That dopamine hit you get when you finally place that straw on the camels back and it gets CRUSHED is why I love Solo Board Gaming, my entire collection is all minimum 1 player, Not saying I'm not up for co-op games (I do multi-hand some games) but I don't have to rely on others to get a game to the table, just me, my favorite snacks/drinks, maybe a fitting playlist on loop and nothing but that sweat imagination and escapism. Really has helped me with my mental health, I don't think there's better medicine.
Two more rules clarifications: 1. You're supposed to do the fear cards one at a time without seeing the next one. Since that definitely affects what you'll do. 2. When exploring, only cities and towns and the coastline are sources of explorers. So the wetland on the far right side of the board would be unexplorable because there are only explorers there. Explorers are single individuals, they don't spawn in other individuals.
Just to make sure that it's understood correctly, note that you can only target one land with each power, even the innates. So at 2:46 when you destroyed 2 explorers and gathered 1 in 3 different lands, you actually would have to target a single land, gather 1 explorer into that land (from an adjacent land) and destroy 2 explorers from that same land.
Know what? If I had to choose my top 5 subscriptions of all time … yours would one of them. Such a great job … clean, concise, and stellar explanations . You set the bar high and there are few presenters out there that can match it.
I’ve looked at this game at my FLGS on numerous occasions but you sir pushed me over the edge into buying it. I saw that it was your No.1 solo game and having enjoyed your playthroughs for some time now completely trust your opinion. This playthrough shows me that my faith wasn’t misplaced as it looks awesome, I love your enthusiasm and presentation style. I have to say that you now probably my favourite playthrough channel and that’s really saying something. Thanks, my friend, it’s very much appreciated. Keep it up, Mark
Wow Mark what high praise, THANK YOU! I am pumped for you to try and see what you think, the gameplay is stellar! I am actually going to be doing a 3 player playthrough of this game with the expansion next!
Great playthrough. It should be noted (esp around 6:40) that you invaders explore only from buildings or the ocean. You appear to have them explore from in the wetlands in on the C tile but in both cases there aren’t any buildings they could have come from.
Thank you for this very helpful series. My husband and I bought a few board games to occupy ourselves during the pandemic and avoid endless hours of TV. Spirit Island is a bit intimidating out of the gate but these videos really demystified the game play.
Thanks for doing this playthrough. This is becoming one of my absolute favorite games. So much replayability even without adding scenarios and adversaries.
The best Co-Op game to bring to the cabin. The default game is easy enough for casuals, but still challenging enough to be entertaining - whereas the scenarios and invader army cards tune up the difficulty for more hardcore strategy fans. Never checked out the expansions, but I heard a lot of good about them too! Probably will be released all in an 'ultimate' edition one day.
Thanks so much putting together this playthrough. Seeing how the full game is played has really helped me understand what makes this game so great. Keep up the good work!
Hey Steve, thank YOU so much for watching these vid's beforehand to check rules. It means that people can learn the correct rules right away instead of waiting for someone smarter to watch it and tell me. Hahaha! Glad you enjoyed the game (even if you didn't at GenCon) and hoping that you can pick it up soon!
At the 6:45 mark why did you add explorers in the east wetlands? There are no towns or cities near them. Looked at the rules and it states if there are towns or cities next to the region or in the region on the card. Unless I missed something those additional explorers shouldn't be added on the eastern wetlands. They will still build there in the build phase though..... Awesome run-through still!
Oh shoot is it just locations that have cities or towns adjacent? I did any invader!! I will check the rules and make a note if you are right. Thanks for that!!
Yeah I think that's the case. It would be a nice variant to add even more difficulty if you choose to do so. Still though, you had the victory regardless.
A swift conclusion! Spirits can really bring down the hammer once powered up, Shadows was great for taking care of explorers so there weren't many builds and Earth just cleaned up once it got moving. I hope you do more videos of Spirit Island, with adversaries. They really shake things up. And there is the expansion too with its tokens and events, which again throw another wrench into things but makes each play even more thematic as you see the different events unfolding every game
Thanks so much for watching! I am for sure going to do another playthrough once I get some more plays under my belt! I cannot WAIT for the expansion play and adversaries, but first I need to learn some moderate and challenging Spirits! Thanks again for the rule help!!
