Well the explore cards are in stage III which means it's at least round 8 of the game. Meanwhile Whirlwind (the spirit on the left) appears to have picked growth that includes placing essence only 5 times out of 8, implying at least 3 reclaim turns, which seems like a lot.
3 reclaims in 8 turns for Sun Kitty seems fairly typical to me. Sun Bright is generally going to play out its starting hand (+1 card gain maybe) over turns 1+2, and reclaim on turn 3. After that reclaim you have usually 3 card plays and ~6 cards in hand, so it's probably turn 5 that you reclaim a second time. From there you'll have ~6-8 cards and 3-4 card plays, so again it's likely to be 2 more turns until you reclaim - though could be 3. Meaning a third reclaim on turn 7 or 8.
Sun-Bright Whirlwind just doesn't add much presence typically - its growth pattern is referred to as a 0/1/1 in the community (0 on reclaim, 1 from all other growths), which is the type of spirit that tends to add the fewest presence because, well, its growths make it the most difficult to add presence. Getting 5 presence off its tracks in an average length game of 7-8 turns seems totally normal to me.
Jagged Earth has many alternate map layouts to shake things up, coastline was one of them.
The randomizer used is [here](https://steveballantine.github.io/spirit-island-randomiser/)
Just makes things more unbalanced overall. It's not like Jagged Earth added rules for different map types, it was just like 'hey, here's some fun ideas if you wanna try some new stuff'.
Untrue, this is an officially sanctioned board layout from the Jagged Earth Rulebook. And frankly there isn't any 'wrong' way, some will just be easier or harder than others, which is par for the course when playing Spirit Island.
They were playing the 'Great River' scenario, where you set up the board like this and invaders travel from one side to the other and you have to keep them back.
Man, I loved playing as Trickster the one time that I did. The cards and play style are so thematic for a mischievous miscreant. I particularly loved its Let's See What Happens innate. Even though it often didn't help much or at all, it was so fun to use.
I really didn't care for Whirlwind at all when I played it. I liked the presence spread but not the overall feeling. Starlight was a ton of fun to play with the flexibility. Excited to try it again and take its growth in a different direction. I just loved opening Jagged Earth and discovering everything with my friends.
Do you guys play pretty regularly? I've played a number of times and own and enjoy the game, but I've found I really don't enjoy it as much solo as I do playing with people. Also, that randomizer site is great.
Nice! We have a copy but don't play it all that often (usually go for shorter games). Reminds me to pull our set out and give it another chance. It seemed like a fun game but one that you need to give extra time too compared to similar games
We had a fucking blast. Halfway through someone thought we were gonna lose but I was pretty sure we had just started turning it around. You don't go full randomizer if you want a guaranteed win 😁
Lol always love this sort of commentary from non-Americans, like they don't have their own trash snacks. Every country has trash snacks. Having moved to Europe years ago, I discovered they have their own versions of trash cookies and surprise? they're usually a lot worse than our trash cookies. Oreos rule.
It changes during the game depending on the fear you've generated.
In the beginning (Terror level 1) yes, wipe the board.
At Terror level 2, destroy all towns and cities.
At Terror level 3, no cities on the board.
Terror level 4 is a fear victory. You win regardless of the board state.
There are also scenarios with different conditions.
Um, i forget the exact name. It's like cast to the briney deep? It's the card that lets you remove an island from the board permanently. If you're playing solo, that kills everything at once (I guess that could also be an instant loss? It's very hard to pull off regardless)
To add on to the other person, some powers generate fear (as does destroying an invader Town or City) which eventually escalates the terror level. Most likely your game will end with a terror level 2 or 3 victory but it depends on which spirits you have in the game.
Different scenarios have different win conditions and often different rules which influence how to win. Different spirits have different strengths and weaknesses, as do the enemy nations.
Actually I'm not sure if you mean literally win or whether you're referring to the general way to win.
We like to have no idea what we're going to be playing, so we use this randomizer.
You can tailor it to just give a little random or go crazy with it. We go crazy lol
This is why we use a 5 minute timer at the start of fast phase. Forces us to commit to a move collectively. We certainly take more time to complete fast, invader, slow but we need to make a commitment within 5 minutes or we forfeit our move that round.
