Setup
Errata / Updates
(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
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
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...
France Level 6 (Persistent Explorers) applies, as does anything else that keys off of resolving "an Explore Card".
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.
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
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