An additional note about Darkness Swallows the Unwary: other comments have already talked about how the entire power has to target a single land (and you put it in the subtitles last episode), but on the "it's actually slightly more powerful than you were playing it" side, the target land has to be range 1 from a Sacred Site, not the explorers which are gathered. As an example, you could have targetted the sands in east board 2, which is range 1 from your sacred site in the jungle in 4. You could gather an explorer from the adjacent jungle in land 1, then destroyed 2 explorers in the sands (land 2, the target of the power) for 2 fear.
YES!! Strategy posts are my favorite :) You are 100% right, I was under-utilizing this ability, not to mention missing out on Shadow's innate ability. Just goes to show how deep and refreshing this game can be. At the point of recording I had only played 4 times, but now after 10+ plays, still feeling the same way about this game, if not more so. Thank you for mentioning this!!
Hey man! I want to offer a point of praise and a point of constructive criticism. Praise: This is BY FAR THE CLEAREST instructional video on how to play the game I’ve found. You don’t spend too much time presenting abstract concepts without any gameplay example to anchor their logic to, which is a massive trend in explainer videos. You just play the game, make your moves, and offer concise reasoning why those moves make sense. You teach the way I learn games, which is to say in a hands-on way. Massive kudos and thanks for making Spirit Island that much more accessible. Constructive criticism: you make a few mistakes during the course of the game, some of which are fixed in annotations, others you mulligan in-video. Since TH-cam is a “slow” rather than a live format, why not just back the board state up (since you were always quick to notice your mistakes) and continue the right way while shooting? You can cut the mistake out entirely this way when editing the video. A lot of people struggling to grasp the rules may “panic” (which I think is probably too strong a word here, but oh well) when they feel they understand a rule, but see an authority (you) gloss over or outright whiff the rule. Even if you later explain your mistake, that moment of confusion can derail an otherwise smooth train of understanding. I spent more words on the criticism than the praise, but it is extremely minor in comparison to what is good in these videos. Subbed, keep it up!
Wow thanks for the wonderful feedback! I honestly think I don't go back as it is a TON more editing and you can lose your strategy etc. But I understand where you are coming from!
@@OneStopCoopShop @@OneStopCoopShop Hey fair enough, you have a much better grasp over what it takes to actually produce these videos than I do. Sorry for any flippancy in my suggestion. Currently watching the Branch and Claw playthrough even though I don't have the expansion. I feel like my understanding of the game gets better every minute I watch! You guys rock.
Another great runthrough and this game looks very cool. I am loving the cards with the actions and their chance to do innate abilities too. One question at 7:0 you say about Crops Wither and Fade that 'all we're gonna do is generate 2 fear' - do you not also get to replace either a town or a city as well?
Thanks! Yeah and these are just the low difficulty spirits! The moderate and high complexity make for even more difficult choices and awesome abilities! You are right I could have replaced a City or a Town with the Crops Wither and Fade, there just wasn't any within range. Thanks for watching!
Good question! This is just used for when you used the pre-set cards for your first game or so. You will see the four basic spirits have a pre-designed power level up and their color matches their spirit. Otherwise you can ignore it! Hope that helps!
It would be helpful if you did another play through that did have any "cheater phases." What I mean by that is you remove and add invaders, towns, and cities appropriately. Otherwise these videos were helpful in helping us understand the game better.
That dopamine hit you get when you finally place that straw on the camels back and it gets CRUSHED is why I love Solo Board Gaming, my entire collection is all minimum 1 player, Not saying I'm not up for co-op games (I do multi-hand some games) but I don't have to rely on others to get a game to the table, just me, my favorite snacks/drinks, maybe a fitting playlist on loop and nothing but that sweat imagination and escapism. Really has helped me with my mental health, I don't think there's better medicine.
Two more rules clarifications:
1. You're supposed to do the fear cards one at a time without seeing the next one. Since that definitely affects what you'll do.
2. When exploring, only cities and towns and the coastline are sources of explorers. So the wetland on the far right side of the board would be unexplorable because there are only explorers there. Explorers are single individuals, they don't spawn in other individuals.
Thanks!
Just to make sure that it's understood correctly, note that you can only target one land with each power, even the innates. So at 2:46 when you destroyed 2 explorers and gathered 1 in 3 different lands, you actually would have to target a single land, gather 1 explorer into that land (from an adjacent land) and destroy 2 explorers from that same land.
You GOT IT! One Card or One Innate for ONE LAND! I missed that, sorry!
I really appreciate your style, speech, explaining, and create the right mood to be followed from the beginning to the end of the game.
Good job!
Thanks for watching!!
Know what? If I had to choose my top 5 subscriptions of all time … yours would one of them. Such a great job … clean, concise, and stellar explanations . You set the bar high and there are few presenters out there that can match it.
