Spirit Island: Red's Final Tier list: Part 7: S-tier

[@AndreasVNesje]

Great video as always but 27:35 "14 is about 15% of 100, 18 is about 20% of 100" such a flawless mathematician!

[@Noxen74]

The math do be mathing

[@jaydeestrong]

Time stamp for those interested > > > > > @3:58 Downpour Drenches the World @10:22 Relentless Gaze of the Sun @19:10 Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds @26:23 Starlight Seeks Its Form @31:01 Towering Roots of the Jungle @38:57 Many Minds Move as One Enjoy!

[@MJ-in2xt]

Thanks for the filler text to avoid spoilers!

[@bostevens236]

I thought Keeper was awesome, just tried them the other day for the first time...

[@InRealTime769]

Many Minds combos really well with Darkness. Darkness Incanra counts as Beasts and it generates more beasts with its innate. Plus Many Minds is a good dump land for Darkness as well. Add in the absolutely stupid amount of fear the 2 generate, it just gets so silly.

[@thesaurus664]

Love these videos, listening to each one as it drops everyday at work. So many new strategies to go try out. The Sun Volcano restoring destroyed presence sounds really fun. Keep up the good work!

[@Waynedan87]

Downpour with finder is crazy. Loads of isolation and the 1 damage to all buildings card is so strong against non England or HME.

[@rampant1apart]

My play group ran into that synergy when one time, as a joke, we decided to play "Team Bird." (Finder, Downpour, Many Minds, Lightning). Turns out Team Bird is really solid!

[@patrickleder8415]

Rain of Blood is great and I have to say it in my most metal voice each time I see it in a Gain.

[@jasongarman]

I’m glad I’m not the only one who does that. My gaming group chuckles at me whenever I get that card.

[@andrewplassard4278]

Two thoughts - 1. Having the meta content broken out into separate videos might make it more consumable (ie the overview of the criteria and the final wrap up) 2. I’d be curious to see spirits ranked by each of the criteria individually

[@brianqi3445]

I really appreciate that along with your description of each spirit's strengths/weaknesses, you also give your personal growth track order. Helps a lot when I eventually try the spirit out! Side note, will you be making guides for the new NI aspects? I really want to make some of them work but not too sure, like lair/darkfire

[@RedReVenge007]

I'd like to, but life is busy. If I were to make guides my list would be: - Memory: Intensify - Green: Tangles - Nourishing: Earth - Fangs: Encircle - River: Haven Now this doesn't mean we won't get contact for the spirits. Just I won't do 20+ videos about the spirit like I do now.

[@Vagabond_4Life]

So many fun spirits! Makes me want to play them all! Can’t wait for the next vid 🎉

[@carlsonliao3100]

I think downpour would be better when there is another spirit which is good at attacking and generate fear . This kinda make up the weakness of downpour. Besides the strengths that you’ve mentioned, the first innate could also generate a great amount of defense in the late game

[@423CartiganTTV]

I’ve found gaze pairs up very well with transforming wildfire. He has the energy and blight to make lots of badlands (that he’ll benefit from), getting a card is also really nice for gaze as that lets you use your G3, and the any element is very versatile on gaze because of right innate. You can even get good use out of that bottom right innate, since wildfire needs energy. I’d encourage anyone to give this a try because honestly it’s really fun, and gaze is strong enough to cover some of wildfire’s weaknesses.

[@lonelysandbar]

Finder seems like a neat combo with Sun. Repeating the badland making card makes for a really saucy dump land.

[@peperoniebabie]

Do my eyes deceive me or is Hearth-Vigil joining the big four in X-tier? Totally deserving if so, the doggo is bonkers.

[@RedReVenge007]

You are right. The final 5 are HV, DUE, Fractured, Stone, and Green

[@jaydeestrong]

wow I was not expecting him to be seen that strong. though i wish they nerfed his unli reclaim strat in solo

[@noahduncan4095]

Woah, I'm really excited to hear the justification for HV tomorrow! It usually feels very strong to me but I didn't realize it had that much potential. I recently lost an England 6 game with it but I suspect that was due to significant miss-play on my part@@RedReVenge007

[@RedReVenge007]

@@noahduncan4095Hearth-Vigil is really strong. Good into all matchups and can completely take over the game for the whole team. Vs England you want to leverage your Isolate Fear card! Don't be afraid to take blight here.

[@kunkudunk1133]

@@noahduncan4095I’m guessing it’s in X tier because of how consistently it can solve multiple boards sooner than most spirits. One of my friends basically only plays hearth vigil now and while the spirit does tend to allow some blight early on, his board is usually mostly cleared far earlier than others and he’s already been helping other boards at this point. At this point even more of his actions can go towards solving other boards. Plus the dahan majors are all pretty strong and HV uses them quite easily and with really powerful synergy between the bonus health and extra starting dahan.

[@phk975]

Here comes the good stuff.

