Spirit Island - Setup & How to Play

Spirit Island is a cooperative settler destruction strategy game for wonderful players that was designed by our Eric Rice and published by fabled Nexus in 2017 in Spirit Island each player controls a unique spirit that is trying to spread its presence across the land and protect the native DeHaan from the invaders players will spend energy to use their powers to try and fight back against the invaders and terrorize them by instilling fear the invaders however are trying to spread across the island by exploring building towns and cities and ravaging the land on their turn this process follows a specific order but which type of land the invaders explore each turn is randomized by a deck of cards once the invaders ravage build and explore then all the cards slide down so the land they explored this turn will be built upon next turn and finally ravage the turn after that as the invaders ravage the land they will kill off the Don and blight the land which removes the players presence if they blight a land that's already blighted it will cascade and you will have to blight another land around it you lose the game if you ever run out of blight or if any one spirit ever removes their last presence from the board you win the game by destroying all the invaders including explorers towns and cities by raising the terror level by instilling fear you can also win by destroying only the towns and cities if you reach the maximum terror level then you only need to destroy all the cities to set up the game place the invader board on the table place for your tokens per player in the fear pool shuffle all the fear cards and build the feared deck by placing three cards down right here then place the terror level three placard on top then put three more fear cards on there and the level two terror on top and finally three more cards go on top of that put the rest of the four your cards back in the box take all the invader cards and separate them into three piles stage one two and three remove one card from each pile and then stack them with one on top followed by two and three on the bottom place the deck on the invader board here for the basic introductory game place five blight per player onto the blight space for the regular game choose a blight card place it with the healthy island side facing up and follow the instructions on the card now that the invader board is all done let's set up the island randomly pick in island board for each spirit that you have in the game and set them up like so one player two players three players and four players if you are playing solo but using more than one spirit then set up the board for that many players each space on the island board shows a symbol to indicate initial setup place tahan on any space showing this symbol place towns on spaces showing this symbol place cities on spaces with this symbol and finally place blight tokens on spaces with this symbol note that this blight doesn't come from the blight pool on the invader board you take it out of the bag and remove the rest from the game shuffle the minor power cards and put them within easy reach and then do the same with the major power cards then put energy cities towns explorers and DeHaan where each player can reach them next each player chooses a spirit there are eight available in the base game and four of them are recommended for the introductory game the back of the spirit boards gives a summary of how they play shows a difficulty rating and shows their strengths and weaknesses after choosing take the four power cards associated with that spirit the back of the card will show a picture of your spirit if everyone is playing an introductory game and chooses the easier spirits and instead of the major and minor power card decks each player will take a power progression card instead look through the major and minor power decks and pick out the ones shown on the card you can tell because it'll have a matching color symbol in the top corner stack them in the order shown next each player is assigned one of the island boards is their home board and follows the setup instructions on the back of the spirit board place a presents token on the spaces listed under setup each player starts on their own board but once the game starts anyone can place presents anywhere and use their powers on any space now flip your spirit board over to the front side and place the rest of your presents tokens on the presents tracks the left space of each track will be left blank the final setup step is the invaders initial action turn over the top card of the invader deck and place an explorer on each space of the given type in this case we drew a sans card so we're gonna place one Explorer in each of the sand spaces on all of the game boards then slide the card over to the build space and you're ready to play spirit island is played over a series of turns which has the following phases spirit phase fast power phase invader phase slow power phase and time passes in the spirit phase each player chooses one of the three growth actions you must do all the actions shown but may choose the order let's go over all the icons now this icon means you reclaim all your cards as you play your power cards that will go to the discard pile and this lets you put them all back in your hand this icon means gain energy energy is used to play your power cards later in the face this icon means add presence to the board at a range of X in this case one take the leftmost presence marker from either row on your presence track and add it to a space on the island since the range is 1 you may add it to a land up to one space away from one of your existing presence markers like so this icon means gain a power card if you are playing the introductory game with the power progression cards just take the topmost card and put it in your hand if the back indicates that it is a major power then you must remove one of your other cards from the game and the normal game you can choose to take a minor power or a major power major powers require that you remove one of your other cards from the game all minor powers do not the cardi remove can come from your hand or your discard pile when you gain a power card draw 4 from the deck and keep one adding it to your hand put the other three cards into a discard pile for that deck after choosing your growth option you gain energy equal to the rightmost uncovered energy value on your presence track this is in addition to any energy you might have received from growth next play power cards equal to the rightmost uncovered number on your presence track you must pay for each card as shown on the upper left each power is slow or fast as explained later but you must pay for all of them now after the spirit phase is the fast power phase each power card with this symbol is considered fast everybody resolves them now players can do this at the same time but talk to each other in case the order matters powers can resolve in any order of the players choose if you do not want to resolve a power you played then you can choose to skip it entirely each spirit also has innate powers that are shown on their board here if an innate power is fast then resolve it at this time innate powers require elements to activate the cards you played this turn both fast and slow have these elements listed on the left hand side these elements can also be revealed on your presence track if you have enough elements shown to satisfy an innate power then you can activate it and treat it just like a power card I'll go over the most common powers later but follow the instructions and carry out the action once everyone has played their fast powers we move on to the invader phase which is more procedural than the others and has a number of sub steps first you check for blooded island effects then you resolve fear cards then the invaders ravage build and explore and finally you advance the invader cards let's go over these now if you are playing with a blighted island card and its flipped over then do whatever the card tells you up at the top if you are playing without it then you can skip this step next we resolve fear cards during the game you will generate fear when you destroy towns and cities you can also play power cards with this symbol that will generate fear equal to the number indicated move that many fear tokens from the pool down when you run out of fear tokens in the pool then flip one for your card and move all the tokens back up this generally happens as you resolve powers and destroy cities but you wait to resolve the fear cards until this step in the invader phase because of this you might have more than one card to resolve just go through them top to bottom fear cards are divided into three sections you resolve the section corresponding to the current terror level you start a terror level one which is printed on the game board this shows that to win the game you need to destroy all explorers towns and cities everything after your third fear card is revealed the terror level will go up to two and you move the divider to show this now to win the game you only