~ Expansions, Promos, and Publishing
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Apocrypha Spirits?
Apocrypha Spirits are Spirits designed by Eric Reuss, but not part of the formal Spirit Island canon. You can think of them kind of like "fan-made Spirits made by the game's creator" - perhaps they resonate with the established lore a touch more simply due to being created by the same person.
The following things are generally true about Apocrypha Spirits:
- They've had vastly less design / development / playtesting than published Spirits, so are apt to be substantially rougher, be over- / under-powered, have parts that just don't work, etc. This is especially true for Apocrypha Spirits designed in real-time with fans at an event, and for those with novel mechanics.
- They are permitted to have more thematic and mechanical overlap with canon Spirits than canon Spirits generally have with each other.
- They are not "in playtesting". Reactions to / stories about playing them are just as welcome as for any Spirit, but playtesting data is not desired, and there's no specific plan to develop them any further.
- They do not restrict future design: small or large portions of them could make their way into canon Spirit designs someday.
- Nothing mentioned in their lore - including the fact of the Spirit's existence - is necessarily true in canon.
- In some cases, it's plausible that there might be stories of these Spirits in canon - maybe fanciful knowingly-false tales, maybe serious stories that are uncertain or poorly-informed. But even if such stories exist, that doesn't necessarily mean the Spirit does.
- Unless someone chooses to commission/donate artwork for a Spirit, they are likely to either have no art, or whatever public-domain / creative-commons art I can scrounge up. (Which may mean imagery that's only tangentially relevant, or doesn't have much stylistic consistency.)
The back of the Spirit panel should list the circumstances of its creation, and whether/when it's okay to spread them around. The norm for Spirits created in collaboration with fans at an event is to be first given to those fans, then a bit later to the Spirit Island community at large - many thanks to the publisher (Greater Than Games) for allowing this!
PS: Yes, "Apocrypha" is a plural noun; technically it should be "apocryphal" or "Apocryphon". Call it poetic license, with a side order of "easier to say".
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Apocrypha Spirits
Some printings of the core game and Jagged Earth came with an extra token of each color. Use these as a spare. For the scenario Guard the Isle's Heart, the extra Presence at the start of the game comes from your Presence tracks, not this extra token.
As a rough gauge, the more of the below questions you'd say "yes" to, the more natural it'd be to start using the expansion:
- Are you comfortable with the core game's mechanics? (No longer need to use the player aid cards / look up basic rules in the rulebook while playing, though you might consult the FAQ for edge cases. This question is the most important of the lot.)
- Have you played some of the Medium/High-complexity Spirits?
- Have you seen much of the core game's diversity? (Played many of the Spirits / played alongside all of them; taken or considered-taking all of the Minor Powers and many of the Major Powers.)
- Are you winning games with Difficulty higher than 0? (Playing against Adversaries, or the more difficult Scenarios.)
- Do you REALLY REALLY like new stuff and want to add the expansion materials as soon as possible?
- Are there more-experienced players in the game with you? (Particularly if they're already familiar with the expansion materials.)
- Are you able to predict victory more than a turn in advance? (With the only Invader randomness being the new Explore card, seasoned players can reach a point where they foresee victory multiple turns ahead of time, even when playing on a good difficulty level for them. If you've hit this point, I actively recommend breaking out the expansion, as its Event deck returns an edge of uncertainty - and thus, tension - to such situations.)
If you can say "yes" to at least 2-3 of these - definitely including the first one - then introducing the expansion is reasonable. If you can say "yes" to 4 or more of them, then by all means, break it out!
(Another reasonable POV someone expressed: "Events - added in the expansion - are best when you have enough of the game system internalized that it's easy to predict what the Invaders will do. The Event Deck combats this by adding some randomness. But if you're not yet at the stage where you feel like you can picture the board 1 or 2 turns in advance, adding Events will just make it harder to do that. So waiting on the expansion until then isn't a bad idea." Though some folks like the Events more for their theme and occasional hard choices than their effects on the Invaders per se, so this may not be universal.)
(Discussion elsewhere) (Discussion elsewhere) (Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Learning
Retail and crowdfunding versions of Spirit Island products are equivalent; there is no exclusive content.
- Core game first printing has both the >G and Fabled Nexus logos.
- Core game second printing has only the >G logo.
- Core game third and fourth printing show the printing number underneath the bar code.
- Core game fifth and sixth printing both show "5th edition" under the bar code. (Whoops.) They can be distinguished on the exterior by the Greater Than Games logo directly over the UPC symbol - the 5th printing has a shades-of-blue die above the text "greater/than/games" while the 6th printing has a blue-and-white die nestled below a larger, all-caps "GREATER THAN GAMES" - see Telling 5th and 6th printings apart for photos of the two logos.
- Core game seventh and eighth printings show the printing number underneath the bar code.
- Branch & Claw second and third printing show the printing number underneath the bar code.
- Branch & Claw fourth printing shows "5th edition" under the bar code. (Whoops.)
- Branch & Claw then skipped to 7th printing (in order to sync up with core-game printings), which is shown underneath the bar code.