Thank you so much for the great comment! Made my Monday morning!! Hope you enjoy your plays of this game!
I’ve looked at this game at my FLGS on numerous occasions but you sir pushed me over the edge into buying it. I saw that it was your No.1 solo game and having enjoyed your playthroughs for some time now completely trust your opinion. This playthrough shows me that my faith wasn’t misplaced as it looks awesome, I love your enthusiasm and presentation style. I have to say that you now probably my favourite playthrough channel and that’s really saying something. Thanks, my friend, it’s very much appreciated.
Keep it up,
Mark
Wow Mark what high praise, THANK YOU! I am pumped for you to try and see what you think, the gameplay is stellar! I am actually going to be doing a 3 player playthrough of this game with the expansion next!
One Stop Co-op Shop Excellent! I’m looking at picking up the expansion soon, even before playing the game. Looking forward to your playthrough.....
It does change the game quite a bit so interested to see if you like how it looks!
Great playthrough. It should be noted (esp around 6:40) that you invaders explore only from buildings or the ocean. You appear to have them explore from in the wetlands in on the C tile but in both cases there aren’t any buildings they could have come from.
Yup thanks for that!!
It’s the “heeyeahaha” for me haha..
Haha!
Thank you for this very helpful series. My husband and I bought a few board games to occupy ourselves during the pandemic and avoid endless hours of TV. Spirit Island is a bit intimidating out of the gate but these videos really demystified the game play.
Awesome to hear!! Hope you enjoy your plays!! And it's always great to not stare at a screen right??
Thanks for doing this playthrough. This is becoming one of my absolute favorite games. So much replayability even without adding scenarios and adversaries.
TELL me about it!! I haven't even gotten to the moderate Spirit's yet!! hahaha! I will though since I love this game. Going to be a Top 10 for me!!
The best Co-Op game to bring to the cabin. The default game is easy enough for casuals, but still challenging enough to be entertaining - whereas the scenarios and invader army cards tune up the difficulty for more hardcore strategy fans.
Never checked out the expansions, but I heard a lot of good about them too! Probably will be released all in an 'ultimate' edition one day.
Yes!!! Totally agree!
Saw part 2 just before work today, and when I come home I see that part 3 is up. Feels like Christmas morning :D Great work as always Colin!
Glad I could brighten your day Nicklas!! Thank YOU so much for watching, it is much appreciated!
Finally got the game and enjoying it a lot. Still learning the rules. Course, your videos help with that, so thanks for sharing.
Glad the vid is helping and thanks for watching!!
Thanks so much putting together this playthrough. Seeing how the full game is played has really helped me understand what makes this game so great. Keep up the good work!
Hey Steve, thank YOU so much for watching these vid's beforehand to check rules. It means that people can learn the correct rules right away instead of waiting for someone smarter to watch it and tell me. Hahaha! Glad you enjoyed the game (even if you didn't at GenCon) and hoping that you can pick it up soon!
At the 6:45 mark why did you add explorers in the east wetlands? There are no towns or cities near them. Looked at the rules and it states if there are towns or cities next to the region or in the region on the card. Unless I missed something those additional explorers shouldn't be added on the eastern wetlands. They will still build there in the build phase though.....
Awesome run-through still!
Oh shoot is it just locations that have cities or towns adjacent? I did any invader!! I will check the rules and make a note if you are right. Thanks for that!!
Yeah I think that's the case. It would be a nice variant to add even more difficulty if you choose to do so. Still though, you had the victory regardless.
Yeah good point, I see it in the rules now. Will be putting it up as a Klingon subtitle, thanks!!
Dude, thanks so much for this. It saved me so much time! I love your enthusiasm.
Just what I wanted to hear!! Glad the video helped! 😀
Nice walkthrough and I like your smooth voice
Thanks so much!
Great playthrough! I'd love to see other spirits, invaders, etc.
Glad you enjoyed it David!!
A swift conclusion! Spirits can really bring down the hammer once powered up, Shadows was great for taking care of explorers so there weren't many builds and Earth just cleaned up once it got moving.
I hope you do more videos of Spirit Island, with adversaries. They really shake things up. And there is the expansion too with its tokens and events, which again throw another wrench into things but makes each play even more thematic as you see the different events unfolding every game
Thanks so much for watching! I am for sure going to do another playthrough once I get some more plays under my belt! I cannot WAIT for the expansion play and adversaries, but first I need to learn some moderate and challenging Spirits! Thanks again for the rule help!!