[@Peroxdar]

Hoho, this means dank space horse is x tier. Super curious for tommorow's video now.

[@verdesin08]

Hi Red! big fan here I was wondering what makes Starlight so powerful. I play with modified "balanced" power decks, so maybe this is the reason why Starlight can't fish the deck for the OP cards and spam them (which I am sure it is a big part of its power budget). But, besides that, I fail to see what is OP about the spirit. Unique skip, innate earth and innate water are powerful, but nowhere near as broken as the tools of some spirits like Many Minds. Is it the adaptability? That grants Starlight no bad matchups, which is something very favorable on your tier lists? Maybe the spirit has so many paths that I get lost and do not optimise it well.

[@RedReVenge007]

What are the "balanced power decks?" I do have a Starlight guide that I suggest you look at. It might help you optimize the Spirit better! As for why it's in high S tier... - Defend 5 on an innate is VERY strong. It covers alot of edge case events as well as can cover the standard City + Town + Explorer ravage. This allows you to keep your blight budget high while you enter the mid game. Several Spirits aren't able to do this! - Having a starting Skip in your kit let's you deal with horrible edge case ravages. Think of Habsburg Livestock 6 getting a Loss Condition ravage T1 and then that land coming up the following turn! Some Spirits don't have outs to this, while Starlight always does! The skip also extends into England matchups and can help against horrible B2B ravages in the Prussia series. The skip is also useful into various double adversary combinations. - Starlight sees about 20% of the minor deck by the end of turn 2. This allows you to consistently find a few of the best minors in the game! - Starlight is flexible. This allows them to mold themself to whatever the team needs. Does the team need a carry? Well Starlight will dig for a major and build itself around it. Does the team need a support? Well Starlight will spam Gift of Constancies, or Gift of Powers - Starlight has excellent matchups into all single level 6 adversaries too. - I'm not an advocate for the Water innate, but some find it to be busted in certain matchups.

[@verdesin08]

@@RedReVenge007 wow! Thanks a lot for such a complete answer, you are really an ace at the game but also attentive to your subs. When I talk about balanced power deck, I refer that I modified the power decks based on the proposal of Emily of discord channel, + some changes made by myself. I also based many of the modifications on the tier list of powers you posted. Overall, I tried to take the power to the tier B/high C on all cards. It increases the challenge and the variabilty of games so I love it. It also helps prevent the "exploit" of spirits that take a broken power such as gift of constany and spam it to overcome the adversary. From what you said about starlight, I have to agree with everything, and admit that I had never valued so much the skip, although it makes a lot of sense the importance you give it, specially for you who tends to play bigger games (4-6p) where the terror level ramps up later in the game.

[@kunkudunk1133]

This is basically how I figured this tier would look although I did kinda expect many minds to be below starlight and roots. Granted that could just be from who I see playing them as well as me not playing them as much. Not sure how I didn’t realize this last video but was pretty surprised to see sun in S tier, mostly because they can struggle to hit multiple lands with meaningful effects the first couple turns. One land is usually very handled but then the other problem is often just chilling from what I’ve seen. Granted giving sun an extra card play with snake or something can go a long way to fixing this. Also the right innate with vengeances presence is pretty fun when you have blight cards destroying presence each turn. Still a fun video to watch and not surprised by what’s left for X tier. Oh forgot for keeper, I think people say they’re so powerful because as you mentioned they have a ton of actions. However a lot of those actions have restrictions with range and the semi struck presence placement can make situations that you just don’t have targets for you abilities. Now giving keeper plus range support fixes a lot of that and really allows full access to all the power that often gets wasted if blight cut off your expansion

[@jaydeestrong]

this is what i thought with Sun as well. he cant always handle 2 lands easily, and he even needs support to do that at times. he wants moon, so its a card with moon is what he usually play. so he has less choice on what in his uniques he will also play. im not sure why it is that high. and blight effects severly punish him

[@stephankreinbucher4229]

I wonder if I miss something with starlight seeks its form. nobody seems to take the same growth option twice and I wonder why? I can't see it written that you may not do it?

[@RedReVenge007]

It’s in the rules that you can only select a growth option once. Same goes for pick two spirits.

[@stephankreinbucher4229]

@@RedReVenge007 thanks! we were confused since on our German boards there is one spirit where it is written that you may not choose the same growth option twice, but on the other ones it is not written.

[@DrDrao]

Many minds is number 6? There's a new x tier? Is it locus serpent?

[@RedReVenge007]

Locus was placed in B tier! X tier is tomorrow's video!

[@DrDrao]

@@RedReVenge007 I felt like I missed it. Just guessing. I genuinely have no clue who it could be.

[@kohaku06]

​@RedReVenge007 is there a updated written tier list for this series?

[@RedReVenge007]

@@kohaku06 yep I’ll make a post tomorrow evening on BGG (will leave it in the description of the video)