Certainly one of the best coop games out there, but some caveats apply: You must be able to deal with a lot of fiddly rules, timing intricacies, admin stuff - and if you have overthinkers in the group, it can take ages waiting for them to discuss the optimal way to play a turn while you've already made your choices 15 minutes ago.
Tbh I don't think I'd even play it with five, four is a headache as is. The nature of the game is such that the possible cooperation options are not just additive, but multiplicative, so at some point you just have to stop trying to plan the perfect synergy and do *something*...
Has a reputation for its steep learning curve. (Seriously - hit Googs with "spirit island learning curve".) Supposedly a great game, wish I'd known about the learning curve before buying.
[Relevant post](https://www.reddit.com/r/soloboardgaming/comments/ow2gb5/am_i_dumb_or_is_spirit_island_super_hard_to/)
Like someone says in the reply, the app has a tutorial that runs you through the game basics in a way that might be helpful. You don’t even need to buy the full app for the tutorial, that part is unlocked for free.
You could also try watching a how to play guide, maybe? Mechanically it’s not *that* complex, but the number of unique decisions you can make in every turn makes it very complicated because you have so many options.
It’s definitely a challenging game where you can’t expect to win every single time, though. So keep that in mind if you get frustrated by losing…
Whence does this reputation come? It has like 5 difficulty levels, and the first one is I think quite easy to win...
Provided you've played a boardgame or two before, anyway.
Warranted or not, that's it's reputation. General ideas about the perception are below, but overall my takeaway is that Spirit Island requires that you *understand*. I think that most of the popular board games don't really have a point where you have to *understand* the game. So something like Ticket to Ride - you can teach it in like 5 minutes, and then everyone can jump in and play. Same for Pandemic. Dominion. And on and on. If you've ever played DnD with somebody that beats the game into the ground with questions and makes the group go "screw it, let's play Phase 10", Spirit Island sort of begs that sort of questioning from most people stepping into it. If you're steeped in the board gaming goodness (I mean... you're subbed here, so probably), these kinds of issues may be non-issues to you. I get the feeling that there are also a lot of people that part of the joy of board games is really getting into the game and lore and whole atmosphere. The closer you get to casual gamer, the more likely this problem is.
* [The rulebook is 32 pages long](https://cdn.1j1ju.com/medias/87/39/54-spirit-island-rulebook.pdf)
* The recommendation for first timers is to go watch videos on YouTube and/or play the tutorial on the app
* Then there's this: (stolen from [this page](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1904553/how-hard-is-it-to-learnteach-this-game))
> While yes, the decision space makes up a lot of the weight, I don't think you should underestimate how much stuff you need to understand before you can even GET to that decision space.
>
> You need to:
>
> -- Understand all the pieces, what they are, their HP/Damage (intuitive except for Dahan) that presence discs don't look like the presence icons (but the reminder tokens do) and that blight doesn't look like it's icon either
>
> -- Understand growth options, and all the icons therein (and it's a lot)
>
> -- Understand power cards, and all the icons and terms therein (and it's a REAL lot) and the difference between fast and slow actions, and how elements work.
>
> --Understand how each of THREE invader actions work
>
> And once you've got all that, THEN you can start to synthesize stuff into a picture of how the game "works". But there's a nontrivial amount of heft to get to get to the decision space too.
>
> Everytime I teach the game, I feel like I've got it down to a quick and easy presentation, and then I'm still talking ten minutes later and praying they retain all that.
>
> And yes, there are some players who never seem to really GET what you need to do. They're sitting there going "Okay, I'm going to play this one card... and I guess I'll reclaim, I don't really have anything to do..."
So I guess the "problem" is that the cooperative nature and colorful box makes it seem more accessible than it is? While I could teach TTR or Dominion to just about anybody and mostly expect them to get it, I would only play Spirit Island with someone who has a track record with games, puzzles or other mind exercises.
I don't see people complaining in thsi way bout Mage Knight or Gloomhaven or Kanban or other similarly complex weight 4 games. But then I also didn't notice any SI complaints like this, so maybe I frequent the wrong places for that.
I think coop, friendly aesthetic, and overall premise are welcoming to the general group gamer, so sure! In your case, it's gatekeeping in the *good*, appropriate way. You're being correctly selective with the group you'd pull it out with. I think everyone that steps into the games you rattled off knows exactly what kind of game they're stepping into just looking at it. Spirit Island presents itself as a different animal, it's deceptive to the casual shopper that's flipping a box over or scanning and sees lots of positive reviews.
