Ongoing Battles: The Tsardom of Russia

 Ongoing Battles: The Tsardom of Russia

I'm going to try something new for some of these posts. For some bigger games (such as Spirit Island or Descent) or games that feature ongoing content and changes in the meta (Star Wars Armada), I have found that my blog posts become outdated. Not necessarily that fast or anything, but enough information changes that I want to revisit the subject. So I'm going to try some ongoing blog posts, in which I mark when I wrote which section and under which circumstances, and it'll just sort of become an ongoing narrative. I have already done that once or twice (most notably on the old Armada blog I used to write for, "It's a Trap!", in which I documented a long-running attempt to "unlock" the commander upgrade, Emperor Palpatine - the link to Part I is here if you're so inclined; I believe I wrote 5 or 6 parts?), so why not try it out here?

December 16, 2021: So for my first ongoing battle, let's deal with those pesky invaders from the Tsardom of Russia! That's right, we're talking Spirit Island!! I recently wrote a game recap that I posted here, wherein I discussed the difficulty we had in dealing with The Kingdom of England as an Adversary. After playing that evening, I sort of felt reinvigorated regarding the game. I say that because at this point, I've played it enough that I really only want to play it with Scenarios and Adversaries. But some of these Adversaries get incredibly difficult to manage, even just at level 2! So I decided I'd try playing solo again in some spare time so I could begin the work of really plotting out how to fully conquer an adversary, even at the highest level. I always hate dealing with Russia because of how quickly things can go sideways with the additional loss condition. I've posted up a picture of The Tsardom of Russia below.

So I thought I'd give it a shot at level 2. Obviously, the synergy Russia displays between Explorers doing additional damage and actions that destroy Explorers only pushing the first one instead of killing him can really be devastating. I thought about how to approach this and started with Many Minds Move As One. I'd never played the Spirit before, and had only seen it played twice, so there wasn't a lot I knew about it. Honestly, it rarely comes to the forefront of my brain when I'm considering Spirits I want to play. I can't explain why other than I once tried Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves (before the Jagged Earth expansion dropped) and found I was starving for Beast tokens, and that really limited my ability to function. Didn't need Russia's animal-hate to absolutely neuter one of my two Spirit choices, as I had already made the decision that this experiment would have to feature two Spirits and two boards. It's been my experience that a number of Spirits simply cannot play this game without support because they take too long to get going and get buried.

Anyway, Many Minds was going to be a bit of an experimental move since I'd never used them before and knew very little about them other than the fact that they relied on Beast tokens. So I knew whichever Spirit complemented Many Minds would need to either fill gaps left by Many Minds, or turn strengths into obscenities. It occurred to me that Shadows Flicker Like Flames could do both. It's a fairly basic Spirit, so I wasn't sure if that would work for or against me in this situation. I figured if nothing else, it would prove an easier Spirit to keep track of so games wouldn't be a ridiculous brain burn for me.

Shadows of the Dahan is a really useful aspect, but I wanted the Spirit to be a little more complex than that, so I decided to replace that aspect with Amorphous (for anyone unfamiliar with the Jagged Earth expansion, one of the ridiculously cool things it did was include potential Aspect changes for all of the most basic Spirits that were in the base game, thus allowing players to switch up how a Spirit plays).

Obviously, I'm doubling down on the notion of generating Fear, since Many Minds' native Power, "Beset and Confound the Invaders" generates Fear and is a Power I'll likely use often, given my need to defend Beast tokens so Russia can't accumulate so many of them so as to beat me that way. But I suspect at a glance that Many Minds may either have difficulty moving around the board or having much impact in places where Beast tokens are scarce. Shadows' new Aspect, "Amorphous," will make up for that shortcoming by being able to basically teleport all over the board.

My one concern is that while I'll be able to move Invaders around the board, I won't be able to kill enough of them to keep my island under control or supplement my Fear income. Especially because those Explorers will each be doing 2 damage during the Ravage phases. That said, there's only so much theorizing I can do when it comes to a game and I decided to just get on with it and learn from winning or losing.

