Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate Review – Beyond The Base Game
More Spirit Island? Yes please!
Since time untold, Spirits have existed on the Island. There are Spirits whose names are known by the local Dahan people — Spirits of growth and fire, of strength and river. But these are not the only Spirits… Legends whispered on the rarest of days tell stories of Spirits from the deepest, furthest reaches of the land. Powerful forces of nature that have not been witnessed in ages.
When white-sailed ships reach our coastal waters, when would-be colonizers step foot onto the unblighted shores, when they raise blade and plow to claim the land with greed and hunger, nature stirs. When Invaders strike out at the heart of the Island, they draw the attention of Spirits of myth and legend and face power unimaginable.
This time, they learn to fear Nature Incarnate.
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Related Content
Welcome To My Channel (Who I Am) ► https://youtu.be/I8mtQvDb_FM
Jagged Earth Review ► https://youtu.be/Go8Q3xoAX7k
Top 5 Spirits with One Pip Wonder ► https://youtube.com/live/A-sfHVbvp30
My Favourite Spirits ► https://youtube.com/live/ct4RywYqV0E
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Who Am I?
One single batchelor from the UK talking about his passion for board games and the people who play them! I support small content creators, board game cafes and go against the status quo when it comes to the board game industry. I give my honest opinions without bias towards any publishers or designers and will not hold back if I don’t like a game.
The Broken Meeple is a variety channel that hosts all kinds of board game content from reviews to Top 10 lists to playthroughs to live stream collaborations with special guests (predominantly small channels who deserve more exposure).
I look forward to engaging with you, the community on my live streams or in the comments on my videos!
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Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
01:46 – Storage
02:17 – Explaining Each of the Spirits (Moderate Complexity)
07:07 – Explaining Each of the Spirits (High Complexity)
15:37 – Explaining Each of the Spirits (Very High Complexity)
17:59 – Aspect Cards
19:16 – Summary, Verdict & Player Scaling
21:31 – Please Share and Support The Show
#brokenmeeple #spiritisland #greaterthangames #natureincarnate #boardgames #boardgame #lukehector #supportsmallcreators #tabletop #tabletopgames #bgg #boardgamer #boardgamereview
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Full credit to BoardGameGeek and its members for any images used that aren’t my own or part of the publisher press kit.
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When it's all said and done the big box/trove chest for this game will be insane
Glad the expansion is worth getting
I always thought of the sun baby from Teletubbies for Relentless Gaze of the sun but mario sun works well haha
I love Spirit Island, but honestly not in a hurry to buy this. I've only tried some of Jagged Earth spirits once, probably haven't played all adversaries yet and barely touched scenarios. There is already a lifetime of content, and this is not even a final expansion. It's a good problem to have for the favourite game, but… How much is too much? They are putting out more than I can chew. Though I can always sell everything else and just play Spirit Island, hehe.
Great information! But I suggest removing the jokes / clips from other media, they break the flow of the video.
the "kill him" clip concerning Thunderspeaker made me choke on my morning coffee.
This one is high on my list. I greatly enjoy Spirit Island and looking forward to getting it to the table more in 2024.
Woo!
I was more excited about the aspects than the new spirits and the aspects are definitely amazing, but I found I liked the spirits more than I expected. Hearth-Vigil and Roots are very powerful (as is Earthquakes) and provide fresh takes on defensive spirits and the new adversary is also really well designed and fun to play against once you internalize the rules.
I have a few thoughts on some of the spirits below if you’re interested:
Darkness Down your Spine feels to me like a proper (and more complex) version of Shadows from the base game. I don’t think you need to rush the incarna empower and top track is fairly underwhelming but a mix of top and bottom track seems to work well. Indeed you want to plan out your growths (and delay reclaiming as much as possible) to time out the invader escapes, which involves prioritizing the second growth option (for more card drafts) and playing the card that puts presence into the Endless Dark (Reach from Infinite Darkness) on turn two because your presence can be the ones that escape from the Endless Dark on growth.
Relentless Gaze was another I didn’t expect to like but I think it’s really fun and also quite strong. An interesting build I’ve seen is to grow along top track the first four turns (staying at one card play for a while), drafting a major on turn 1 (forgetting Wither), and setting up for a mid-game turn to play that major and repeat it 1-2 times (ideally the major generates a lot of fear and/or affects multiple lands, if your first major draft is bad try again in the following turn). I’ve done it and it was surprisingly good against a level 5 adversary. I think its unique power cards are actually really strong and undercosted (people probably overestimate Wither whereas it’s actually its worst card, though I’ll admit it’s fun to add those badlands) and the one that generates fear and skips invader actions is insane to repeat. With the spirit it’s also important to get to terror level 2 as quick as possible.
I didn’t enjoy Wounded Waters as much from my one play so far but I think the idea is to draft on-element cards in the early turns and then have a big power spike in the mid-game by hitting the lower thresholds of your innates every turn.
Hi Luke, what's your favourite/most common player count? I've only played 2/3, haven't tried solo yet.
How many of the aspects included here are for spirits from branch & claw or flame?
I only have jagged earth and these 2 other exps don't really interest me much..
Can the spirts play across expansions?
I only have the base game and Branch and Claw. I tried it true solo and it didn’t land with me. I switched to 2 handed solo and fell in love with it. I like the way they can work together. It’s the same as Marvel Champions, I only want 2 handed solo.
And thank you for the order to buy the expansions. I’ll get Jagged Earth next. That was useful information so I’m glad you told us
Spirit Island is in my top 10 of all time.
Thanks for the review, Luke.
Branch and Claw makes SI feel complete, at least imo. Jagged Earth for me felt more like bloat. i like it but i could have stayed with BandC and been happy. ill likely never get Nature Incarnate. i dont need more tokens/action types. the alternate power cards for the previous spirits are all id really be interested in.
I think I need to dust off my copy of Spirit Island!
randomly run through your existing JE spirit rankings, hoping to see your updated list with NI.
Great review. Yes please make another/new ranking with OnePipWonder. I wonder what would have changed for both of you. I am no where near as far with my plays as you are. I usually prefer dual handed play with 2 Spirits, to see the synergy, but I haven't played many games yet, even I have all the stuff. Maybe I should play like you: one Spirit only, one after the other from easy to hard? I forgot, have already covered Horizons of SI? I need to look it up. Thanks for the video.