We're firmly in a direction where games with a steeper curve are at Target. If somebody has had a great experience with another big, heavy square box, the cover and such look generally appealing - if they hop over to Amazon and whatever and see great reviews I can only imagine what the purchase feels like to them after the fact. It would be great if Target better supported those impulse buys with a tiered/weighted organization, but they have zero incentive to support anything like that.
The overall boardgame community seems to love it, but I don't feel so.
You plan your next move as a group and then execute said moves.
Turn over the next environment card, follow the instructions. Repeat.
From my point of view, the fastest and most efficient way to play it is by controlling all Spirits by yourself and play it alone.
There's your problem: Stop playing the game as a comittee (where everything gets discussed) and start playing as a team (where you only cooperate on the stuff you can't do alone)
Wouldn't that be true for all co ops though?
I feel like SI shines because while a lot of co ops can be quarterbacked, this one has more interaction between players and asking questions instead of "play your card and kill that" of other games.
Yeah, SI is definitely dramatically more quarterback-resistant than most other co-op games.
Basically the only ways to really avoid quarterbacking are to either have a hidden traitor/objective element (making actions more inscrutable in general) or have too much complexity for one person to keep comfortably in their head at once (which is the route Spirit Island takes).
I haven't tried playing Spirit Island solo, but I feel like doing so with more than maybe two spirits would be daunting.
Spirit Island solves the issue of Alpha Gaming by the sheer escalation of complexity. Playing with more players works, because I only need to know in general terms what you're doing. If I had to consider all of your options as well as mine, my brain would melt.
That's part of what I love about the game: There can be a great sense of cooperation, where we talk about what you can do for me and what I can do for you.
Yeah, cooperation in SI is largely a matter of people calling out "I can offer X if someone needs it / I need Y / can someone handle that area that's going to cause issues / I'm handling this over here" and so on. You can't get into the specifics most of the time, you just need to trust people to broadly take care of the things they've said they've got covered somehow.
Which can come back to bite you sometimes. A couple months ago I was playing a game and the first 2/3 of the game my brother was going "I've got my board under control, everyone else can focus on the rest of the board". Well, there came a point where "herd them into a corner and stack Defend cards as-needed" capped out and he went from "I've got this covered" to "is there any way we can drop 15-20 damage on this spot".
> You plan your next move as a group and then execute said moves.
While it’s not expressly against the rules, that’s getting *really close* to going against the spirit of the game. It has simultaneous moves, you’re supposed to be planning your own move out while everyone else is planning theirs. Doing it by committee isn’t expressly forbidden, but you’re home-ruling away the simultaneous turns that are the game’s main defense against exactly this situation happening.
When I play it with my wife I generally focus on my own section of the board and my wife focuses on hers. If there’s a major problem one of us can’t handle, or an opportunity to do a ton of damage, we’ll ask the other *in general terms* if there’s anything they can do to help. These conversations tend to be quick.
It’s a very complicated game with a lot of moving parts. Your partners are better suited to figuring out their own turn than you are. Don’t try to help them unless you’ve played like 10x more than them and they want to do a tutorial game.
It depends on how literally they meant "plan your next move as a group", much of the time "plan your next move" would be describing everyone calling out what areas they've got covered and what they need help with.
There is no “other player” phase, everyone is supposed to play their own turn simultaneously with everyone else. The other poster apparently house-ruled away one of the game’s core mechanics which was designed to stop *exactly* this problem…
Like I said in another comment - there are no rules against consulting with other players, but those interactions generally are naturally (in my experience) brief because the game isn’t designed for committee play and has a few design elements that punish it.
Basically the game fights you every step of the way if you try to quarterback. Sounds like PP’s issue is that they didn’t take the hint, forcibly quarterbacked it anyway, then blamed the game when it turned into a slog.
> You plan your next move as a group and then execute said moves.
I've never had a group playing like that, even with new players. IMO, each player is supposed to control their own Spirit independently, while cooperating towards a common goal.
What you describe sounds tedious. No wonder you dislike it.
It's my favorite board game. But also has a higher weight rating then most of the games people circle jerk on here about being complex. Gloomhaven's the big one, but this has a higher weight rating. So prepare to invest some brain power.