- Promo Spirits (Wildfire and Serpent) second-and-onwards printings have "Add a Presence" instead of "Add Presence" as reminder text under Growth options.
| Language | Publisher | Timing |
|---|
| German | Pegasus Spiele | Essen 2018 (base game); October 2019 (Branch & Claw) |
| French | Intrafin | November 2018 |
| Russian | Hobby World | Spring 2019 (base game) |
| Spanish | Arrakis Games | 2019 (base game) |
| Portuguese | ACE Studios | February 2019 (base game) |
| Polish | Lacerta | |
| Hungarian | Gém Klub Kft. | |
| Italian | Ghenos Games | |
| Korean | BoardM Factory | |
| Chinese | One Moment Games | |
The above table is best-knowledge (not a guarantee), and does not include deals not yet finalized / announced. Dates listed are initial printings only; if something's out of stock and you want to ask about a reprint, contact the publisher. Publishers with licensing to print the base game also have permission to print expansions, so if you want those to happen, write to them, not Greater Than Games! :)
If there's a language not shown above for which you'd like to see a localization of Spirit Island, the steps to make this happen are: (a) find a local publisher who'd be interested in printing such a thing; then (b) get them to talk to Greater Than Games about licensing.
Tags: Foreign Languages, Printings and Editions
- Sea Monsters (Major Power in B&C) - new version in JE (capping Fear)
- Draw Towards a Consuming Void (Major Power in JE) - new version in NI (wording - no functional changes)
- Growth Through Sacrifice (Minor Power in B&C) - replacement Minor in NI (Roiling Bog and Snagging Thorn)
Retired:
- Outpaced (Event in B&C) - retired as of NI
- War Touches the Island's Shores (Event in B&C) - retired as of NI (which has a new Event with similar theme)
- A Strange Madness Among the Beasts (Event in B&C) - retired as of JE/NI
- Tipping Point (Blighted Island Card in B&C) - retired as of NI
Farmers Seek the Dahan for Aid has not yet been replaced, because that replacement would best be done as part of a Dahan-centric expansion.
It's fine - but not required - to retire game items "early" (ie, without buying the expansion which officially says they're retired). That's awkward for replacing game items - since you need the replacement - though some players opt to omit Growth Through Sacrifice, finding the elemental distortion from its absence to be less impactful than it seeing use in play.
Outpaced, War Touches, Strange Madness, and Tipping Point were all retired for an overly swingy play experience. Original Sea Monsters was so good with Many Minds that it trivialized the game. Growth Through Sacrifice was nearly always game-warpingly good. Draw Towards a Consuming Void was one of the
very few things that moves other Spirits' Presence without explicitly stating so, and Nature Incarnate had space on the card sheet, so we printed a replacement.
Tags: Retired or Replaced Game Items, Sea Monsters, Draw Towards a Consuming Void, Growth Through Sacrifice, 5 more...
Going item-by-item:
- Scenarios: Are fine to use. Most of these are in the expansion purely because they use the expansion's Scenario Tokens.
- Adversary: France can be used at Level 1 and below without any trouble. Level 2+ will be harder without Strife tokens and the Event Deck. (Though you can fix the latter by just resolving Slave Rebellion every 4 turns.)
- Events: Most of them should be usable by skipping the token Event... but this will make the game harder. However, if you look up the Jagged Earth rulebook online, it has rules for playing without Event Cards (without kneecapping Beasts-using Spirits like Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves).
- New Fear Cards: There are about half a dozen fear cards that don't reference tokens. (They're in the expansion because of new rules, or just to keep effect distribution even.) Including just those 6 will slightly skew the effects of the fear deck, but not in any way that you're apt to notice unless you're a very experienced player.
- New Blight Cards: The expansion Blight cards don't have a negative ongoing effect, because the Event deck handles that: About 1/3 of the Event cards involve adding Blight / destroying Presence if the island is Blighted. So using the new Blight cards without the Event deck lowers the incentive to keep the Blight Card from flipping early, which in turn slightly lowers difficulty / early-game tension. Doing so also makes the small-pool Blight cards better (especially "Back Against the Wall" / "Aid from Lesser Spirits") because they're less risky.
- Spirits: Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds needs Wilds tokens. It may have a slightly harder time of it without the possibility of players gaining Minor/Major Powers that add Wilds, but is probably fine. Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves needs Beasts tokens to function well, and Beasts need Event Cards to be good; without Events, Sharp Fangs is almost certainly underpowered unless you use the "Play Without Event" rules from Jagged Earth.
- New Power Cards: Adding only a subset of new Power Cards is likely to change the distribution of different types of effects, and near-certain to change the elemental distribution (both how often each element appears, and how often each pair of elements appears). The game will absolutely still work, but some Spirits will be invisibly penalized / rewarded (because Power Card draws will on average be lousier/better for their elements), and it may skew strategy depending on what types of effects get added to the deck. This isn't apt to be a big deal if you're just adding a few cards, but if you're adding half the new cards it could be more pronounced. Also, some Major Powers are in the expansion because they shouldn't be part of a small Major Power deck.
And finally,
"Everything except the Event Cards": If you omit the starting Disease from each board, and don't use the "Aid from Lesser Spirits" / "Back Against the Wall" Blight cards, my educated guess is that using everything but the Event Cards wouldn't mess with game difficulty too much - Beast tokens will be much worse (mild difficulty boost), and the Blight Card changes will make things slightly easier.
(You could also use Event Cards for token Events only, in which case you're probably making your game easier by 1 or 2 Difficulty?) It's totally untested that way, but if you want to give it a shot, please go for it - and if you have a chance, post to BGG or the >G forums to let me know how it went!
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Events, Learning, Difficulty