There's a lot that happens during a game of Spirit Island, and I'm not interested in documenting what happens from turn to turn unless I hear from a bunch of readers that's something y'all want to read. So I won't go into a ton of details, just want to hit some highlights for my purposes here:

• I adore Many Minds Move As One. I sort of can't believe how long it took me to discover it. But I very rarely found myself Energy-starved because of the cheap but regularly useful basic Powers with which the Spirit starts. This meant I could focus more on my Card Play Presence track, and that was huge, because its Innate Powers are absolutely vital.
• I used each Innate Power every single turn once I got going (and because of how cheap the starting Power cards are, this Spirit was humming along pretty early in the game), and I was adding Beast tokens at every possible turn (by the grace of "Ever-Multiplying Swarm": a slow Power that adds 2 Beast tokens on a land in which I've got Presence). It's true that Many Minds relies on its Beast tokens, so it sometimes moves Beast tokens into danger. But I was almost always able to move or protect them, and the deluge of Beast tokens also meant that Russia was unlikely to satisfy its additional Loss Condition of having more Beast tokens killed through Ravage than were on the board at any given time.
• Shadows Flicker Like Flame rarely did anything sexy, but it served as a good support Spirit.
• It didn't generate as much Fear as I hoped simply because it was always moving Explorers instead of killing them. Since it generates Fear when an Explorer is moved instead of killed per the Adversary's rules, there was still some Fear generated. But I found that Shadows was often moving around the board to put out fires. Which I suppose could just mean that I drafted this Spirit into service for the right reasons. Ultimately, it did serve as a good complement to Many Minds Move As One.
• I needed some Blight removal that I mostly didn't have. Shadows drew into "Growth Through Sacrifice," which gave me Elements that Shadows likes to use as well as allowing either Spirit to remove Blight from one of their lands. It meant Shadows was sacrificing Presence, which I didn't love. But it helped serve as a stop-gap measure late game as I tried to prevent Cascading Blight. Ultimately, that would prove to be a losing battle. But I managed to hold off the Cascades long enough that I could win the game through a Fear victory.
• This sort of led me to two conclusions:
• 1) Many Minds is a really fantastic answer to Russia. I don't know that I can argue it's a staple in such an endeavor, but it might be real dang close. It's one of the very few Spirits (if not the only one) that can consistently move Beast tokens around in response to whatever Russia is plotting. Not only that, but Many Minds can also make use of such constant movement. I can definitely see other Spirits with the capability to move Beast tokens out of harm's way, but then what? It feels like such an endeavor for the majority of other Spirits is an exercise in futility, as they can only ever hope to hold their ground instead of actually gaining any. Many Minds gains ground through such motion because Beast token motion is integral to their plans. Sure, there are times when you as a player will have to make a less-than-optimal move or two in order to avoid dangers like dead Beast tokens or Blight. But that's far superior to the alternative offered by other Spirits against this Adversary.
• 2) The best way to beat Russia with Many Minds in the mix (specifically at lower player counts) is to aim for a Fear victory. I know this is not necessarily optimal because it can be a lot of Fear cards to earn and as Invader numbers go up, players can quickly run out of space on the island. (See my final board state picture below, and note just how many Invaders and how much Blight is on the island - I lucked into the Blighted side of my Island card being one of those "Still Healthy - For Now," which bought me a little extra time).

That said, I considered every permutation that would allow me to eliminate the final four cities on the island before the Ravage phase in the last turn of the game. I tried very hard to make it happen, because I knew I wouldn't survive another Ravage. I was staring down quite a lot of cascading Blight, which would've let me into a different Blighted Island card who would certainly have been more harsh than the one I had already flipped. No matter how I did the math, I just couldn't eliminate those cities before they Ravaged and Built and just buried me in an avalanche of colonizers. So a Fear victory was my only choice. Luckily, this is what I had been cultivating from the start, and it was almost too easy to earn the something like 9 or so Fear in the fast powers phase to achieve the Terror Victory condition.

It was a very close game by the end, but I felt like I was fairly well in control for the majority of it. Even as I scrambled to counter Russia's moves and some unwelcome surprises delivered by the Event cards, I never felt helpless in the face of what might come next. It was a very different experience from my next game, in which I again fielded Many Minds Move As One, but this time, it was accompanied by Starlight Finds Its Form and we were pitted against level 3 Russia. I'll get more into that disaster next time!