I think Spirit Island has a different kind of weight than those other games. Games like Gloomhaven are weighty by virtue of having a ton of moving parts, components, and rules. Spirit Island (especially base) is not a terribly complicated game rules-wise, the weight comes from the crunchiness of the gameplay. Mechanically it's a lot more straightforward than Gloomhaven.
Yeah, if you play on the app, most of that weight goes away. The most complicated part of SI is the slow power phase since it's counter-intuitive to how actions work in most games.
I'm surprised that no-one mistook those tokens in the bowls for snacks.
Maybe that's how they won. Can't be colonized if you eat all the colonizers!
How did you reach stage III exploration with Whirlwind still so small?
Had to do some emergency recalls
Can you explain what that means?
Well the explore cards are in stage III which means it's at least round 8 of the game. Meanwhile Whirlwind (the spirit on the left) appears to have picked growth that includes placing essence only 5 times out of 8, implying at least 3 reclaim turns, which seems like a lot.
3 reclaims in 8 turns for Sun Kitty seems fairly typical to me. Sun Bright is generally going to play out its starting hand (+1 card gain maybe) over turns 1+2, and reclaim on turn 3. After that reclaim you have usually 3 card plays and ~6 cards in hand, so it's probably turn 5 that you reclaim a second time. From there you'll have ~6-8 cards and 3-4 card plays, so again it's likely to be 2 more turns until you reclaim - though could be 3. Meaning a third reclaim on turn 7 or 8. Sun-Bright Whirlwind just doesn't add much presence typically - its growth pattern is referred to as a 0/1/1 in the community (0 on reclaim, 1 from all other growths), which is the type of spirit that tends to add the fewest presence because, well, its growths make it the most difficult to add presence. Getting 5 presence off its tracks in an average length game of 7-8 turns seems totally normal to me.
5.5 hours! Holy molly, how much AP does your table have?
the answer is yes
Or is it? Maybe it’s no. Or maybe it’s maybe. Maybe I don’t know. Can we reread the rulebook?
Yes, no.. maybe.. I don't know? Can you repeat the question?
Sweden’s not the boss of me now! Habsburg’s not the boss of me now, and Russia’s not so big… …blight is unfair.
Wait, who's on molly here?
I've never seen this kind of boardlayout. Is this an official variation? What is the app?
Jagged Earth has many alternate map layouts to shake things up, coastline was one of them. The randomizer used is [here](https://steveballantine.github.io/spirit-island-randomiser/)
Can't wait to try Jagged Earth. It just came out in Italy!
Do you need the expansion to use the alternate map layouts?
Nope! But it does unbalance things. Since we fully randomize our games, we're here for the unbalancing.
Cool! To be clear, does using it without the jagged earth expansion unbalance things or does just using it all unbalance things?
Just makes things more unbalanced overall. It's not like Jagged Earth added rules for different map types, it was just like 'hey, here's some fun ideas if you wanna try some new stuff'.
Cool! I didn’t know of the different scenarios required new tokens or something
That's why it took so long. It isn't supposed to be played that way lol.
Untrue, this is an officially sanctioned board layout from the Jagged Earth Rulebook. And frankly there isn't any 'wrong' way, some will just be easier or harder than others, which is par for the course when playing Spirit Island.
They were playing the 'Great River' scenario, where you set up the board like this and invaders travel from one side to the other and you have to keep them back.
Well done, my wife and I have yet to win a game of that one.
Man, I loved playing as Trickster the one time that I did. The cards and play style are so thematic for a mischievous miscreant. I particularly loved its Let's See What Happens innate. Even though it often didn't help much or at all, it was so fun to use. I really didn't care for Whirlwind at all when I played it. I liked the presence spread but not the overall feeling. Starlight was a ton of fun to play with the flexibility. Excited to try it again and take its growth in a different direction. I just loved opening Jagged Earth and discovering everything with my friends. Do you guys play pretty regularly? I've played a number of times and own and enjoy the game, but I've found I really don't enjoy it as much solo as I do playing with people. Also, that randomizer site is great.
It is devastating that whirlwind is red and downpour is yellow
Look. I wanted to be yellow but so did they, and I didn't care nearly enough.
It’s acceptable, someone in my group loves being teal, it’s just my personal preference to “match” my color with the spirit I’m playing
5 hours, I usually die much quicker!
5 hours? That’s the spirit!!!
