Hello friends. In the last newsletter, Spirit Island won the popular vote! This is the last newsletter in this series.
Today’s solo adventure?
Spirit Island by R. Eric Reuss and published by Greater Than Games.
This is the original game without any expansions. Before buying this game I did buy the target version (Horizons of Spirit Island) The components are a little cheaper and toned down from the original game in order to bring the retail price down. The original game has an MSRP of $90. Horizons goes for $30. Horizons also acts as an expansion to Spirit Island, so if it does end up in your collection, it can be used with the original game! That’s pretty cool!
On with the show!
SETUP:
Setup is not complex. Grab a random map board. Randomly select a spirit. You’ll add 4 fear tokens to the main board. Setup the fear & invader cards, the blight tokens (you need 5 per player +1, and that +1 will start on the map), Starting spirit hand of power cards, setting up the board with the appropriate invaders, dahan (village hut looking tokens), player’s presence tokens and that blight token.
The game begins after you flip over the first invader card, adding another spot on the map for the enemies.
This is kind of a complex game, but it doesn’t take up as much space as other games of the same complexity. It takes up about 2/3rds of my coffee table. The solo setup instructions in the back of the manual is 2 sentences that essentially say “the game is the same as multiplayer. Wording on the cards may feel weird, since the assumption is more than 1 person is playing, just target yourself if a card wants you to target another spirit.”
GAMEPLAY:
The game is played until all 6 blight are on the map, or you’ve run out of fear cards, or you’ve accomplished the round’s goals of eliminating certain invaders, or the invader’s have run out of cards to play, or you’ve lost all of your presence on the map.
Yeah, this game can go a number of ways, and I completely understand why a ‘simplified’ version was made for the mass market audience that visits Target.
There are a number of phases in each round. Every round begins with you making a choice based on the options at the top of your spirit board. In this game, I played ‘Shadows Flicker Like Flame’ (an option the rules suggests is the most complex ‘easy’ spirit). My options were:
Reclaim cards & Gain 1 power card
Gain 1 power card & 1 presence
Gain 1 presence & 3 energy.
In the next phase you gain energy depending on how many presence tiles you’ve placed on the map. And then you play cards from your hand. (You’re limited in the beginning of how many cards you can play, but as time goes on you’ll unlock more option. )
Cards cost energy to play. And they come in 2 flavors, Fast and Slow.
Fast actions happen immediately . Just follow the actions on the card. Slow actions however, essentially happen when the round is over (after the enemies make their moves!) and the timing of when they happen can severely limit the potential you had for them.
After your actions play out, the Invaders get a turn.
The Invaders have their own little deck that you draw from, it acts as a conveyer belt of actions. Their cards will continue to move to the left each round, but they take actions from left to right, beginning with the Ravage. (No cards in the ravage spot in the first round so you get one pass, but every turn after they will beat you down!)
During The Ravage, any invader units on the map deal damage to the land and the people. There are often few survivors if any, and every time they deal 2 or more damage to the land, they leave a mark. The game calls this The Blight. You begin the game with a max amount of Blight tokens. If all get used, you lose.
If any of the villagers survive, they do fight back eliminating some of the invader units. But in the next step, invaders multiply. If they aren’t kept at bay or eliminated, you’ve got a huge problem on your hands.
Next up is the Invader’s Build Phase. Here you check to see if they have any units in a particular region and they’ll get bigger units if so. From explorers you get towns. And from towns you get cities. Cities make more towns. It gets out of hand quickly.
After that the Invader’s Explore Phase occurs. Here they send out explorers to neighboring regions. Like a cancer, always growing and spreading.
That’s it for the Invaders. If you played any slow action cards, those would take effect now and from here it all loops again.
My Thoughts:
It took me about 60 minutes to play this game. It was my first time playing the ‘real’ version of Spirit Island. A few months ago I had purchased the mass market version they made for Target. It’s essentially the same game, with some modifications to slim it’s table presence and lower that $90 MSRP price tag.
I played two games actually for this solo playthrough. The first time I got about half way and realized that I had missed a huge rule. When the invaders attack, they attack BOTH the land and the villagers at the same time. (I was having them attack the land AFTER they attacked the villagers, basically giving the invaders trample, when they actually have double strike. ) So I started over.
The second game I won!
There’s a mechanic in the game where you create Fear. And when you generate enough fear, you earn a card, essentially a free action that occurs before the invader’s next turn. This usually changes the board state in some way, letting you pick off invader units or move the villagers around. It also doubles as a changing end game trigger. Every 3 fear cards you earn, the end game trigger get’s easier. (I think it’s easier) Anyways I got to the last tier, end game change, and I just had to eliminate every city from the map. And I did!
The game abruptly ends and you let out a sigh of relief.
Spirit Island is a tense game. One bad decision early in the game can end you. One lucky draw from the invaders can give their cancer efforts an edge. The game gives you plenty of options for choice and decisions, but it’s all chaos mitigation. The best actions are slow and don’t occur until after the enemy has made its move.
I love that ‘the ai’ is built into the game, both solo and multiplayer. Solo mode got 2 sentences in the rule book. “Just play the game.” and I love how simple that is. It doesn’t take up that much table space, and there’s a ton of content in the box. There’s entire scenarios and campaigns to play through. This game has a very high retail cost. BUT it does come with hours and hours of material, that $:entertainment ratio has to be low.
My one disappointment with the game, is that considering its theme, I’m surprised with how much plastic is in the game. There are a ton of plastic invader tokens and blight tokens. (Horizons fixes the plastic issue by turning everything into cardboard. I especially liked the blight tokens as it turns them into cardboard tokens that actually look like their icon in the rule book) If you’re an eco-conscious buyer, save your money and stick with the target edition.
I spent $20 on the target edition of Spirit Island in September 2023. I spent $44 on the original edition a few weeks ago October 2023.
That’s it for Solotober this year! Thank you for letting me be a part of your inbox this month. I’d love to hear what you thought about the series and if you had any feedback for me, my DMs are open on all the various social channels. (or email me!)
I’d also love to hear what games you’ve played solo recently. I think the way the world is moving, I appreciate it more when designers consider that it’s getting harder and harder to have a group of friends over. And I find, with solo modes, I can usually take my time learning the game before I teach it to a group. It’s a shame so many games sit on the shelf, played less every year because the game collection grows and people can’t come over as often as they used to.
No one thinks it’s weird to play a video game by yourself. It’s a little funny to me that there’s a small stigma towards soloing a boardgame. But don’t let it get to you. No one’s watching! (Ha!) You’re home alone. Crack open your beverage of choice and save the island, or survive the killer invaders, or travel through the national parks! or play poker against a god or attempt to run an award winning distillery!
Until next time. May Alora be with you.
Thanks for sharing your Spirit Island playthrough! Really enjoyed "Solotober".
I've often thought about how, like you mentioned, solo video gaming is completely normal and no one thinks twice about it. And yet solo board gaming is still considered new and a little odd perhaps. I've yet to come up with a good reason why that might be.