Verdammt! Am Wochenende haben wir noch #SpiritIsland gespielt und darüber gesprochen dass es noch eine weitere Erweiterung geben soll. Eines meiner liebsten #Brettspiele, die hätte ich blind gekauft.
Jetzt lese ich dass #GreaterThanGames (der originale Verlag) ein Opfer der aktuellen US-Politik geworden ist und die Türen schließt. 🤬
@REricReuss schreibt dass er mit dem Spiel noch nicht fertig ist, ich fürchte aber dass ich das vergessen kann. 😒
https://rericreuss.com/2025/04/17/sad-greater-than-games-news/

Spirit Island, 2 players

We really rocked this Shifting Memory/Deep Lure match-up with France lvl 4. Something about our powers took them down nicely. I ate a huge amount of blight, but some of it was to wind up the major power that does 2 damage per blight/1 damage per adjacent blight and repeat 3 grey/3 white. Deep Lure was in the capable hands of my partner, and it showed. She has her favorite 3-4 spirits locked in and almost exclusively plays them.

#spiritisland #greaterthangames #rericreuss #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiel #brettspiele

Spirit Island, 2 players

Back to Spirit Island, our mainstay, this weekend. We don't play enough anymore for my partner to branch out of her two or three favorites, so she used Deep Lure. I used this mud otter from Horizons, and we crushed Prussia pretty handily at level 4, difficulty 7-8, which is our casual afternoon sweet spot.

The Horizons spirits are just across the board better designed spirits than the ones originally designed for the base game, and the otter showed this off. First, they are better balanced. They don't have weird, no return growth corners that a few of the base game spirits get into. More importantly, they are indirectly focused on teaching you key skills in the game. The otter here is all about placing presence, its implications, and focusing new players on getting (and moving) presence to the right place at the right time. It's asking players to think about where their presence will be in build phase the next turn the turn before in slow power phase. That's because its best power (by a distance) is making all enemies build explorers instead of towns and cities in double presence locations.

Anyway, just top-level introductory faction design. Making the spirit fun and flexible but also trying to teach the player a crucial skill for Spirit Island at higher levels going forward. Honestly, these Horizon spirits should be in the base box at this point.

#spiritisland #greaterthangames #rericreuss #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #brettspiel #eurogames