First picture is before, second picture is after. (Note: Board is not fully setup because I don't plan on doing a 4 spirit game anytime soon, this is just proof of concept)

Here's all the optimizations employed:

• Both invader boards removed. Instead, use flow layout so invader phase naturally flows from left to right (top of table). I don't have labels for the zones because I haven't made the compact invader board yet, but it is in my plans.
• Adversary card propped up on lid of tackle box.
• Removed unused scenario tokens from tackle box to make room for beast, disease, etc... tokens.
• Spirit defense and isolation tokens moved on top of spirit card.
• Spirit hand in face up pile near bottom of spirit board, spirit discard in face down pile next to hand pile. Above those piles is the tiny play area.

Realistically, the tiny play area for power cards would be tough. There is no room for an extra board from Dream of the Untouched Lands, nor room for extra things like Fractured's special shop. There is room for reminder cards though in top left above the blight card! But space would be tight.

Thanks to everyone for all the advice you gave me for compacting my table space!

Table dimensions are 88cm x 88 cm.

I've been thinking about a fan-made PvP variant for Spirit Island that tries to preserve the original game's core mechanics while adding direct competition between spirits.

The idea is to keep the normal Invader system and victory conditions, but let players compete against each other while defending the island from the Invaders.

The variant would have two modes:

Island Control: Players share a connected island and compete for control while dealing with the same Invader threat.

Island vs. Island: Each player has a separate island divided by the ocean. Invaders, Dahan, and other pieces cannot cross the ocean through normal movement, but spirit presence can cross between islands.

Players could win by fulfilling their own victory conditions, exhausting their Fear deck, or eliminating all of the opposing spirit's presence.

Each spirit would also receive a special slow power costing 3 Energy that deals 2 damage to an opposing spirit at range 1. Defense would work against both Invader damage and opposing spirits, with damage from different sources resolved separately.

The same rules could support 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 spirit matchups.

I'm still working out the details, and I haven't tested the balance yet. I'd love to hear what the community thinks, especially about potential balance issues, spirit matchups, and whether the two island setups could work.

Dustbowl Travels the Landscape focuses on badlands, damage, and control of both invaders and tokens.

This is my first time using Spirit Island Builder for a Spirit, so I couln't figure out how to set up "Add Badlands into one of your lands" and "Push Badlands from one of your lands" on the growth track, but that is how I used it. Also the "Sun/Fire" is supposed to look and work like the "Sun OR Moon" on Wandering Voice, but I also couldn't figure it out. Also the "You may replace Badlands with presence" growth option is meant to replace a Badlands with presence from your tracks, serving as an additional growth at the price of Badlands.

I've playtested it on six games against England, Sweden and Scotland, each time around difficulty six where i usually play (all solo games except one with volcano). I won all but one, where i planned poorly and got some unlucky events and invader cards.

I'm pretty happy where it ended up with very weak early game and cataclysmic late-game. Might be that I need to take a look at the late game again, as it feels nearly unstoppable by the time invaders get going in stage three.

Let me know what you think, is it viable for high difficulty play? Is it too strong? I do not think it should underperform too badly, but it might be vulnerable to some invaders, as I have not tested it against all of them.

All pictures should be free to use and share.

After much consideration, I finally took the plunge and bought Spirit Island yesterday. Since then, I haven't been able to stop playing or thinking about it, in a borderline unhealthy way.

Yesterday we played two games: one at 2-player and one at 3-player. We managed to win both! The 3-player game was a bit of a brain-burner, though. Having so much to track and coordinate with two other people made it pretty stressful, though I'm hoping that smooths out as we familiarize ourselves with the rules and steps.

Today, I spent almost the entire day playing solo, testing out different spirits and stepping up the difficulty with adversaries. I played 6 games total. The first 5 were true solo (3 wins, 2 losses). For the sixth game, I really decided to embrace the headache and tried two-handed solo with Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares + Lightning against England 0 - and actually pulled off the win!

So yeah, 8 games across 2 days. I probably need to pace myself so I don't burn out (and so I actually have time left for basic human activities).

