Spirit Island

 Spirit Island

I think I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm generally not a fan of using Tabletop Simulator (TTS). Not because it's not a good program; I think it's incredibly solid and allows for so much gaming over distance while simultaneous reducing setup and teardown as well as addressing a lot of bookkeeping. It's brilliant! But I'm very much a tactile person, and while I can sit for hours and hours around a table playing games with people in person, that's just not true when I'm sitting at my computer, staring at a screen, scrolling and zooming constantly so I can see all the components and make my decisions.

Luckily, my friends Suf and Alissa discovered early on in the pandemic that Spirit Island is a game we could play online without using TTS! Much like Five Tribes, we could play off of a lead board (Suf and Alissa's) that would be on camera while I would run the Events and Fear and ensure that my board reflected their board. Soon, we brought in our excellent friends, Alyx and Ryan, to play with us! So while it does take a bit longer to play Spirit Island this way owing to the fact that we periodically have to do a sweep of the boards to ensure that they all match, this is actually how I prefer to play when I'm playing online.

Recently, the five of us decided it had been too long since we last played, so we came together to take down an Adversary. I'd mentioned my ongoing battle against the Tsardom of Russia and my recent losses to them on level 3 difficulty. Alyx proposed vengeance on Russia and I was all too happy to go along with that! So we played against the Tsardom of Russia on level 2. I was certain I'd be playing Many Minds Move As One if nobody else picked them, but I was happy to pick last in case someone else wanted to try them out. I had a couple of backups selected, but they were unnecessary. Our Spirit choices are listed below and are in chronological order (that is, this is the order in which players picked their Spirits, one after another):

• Suf picked Fractured Days Split the Sky. I was really excited to see this one in action! There's a lot going on there, so I just hadn't messed with it yet. But if anyone could show me how great that Spirit could be, it was Suf!
• Ryan selected Grinning Trickster Stirs Up Trouble. I had seen this one used a couple of times, but have never played them myself. I think they're just a lot of fun to play and the chaos they introduce is always entertaining.
• Alyx decided to go with Lightning's Swift Strike. I've seen games in which Lightning making one or two powers Fast instead of Slow just isn't enough to turn the tide, but that's always been in smaller games. In larger games with higher player counts, Lightning is absolutely beastly and they were a welcome addition to our battle against Russia.
• Alissa declared she was playing as Lure of the Deep Wilderness. Let me tell you, she is an absolute terror with this Spirit. I had always thought of them as a bit limited because they have to operate inland. Plus, they really do have to prepare a space or two ("murder holes," if you will) that is awash in tokens they can use to level a ton of damage at the Invaders they collect. That tells you just how short-sighted I am, because Alissa absolutely wreaks havoc with this Spirit.
• Finally, I decided on Many Minds Move As One. Not much of a decision for me, honestly. They're one of my new favorite Spirits (they make my Top 3!) and they basically ensure that Russia will never meet its additional loss condition. As a reminder of what we're up against, Imma post the Tsardom of Russia Adversary card up here for ya.

Basically, with Many Minds in play, there's no way Russia's Beast token kills can possibly outpace the Beast output of Many Minds. I think there are more reasons than that to play Many Minds, but it's definitely some serious upside against this particular Adversary.

I feel as though I've got enough experience with Many Minds by this time that I can offer my services up beyond protecting my own board. So I end up on board A, where it's a little easier for me to throw support to whoever needs it. 

Honestly, there's a lot I don't remember about this game at this point. I will say that it never really felt as though we were out of control of the game except for maybe the very last turn when Ryan's Trickster antics very nearly pushed us over the Blight edge. I will say that the Fear came fast and furious, which meant we were seeing boons from Fear cards nearly every turn.

By the time we hit a point in the game where we were confident we could end it, we hit a pretty familiar decision point. It was Terror Level 3, which meant eliminating the last 5 cities would win us the game. However, we also knew that if we didn't eliminate the final cities before the Build phase, we'd see a lot of new cities, and then we would have a lot to deal with come the following Ravage phase. Luckily, Alyx could use Lightning's Boon on me so that my 2 Slow Powers could be Fast instead. And just the turn before, I'd drawn into this:

Oh yeah. Those Invaders are about to have a very bad day. At this point, between my Innate Powers and Power Cards, I can get 9 Beast tokens onto a primary space and 2 Beast tokens onto a second place (because yes of course I have 3 Water and 3 Beast Elements in order to repeat the Power, thanks for asking!). So this happens Fast, courtesy of Lightning, and at that point, I manage to absolutely level the shoreside Wetland space that I had been building up literally all game. I believe I let it Blight once, but otherwise, every single time it threatened, I simply used A Dreadful Tide of Scurrying Flesh to skip the Ravage step. Every now and again, someone offered to "take care of it" for me, but I said that I had it on lock unless other people truly had nothing at all to do. With such a big island, there were always other things to address with more urgency. So that Wetland just proved a good place to constantly move Explorers when they should've died (per Russia's "A Sense for Impending Disaster") and let them accumulate there. This is very obviously a strategy that doesn't work if "Competition Among Hunters" is in play, which is one of the reasons I've got so much difficulty playing against Level 3 Russia.

But this is Level 2 Russia, not Level 3 Russia, and so this strategy paid off spectacularly for our end game when Sea Monsters dealt 8 Fear (with ease) and 28 damage (8 Beast tokens, one of my sacred sites, and a Blight) to the Wetlands, murdering literally everything in there except for one Explorer who got to run off, courtesy of Russia's "Impending Disaster." And then another 6 damage to the Jungle just north of those Wetlands, thus finishing off 3 of the 5 remaining Cities. Unless I'm mistaken, it was Alissa and Ryan who eliminated the final 2 Cities, thus winning us the game. It was a very satisfying win, though it felt pretty inevitable for a little while there. We took some early hits that were kinda scary, but after that, it was a no-contest.

Honestly, I've never played a game of Spirit Island I didn't enjoy, win or lose. So I'm always happy to get this to the table. But I have also, in a lot of ways, hit a point where I want to increase the difficulty because these bigger games with more Spirits have felt easier. Part of that is playing with experienced players, part of that is the Spirit variety means we're pretty well-equipped to deal with any situation. Look at our team composition above:

• Need some Invaders burned down? Let Lightning, Trickster, or Lure handle that.
• Concerned about a land being Blighted? Many Minds or Trickster has your back.
• Fear? Lure and Many Minds is all too happy to contribute some to the pool (outside of our considerable offense, of course).
• Confronted with the unexpected and need a little Control or Utility? Pretty sure Fractured Days can handle that with ease.

The Invader and Event cards alone are not really enough to provide a challenge in the face of that kind of versatility. Level 2 Russia was a fun challenge, but other than a couple of close shaves early, we were in the driver's seat the whole time. It's why I've got an ongoing challenge against the Tsardom of Russia: because I know there's a lot more difficulty to unlock in this game. Difficulty that ensures the only path to victory means playing mistake-free ball. And while that's an extremely tall order, that's part of what makes the game so fun for me. To that end, part of it is the choice of Adversary: on such a big board, Russia operates at a disadvantage. Unlike the Habsburg Monarchy, which might do some really ugly stuff on a bigger board with more lands to affect. So, lots to mess with. Again: one of my favorite parts of this game is the insane replayability.

Glad to get this to the table with dear friends. It was a nice way to play the game while breaking up my current, one man experimentation against an increasingly difficult Tsardom of Russia Adversary!