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January 9, 2022: Sooooooo yeeeeeeeaaaaaaah, this is where things go south for me. I decided that while Shadows Flicker Like Flame was effective in that first game against Russia, the level 3 ability of Russia ("Ravage cards also match lands with 3 or more Explorers. If the land already matched the Ravage card, it still Ravages just once.") meant that I couldn't just keep shuffling Explorers around so that they wouldn't Ravage; I needed to kill off Explorers instead of just letting them pile up because at some point, they'd become impossible to manage and I'd just end up with an entire island covered in Blight. So I decided I'd swap out Shadows for Starlight Finds Its Form.

I had never played it before so I was excited to finally get it to the table! I was confident that I would need several games to "figure it out," but I also thought that it was such a flexible Spirit that it would allow me to grow in whatever direction I needed to complement Many Minds (my staple against Russia, and just one of my new favorite Spirits) and counter Russia. I'll admit that one of the first things I was looking at was using the Innate Power, "Fire Burns, Water Soothes" to deal with the Explorers on a regular basis. This proved a mistake as I'd quickly discover. And by quickly, I mean as early as the fourth round, possibly? I was definitely in trouble once I hit Terror Level 2, because "Peace of the Nighttime Sky" can no longer prevent Ravages, and I had relied a little too heavily on that Power card for Starlight to hold its ground while it was trying to build toward "Fire Burns, Water Soothes." I tried to reach a little too hard for that, which meant I was pulling Presence off of the wrong (for the time and circumstance!) Presence tracks because I was trying to unlock the Elements on my tracks. I just ended up in a situation where I was always chasing or just holding my ground, and not making enough headway. When an Event caused some of the Explorers to scatter to different lands, I was just overwhelmed by pockets of Explorers Ravaging out of turn (again, because of the third level ability of Russia).

I decided to try this set-up again (Spirits and boards, anyway; I reset and changed the Event, Fear, and Explorer decks) because I had learned a lot from that game and thought if I had more experience playing as Starlight, this was a good team-up to tackle Russia. So I played again and played Starlight a little differently, trying very hard not to reach for something that wasn't there. This time, though, I was overwhelmed more quickly, if that's possible! I was trying hard not to overreact to bad Invader cards, but I got hit with a bad Ravage and then a bad Event that compounded it, and I just hit a point where I couldn't even reach backward to stop the Island from flipping from Healthy to Blighted. I still really enjoy Starlight as a Spirit, but I had sort of come to the conclusion that it wasn't the right pairing for this particular experiment. Perhaps on a bigger board with more players/Spirits, it could hold its own, but in this situation, it just wasn't cutting it for me the way that I was bringing it to bear.

So I had a couple of ideas of what direction to go in, but it wasn't until I played with some folks who are family in name though not in blood, that I really locked onto what I wanted to try next. One of the Spirits I decided I want to try next is because of what Alissa would play in our online game, and the other Spirit (the one, in fact, that I'm about to start messing with right now) came about as a recommendation from Suf (and honestly, I sorta can't believe I didn't think of this one sooner, since it's one of my preferred Spirits, even if I haven't used it in a long while!) I'm really looking forward to seeing how this goes and sharing the next match with y'all! I'll try to take pictures this time ;)

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January 12, 2022: Funny story - I had every intention of throwing Ocean's Hungry Grasp at Russia and eating Invaders instead of Destroying them, but Drowning them is the equivalent of Destroying them, so I've tabled that notion. It was a good thought, Suf, but we've been foiled by the rules! But in talking further with Suf about the hole in that reasoning, he suggested having Volcano Looming High team up with Many Minds and outlined a strategy for my first two turns. His idea is in italics below:

Turn 1, add 2 presence to starting mountain either with or adjacent to a town. Pull from bottom track.

Play Lava Flows.

Use first level of Explosive Eruption to blow up a town.

Laugh maniacally, for you do not need all of that presence. 

It depends on the board, but otherwise it is a round 1 way to push their explores to the coast, and adjacent to Land 2.

Round 2, add 2 presence from top track, and play Rain of Ash. Get some fear and push out fools who built during the round, also adding 1 destroyed presence in slow phase.

