Spirit Island Playthrough Review

Full 2-player playthrough followed by a review. Enjoy!
Skip to review 1:32:30

[@Gutock]

My wife and I have about 25 plays and now clocking in level 6 or 7 difficulty, the replayability is insane. It really goes into Lvl99 kinds of craziness. Basically jumped to one of our fave games and maybe game of the year for us, beyond even Gloomhaven. Really suggest getting the expansion after you feel good with the base set... the extra variety in blight cards and basically doubling the powers is just so, so good. The extra mechanics fit in quite well and though fiddliness picks up, it's worth it because it's just so meaty and delicious. I think I'd call this a variable player power area control game rather than worker placement, but the game is really different from other games, even though it kind of is just a really complex Pandemic. Thanks for the playthrough! Want to try scenarios now, we've just been going up the Adversary charts.

[@Gutock]

Question: For the Thunderspeaker Innate Power, I think you may have misplayed: isn't it that you target one land and all effects trigger there? I think the idea is you can gather two Dahan to that land then push one of the Dahan in the just gathered land into another land. This is a way to spread Dahan out, not just clump them out. I think you guys did that for both Innate Powers (splitting up different sections and targeting different lands) rather than stacking the effects from top to bottom. Francis (sorry if I spelled your name wrong!) did this at the 51 minute mark. That or I've been playing it wrong :) Again, awesome playthrough, and I'm not sure it matters so much, but still :)

[@ToucanSamich]

Gutock I know you asked them, but I will just back up what you are saying for others interested. Page 17 of the rulebook "Unless a power explicitly states otherwise: it only affects one single target land... If a power has multiple effects, they ALL apply to the same land." The way the board is set up here bothers me more than that though lol

[@AntLabGames]

We most likely played it wrong. Looking back at the rules it makes more sense how you interpreted it. Thanks!

[@AntLabGames]

What's wrong with the board?

[@weaselchomper]

I don't see anything wrong with the board. There are a few different ways to arrange the boards for 2 players, but the way it's set up in the video makes the most sense for the scenario chosen. Although, the designer and one of the editors say that particular arrangement makes the game slightly easier. There is a thread on it here: boardgamegeek.com/thread/1819890/setup-2-player-board

[@lazulin]

Loved this playthrough and a truly great review! Lots of fun to watch, but you guys did misplay a few rules. Like when you removed blight, it was supposed to return to the blight card. And when you have multiple fear cards, they resolve one by one in the order they were obtained. Also you only ever target one land with a single power (unless the power says otherwise), so you couldn't choose different lands for different parts of the power the way you did. From a strategy perspective, when you were down to three towns in the slow phase as you hit terror level 2, it's pretty unlikely that you couldn't have won the game before the build phase, especially since you were reclaiming & gaining powers. Typically, in that case, I'd be using the slow phase to set up for as much ravage Dahan damage as possible (sacrificing Dahan to do so if it ends up being necessary) & going all-in on any quick damage power that can be played. Since ravage occurs before build, between the Dahan attack and the fast powers, three tows normally fall quite easily. Also, innate powers for most spirits are quite powerful, so when picking powers, sometimes it makes sense to take a power that's not quite as cool but that has a lot of elements you need. Getting to the higher levels of those powers can make you extremely strong. No big deal at the low difficulty you're playing, but I suspect you'll be playing this one at higher difficulties too, so just my two cents. ;) As a side note - strangely enough, this game can actually be used as a gateway game, particularly when played 2-player. It works especially well for people who like video games, in my experience. I think it's because they want that deeper experience but this game is streamlined enough that they can actually enjoy it as opposed to many other wonderful heavy games in my collection that require far more actual board game experience.

[@MordenGaming]

Excellent playthrough and review! You guys made me buy it. Great video as always and eager to see the next one everytime I listen to one of yours. Thanks for your hard work! :)

[@ronburgundy9802]

You guys are awesome 👏🏻 Best review channel out there👌🏻 Thank u 🙏🏻

[@AntLabGames]

Thanks!

[@thomasjulchristiansen8591]

Started seeing your reviews a few days ago. You have already become one of my favorite reviewers !! I think you have the taste of board games closest to my wife and mine. Can you make a top 10 over your favorite game at some point? It could be nice to get some inspiration :) Really glad I found your channel.

[@AntLabGames]

We will make a top 10 of 2017 at the end of the year...

[@AntLabGames]

We will work on that.

[@brandbryson3616]

Yes please - would love to know more about your background interests to help inform your reviews. Love your videos. Inspiring and informative. Keep it up.

[@Clorox41]

I agree that a top 10 of all time is more useful to me than a top 10 of 2017

[@LukeVenables]

Thank you for doing something other than the base/easiest version of the game. I do appreciate those as well but it's nice to have something different.

[@MJGOLDHEART]

Don't think I have seen Frances smile so much talking about a game :-)

[@jaycey4316]

please go get the expansion when you can and the promo spirits are amazing. The expansion adds so much different routes to handle things and plan ahead, as well as random events that can throw a major wrench in any plans of yours.

