Core game

Errata / Updates

Effect Rules
  • Core game - 4th and 5th printings
    Errata for core rulebook, p. 19, "Gather and Push" -- In the 2nd paragraph 4th line, there's an extra "not" - the text should read "If Pushing multiple things, they may go to different lands or not..."
    Tags: Push, Rulebook
  • Core game, Branch & Claw, Promo, Jagged Earth - all printings
    Errata / Clarification on which items are triggered actions -- Jagged Earth formalized how triggered actions work. The following earlier items are triggered actions ("after X, do Y") even though their wording doesn't use "after":
    • Vengeance of the Dead (Major Power, core game);
    • Ocean In Play (Ocean's Hungry Grasp special rule, core game);
    • Sworn to Victory1 (Thunderspeaker special rule, core game);
    • Blazing Presence2 (Heart of the Wildfire special rule, promo 1);
    • Constant Raiding (Dahan Insurrection Scenario rule, core game);
    • Military Response (Dahan Insurrection Scenario rule, core game).
    The following items are also triggered actions ("after X, do Y") even though their wording doesn't use "after" (but practically speaking it doesn't matter much):
    • Portents of Disaster (Minor Power - Branch & Claw);
    • Forbidden Ground3 (Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds special rule - Branch & Claw);
    • Deep Layers Exposed to the Surface (Stone's Unyielding Defiance special rule - Jagged Earth)
    1 = The trigger is "After a Ravage destroys 1 or more Dahan..." and does not involve Blight; see this FAQ entry for elaboration.
    2 = This rule used to say "When you add or move Presence...". More recent printings of the Spirit correctly say "After you add or move [Presence] after Setup...".
    3 = Read as, "After one or more lands become a Sacred Site for you, Push all Dahan from those lands."
    See Summary of Action rules for more details on how triggered actions work in general.
    Adversary instructions saying "After Setup:" are not triggered actions, but just a specification of when that rule applies ("not during Setup"). We apologize for the wording overlap, and will be using "During Play:" or "Post-Setup:" moving forward.
    Tags: Triggered Actions, Vengeance of the Dead, Portents of Disaster, Sworn to Victory (Thunderspeaker), 5 more...
  • Branch & Claw, Core game - all printings
    Errata / clarification on older materials with imprecise wording -- Some earlier game materials use terms that are now ambiguous with the more precise terminology introduced in Jagged Earth. For the most part, they work just as they always have, but in case additional clarity is needed:
    • Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares - their Special Rule is a modifier - when your Power would Destroy Invaders, instead generate Fear (and perhaps Push them).
    • France lvl 6 - "After the normal Explore Phase," should read "After resolving an Explore Card,"
    • Event: Fortification - first sentence should read: After advancing Invader Cards: perform a Build Step for one terrain not shown under any Invader Action.
    • Event: Cash Crops Take Hold - first sentence should read: Perform a Ravage Step for one terrain not shown under any Invader Action.
    The only mechanical change is that France 6 will behave slightly differently if there are 0 or 2+ Explore cards in a turn, adding one Explorer per card instead of a flat 1.
    See also Errata / Clarification on which items are triggered actions and New Nomenclature Roundup.
    Tags: Kingdom of France, Fortification, New Cash Crops Take Hold
  • Core game - 4th and 5th printings
    Errata for core Rulebook p. 19 (Repeat) -- The final line of details about Repeating a Power ("It does not count as using a new Power") should read "It does count as using a new Power". (Spurious "not".)
    Tags: Repeat, Rulebook
Fear and Fear Cards
  • Core game - 1st printing
    Update to Dahan Enheartened Fear Card -- In the second+ printings, the effects for Terror Levels 2 and 3 read:
    • 2: "Each player chooses a different land. In chosen lands: Gather up to 2 Dahan, then 1 Damage if Dahan are present."
    • 3: "Each player chooses a different land. In chosen lands: Gather up to 2 Dahan, then 1 Damage per Dahan present."
    This is a minor change - mostly just a rewording for clarity (see Changes in core game second printing), but slightly more permissive than the first printing. (You can choose a land which already has Dahan, then Gather 0 Dahan and still do Damage. The first printing requires you to Gather 1 or 2 Dahan to each chosen land, which was not the original intent, and was confusing some players.)
    Designer's recommendation: Play with whichever version is easiest or most appealing for you; the difference is so minor it will not substantially affect game balance. (If the card hadn't wanted tweaking for clarity anyway, we wouldn't have bothered updating it.) If you wish to make a pasteup for your first-printing copy, an image of the new card has been uploaded here.
    Tags: Dahan Enheartened
Invader Actions
  • Core game - 1st printing
    Errata for core rulebook, p. 9 (Ravage) -- Ravaging Invaders damage Dahan and the land separately, equally, and simultaneously. (The word "simultaneously" was accidentally omitted on p. 9, though the example on p. 11 is correct.)
