Spirit Island Basic Strategy - Lightning

A basic introduction to playing Spirit Island as Lightning's Swift Strike.
Lightning is an offense oriented spirit which is capable of destroying buildings like no other. In this video we go over the reclaim loop strategy for Lightning. While this video focuses on solo play, the basic principles apply to multiplayer games as well.
A good piece of feedback I got after posting the video: defend powers really do have a lot of value on Lightning! Pushing Dahan into a land about to ravage and then defending it is a great combo. If you get a good defend power, try it out and let the Dahan do your destructive work for you!
Thoughts, questions, or differing opinions? Let me know in the comments below!

[@kwazimoto]

This was a terrific explanation for how to play Lightning's Swift Strike. My "kids" (young adults) and I have been playing Spirit Island, and we've been enjoying it, but it always seems to be a very challenging game and I think that's because we (or at least I) have been playing it wrong. Your video has shown me how useful Slow powers really are, and how it's not always a bad strategy to let the Invaders "ravage" and build in a land because your Slow powers can then immediately take out their newly built town. I really like the idea and mechanics of Lightning's Swift Strike, but I was disappointed playing as that deity, and now I see that it's because I've been playing the game the "wrong" way. I need to change my mindset, and stop thinking that I have to prevent the Invaders from completing their actions.

[@craiggarvie2120]

I love playing Lightnings reclaim loop, i find it my soothing comfort game

[@JFitzsimmons]

This video was so incredibly helpful! I really appreciate how you walked through all of the options and your thought process for each step of the way. Thank you so much! I am brand new to the game and it’s a lot to learn initially but I’m really really really enjoying it.

[@kalennoreth]

Thank you for the kind words, and welcome to the game! I appreciate hearing that the guides are working for folks.

[@markdandridge4433]

This is truly amazing. I can't wait to try again. Thank you very much.🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

[@omyyer]

I tried my hand at an adversary today for the first time. Tried BP and then saw that level 1 didn't look too bad so I added level 1. Felt a bit shaky toward the end but the extra towns are just good eats for Lightning. Before I knew it, terror 3 arrived and I won immediately!

[@bostevens236]

Great little video, peppered with general strategy for all spirits. Thanks!

[@kalennoreth]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!

[@spazticdrummer7]

Oof, my heart when Lure of the Unknown was tossed! haha

[@johnboi3933]

Hopefully it comes up again for the Shadows Guide…

[@spazticdrummer7]

@@johnboi3933 ah yes of course; Kalen was just saving it for later.

[@kalennoreth]

It's going to be great if I get it in the Shadows video and it's still not the right pick :P But yeah, Lure is a great card, it just didn't match the playstyle I wanted in this game.

[@nikosmessis]

Hey I have been watcing your Spirit Island videos these days and they are exceptional! The community much needed someone to present the basic startegy of the spirits and the playthoughs. I like your approach to the game, your narration of the thought process and of course your playstyle. I think you are the only one that has that many playthroughs of the game and they really help people to improve, so thanks a lot for that! I know the game is not as popular as it was but seeing some new videos now and then is very helpful!

[@kalennoreth]

Thank you! It's really great to hear that. I will definitely get back to making more SI content in the future, and I think the digital version is going to get a nice boost with Jagged Earth coming out over the next year! re: play count, I feel obligated to mention that, while I'm definitely up there, I know of at least one person who has played much more than I have ;)

[@nikosmessis]

@@kalennoreth that's right, I have found 2 more people that do videos that I enjoyed. However since I am a beginner, I struggle to keep up with the extra tokens and the alternative spirit powers (from the expansions I suppose)!

[@Whipitgood]

God these tutorials are so helpful. I've started taking on adversaries for the first time and there's a lot of counter intuitive things I've picked up from your videos. Like in this case a turn where it makes sense to play no cards, let a ravage happen, or let a town build happen so you can kill it for fear. Really great commentary on these.

[@kalennoreth]

Glad to hear they're helping! This game has so much going on that it feels like there's always more to learn, I love it.