need to destroy all towns and cities not the Explorers after the sixth fear card is go up to level three which means you only need to destroy all the cities to win and if you ever manage to reveal the ninth fear card then you instantly win the game so for each fear card you've earned you'll look at the effect for the current terror level one two or three you'll do that effect and move it to the discard pile you'll do this for all your earned fear cards and once you're empty we will move on to the next invader step now it's time for invaders to fight back by ravaging the island on the first turn of the game you'll skip this step because the ravaged space will be blank after the first turn check the land type on the ravage space all invaders in these spaces will attack the land and the DeHaan each invader type does a different amount of damage explorers do one damage towns due to damage and cities do three damage they also have that much health the native DeHaan due to damage and have to health so add up the number of damage the invaders are doing in this case we have a town which does too and an explorer which does one for a total of three damage first they damage the land if they do two or more damage than you blight the land take a blight token off the game board and put it on the space if players have presents there then you destroy one from each spirit on that space the presence is removed from the game completely and not returned to your spirit track if the space you just played had already had blight there then you cascade and add another blight token to one additional space adjacent to it you get to choose which adjacent space to add it to blight can cascade more than one so try to avoid that after damaging the land the invaders will do the same amount of damage to the DeHaan in that space for every tea damage you must destroy it on so in this example the invaders do three damage which kills one Don and injures the other one after you've removed any killed Don any remaining will fight back in this case our surviving two han will do three damage to the invaders we can choose to destroy the town which has two health and leave the Explorer or we could destroy the Explorer and do one damage to the town to show the town has taken damage we would place it on its side it makes more sense to destroy the town so that's what we'll do don't forget when you destroy a town you generate one fear and you get to fear when you destroy a city once you've gone through every matching land type and resolve the invaders averaging step then they will build towns and cities check the land type on the card here and go through all matching spaces on the island if there is some type of invader already there then they will build a town if there are more towns than cities before you do that then they will build a city instead next flip over the top card of the invader deck to see which land type they will explore in this case jungles for each matching space on the island if it's next to a town city or water or already has a town or city then add an explorer once that's all done discard the ravaging card and slide all the others to the left this means that the land type that the invaders just explored will be built on next turn and then they'll ravage it the turn after it's a simple but effective AI system that escalates quickly note that as you progress through the invader deck you might reveal cards with multiple land types and ones that indicate coastal meaning adjacent to water after the invader phase is the slow power phase each power card with this symbol is considered slow and everybody resolves them now also resolve any slow innate abilities you might have once that's done the turn is over in time passes discard all the power cards you use to the discard pile and clear damage from all cities towns and invaders by up writing them okay so we've gone over the bulk of the rules but we haven't really looked at the power cards so let's do that now the name of the card is here the energy cost to play it is here this is the speed this is the range and this shows the targeting restrictions the left hand side shows the elements in the middle of the card shows the effect some cards also have an optional effect shown at the bottom which you can only use if you have the indicated elements we've already gone over the cost and the speed so let's talk about the range most cards target one land space and this shows you how far away that land can be from one of your presence tokens on the board zero means you must have a presence token on that land and one means that the land must be adjacent to one of your presence tokens you might also see this symbol which means it must be that many spaces away from a land you have two or more presence tokens in to presence tokens on the same spaces called the sacred site and some spirits and cards require it for powerful effects most cards can target any land within a specified range but some cards a specific terrain like this one which requires a jungle or a wetland or they can specify whether the land has invaders are not like this one there are also cards the target spirits this symbol means you can target any spirit including yourself while this symbol means it must be a different spirit the effects on cards are variable and there are a ton the general rule is one land one turn one use you target one land you only get the effect for this one turn and you can't pay for it multiple times to use it more than once all right so let's go over some of the common card effects now defend X means both the land and han take that much less damage from invaders destroy means you remove it from the board and generate fear if it was a town or city remove and replace effects can remove it from the board but did not generate fear like normal push means you can move the indicated pieces out of the target land into adjacent spaces and they can go to different spaces if you choose gather is the inverse of push it means move pieces from adjacent spaces on to the target land they can come from different adjacent spaces but they all move on to the same single space every card in the game is unique and after a couple plays you'll get more comfortable with the symbols and wording one last thing I wanted to mention is that elements are not used up so if you have any powers and power cards that require the same elements to activate then you just check to make sure you have that many symbols showing on your cards and board you don't have to keep track of elements getting used up also if you have enough elements for your second or third innate action level you actually get to do all of the actions including the lower levels the exception is if the action uses the word instead in which case you do not do the earlier level now let me reiterate the different ways the game can end now that you know all the rules if you ever run out of blight on the invader board and you have a blighted island then you follow the instructions which usually says you lose if any spirit has no presence left on the island then everyone loses if you need to draw an invader card and there are none left then you also lose to win the game you need to check your current terror level at level 1 you need to destroy all the invaders from the island at level 2 you need to destroy all the towns and cities at level 3 you need to destroy all this cities and finally if you go through all the fear cards then everyone immediately wins spirit island alright and that's how you play spirit island I know this is a super long video so I'll keep my conclusion short if you've made it to the end please consider subscribing and give this video a thumbs up so others will be more likely to find it on YouTube spirit island is awesome we love it so so much but I will warn you that it is brutally hard especially at first when you are trying to learn the different spirits and don't really know what you should focus on first but this game rewards repeated plays and the interaction between different spirits gives it tons of replayability I'd like to end by mentioning that there are a ton of ways to make the game more challenging there are adversaries which are basically different AI with special rules so they act a bit differently than in the basic game each adversary has six levels that get progressively harder he can also play different scenarios which changed the rules and wind conditions and lastly the flip side of the island board shows a thematic map which is apparently harder and less balanced if all that wasn't enough there are two additional spirits available on greater than games website as well as the branch and claw expansion with another two spirits scenarios and gameplay elements with this much content I don't think it's possible for the game to get stale or too easy so that's it for me let me know in the comments what you think of spirit island if you enjoyed this video give me a thumbs up and consider subscribing for future videos if you want to check out more of my videos just click the links on the screen and maybe you'll find a new game to play alright guys with that Mykel skeleton is out