[@Feldingor]

Jaycey The slumbering serpent is soooo slow to build up, though. I’ll avoid it until I have a better knowledge of the game 😉

[@Fighterfan69]

Interesting that you did a scenario. Enjoyed the run-through as well as how you both thought of dealing with threats etc. The game is fantastic and I love that there are so many variations with adversaries, the types of spirits you use, scenarios. I hope you guys get the expansion. It's a blast to play and changes it up even more. Best game of the year IMO for me at least.

[@aaxiom31]

BTW, at 42:35, when you resolve the accumulated fear cards, you resolve them in the order they were drawn WITHOUT revealing those to follow (see, querki.net/u/darker/spirit-island-faq/#!.3y28aut). Also, at 1:11:41, you actually wanted to put the removed blight token back on the +card+, not in the pool of blight tokens. Great playthrough, you two! I'm glad to see a more complex scenario being played. Well done! :-)

[@SoloClub123]

1:09:10 One energy was paid to use the power but I thought the power was to be able to play your power on a space with Dahan? And jungle doesn't have Dahan so illegal move right?

[@SyKot]

wildinferno1984 Yes, it was an invalid move

[@Feldingor]

Also, when you get a new major power, you have to forget a power, it doesn’t have to be a minor one (also because that way you couldn’t forget unique spirit powers, since they’re neither minor nor major)

[@assos2000]

23:10 you could gather 3 cause an air symbol is revealed at the spirit card. I believe gather AND push has to be in the same chosen land, so technically the play is correct 3 dahan gathered at the J spot.

[@primordialsoup7085]

Really enjoyed the play through. You two cooperate very well together. I was wondering what those beautiful containers are called? I would love to get a set for my copy of spirit island.

[@Logicfray]

I've seen these in a craft supply store. The ones I saw screw together to form a longer tube for storage. Great for boardgames!

[@wizardom]

@1:37:20 I think you were looking for the word "overwhelming"

[@ehartnett00]

Thank you for this. I'm hoping to play this with my wife at bggcon and hoping she likes it ( she generally does not like coop games). Thanks again.

[@vitastheniker]

OK I have a request to make: I am always looking for better strorage solutions as everyone I guess. I never thought of creme pots like you use them. What size or volume (ml) so to speak do you commonly use. You would really help me alot. It is the practical and at the same time aesthetic solution, I was searching for. Thank you very much in advance.

[@dangerousbeans2907]

1:05:27 adorable. “You don’t even understand” lol

[@SixPhilippe]

Excellent review! Subscribed ;-)

[@cally77777]

Hey guys, I love your videos, but I've noticed a wee anomaly (wee = Scottish for small). So you haven't set up the 2 player board like they say in the manual. If you imagine the coasts being horizontal, then put them bottom left and top right (you can still randomize them). The way you have them, there's a big area in the middle the invaders can't easily get to from the coasts. Particularly useful to Guard the Island's heart. Was that deliberate (cough!?) It doesn't really effect your demo of the game play, which was fine. It's just that when some poor soul tries the game with the right map orientation, he or she might wonder why it's seems a lot tougher than when that nice Ant and Francis were doing it, and berate themselves as rubbish players!

[@vuzi808]

yeah this went way too smoothly. the sea shores were basically harmless. but I do think it was intentional

[@repeataftermeme75]

Outstanding video, thx!... I know this game was a kickstarter game, but how much is it msrp?

[@Gutock]

I believe it's 80 MSRP for the base, 30 MSRP for the expansion. They are a little harder to track down now but a 2nd print one was OK'ed a while ago and should be out in distribution around December.

[@hanng1242]

I love the theme. It is great to be able to play the bad guys trying to stop the march of civilization to keep the natives ignorant and subsistence-level so that they will continue to worship the island spirits. It's like co-op Chaos in the Old World.

[@ludwiglarsson3352]

At 36:00, they're cheating, right? She's supposed to push invaders from one of her lands, but she pushes them from a land adjacent to one of her lands. She should only be able to push invaders from lands where she have presence.

[@theDiRTYeightSUPER]

you can push from lands without presence as long as the card you play has the range to do so. so if range 1 from my presence, I can push something in an adjacent space.

[@jenadh]

@@theDiRTYeightSUPER I have to agree with @Ludwig Larsson. First the sand was targeted as the land to gather into. Once that's picked, it should also be the target of push, which means dehans should be pushed from that target as well. Effectively what you've done there is to pick 2 targets: one for gather (no complaints there), then another was targeted for push. This seems like a cheat. "if range 1 from my presence, I can push something in an adjacent space.": this to choose your target land for push, but target land was already chosen by virtue of having done the gather.

[@apachence]

Yeah that's right. It's a rule I also miss because the card (and some other cards) says "(no range listed) - from one of THEIR LANDS". Which means a land with that spirits presence. I guess why the card wasn't written as a 0 range with presence is because it can target another spirit. Anyways, she could have targeted the other wetlands.

[@andrewdalton2626]

you didn't reveal fear cards

[@dangerousbeans2907]

Super duper. 8) Thanks

[@Mokkel73]

The whitest teeth in all of boardgaming! :-)

[@Mokkel73]

Just pimped mine, with wooden colonialists, towns and cities. White of course, colonialists have always been white.