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nerwengreenAh, Spirit Island. It's a co-op board game that's also amazing to play solo, which was one of the selling points when I bought it. It meant I could still play even if no one else liked it.
Today's main accomplishment: winning a game against England level 3 (difficulty 6 on a scale of 1-10, according to the rules). In level 3, there's an extra build phase before the ravage for the first stage invader cards - which can be devastating if it's the same land that builds, then immediately ravages (and adds blight everywhere). There's also a rule that lands with no invaders can get buildings if they're next to 2+ buildings in adjacent lands. It took me a few games to slowly realize that merely clearing out all explorers was not going to solve the problem.
The spirits I eventually won with: Rampant Green and Ocean.
Ocean is tricky to figure out. It can do ridiculous amounts of damage, but only if its spirit phases are timed to what the invaders are doing. The game right before (same adversary, but with Earth instead of Rampant Green), it was exactly the opposite of what I needed and I lost pretty fast.
It's also a lot easier to notice on higher difficulties that there's a definite pattern to these games. At first, the spirits are pretty limited and the invaders proliferate everywhere. Then, when things look super hopeless (usually in the form of nearly gone blight pool), there's a turning point of the spirits finally getting powerful enough to do stuff, while at the same time the win conditions get easier, until suddenly out of nowhere I win.
In this game, that was right about when Stage 1 invaders was over, the extra build phase was removed (and I was all, "omg thank the spirits!"), and Ocean had just picked up Tsunami as its first major power. Then Tsunami happened, along with three other powers that combined well with it, and I think I ran through the entire fear pool twice in one go. There was so much built up to destroy by then.
After that, Ocean did massive amounts of damage at least every other round, and the game was eventually won by running down the fear deck. It was really cool to discover that there were basically two sets of cards that combined well with each other, and I could just alternate playing them into infinity. (....well, until there stopped being anything to kill in the coastal lands. Tsunami stopped being effective at that point. But then the game was over so I didn't have to recombine new card sets.)
Rampant Green worked out to be mostly defender and support staff to Ocean for most of the game. It's extremely good at stopping blight by just losing presence off of sacred sites (which can then be added back later, infinitely). A bit after Tsunami came up, Rampant Green worked out a good combo for removing blight and putting it back into the pool - but there was a super low point where I actually lost the game before I figured it out, but then I retconned the situation back to having one blight left in the pool, and it went on. Things eventually recovered after that. Basically, it required Ocean to be playing the other set of cards at the same time as Green's blight removal cards. (To take advantage of "target beneficial effects to another spirit" cards.)
I think overall I just need to work on building up the card decks faster. Major powers are pretty powerful, but you have to trade in another card for them, and to do that you need lots of minor powers first... some of the spirits are really good for dorking around never picking up cards.
Next thing I want to try (if not England level 3 again, with different spirits, just to make sure that I really did win by being good at the game and not because I retconned too many things...): Dahan Insurrection scenario combined with Brandenburg-Prussia.
I really like the Dahan Insurrection scenario. Basically whenever the Dahan go anywhere, they get to do damage. So if I played it with two spirits that are good at moving them around (for example, Thunderspeaker and River), they'd probably pwn everything. I won with just the scenario by itself (difficulty 4, Earth and Rampant Green). I've also won playing Brandenburg-Prussia level 2 by itself (also difficulty 4, River and Lightning). So I figure, if I do both of those together with the easiest possible spirits for the scenario...
There's also the Isle's Heart scenario that I really like. I tried combining it with England, but it turned out too difficult. I lost both times due to the scenario rules and not the England rules. Might try it again combined with something else.
Today's main accomplishment: winning a game against England level 3 (difficulty 6 on a scale of 1-10, according to the rules). In level 3, there's an extra build phase before the ravage for the first stage invader cards - which can be devastating if it's the same land that builds, then immediately ravages (and adds blight everywhere). There's also a rule that lands with no invaders can get buildings if they're next to 2+ buildings in adjacent lands. It took me a few games to slowly realize that merely clearing out all explorers was not going to solve the problem.
The spirits I eventually won with: Rampant Green and Ocean.
Ocean is tricky to figure out. It can do ridiculous amounts of damage, but only if its spirit phases are timed to what the invaders are doing. The game right before (same adversary, but with Earth instead of Rampant Green), it was exactly the opposite of what I needed and I lost pretty fast.
It's also a lot easier to notice on higher difficulties that there's a definite pattern to these games. At first, the spirits are pretty limited and the invaders proliferate everywhere. Then, when things look super hopeless (usually in the form of nearly gone blight pool), there's a turning point of the spirits finally getting powerful enough to do stuff, while at the same time the win conditions get easier, until suddenly out of nowhere I win.
In this game, that was right about when Stage 1 invaders was over, the extra build phase was removed (and I was all, "omg thank the spirits!"), and Ocean had just picked up Tsunami as its first major power. Then Tsunami happened, along with three other powers that combined well with it, and I think I ran through the entire fear pool twice in one go. There was so much built up to destroy by then.
After that, Ocean did massive amounts of damage at least every other round, and the game was eventually won by running down the fear deck. It was really cool to discover that there were basically two sets of cards that combined well with each other, and I could just alternate playing them into infinity. (....well, until there stopped being anything to kill in the coastal lands. Tsunami stopped being effective at that point. But then the game was over so I didn't have to recombine new card sets.)
Rampant Green worked out to be mostly defender and support staff to Ocean for most of the game. It's extremely good at stopping blight by just losing presence off of sacred sites (which can then be added back later, infinitely). A bit after Tsunami came up, Rampant Green worked out a good combo for removing blight and putting it back into the pool - but there was a super low point where I actually lost the game before I figured it out, but then I retconned the situation back to having one blight left in the pool, and it went on. Things eventually recovered after that. Basically, it required Ocean to be playing the other set of cards at the same time as Green's blight removal cards. (To take advantage of "target beneficial effects to another spirit" cards.)
I think overall I just need to work on building up the card decks faster. Major powers are pretty powerful, but you have to trade in another card for them, and to do that you need lots of minor powers first... some of the spirits are really good for dorking around never picking up cards.
Next thing I want to try (if not England level 3 again, with different spirits, just to make sure that I really did win by being good at the game and not because I retconned too many things...): Dahan Insurrection scenario combined with Brandenburg-Prussia.
I really like the Dahan Insurrection scenario. Basically whenever the Dahan go anywhere, they get to do damage. So if I played it with two spirits that are good at moving them around (for example, Thunderspeaker and River), they'd probably pwn everything. I won with just the scenario by itself (difficulty 4, Earth and Rampant Green). I've also won playing Brandenburg-Prussia level 2 by itself (also difficulty 4, River and Lightning). So I figure, if I do both of those together with the easiest possible spirits for the scenario...
There's also the Isle's Heart scenario that I really like. I tried combining it with England, but it turned out too difficult. I lost both times due to the scenario rules and not the England rules. Might try it again combined with something else.