Channel: MyklSkeleton

Views: 78,479

Keywords: Spirit Island, board game, how to play Spirit Island, how to play, runthrough, playthrough, R. Eric Reuss, Eric Reuss, rules, rules overview, myklskeleton, playthrough of Spirit Island, how to setup Spirit Island, rules of Spirit Island, coop game, co-op game, walkthrough, Spirit Island walkthrough, Spirit Island runthrough, Spirit Island playthrough, 2 player, 2 player game, Spirit Island game, Spirit Island board game, gaming rules, greater than games, fabled nexus

Id: zQ17Ft2T0ho

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/NolanNasser]

I can't watch this right now but I'm so excited to. Thank you for doing a H2P of this phenomenal game. Pass it along to GtG whenever it's ready(if you take any feedback in this thread)

Who's your favorite spirit?

[u/PM_ME_UR_PUPPER_PLZ]

Great job! Enjoyed this video and will save for future reference.

[u/zekthegeke]

Great work! I really enjoyed the video and found it easy to follow. FWIW, one thing that really helps me in a game like this is if the examples (for instance, in each phase) make a gesture towards how Doing X might get you closer to the victory conditions. It gives a purpose to each piece of the puzzle, and sometimes helps me decide what to leave out of the initial explanation.

Again, I really liked the video and look forward to more.

[u/ggfunk]

Great work!

[u/MDogFlex]

A couple things:

When you are describing fear/terror level win conditions early in the video you fail to mention that earning the three fear cards after terror level 3 results in an auto-win. You said it later in the video but it might be good to mention earlier too.

When you demonstrate how earning fear gets you fear cards around minute 8, you incorrectly flip the fear card over once you have earned it. Fear cards are to remain face down until they are resolved during the Invader phase, we are not meant to have the extra information of what that card will do as it could affect our other decisions. If you have multiple fear cards, they are resolved in the order they were earned.

I believe you also missed the lose condition that if all Dahan are destroyed you lose.

Otherwise it's a pretty good job of distilling a lot of info rather efficiently. I love this game.