    Currently relevant in certain cases of a Ravage destroying one of Vital Strength of the Earth's Sacred Sites. (The Defend 3 reduces overall damage done to both land and Dahan.)
    Wording fixed / clarified in 2nd printing. Numbered list replaced with a bulleted list in 3rd printing.
    Tags: Rulebook, Ravage, Damage, Earth's Vitality (Vital Strength of the Earth), 0 more...
Power Cards
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
Spirits and Innate Powers

Frequently Asked Questions

Adversaries
Blighted Island cards
  • When the Blight card is flipped to the Blighted Island side, how much Blight gets added?
    If the new side says N Blight per player, you add N Blight per player more. The total amount of Blight on both sides will then be N+2 Blight per player, plus one Blight more (following this erratum).
    The amount of Blight on the base board is roughly balanced with the Blight cards - your total Blight pool is smaller, but you have no negative effect. However, it is slightly easier to play with - first, because the certainty of knowing exactly what will happen makes some decisions easier / clearer / less risky; second, because with ongoing-effect Blight cards, there's an early-game pressure to not let the island go Blighted (as the earlier it happens, the worse it is), whereas with the base blight space it doesn't matter when Blight is placed, only whether it empties.
    (The early-game pressure is also present with immediate-effect Blight cards and the Event deck from Branch & Claw, as some Events key off the island being Blighted.)
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Blight, Blighted Island
  • If there's only 1 Blight on the Healthy Island card, and you need to add 2 at once (eg: Sweden 1), what do you do?
    Immediately flip the card; any Blight that was on it is added to the newly created Blight pool. If the Blight Card has any immediate effects, resolve them. Then add the 2 Blight to the board.
    Immediate effects of the flipped Blight card are nested actions - you resolve them completely (including anything they trigger) before returning to what you were doing.
    Tags: Blighted Island, Nested Actions, Blight, Timing, 1 more...
Definitions
Effect Rules
Elements and Elemental Thresholds
Fear and Fear Cards
General Play
Invader Actions
Power Cards
Presence and Sacred Sites
  • Can cascading Blight kill Presence twice?
    Yes, it can. Each time you add one or more Blight to a given land - including cascades - destroy 1 Presence from every Spirit there. (p. 15)
    So if you had a hideously bad cascade that added Blight to 4 different lands, in each of those 4 lands you'd destroy a Presence from each Spirit.
    In the very odd case that you decided to double-back a Blight cascade to hit the same land a second time, you'd again destroy 1 Presence from every Spirit there then continue cascading. This is nearly always a terrible idea.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Blight, Presence
  • Can you place Presence into lands with Blight?
    Yes. Blight destroys Presence only when it's added.
    If a Spirit is so sensitive to Blight that it has trouble adding Presence to lands having any, its Growth choices will explicitly reflect that. (eg: Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds, Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island.)
    To draw a parallel: if you're in a house when it catches fire, you can die. But if you move into the half-charred ruin a year later, you don't suddenly burn to death.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Presence, Blight, Growth
  • Can Presence tokens destroyed by Blight be added to the island?
    Only if an effect explicitly says to add "destroyed Presence".
    Very few effects currently let you add destroyed Presence, like the Steady Regeneration special rule for A Spread of Rampant Green or the major power Blazing Renewal.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Presence, Growth
  • If all my Presence from my Spirit Panel is placed on the board, how do I add more?
    Whenever adding Presence, instead of taking from your Presence Tracks you can use Presence (of yours) already on the island instead. [sidebar, p. 14]. You can take it out of any land.
    While this option is most often relevant if your Presence tracks are empty, it's not a requirement for doing so.
    You cannot place destroyed Presence unless an effect explicitly says so.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Presence, Growth
Range and Targeting
Scenarios
Setup
  • What counts as the end of Setup for “During Play” Adversary/Scenario effects? And how are they different from “After Setup” effects?
    During Play effects do not affect Setup, but do affect normal gameplay. Setup normally ends with the initial Explore, with normal gameplay starting with the first Spirit Phase, but some Adversaries and Scenarios have Setup instructions that happen after the initial Explore and before the game starts.
    There is no difference between During Play and After Setup effects that happen more than once. With Jagged Earth turning "after" into a key word for Triggered Actions, if "after Setup" were interpreted as strictly as possible, it would make the associated effect happen exactly once, between Setup and Spirits choosing Growth Options on the first turn. With the exception of Guard the Isle's Heart, which explicitly adds an extra step to Setup, "after Setup" effects from Jagged Earth and earlier should be interpreted as "During Play."
    Tags: Guard the Isle's Heart, Kingdom of France, Varied Terrains, Despicable Theft, 3 more...
