Miami Dice: Spirit Island

Tom, Zee, and Sam take a look at this new cooperative game from Greater Than Games where the players are spirits fending off colonial settlers!

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#dicetower #thedicetower

00:00 - Introduction
02:02 - Game overview
09:47 - Final thoughts

[meepleup]

Its like reverse Robinson Crusoe. You are the weather dice!

[jvomkrieg]

As someone living in the south pacific, who grew up in a colonial country, with Childhood stories about local spirits and myths. This game looks really exciting to me. I don't mind euros and complexity though, so Zee's objections came across almost as positives for me.

[Draffut]

Almost passed on this because of Zee, happy I played it at the DT con. One of the best coops out there.

Lots of rules doesn't make something less thematic, it just makes it heavier. Literally one of the most thematic coops ever printed.

[saykhia]

I really love the names of the spirits - they did well in bringing out the flavour of characters from folk tales / legends. "River Surges in Starlight" is my favourite.

[mazmo_]

For the fast and slow cards, the color of the ring on the Energy cost of the card is red when fast, and blue when slow ! I got you covered Tom :)

[simonjpatterson]

Interesting review. I know it's three years old now, but to me the Slow and Fast powers are the single most important aspect of this game and step it up from a tricky game to one where you need to get your chess mind engaged. For fast powers, you know how it will turn out. For slow powers you have to think ahead to how it will be after the Ravage, Build and Explore. That takes a good chunk of brain power. Ravage on wetlands and build on mountains this turn - fast powers to deal with the wetlands, slow powers to deal with how the mountains will look after the RBE. That's tricky!

[TheDarktater]

Finally was able to play Spirit Island this past weekend. Ended up playing it 7 times, had an amazing experience. I love how different each of the spirits plays and the planning ahead for the next round when the phases shift.

[Jeff]

Nice to see all the Miami Dice trio reviews lately! I enjoy them more than the ones with only 1 reviewer.

[duncancole]

Usually I'm with Zee on these things but I can't agree with him here (and the fiddly building thing is overblown - I've played 4 games now and not once have I had to put a building on its side. Since damage doesn't carry over between rounds you always fully damage a building if you're going for it). Tom nailed it - a fantastic, original and very thematic (and heavy) co-op.

[arenson]

I get what Zee is saying -- there's a lot to keep track of. Putting buildings on the side is not attractive. I also get what Tom said about maybe Slow and Fast aren't really needed. There's such a wide decisions space that anything that makes it bigger feels unnecessary .... when you're first learning the game. Having played half a dozen times now, though, I really like this game. It takes some real work to come up to speed, but I think it's very rewarding when you do.

[Jowanson]

Actually, the game offers an easier mode of play with the Blitz campaign (or Blitz mode?), where there's no slow actions, but all of them are fast. So that takes some of the complications away, since you don't have to distinguish between fast and slow powers any more, all of your actions will take place before the invaders take their turn.
I don't like how they missed this, since it's a huge plus in my eyes. The game offers an absurdly wide variety of customization, not just by playing against different adversaries and/or campaigns, but also changing around these things lets you vary the games difficulty to such an extent which I think is very rare, especially amongst such complex board games.

[frotes]

I don't understand the comment about they should have made the fast/slow things green/red. They did do that, one is Red and the other is Blue. The symbol is on the top left of all the cards and it's colored that way on the powers along with a bird icon & turtle icon

[maxducoudray]

The card play seems like it's going to appeal to players who like special power cards with lots of combos, like Magic: the Gathering or Innovation. I can see why Zee thinks it's overwrought, but for players who love manipulating weird card powers that sounds ideal.

[rikhavok]

One of the best Co-Op games over!! Theme heavy! Heavy game! Yes, this game has a learning curve. But once you get it, it’s amazing! But the co-op nature of this game is very important. Communication is definitely important.

[IronSalamander]

I just played this a couple weeks ago and I enjoyed it quite a bit as the low complexity earth spirit while my friend that owns it played some plague spirit. We won, but it was very close and we won from from fear!

I didn't find it that heavy, not light, but nothing too heavy, and felt the theme was fairly strong. I also like how the invaders are plastic and the natives are wood, a nice little touch.

[aarondovauo]

Really excited for this to arrive, appreciate the different perspectives on this.

[xfoolsgoldx]

I think this game appear to be a breath of fresh air as far as Euros go. This game sounds a little heavier than my usual but I am looking forward to playing it this week.

[dTones]

Yeah Sam! #TeamThunderspeaker Love empowering the Dahani to crush those damned colonists :D

This game is really firing on all cylinders for me so far. I was never a fan of the lighter co-ops where every player collectively decides every action that should be taken, and Spirit Island tackles both those issues handily.

[Chaosmancer]

I'm a bit surprised to see the more mixed reviews, but I'll fully admit bias in that I've been looking forward to getting and playing this game for two years after I was exposed at Gencon.

One thing on the complexity, it was very intentional. The designer wanted a game that really downplayed the "Alpha player" syndrome, and he went through a lot of ideas of how to make that happen. This worked the best, there are enough moving parts that happen simultaneously that it is much easier for the group to all handle their own board than for one guy to try and handle all four boards. It may hurt the game a little with some crowds, but I love the mental exercise I get from really digging deep with this so I don't mind the extra layers.


Also, easy to miss, but the fast and slow powers also have different colored energy circles (blue and red) it is subtle enough to be about as helpful as the icons, but having both may help you remember which is which if you are having issues with it.

[KabukiKid]

This may be my new favorite co-op game... or at least tied with my all-time favorite, which is Robinson Crusoe. I only played it a couple times, so far, but I keep thinking about it and you know that is a sign of a good game when you find yourself thinking about it when not gaming. heh :-)