[@marknemergut8244]

You did it again! Tried out Lightning the first time tonight and won my first match fairly quickly. The reclaim loop is strong at knocking out towns and cities efficiently. Thanks for the help, Kalen!

[@kalennoreth]

Congrats on the win, and glad to be of help!

[@Palessan69]

I was afraid to let even a blight in, and this made me get stuck on less cards. Can't wait to try your opening :)

[@kalennoreth]

I hope it helps! Taking blight in order to power up your spirit through growth options is huge.

[@Hansi251]

Thanks for the very helpful guide

[@kalennoreth]

You're welcome, glad it could be of help!

[@markdandridge4433]

I had a chance this morning. I can't say I understood what happened but I won my first game ever playing with this strategy. It ramped up and I was controlling the board. I still have a ton to truly learn but you have put me on the right path. I hit subscribe last night.

[@kalennoreth]

Glad to hear the video could help, and welcome to the game!

[@markdandridge4433]

​@@kalennorethHowdy, After I started playing initially I really wasn't understanding and I packed it up. I have finally revisited Spirit Island with a fresh outlook and I am understanding now. I vist your channel often for insight. I remember when I initially found you channel I wasn't familiar with all the terminology so there was definitely a learning curve for me. I played through and understood what was going on and the strategy of waiting for the slow phase. Thank you again for all your dedication to teaching others how to play Spirit Island!😊

[@budakkotak5066]

in the middle of watching and subcribed, good info and explaination

[@kalennoreth]

Thank you!

[@Revenant2023]

This strategy helped me get my first win in the game thanks

[@kalennoreth]

Congrats on the win! Hopefully many more to come :)

[@Trashloot]

You play way calmer than i do. Maybe i should start thinking about letting a blight through to get a late game advantage more often. Its also interesting how much you value fear. Fear is just a passive bonus for me but you seem to favor cards which generate fear.

[@kalennoreth]

I would definitely encourage you to experiment with letting blight through now and then, the advantages you can get from it are huge! I definitely like fear a lot, mostly because of how the terror level interacts with the victory condition. The perks from the fear deck also have huge potential to solve lands I was going to leave alone, although that can be hit or miss.

[@roncadwallader6410]

I like the highlight of accepting the early blight on a difficult land, it's a very important lesson to learn. When dealing with the city in the mountain, I would be tempted to use the power slow to delay the fear card a turn. Ideally, you would then try to push for terror level 2 next fast phase for increased effect. Not sure why you didn't push both Dahan into the mountains to close the game. Very nice starter guide though.

[@peterxu5043]

Super efficient blitz playstyle. Map B is so good for lightening. Land 5 sand, and land 5 is the center of the island. Excuse me for studying the map again. Started studying maps from Mage Knight.

[@kalennoreth]

I hear you, I love B for Lightning. It's not my favorite in higher player counts (I'd rather be closer to an edge then), but it's definitely nice for solo.

[@peterxu5043]

@@kalennoreth Yep. Lightening like Ocean, their Coop and solo are very different. Lightening solo need swiftness to eliminate buildings and get enough fear and then burn the city to win in fear level three. Ocean coop is more costal and building prevention control focus. Well in solo, thanks for much more energy, the rich Ocean can generate a lot of fear and control inland by majors and can win by milling all the fear deck.

[@matthewcarns4282]

This was a great guide! I’ve always found the pacing for lightning awkward since it’s harder to get cards, but this was helpful. How does this strategy fare against higher level adversaries?

[@kalennoreth]

Glad it could help! The strategy can scale to higher adversaries quite well, although solo base Lightning is not the strongest solo spirit. I actually have a video from a little while ago (kzbin.info/www/bejne/jYaTh5qwd9abpJY) in which we beat England 6 with Lightning using the same basic approach. That video has some additional insights on handling events, which I didn't include in this one for simplicity's sake.

[@tpa3437]

I really like your basic strategy videos. At this point if the game would last longer, how would you go about adding more presence to get stronger?