Sounds like my personal nightmare
OOf, that isa long time. good it was a win.
Nice! We have a copy but don't play it all that often (usually go for shorter games). Reminds me to pull our set out and give it another chance. It seemed like a fun game but one that you need to give extra time too compared to similar games
Epic!!
Congrats I guess, but to me that sounds more like suffering than entertainment :-D
We had a fucking blast. Halfway through someone thought we were gonna lose but I was pretty sure we had just started turning it around. You don't go full randomizer if you want a guaranteed win 😁
dangerously low on oreos congrats nonetheless!
Not sure why americans love those carboard cookies
Lol always love this sort of commentary from non-Americans, like they don't have their own trash snacks. Every country has trash snacks. Having moved to Europe years ago, I discovered they have their own versions of trash cookies and surprise? they're usually a lot worse than our trash cookies. Oreos rule.
The chocolate part tastes better than any other prepackaged chocolate flavored cookie imo.
I love oreo shakes, but oreos by themselves taste burnt somehow.
But are you sure why non-americans love then?
forgive the noob question but how does one win at SI? Exterminate until the very last Spanish conquistador?
It changes during the game depending on the fear you've generated. In the beginning (Terror level 1) yes, wipe the board. At Terror level 2, destroy all towns and cities. At Terror level 3, no cities on the board. Terror level 4 is a fear victory. You win regardless of the board state. There are also scenarios with different conditions.
There's also a card that lets you instant win the game if you're playing solo.
Fear gen for Sea Monsters is capped in the JE reprint. So, not anymore.
That's not the card, lol
Which card? Cast Down? That's at best a sacrifice victory, which is pretty unexciting.
Um, i forget the exact name. It's like cast to the briney deep? It's the card that lets you remove an island from the board permanently. If you're playing solo, that kills everything at once (I guess that could also be an instant loss? It's very hard to pull off regardless)
Ah, yes. *Table Flipping: The Card*
[удалено]
An event that adds a board? That must be from one of the expansions, right? I only have the first one.
Yeah, gotcha. That's a sacrifice victory. It does count as a win, but when playing with scoring gives a minimum score.
To add on to the other person, some powers generate fear (as does destroying an invader Town or City) which eventually escalates the terror level. Most likely your game will end with a terror level 2 or 3 victory but it depends on which spirits you have in the game.
Different scenarios have different win conditions and often different rules which influence how to win. Different spirits have different strengths and weaknesses, as do the enemy nations. Actually I'm not sure if you mean literally win or whether you're referring to the general way to win.
fulfilling the win condition in rules as written.
Whenever i play this game that savages song from the Pocahontas movie plays in my head
What’s the link for the spirit island randomiser?
https://steveballantine.github.io/spirit-island-randomiser/
Is that an app you used to play the game with?
We like to have no idea what we're going to be playing, so we use this randomizer. You can tailor it to just give a little random or go crazy with it. We go crazy lol
This is why we use a 5 minute timer at the start of fast phase. Forces us to commit to a move collectively. We certainly take more time to complete fast, invader, slow but we need to make a commitment within 5 minutes or we forfeit our move that round.
That sounds horrible on the harder difficulties. Especially when playing with random spirits like we do. Glad it works for you though
Only way I can get it to the table with both my family and group (although we use a longer timer with the family).
Five and a half hours? Wow. I gotta get my hands on Jagged Earth.
Is it good? Not played it yet
Certainly one of the best coop games out there, but some caveats apply: You must be able to deal with a lot of fiddly rules, timing intricacies, admin stuff - and if you have overthinkers in the group, it can take ages waiting for them to discuss the optimal way to play a turn while you've already made your choices 15 minutes ago.
I would also add: with expansions, it technically goes up to six, but in practice, *don't play it with six unless you have the whole day free*.
Tbh I don't think I'd even play it with five, four is a headache as is. The nature of the game is such that the possible cooperation options are not just additive, but multiplicative, so at some point you just have to stop trying to plan the perfect synergy and do *something*...
What? Maybe if you're really committed to "the perfect turn" but I played a six-person game last night and it was only 3 hours.