  • What are the options for making the map for a 2-player game?
    On the balanced maps, the standard layout given in the rulebook might be called "bottom to bottom", with one ocean in the upper-left and one in the bottom-right. But you can put together the maps any way they fit, with some variation in the game dynamics and (slightly) overall difficulty.
    Some examples: if you put the boards together "top to top", with one ocean in the bottom-left and one in the upper-right, the difficulty will be slightly increased, since you lose the potential backcourts to clear of Invaders around land #8 on each board, and the corners around land #3 become hazards for Blight cascades - though land #1 on each board does become less dangerous in that regard. If you put the boards together "end to end", with oceans on the far left and far right (as in the thematic 2-player setup), the difficulty will be slightly decreased since it is easier to clear out the center of the board, which more than compensates for both land #1 and #3 having fewer adjacencies to cascade Blight to.
    The difficulty change from these dynamics is fairly minor relative to, e.g., the Difficulty boost of Adversaries and Scenarios.
    If you are playing the scenario Guard the Isle's Heart, the "end to end" layout results in a more natural "heart" of the island, with the two lands #7 touching each other.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: 2-player games, Island setup, Guard the Isle's Heart
  • Can one person play more than one Spirit?
    Practically speaking, sure. Because the game doesn’t usually have secret information that only one player knows, one person can play as many Spirits as they’d like. However, that one person is taking on the roles of multiple Players, e.g., simultaneously being the Red Player, the Blue Player, and the Yellow Player. The game mechanics scale with the number of Players, not the number of people who are participating.
    Two scenarios involve secrets and thus get easier if a person plays multi-handed:
    • A Diversity of Spirits introduces communication barriers between the people playing the game. When playing multiple Spirits, only gain the Strength in Diversity benefits when a Spirit you are playing adds Presence to the land of a Spirit being played by a different person. If you are the only person playing, don’t play this Scenario — it will have no effect on the game.
    • Destiny Unfolds adds extra setup steps where no communication is allowed. Playing multi-handed considerably reduces the Difficulty of this Scenario and changes the dynamics of the extra setup. If some of the participants are each playing multiple Spirits, it is strongly recommended that there be at least three people participating, e.g., by each playing 2 Spirits using the 6-Player rules.
      Tags: Player count, A Diversity of Spirits, Destiny Unfolds
  • Are some Island tiles better than others for your first games?
    As long as you are using the balanced (non-thematic) side, the Island tiles are all pretty equivalent, and you should just pick them randomly.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Island setup
  • Can you play 5-6 players with two copies of the base game?
    Yes, with some caveats. You will need Presence disks and reminder tokens in different player colors. We also strongly recommend your first play or two be with 4 or fewer players per game. 5-6p games are fine when everyone involved knows the game well, but with newer players there's just an overwhelming amount of board to parse.
    If 5+ people want to learn together, we suggest two side-by-side games, to let everyone use a low-complexity spirit and keep the visual complexity of the island reasonable. (You can share some of your experience by using identical island layouts and spirits for each game, and seeing where they diverge based on player choice and Invader exploration.)
    Once you know the game and want to play 5-6p, basically any way you puzzle the boards together is fine, with some changes in dynamics. (If you string everything out into a long line, spirits starting at one end will have a rough time getting to where they can help out on the other end of the board.) Official "standard" layouts for 5-6p and alternate layouts for all player counts are in the Jagged Earth rulebook.
    (Discussion elsewhere) (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Player count, Island setup
  • If a Spirit has multiple legal ways to set up on the island, can it choose the one it likes best?
    Yes, when there are multiple choices that equally meet the setup conditions, the player gets to choose the one they like. For some Spirits, this will only happen on the thematic side or against specific Adversaries/Scenarios.
    Tags: Spirit setup, Thunderspeaker, A Spread of Rampant Green, Ocean's Hungry Grasp, 10 more...
  • Can every Spirit be played in a solo game?
    Yes, it is possible to play and win with each Spirit in a solo game.
    It is possible to win even with Spirits with special restrictions like Ocean's Hungry Grasp or Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares. Some Spirits will be harder to win with than others (particularly against certain Adversaries), but the difficult Spirits may not be the ones you expect.
    Tags: Solo games, Ocean's Hungry Grasp, Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares
  • Does Blight added during Setup come from the box or from the Blight Pool?
    All Blight added during Setup comes from the box. Unless specifically stated otherwise, the Blight Pool does not start out depleted.
    This applies to Blight added due to printed icons on the board (p. 6), an Invader's setup (like Sweden level 6) or a Spirit's setup (like Heart of the Wildfire).
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Blight, Kingdom of Sweden, Heart of the Wildfire
Spirit Phase
Spirits and Innate Powers
~ Expansions, Promos, and Publishing
~ World and Lore