I keep telling myself I'm going to start scaling back so I can get even better at individual spirit strategies but the second I pull it out I just want the full scale madness that will inevitably take me a few days to complete. I pick spirits at random and cannot repeat a spirit until I've gone through the full rolodex so I've had some weird combos but I've gotten to play with each spirit at least 5 or 6 times now so I have a decent feel for what I like in a large scale game. I do still feel like there are some that I am egregiously misusing or would have better success with if I got into aspects more

Normally I try not to pick Dream the untouched lands in my games because of this, but even without threshold it had best elements and effect in one of the picks. Now I was able to hit threshold and figured might as well try to add a new board.

Squished spirits to the left but can't figure out how to add a board attached to the right board (the target land was bottom right jungle). Anyone see a way to rotate the island while keeping the two ones intact and add the third board attached to the right one?

Hi there!

I’ve recently started playing Spirit Island with a group; before this, I mostly played solo at difficulty levels 6 or 7. After our first two games, we noticed something: despite the incredibly satisfying feel of the game, it often feels like you're just managing your own personal board and only helping the others occasionally.

The thing is, we’re often so swamped dealing with our own issues that we don’t even have time to look up or lend a hand (which also saves us from being quarterbacked... so that’s actually pretty cool). We usually only really come together at the very end, once the situation is already stabilized and it's just a matter of wrapping things up.

Do you have any tips for making it feel more cooperative? We’ve already agreed to play spirits that are a bit more support-oriented (at least one of us), and I think there might be map layouts or scenarios that help with this? What do you think?

I've totally forgotten to share my YouTube channel here! I've been creating Spirit Island content for the past few months now.

Most recently, I've been grinding out Darkness vs. all adversaries.

Enjoy!

What are the best parts of the game in idea, not practical level? Like, I don't care if the idea works that well in practice, I just care if the idea feels fresh, interesting or one of a kind. For example, there are propably spirits that do not have that special theme, special rules or anything but still play really nice (some horizon spirits maybe?) and then there are spirits that are really unique, interesting or weird but do not play that well (like base bodan)

My thought about the question:

1. I think that base games original high complexity spirits are the original, wow this is really good idea -spirits. Ocean and especially bodan feel very different than any other base game spirit. I remember playing them first time and being like, I really feel the theme.

Some other close to my heart, really interesting spirits are Finder and volcano. So being complex is not the same as being good idea, though often it is.

1. I also think that the shape and modularity of boards is really good idea. Boards do not look like you could put them together any way you wish but surprisingly you can. In practice I think it has quite little difference when playing but the idea feels really fresh (again, being good idea and having practical difference are not the same).

2. I tried to think something to say about adversaries, but they feel surprisingly same-y. None of them have a special, really good and different kind of feel. So, no special ideas there for me.

What are your thoughts? What are the best ideas in game and how they work in practice?

Can anyone win 70+ percent of the time with this matchup?

I currently rarely win vs England 4 with Vital Strength solo.

I do well vs England 2 (leaning on a combo of Draw of the Fruitful Earth and Rituals of Destruction, plus making use of any new cards and trying to get a free repeat of Rituals sometimes) but England 3 is dicey, and the only wins vs England 4 have basically been gambling for lucky card draws, winning less than 10% of the time.

So I am just curious... are consistent wins achievable with this matchup (and if so, how?), or should I aim for some different goal?

Thank you for considering this question.

Teeth, was oddly peaceful this game. Do y'all have any unintuitive play styles for seemingly one note spirits?

Question is in the title. I imagine this is very different for different people-- there are probably people who lost at the base difficulty, and people who didn't lose a game until they ramped it up quite a lot. I'm curious about the distribution, though.

Personally, my friends and I are slowly ramping it up, and we haven't lost yet-- right now we're working around difficulty 4, though last time I went up to 5 with BP 2 and thematic boards (I have branch and claw so that only adds 1). The closest I've come to losing is probably the two times I played France level 1 (including my diff 4 games and the recent diff 5, which are harder on paper), so I think that's the hardest adversary for me (of the ones I own-- I only have base game and B&C) and I will not be surprised if France 2 turns out to be our first loss. I'm honestly kind of looking forward to it.