[@kalennoreth]

Lightning often needs to try and find a "down turn" to skip the reclaim and grow to 6 card plays. Usually this means not triggering your innate that turn and/or playing cards like raging storm that are usually too expensive for their effect. I would guess that I usually take my down turn somewhere around turn 5-7, depending on board state and what powers I've drafted. Specific adversary matchups could also affect the decision (for example, France sometimes gets a lot of explorers in one land and so a turn when I play raging storm and 0-1 other cards is a lot more appealing).

[@rahulc]

Any thoughts on lands 4 + 7 instead? that way you have full coverage even without 5, so can spare it for events or just invaders going in if needed. (I would say 4 + 6, but here they would blight you out at the time you're choosing that). Great series.

[@kalennoreth]

Hm, 4 + 7 (or 4 + 6 if the Wetlands hadn't been the first explore) do seem like a very good option! One of the downsides of going into 3 like I did is that then we're concentrated in the same terrain type, making it more important that we do something about Sands if it comes up (which it did). Additionally, 4 is already blighted, so we really want to stop blight there regardless of if we put presence down! That would have concentrated our potential threat lands, meaning we could do something like letting land 8 go for a turn while we focused on 4. Thanks for the comment!

[@nitrorev]

Lighting is actually so strong once you learn the reclaim loop. I beat England 5 last night using it and will try to work on 6 next. Raging Storm is kind of a trap, one time I broke the loop for a turn to rebuild a sacred site and gain a bunch of energy but I made the mistake of playing Raging Storm because it was one of the only cards in my hand and I wanted thundering destruction. The problem is that the high cost completely undercut my energy gain and I was stuck on minors for the rest of the game. Do you find you use Raging Storm in high difficulty. It was fine in this game because it was level 0 but 3 energy for 1 Explorer seems like an inefficient use of energy.

[@kalennoreth]

I don't think I use Raging Storm in solo high difficulty with the occasional exception of France and/or the Blitz scenario (due to the extra explorers). I find I tend to use it a bit more in multiplayer; for example, combining Lightning and River usually means there are more explorers in a single land and Lightning actually has energy thanks to Boon of Vigor.

[@Mr.Bassman]

Hey, these playthroughs are fantastic as im getting started, just picked up the tabletop edition and am trying to figure this out. Im a little confused with the "push" mechanic, at 3:51 moving the Dehan from 1 to 5 seems to be a "gather" movement as the presence is there pulling it in?

[@kalennoreth]

The basic idea with Push/Gather is you target a land from your presence and then do your action relative to that land. Once you've targeted a land, your presence is irrelevant to the Push/Gather. In this case, land 1 is within range 1 of my presence, and Harbingers is a range 1 power. Once I target land 1, I can push the Dahan from there to ANY adjacent land; in this case it's a coincidence that I had a presence in the land I pushed to. Similarly, if I had targeted a land with a Gather power, I could gather from any adjacent land(s), regardless of where my presence is.

[@Mr.Bassman]

@@kalennoreth Thank you!

[@darkjuly8360]

Jeez! I just won single island solo lightning in 4 turns doing this (or was it 5). Seems all thats missing from LSS' starting powers is 1 fire element. So you could do this reliably every single time? Feels kind of "solved"? I just started getting deeper into the game and am curious when or where this G2x2 then Reclaim strategy will fall off and require more dynamic responses?

[@kalennoreth]

At base difficulty, I think this works pretty much every time. It won't always be as fast as you described, but it does feel pretty solved. At higher difficulties, the story is different. While I usually use the same opening of G2x2 then reclaim, stronger adversaries often require getting to 5 or 6 card plays. As such, it's usually necessary to identify a turn (often around turn 4-6) when you can afford to do little or nothing, and take a third G2 instead of reclaiming. This gives you enough of a power boost to close out the game. It's worth noting that there are a couple of ways to get around this, such as pairing Lightning with a spirit like Rampant Green (to place the extra presence needed) or River (Boon of Vigor lets you start drafting majors instead of minors so you can have more impact while staying on 4 plays). Another (luck-based) way is the event Years of Little Rain, so it's almost always worth keeping a Dahan or two in one of your lands.