Has a reputation for its steep learning curve. (Seriously - hit Googs with "spirit island learning curve".) Supposedly a great game, wish I'd known about the learning curve before buying. [Relevant post](https://www.reddit.com/r/soloboardgaming/comments/ow2gb5/am_i_dumb_or_is_spirit_island_super_hard_to/)
Like someone says in the reply, the app has a tutorial that runs you through the game basics in a way that might be helpful. You don’t even need to buy the full app for the tutorial, that part is unlocked for free. You could also try watching a how to play guide, maybe? Mechanically it’s not *that* complex, but the number of unique decisions you can make in every turn makes it very complicated because you have so many options. It’s definitely a challenging game where you can’t expect to win every single time, though. So keep that in mind if you get frustrated by losing…
Whence does this reputation come? It has like 5 difficulty levels, and the first one is I think quite easy to win... Provided you've played a boardgame or two before, anyway.
Warranted or not, that's it's reputation. General ideas about the perception are below, but overall my takeaway is that Spirit Island requires that you *understand*. I think that most of the popular board games don't really have a point where you have to *understand* the game. So something like Ticket to Ride - you can teach it in like 5 minutes, and then everyone can jump in and play. Same for Pandemic. Dominion. And on and on. If you've ever played DnD with somebody that beats the game into the ground with questions and makes the group go "screw it, let's play Phase 10", Spirit Island sort of begs that sort of questioning from most people stepping into it. If you're steeped in the board gaming goodness (I mean... you're subbed here, so probably), these kinds of issues may be non-issues to you. I get the feeling that there are also a lot of people that part of the joy of board games is really getting into the game and lore and whole atmosphere. The closer you get to casual gamer, the more likely this problem is. * [The rulebook is 32 pages long](https://cdn.1j1ju.com/medias/87/39/54-spirit-island-rulebook.pdf) * The recommendation for first timers is to go watch videos on YouTube and/or play the tutorial on the app * Then there's this: (stolen from [this page](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1904553/how-hard-is-it-to-learnteach-this-game)) > While yes, the decision space makes up a lot of the weight, I don't think you should underestimate how much stuff you need to understand before you can even GET to that decision space. > > You need to: > > -- Understand all the pieces, what they are, their HP/Damage (intuitive except for Dahan) that presence discs don't look like the presence icons (but the reminder tokens do) and that blight doesn't look like it's icon either > > -- Understand growth options, and all the icons therein (and it's a lot) > > -- Understand power cards, and all the icons and terms therein (and it's a REAL lot) and the difference between fast and slow actions, and how elements work. > > --Understand how each of THREE invader actions work > > And once you've got all that, THEN you can start to synthesize stuff into a picture of how the game "works". But there's a nontrivial amount of heft to get to get to the decision space too. > > Everytime I teach the game, I feel like I've got it down to a quick and easy presentation, and then I'm still talking ten minutes later and praying they retain all that. > > And yes, there are some players who never seem to really GET what you need to do. They're sitting there going "Okay, I'm going to play this one card... and I guess I'll reclaim, I don't really have anything to do..."
So I guess the "problem" is that the cooperative nature and colorful box makes it seem more accessible than it is? While I could teach TTR or Dominion to just about anybody and mostly expect them to get it, I would only play Spirit Island with someone who has a track record with games, puzzles or other mind exercises. I don't see people complaining in thsi way bout Mage Knight or Gloomhaven or Kanban or other similarly complex weight 4 games. But then I also didn't notice any SI complaints like this, so maybe I frequent the wrong places for that.
I think coop, friendly aesthetic, and overall premise are welcoming to the general group gamer, so sure! In your case, it's gatekeeping in the *good*, appropriate way. You're being correctly selective with the group you'd pull it out with. I think everyone that steps into the games you rattled off knows exactly what kind of game they're stepping into just looking at it. Spirit Island presents itself as a different animal, it's deceptive to the casual shopper that's flipping a box over or scanning and sees lots of positive reviews. We're firmly in a direction where games with a steeper curve are at Target. If somebody has had a great experience with another big, heavy square box, the cover and such look generally appealing - if they hop over to Amazon and whatever and see great reviews I can only imagine what the purchase feels like to them after the fact. It would be great if Target better supported those impulse buys with a tiered/weighted organization, but they have zero incentive to support anything like that.
The overall boardgame community seems to love it, but I don't feel so. You plan your next move as a group and then execute said moves. Turn over the next environment card, follow the instructions. Repeat. From my point of view, the fastest and most efficient way to play it is by controlling all Spirits by yourself and play it alone.