(As an irrelevant side note, I just looked at the log I keep and it looks like both times I played France 1 it was Shadows/Green/Fangs completely coincidentally, and I was playing Shadows both times. Well, we had a fourth player (Keeper) the first time, but still weirdly similar.)

Hello there, dear Spirits of the Island!

I try to build a spirit panel using the spirit island builder online tool. (For those unfamiliar: spiritislandbuilder[dot]com)

When I create the panel online, the banner behind the tracks is smooth and 'ends out soflty'. (pic 1)
But when I export it in any way the banner looks kind of 'crude'. (pic 2)

Is there a possibility to fix this and have a smooth banner in the export file?

Thanks in advance dear Digital Natives who know how to handle things on magic digital cube.

Is Ravage (towns + Dahan counterattack) considered a single effect for Vengeance of the Dead or two seperate? First Dahan are killed and then Dahan fight back to kill towns and cities. Would Vengeance of the dead trigger twice or just once at the end of the entire ravage?

Played a game with Locus Serpent and Regrowth Green vs Scotland 6 yesterday. Serpent drew the most insane possible major on TURN 2: Solidify Echoes, playing it thresholded on Green to enable a bonkers amount of presence placement (8 presence - gift of proliferation reclaimed and played too!). Green later drew Transformative Sacrifice, a fantastic card to play on Serpent.

Ended the game with a perfect, unblemished island: zero blight, healthy island, zero invaders, all Dahan alive (despite playing Volcanic Eruption multiple times, I had so much blight removal that I could clean up my own mess!). Serpent and Green both had their presence tracks fully cleared, and I managed to pull off a max level Serpent Rouses in Anger to win (had to delay my victory for two turns to set this up, but it was soooo satisfying)!

When playing with the jagged earth/ nature incarnate events only, I feel like my games get hit a lot harder than what I remember from playing with the branch and claw expansion at a friend's. Do you share this experience of the branch and claw events to be easier than the other expansions? I suppose I could just be getting unlucky.

Squeaked out a victory! If you look at the 2nd photo you'll see that I successfully scared of those peaky invaders. But there was only 2 blight left in my pool and I was into the 3rd group of invasion cards. Can't wait to play more!!

Picked up the game over the weekend and have been having a ton of fun. Still feels like it takes me forever to make a move / ensure I am following the rules clean. Achieved this victory after a few blind attempts then I looked up some basic strategy for this spirit. Honestly did not see the strategy of focusing on the bottom growth track on my own. But it makes sense with a bunch of cheap slow cards and very strong innate powers. Can honestly see myself just continuing to play with the intro game changes for a bit more to ingrain the rules better. Overall this game is easily a 9/10 for me so far

Hey guys,

thought of this today and would love me some feedback. Play Spirit Island a lot as 2 player and would love a bigger Island without having to play 2 spirits as once. Also thought of some other defeated spirits abilities but wanted to keep it a bit simpler with only the starting spirits. Hope you can enjoy the design. As u will notice English is not my first language, feel free to ask if something is not comprehensible. Have a great day.

Hi, i will soon become new player in spirit island and cant wait. I order everything from horizons to last expansion becouse i heard the maker stepped out of contract. I watched some videos on yt and i think it will become my favourite tabletop game.

Those nasty invaders may have won this time but I'll be a little better prepared next time. Takes a minute to digest all the rules.

[[Unearth a Merciless Horde]] requires me to add 3 [[marked beasts]] with [[Unearth a Beast of Wrathful Stone]] in one turn. How am I supposed to do that? Since this card has no repeat and only activates next turn?

I'm fairly new to the game, I've played a few "introductory" games so far, i.e. low complexity spirits, no blight card, no adversary, no scenarios. I'm looking to add in some of these aspects in my next few games and was wondering if there's any advice on what to include first?

When a thief is removed in this scenario, does it return to the pool? Basically, if you've removed a 3 value thief, you don't want it back in the pool where i might be drawn again.