Well done. Thanks for sharing!
Fantastic playthrough! Now I just need to punch my own copy and get it to the table!
Thanks for watching Chris! Good luck out there!! Love this game!!
Nicely done. A real puzzle.
Thank you!
Great playthrough! You made the game real easy to understand!
Awesome so glad I could help!
An additional note about Darkness Swallows the Unwary: other comments have already talked about how the entire power has to target a single land (and you put it in the subtitles last episode), but on the "it's actually slightly more powerful than you were playing it" side, the target land has to be range 1 from a Sacred Site, not the explorers which are gathered.
As an example, you could have targetted the sands in east board 2, which is range 1 from your sacred site in the jungle in 4. You could gather an explorer from the adjacent jungle in land 1, then destroyed 2 explorers in the sands (land 2, the target of the power) for 2 fear.
YES!! Strategy posts are my favorite :) You are 100% right, I was under-utilizing this ability, not to mention missing out on Shadow's innate ability. Just goes to show how deep and refreshing this game can be. At the point of recording I had only played 4 times, but now after 10+ plays, still feeling the same way about this game, if not more so. Thank you for mentioning this!!
Such great content!!
Thanks so much for watching!!
Hey man! I want to offer a point of praise and a point of constructive criticism.
Praise: This is BY FAR THE CLEAREST instructional video on how to play the game I’ve found. You don’t spend too much time presenting abstract concepts without any gameplay example to anchor their logic to, which is a massive trend in explainer videos. You just play the game, make your moves, and offer concise reasoning why those moves make sense. You teach the way I learn games, which is to say in a hands-on way. Massive kudos and thanks for making Spirit Island that much more accessible.
Constructive criticism: you make a few mistakes during the course of the game, some of which are fixed in annotations, others you mulligan in-video. Since TH-cam is a “slow” rather than a live format, why not just back the board state up (since you were always quick to notice your mistakes) and continue the right way while shooting? You can cut the mistake out entirely this way when editing the video. A lot of people struggling to grasp the rules may “panic” (which I think is probably too strong a word here, but oh well) when they feel they understand a rule, but see an authority (you) gloss over or outright whiff the rule. Even if you later explain your mistake, that moment of confusion can derail an otherwise smooth train of understanding.
I spent more words on the criticism than the praise, but it is extremely minor in comparison to what is good in these videos. Subbed, keep it up!
Wow thanks for the wonderful feedback! I honestly think I don't go back as it is a TON more editing and you can lose your strategy etc. But I understand where you are coming from!
@@OneStopCoopShop @@OneStopCoopShop Hey fair enough, you have a much better grasp over what it takes to actually produce these videos than I do. Sorry for any flippancy in my suggestion.
Currently watching the Branch and Claw playthrough even though I don't have the expansion. I feel like my understanding of the game gets better every minute I watch! You guys rock.
Great Series.
Thanks for watching Frank!
wow that 5 damage, that was a great gameplay..i enjoyed the series.
Thanks so much Ahmed for watching!
Awesome great game
Great serie! I love this game as well, so fun! Will link to your serie once I do my own solo playthrough this weekend :)
Whoot good luck Josef, this is my number 1 solo game of all time. . . it is SO GOOD!! Can't wait to see your playthrough!
Another great runthrough and this game looks very cool. I am loving the cards with the actions and their chance to do innate abilities too. One question at 7:0 you say about Crops Wither and Fade that 'all we're gonna do is generate 2 fear' - do you not also get to replace either a town or a city as well?
Thanks! Yeah and these are just the low difficulty spirits! The moderate and high complexity make for even more difficult choices and awesome abilities! You are right I could have replaced a City or a Town with the Crops Wither and Fade, there just wasn't any within range. Thanks for watching!
Sorry for a question. I couldn't find this in the rules. Some power cards have a color at the top/left and bottom/right corners. What do those mean?
Good question! This is just used for when you used the pre-set cards for your first game or so. You will see the four basic spirits have a pre-designed power level up and their color matches their spirit. Otherwise you can ignore it! Hope that helps!
I wish someone in my group would get this lol
This may be the next game I giveaway! Just saying!
Spoilers! ;-)
HAHAHAHA Yup! :)
It would be helpful if you did another play through that did have any "cheater phases." What I mean by that is you remove and add invaders, towns, and cities appropriately. Otherwise these videos were helpful in helping us understand the game better.
I have no idea what you mean sorry...
Great series.
Thank you!!