Blighted Island

Errata / Updates

Setup
  • Core game - all printings
    Erratum for setting up the Healthy Island Card -- During Setup, you get exactly 1 additional Blight in your Blight pool.
    (i.e.: If you are using a Healthy Island card, treat it as if it said “2 per player, +1". If you are not using a Healthy Island card, treat the Blight space as if it said “5 per player, +1".)
    This does NOT apply after Setup (i.e., when Blight Cards flip) - just at the start of the game.
    This also applies to any Scenarios (e.g., Blitz) or other effects (e.g., Sweden level 6) that change the amount of initial Blight. In all cases, add one additional Blight.
    Blight Cards in future expansions will not fix this, as doing so would make them distinguishable from previously-printed Blight Cards.
    Note that this does not affect the board from Horizons of Spirit Island, only the core game Invader Board and all Healthy Island cards. The rulebook in core game 14th printing and onwards mentions this errata, as does Nature Incarnate.
    Explanation, for the curious: The Blight system has a fencepost error which makes smaller games harder. While the # of Blight sitting on the card scales proportionally to the number of players, the number of usable Blight ("how much Blight can we let happen without the Blight Card flipping?") does not:
    • Players: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
    • Blight on card: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12
    • Usable Blight without flip : 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11
    • Blight per player: 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2
    • Usable Blight per player: 1, 1.5, 1.666, 1.75, 1.8, 1.833
    This erratum adds 1 extra blight on setup, which has the usable Blight per player scale proportionally with the number of players, and makes the experience / Difficulty of smaller (1-2p) games more in-line with that of larger games. (In some ways the change very slightly disadvantages larger games relative to smaller games, but practically speaking that impact is much lower than the upside from multiple Spirits cooperating.)
    No changes are needed for flipped Blight cards (whether Still-Healthy or Blighted); if you want a deeper look into why see these comments.
    Likewise when setting up for the Second Wave scenario, do not add an additional Blight, since it was already added in the first wave.
    Tags: Blighted Island

Frequently Asked Questions

Adversaries
Blighted Island cards
Effect Rules
  • When Blight is Added, what order do you perform all of the effects of Adding Blight? If you were in the middle of a Ravage, do you finish the Ravage first?
    Do the ‘Immediately’ effects on the Blight card, and then finish resolving whatever caused the card to flip (whether it's a Ravage or something else).
    More precisely, the order is:
    1. Take Blight off the card. If this empties the card, flip it, refill the Blight pool, and resolve any ‘Immediately’ effects on the card as a nested Action.
    2. Actually put the Blight in the land.
    3. Destroy Presence and do anything else that cares “when” this happens, like Kingdom of Sweden Level 5, Tsardom of Russia Level 1, or the Blight card All Things Weaken.
    4. If Blight was already present, cascade (returning to Step 1 in that adjacent land).
    5. Finish resolving the Action (usually the Ravage) that caused the Blight card to flip.
    6. Perform any Triggered Actions that care about Blight being added, like Kingdom of Scotland Level 5.
    In particular, if more Invaders are added to the land being Ravaged (e.g., with Promising Farmlands), they don't deal more damage, as that step has already happened; however, they are susceptible to a Dahan counterattack, and any new Dahan (e.g., with Unnatural Proliferation) would participate.
    (Discussion elsewhere) (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Blighted Island, Timing, Nested Actions, Blight, 13 more...
Scenarios
  • With the Second Wave Scenario, how do you handle Still-Healthy Island cards?
    The short version is "rewind cards, and what you learned doesn't change" (you'll use the same cards next game).
    The long version: If you went past a Still-Healthy Island Card, after following the Blight instructions, put it – original Healthy side up – atop the stack of Blight Cards (so you encounter it first, just like you did this game).
    If you reached (but did not pass) a Still-Healthy Island Card, treat it as a Blighted Island Card for the Blight instructions – but in your next game, if you get past it to a new Blight Card, you will need to add new Blight from the box rather than from the pool by the side of the card.
    (If this is too complex, you may also opt to simply omit Still-Healthy Island cards.)
    Tags: Blighted Island, Still Healthy Island, Second Wave
Spirits and Innate Powers