Spirit Island rules refresher

Read the refresher

You and the other Spirits win by driving the Invaders off the Island, meeting whatever victory condition the current Terror Level demands. You do that by growing your Presence across the land, gaining and playing Power Cards, and destroying Invaders fast enough to generate Fear before Blight overwhelms the Island.

To set up, put four Fear Markers per player into the Fear Pool. Shuffle the Fear Deck and place nine cards on the Fear Deck space, with the Terror Level 3 divider three cards from the bottom and the Terror Level 2 divider three cards above that. Build the Invader Deck from three Stage One cards on top, then four Stage Two, then five Stage Three, chosen at random without looking, and put it on the Explore space. Take a random Blight Card, place it Healthy Island side up without looking at the back, and put the shown amount of Blight on it. Use one Island Board per player, populated with the Invaders, Dahan, and Blight shown by the printed icons. Each player takes a Spirit Panel and its four Unique Power Cards as a starting hand, follows the setup on the back of the panel, then flips it and covers the dashed circles on both Presence Tracks with the remaining Presence, leaving the leftmost solid numbers uncovered. Finally, the Invaders take a starting action: reveal the top Invader Card, Explore in that land type, then place that card in the Build space.

Every turn has five phases and all players act simultaneously, talking freely. First the Spirit Phase, where you Grow, gain Energy, and choose and pay for the Power Cards you will use. Then the Fast Power Phase. Then the Invader Phase, where the Blighted Island effect and Fear Cards resolve, the Invaders Ravage, Build, and Explore, and the Invader Cards advance. Then the Slow Power Phase. Then Time Passes, where you discard played cards and clear all Damage and Elements.

In Growth, you pick one section of the Growth options on your panel and do everything in it, in whatever order you like. Typical options add a Presence from your track to the board, gain extra Energy, gain a Power Card, or reclaim your whole discard pile into your hand. Placing Presence from a track uncovers bigger numbers: the top track sets your Energy per turn, the bottom sets your Card Plays. You always use the highest uncovered number, not the sum. When you gain a Power Card, choose Minor or Major, draw four from that deck and keep one. Gaining a Major Power forces you to Forget one of your Power Cards.

Then gain Energy, and play cards up to your Card Plays limit. Pay Energy for all of them right away, Slow ones included, and you immediately gain all their Elements even though the effects wait. Elements are never spent, only checked, and they vanish at end of turn. Innate Powers on your panel are free, cost no Card Play, and trigger based on the Elements you hold that turn.

Powers target a single land unless they say otherwise. Range is counted from your Presence, so Range 0 means a land where you have Presence. A land with two or more of your Presence is a Sacred Site, which some Powers require. Fast Powers resolve before the Invader Phase, Slow ones after, and you cannot hold a Fast Power back for later. You may skip a Power's effect entirely, but you do not get the Energy back. Do as much as you can, one land, one turn, one use.

Fear comes from Power effects with the Fear symbol and from destruction: one Fear per Town destroyed, two per City. Move that many markers from the Fear Pool to the Generated Fear area. When all markers have advanced, take the top card of the Fear Deck face-down into the Earned Fear Cards area, return the markers to the Pool, and carry over any leftover Fear. If a Terror Level divider is revealed, the new Terror Level and its easier victory condition take effect immediately. Earned Fear Cards are flipped and resolved at the start of the next Invader Phase, in the order earned, using only the effect for the current Terror Level.

During Ravage, Invaders in lands of the shown type deal damage simultaneously to the land and the Dahan: one per Explorer, two per Town, three per City, reduced by any Defend. Two or more damage to the land adds one Blight, just once no matter how much damage. Every two damage destroys a Dahan, and you must kill as efficiently as possible. Then surviving Dahan fight back, two damage each, and they fight back even if the Invaders dealt no damage, though not if the Ravage was prevented altogether. Adding Blight to a land destroys one Presence from each Spirit there, and that Presence is out of the game, not returned to your panel. If the land already had Blight, add another Blight to one adjacent land, which can cascade again.

Build happens in lands of the shown type that contain Invaders. If the land has more Towns than Cities, add a City; otherwise add a Town. No Invaders means no Build. Explore flips the top Invader Card and adds one Explorer to each land of that type which contains a Town or City, or is adjacent to a Town, City, or the Ocean. One Explorer per land, taken from the supply. Then slide the cards left: Ravage to the discard, Build to Ravage, Explore to Build.

You win the moment you meet the current victory condition. At Terror Level One that means no Invaders at all on the Island. At Level Two, no Towns or Cities. At Level Three, no Cities. You lose if the last Blight comes off the Blight Card and its instructions say so, if any Spirit has no Presence left on the Island, or if you must draw an Invader Card to Explore and the deck is empty. If one effect makes you both win and lose at once, you win a sacrifice victory. If you want to compare games, a victory scores five times the difficulty plus ten, plus two per Invader Card left in the deck; a defeat scores twice the difficulty plus one per Invader Card no longer in the deck; and either way add one for every X living Dahan and subtract one for every X Blight on the Island, where X is the number of players.

A turn, played out

Two Spirits, mid game. Your top track shows 3 as its highest uncovered number, your bottom track shows 2. In Growth you pick the section that adds a Presence. You lift one off the top track, uncovering a 4, so you gain 4 Energy this turn, not 3 plus 4. You place it in a coastal land where you already have 1 Presence, making it a Sacred Site. You have 2 Card Plays. You play a Fast card granting Defend 3 for 1 Energy, and a Slow card costing 3 that generates 2 Fear. You pay all 4 Energy now, and both cards' Elements count toward your Innate Power right away. In the Fast phase, Defend 3 goes on your Sacred Site. That land matches the Ravage card and holds 1 City, 1 Explorer and 2 Dahan. In the Invader Phase they would deal 4 damage, and Defend cuts it to 1. That is too little to Blight the land or destroy a Dahan, so both Dahan fight back for 4 damage. Build hits a land with 1 Town and no City. More Towns than Cities, so a City appears. Explore flips a card and adds 1 Explorer to each land of that type that holds or touches a Town or City, or touches the Ocean. In the Slow phase your 2 Fear resolve. The Pool held just 1 marker. It moves, you take the top Fear Card face down, all 8 markers return, and 1 Fear carries over.