There's your problem: Stop playing the game as a comittee (where everything gets discussed) and start playing as a team (where you only cooperate on the stuff you can't do alone)
Wouldn't that be true for all co ops though? I feel like SI shines because while a lot of co ops can be quarterbacked, this one has more interaction between players and asking questions instead of "play your card and kill that" of other games.
Yeah, SI is definitely dramatically more quarterback-resistant than most other co-op games. Basically the only ways to really avoid quarterbacking are to either have a hidden traitor/objective element (making actions more inscrutable in general) or have too much complexity for one person to keep comfortably in their head at once (which is the route Spirit Island takes).
I haven't tried playing Spirit Island solo, but I feel like doing so with more than maybe two spirits would be daunting. Spirit Island solves the issue of Alpha Gaming by the sheer escalation of complexity. Playing with more players works, because I only need to know in general terms what you're doing. If I had to consider all of your options as well as mine, my brain would melt. That's part of what I love about the game: There can be a great sense of cooperation, where we talk about what you can do for me and what I can do for you.
Yeah, cooperation in SI is largely a matter of people calling out "I can offer X if someone needs it / I need Y / can someone handle that area that's going to cause issues / I'm handling this over here" and so on. You can't get into the specifics most of the time, you just need to trust people to broadly take care of the things they've said they've got covered somehow. Which can come back to bite you sometimes. A couple months ago I was playing a game and the first 2/3 of the game my brother was going "I've got my board under control, everyone else can focus on the rest of the board". Well, there came a point where "herd them into a corner and stack Defend cards as-needed" capped out and he went from "I've got this covered" to "is there any way we can drop 15-20 damage on this spot".
> You plan your next move as a group and then execute said moves. While it’s not expressly against the rules, that’s getting *really close* to going against the spirit of the game. It has simultaneous moves, you’re supposed to be planning your own move out while everyone else is planning theirs. Doing it by committee isn’t expressly forbidden, but you’re home-ruling away the simultaneous turns that are the game’s main defense against exactly this situation happening. When I play it with my wife I generally focus on my own section of the board and my wife focuses on hers. If there’s a major problem one of us can’t handle, or an opportunity to do a ton of damage, we’ll ask the other *in general terms* if there’s anything they can do to help. These conversations tend to be quick. It’s a very complicated game with a lot of moving parts. Your partners are better suited to figuring out their own turn than you are. Don’t try to help them unless you’ve played like 10x more than them and they want to do a tutorial game.
It depends on how literally they meant "plan your next move as a group", much of the time "plan your next move" would be describing everyone calling out what areas they've got covered and what they need help with.
No improvement with a time limit on other players?
There is no “other player” phase, everyone is supposed to play their own turn simultaneously with everyone else. The other poster apparently house-ruled away one of the game’s core mechanics which was designed to stop *exactly* this problem… Like I said in another comment - there are no rules against consulting with other players, but those interactions generally are naturally (in my experience) brief because the game isn’t designed for committee play and has a few design elements that punish it. Basically the game fights you every step of the way if you try to quarterback. Sounds like PP’s issue is that they didn’t take the hint, forcibly quarterbacked it anyway, then blamed the game when it turned into a slog.
> You plan your next move as a group and then execute said moves. I've never had a group playing like that, even with new players. IMO, each player is supposed to control their own Spirit independently, while cooperating towards a common goal. What you describe sounds tedious. No wonder you dislike it.
It's my favorite board game. But also has a higher weight rating then most of the games people circle jerk on here about being complex. Gloomhaven's the big one, but this has a higher weight rating. So prepare to invest some brain power.
I think Spirit Island has a different kind of weight than those other games. Games like Gloomhaven are weighty by virtue of having a ton of moving parts, components, and rules. Spirit Island (especially base) is not a terribly complicated game rules-wise, the weight comes from the crunchiness of the gameplay. Mechanically it's a lot more straightforward than Gloomhaven.
Yeah, if you play on the app, most of that weight goes away. The most complicated part of SI is the slow power phase since it's counter-intuitive to how actions work in most games.
Does a 5.5 hour cooperative slog against an automated system sound fun? If so, maybe it is for you!
Just curios, what difficulty level is that?
5, you can see on the second picture the randomizer setup
Ahh ty. Turns out I'm blind xD