[@Giannis_Krimitzas]

Hello Kalen. I am a fairly new player that has just hooked up with this game. I have a question, if I may, about a situation that came up while testing the 'first turn pass' strategy you demonstrate here. I played at board D. It is the one that the Sacred Site and two of the Dahan is on inland Sand where the opponent starts with a Town there as well. The first round was Sand Explore that added one invader. If I pass, as it works perfectly in all other games I've tried, the opponent adds there a City and threatens next round to wipe the Sacred Site. How do you act there? You forget the land, add your 2 Sacred Sited in lands that cover all the Island and you just take a Blight? Or do you alter the gameplay to prevent that somehow? And if it is the latter, how? Thank you for your content. I will surely play this game a lot and I will continuously study your videos.

[@kalennoreth]

First off, welcome to the game! This response got longer than I expected, so my apologies. Hope it helps! In solo play, I would do the first route you suggested, creating Sacred Sites in lands 1 and 4 to get coverage of the board and letting land 7 blight (destroying one of my presence there). If you do this, be sure to push the Dahan out with Harbingers! No need to let them perish as well. While there are some changes you could make to try and clear land 7 as it blights, there isn't really a great path to stopping the land from blighting at all. One that I can think of is to take your third growth on the first and second turns, playing no cards on the first turn, so you can play your entire hand on turn 2 and destroy the city. However, this will still let a blight through in your other Sands, and placing less presence means you actually end up with less presence on the board than if you had just let a presence get destroyed (and more presence left on your tracks, hurting your energy income for the rest of the game). A better possibility might be to use growth 2 from your energy track turn 1 and play Shatter Homesteads to destroy the town in land 7, so a town builds instead of a city, and then growth 3 on turn 2 and play the rest of your hand so that Thundering Destruction can take out the new town. The downside here, of course, is that you get stuck with only 3 card plays, and you end up equivalent on presence (none was destroyed, but you placed one less). You'll also still take a blight in your other Sands. This actually illustrates something about the game, which is that adding a presence is worth a lot more than preventing an existing presence from being destroyed. Multiplayer might be a different story, however, depending on what spirits are in the game. If another spirit can give you a power card or an element, suddenly you can get Thundering Destruction to destroy the city, and take out the town with Shatter Homesteads. Another spirit might be able to defend or otherwise solve the land in exchange for you handling towns on their board. This is especially helpful in bigger games where you might want to get coverage on other boards while still maintaining your starting Sacred Site.

[@Giannis_Krimitzas]

​@@kalennoreth Hello Kalen. Absolutely do not worry about the response getting longer. Usually, from a good player's perspective, longer means that there is actual analysis so better understanding for us newcomers to the game. This is brilliant and that is why I think that you are doing a great job for this terrific game. Thank you for your response. I replicated the situation, restarting board D till I get the Sand invader's first card. I did exactly as you told be, by escorting the Dahan out while letting the invaders overwhelm the land. It worked as you said. I sticked to the main plan. The two Sacred Sites are enough to cover the whole map so the third one isn't doing lot of work considering abilities range. It was a normal game afterwards, even forgetting the first Sand ravage that even existed because it didn't matter at all. You pushed me even further to the knowledge, not only for the specific spirit, but for the game as well. I am starting to understand now the importance of the 1 energy left in the first rounds. You have to keep it and use it to destroy the first City by buying a Fire element card. Of course if it costs zero then you are fine. But you are flexible to buy a 1-cost fire card, to play it once with the usual 3, to destroy the City. Even if you let a blight in another land, because by destroying the City you remove a threat on the board for the potential Terror Level 3 victory. By all means, point it out freely if I am making any mistakes here. The game is brilliant and it has lot of depth. I have only played with the Lightning Swift up to now to get the hang of it. I am planning to go that way with all the available spirits with the Holy Grail to win an 'all-in wave' with all the spirits combined. You will surely hear from me soon again with many-many questions that will come up, each one to the respected spirit video. Thank you again Kalen

[@ezamal89]

There are new spirits out it would be great if you could do them. Also as a sidenote, it would be awesome if you could make the card text bigger. Hard to read and understand what you are saying while on the phone