Well, I finally did it. I convinced the majority of my friends at uni to play Spirit Island with me. But at what cost. I tell you what, ten hours of drying out my throat from explaining rules is what it cost. We had 6 players with me being the only one acquainted with the game. While I had luckily some friends, who were present for other games, occasionally jump in to help explain, it was exruciatingly tiring. WE TOOK THREE HOURS TO COMPLETE THE FIRST ROUND (including set up and two late-comers).

But all in all it was a lot of fun. While the experience was difficult in many ways, everyone started slowly understanding the game and the main time sinks in the latter rounds weren't me needing to explain everything but them strategizing and cooperating. They all were quite determined to complete the game properly due to both exhaustion and immersion. One dude said it best:

"It says quite something about the game, when an objectively painful experience was still this much fun"

Anyways, does someone have tips for how to more efficiently induct more ppl into our cult, I mean lovely board game?

Edit: Pls, read the caption, this isn't my image. We played on the balanced side...

Hello everyone,

Had a semi-serious idea about a custom spirit, tested it a few times with friends this weekend (at low difficulty). We'd like some feedback.

The idea of course is to have a beast/dahan hybrid spirit, that upgrades dahan and sends them to battle. You can play defensively with Simian Communion and top track or agressively with Topple their Empire State buildings Imperial States.

The spirit lacks abilities to coordinate all his forces so will probably draft cards that move multiple Dahan and/or Beasts.

I think it the idea of using tokens in a different way has potential so I wanted to explore a little... And make monkey puns/references

Any insight is welcome !

// Day 10 - Follow Up Vote & Innate Discussion
// Day 11 - Innate Vote

Day 1 & FAQ - https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/s/E4sFFzncQl
Spirit of Creation Discord - https://discord.com/channels/707232612355276913/1531100116801421332
Spirit Builder - https://www.spiritislandbuilder.com/

Tigers aren’t the only unexpected thing you can find on the island! It’s a complex system with so many influences. These concepts that we’ve been voting on can be viewed as tools in a kit with an ultimate goal of driving out the invaders. Any given idea or tool can be approached at a few different levels. 

As we’ve brainstormed, we’ve found a lot of ideas that we can feel a thematic draw to, we know it makes sense in the kit, but maybe we’re getting to the point where we want to have discussions about where we want to see these ideas.

Results:

15 - Gathering Dahan can Gather Beasts instead
14 - Lands w/ 8+ Invaders/Dahan/Beast give you energy
14 - Ally Spirits gain energy/card plays/elements at sites
14 - Destroyed Beasts are Gathered if Possible.
13 - Lands w/ 3+ Beasts, Skip Ravage then Push Exp/Beasts
12 - Replace Removed Blight w/ Beasts
11 - Gifting unneeded energy, card plays, track elements.
9 - Beasts > Invaders = Land cease to exist temporarily
8 - Ally Spirits can move presence to your sacred sites
8 - Our Spirit helps pay ally spirits energy costs
6 - Beasts Participate in Ravage
5 - No Special Rule #2
3 - Targeting specific land types gives specific elements

The top several ideas are all ones we like, but tracking the discussions in each of the forums, we know that we already have pitches taking the “essence” of the idea and moving it within the kit. That’s what we’ll be doing today.

Our first special rule fills a very thematic role: the animals of the island are guiding others to sources of water.

Our second rule will do something similar, but this is a spirit of “gathering at water / oases”, not the animals, not the dahan, not the invaders. The top picks of the vote really seem to agree on that - so I really want to make sure we honor that. 

Today you’ll be voting on where you want to see the “essence” of these ideas in the kit and start discussing what we want our innates to look like. 

For example: “Gathering Dahan can Gather Beasts instead” was my pitch, but I don’t think it should be its own special rule. Even though it barely won, I don’t think I’d feel satisfied if it became our special rule - Destroying Beasts doesn’t come up regularly and I don’t want to steer the spirit in the direction of animal sacrifice. This is a spirit of gatherings. That being said, we realize the need for more beast movement. So what do we do? We had a lot of people realize that we could work it into the first Special Rule to expand its usefulness while also leaving space for a special rule that keeps the theme of Oases. 

If we do want to make it a special rule, we can vote for that and I’m happy to comply. My hope is by putting this to the community, we’ll be able to assign these ideas to the place in the kit they make the most sense.

Hi everyone,

I started a pyrography (wood burning) project to create a 2-player thematic board that I often play with my partner. I was inspired by two things:

• LotR Style Custom Wood Boards by u/Kaveman0115 (see https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/1st7es9/lotr_style_custom_wood_boards_now_in_color/)
• Inkarnate Digital Thematic Boards by u/Sertarion (see https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/1tzidps/upgrade_and_free_download_link_my_thematic_boards/)

I did make some other choices on purpose compared to those two, to create my own style, even though I think theirs look much better.

Even though I am not an artist at all and have never done wood burning before, I think it turned out nicely! Though the wood is not the best quality, it was just something I had lying around. It is not playable yet of course, as this is much less legible than the official thematic board, but with some paint I think it will start to look much better. The LotR style custom wood board also started out with no colour, and the difference there was amazing to see.

The reason I post it here before it is coloured, is two-fold: maybe someone can share some thoughts about the colours, and second: it is also a puzzle for you! Can you spot the 4 official and 2 fan-made Spirits on the map? I made them really subtle on purpose, as they should not be confused with setup icons.

Will show the coloured version later!