I had only played Volcano Looming High once before now, but I really enjoyed it! I had previously feared that it would take too long to build up, but I felt as though Suf had outlined a pretty strong approach that would allow for the Invader destruction I had been missing in previous attempts. That said, I also know I'm not familiar enough with Volcano to really adjust the strategy outlined above while still sticking to its core philosophy (think of it as learning the wrong lesson from an experience). So I decide ahead of time that for this run at Russia, I'll just follow Suf's outline to the letter. I don't really love that the initial Explore is Jungles. Two spaces couldn't be further apart on the board Many Minds occupies, which makes it more difficult for me to mitigate damage out of the gate. Which is a bad look, given that I know there's going to be at least some Blight on Volcano's board because while it can be extremely effective, it can only handle so many threats at once, and it still needs to build up before it uses "Explosive Eruption" or effectively uses "Collapse in a Blast of Lava and Steam." And the Jungle spaces aren't particularly close on Volcano's board, either. I play the first turn, choosing to follow Suf's advice to the letter and...well that's weird. Now I look at the pictures and don't remember for the life of me what I did. I definitely played the Power card that Suf suggested, but I can't track where I used it or Explosive Eruption.

Huh. That's weird. Well, now I have to wonder: after I played the first turn, I felt a little overwhelmed and decided to step away from the game. Then it was several days before I came back to it to continue with round 2. I have to wonder if maybe I missed or forgot something, because that board doesn't look right and I can't figure how it got there. I can say with confidence that Many Minds simply added Presence and a Beast token on Jungle number 8 on its own board, and then played "Ever-Multiplying Swarm" on the same space, basically prepping for defensive measures on the second turn. But I can't figure out what happened on Volcano's board...

January 18, 2022: This is where I picked the game up again, despite the fact that I could already feel it slipping away from me. I'm on my back foot heading into round 2, and while that's not totally unfamiliar territory, I don't really have a plan moving forward. And when I have to spend too much time reacting instead of planning and acting, it's really only a matter of time before an Event or Invader card catches me off-guard and sunders my hopes for victory.

I knew I was going to see Blight on the island, but honestly, this is where things start to go really wrong. And of all things, it's a Fear card that completely threw me off. It should have helped me immensely, but instead, I let myself get carried away and I screwed up the "A Sense for Impending Doom" rule. How, you ask? It's easy for me to conflate "The first time each Action would Destroy an Explorer" with "Each time an action would destroy." I get the rule right whenever the action affects just one space (if I'm doing 3 damage in one space, I'll move one Explorer and Destroy the other two, no problem!), but when it affects multiple spaces, my default is to apply the rule to every space. Which meant that when this Fear card came up and said that "in each space, a Town Destroys an Explorer," I shuffled ALL of the Explorers around the board instead of only moving the first one and killing the rest. And I assure you: it was a lot of Explorers.

This generated a lot of Fear for me, but I needed to kill those Explorers. Not just to stay in line with the rules, but because moving them all around as I did meant that there were a number of spaces occupied by 3 Explorers, which would trigger "Competition Among Hunters," the third level ability of Russia, thus leading to Ravages happening out of turn.

At this point, I was willing to call it. I could've held out for another turn, maybe two, but not more than that. Part of me was relieved that I got beaten so soundly because I clearly didn't abide by the rules, and part of me is annoyed that I made such a big mistake with a Fear card that was actually perfect for my situation. So why bother sharing this with y'all when I screwed the pooch so badly? And can't I just turn back the clock because I've got pictures of the board state?

February 28, 2022: I'll answer the second question first. I don't learn as well when my choices have no consequences. I run into this when I'm playing Armada and most recently X-Wing - there are definitely times when it makes sense to retcon a thing because it's a devastating mistake predicated on a misunderstanding of the game (I sideslipped my HMP Gunship in the obviously wrong direction during my second game playing with it). But I've been playing Armada for something like 4 years now. I grasp the game. If I make a mistake, I'm going to learn more from it if I try to salvage it. It's not always enough to know something is a mistake: it's sometimes important to learn that a choice is bad but salvageable versus "no, the downside there means I'm dead, even if it takes longer to happen." The other night, I flew one of my HMP Gunships over an asteroid. That sucked. I had banked at speed 2 thinking I'd clear it when I needed to bank at speed 3.