Board Game: Spirit Island

Didn't wind up playing Blades in the Dark last night due to being down a player (and with only four players, I really prefer not to have anyone missing), so we opted for a board game instead.

The Game: Spirit Island
The Publisher: Greater Than Games
Time: It took us nearly 3 hours, but it's a complex game; a second playthrough would be a lot faster
Players: Me, Michelle, Amanda, Toasty

The bare island

Game Play: I'll say this: The game warns you up front that it's got a lot of moving parts and advises some modifications on your first time playing (we used most of them, we should have used all of them, so I'll just say if you're playing this game for the first time, play it like the manual says).

The basic premise is that invaders have come to the island of the Dahan, and you're playing the spirits of the island trying to drive said invaders back into the sea. Problem is, the invaders multiply like rabbits, and they bring blight with them, which destroys the spirits' presence.

Now, that all sounds very simple, but the game is not. It progresses in multiple phases, each of which has multiple sub-phases. As the spirit, you have to track several difference resources. Check it:

That's my spirit board. The yellow thingies are my presence, which get added to the island board to track where my spirit has influence. As they get taken off the board, I get more energy every turn, or I can play more cards per turn, depending on which track I take them from. I can take cards to gain more powers, and then I spend energy to activate powers, and the powers generate elements, which then fuel my innate powers. And all of that is just shit I have to keep track of, none of that even gets into the invaders.

These fuckers here.

Invaders get added to the board every turn, they ravage the land, killing natives (those little wooden mushroom-looking things), and adding blight. The spirits can kill them, depending on what powers they use, but it's impossible to prevent blight from spreading entirely, and once blight spreads too far the island becomes blighted, which can have nasty effects each turn. Eventually, you run out of blight entirely and then the game ends. Or, the blight destroys all of a given spirit's presence, and the game ends.

That there is the invader board. That weird stack of turtle-looking things is the supply of Fear Markers (we just called them "fear turtles"). Fear is a good thing; you're putting the fear into the invaders, and once all the little turtles get moved down into the green area (the turtle moves), you get a fear card, which has a detrimental effect on the invaders.

We...did not win.

Opinions: I like this game, but holy shit, it is not something you can play if you're not going to pay attention and learn how it works. The players really need to keep watch on what the other players are doing, and you need to talk out your strategy turn to turn. I suspect it'd be difficult to master even before you start adding in some of the options, like Adversaries or Scenarios.

But for all that, it's a lot of fun, and it's very satisfying to move the little turtles as a representation of scaring the hell out of invading colonizers.

Keep? Yep.