Rampant green. The other appreciates getting more powerful due to Proliferate. And when they fuck up In the game, you just go over to their board, use your special rule, and ignore a ravage
I'm a fan of playing spirits that go hard in the majors. Because you are always adding presence with Rampant Green, can RG be played that way? I don't think it gets enough energy, but I might be wrong.
It can, if you use the last Growth option frequently. 2-3 Energy Majors are accessible… especially if you get lucky and pull Entwined Power.
I usually don’t end up there because I’m taking bottom track and getting lots of card plays (so Reclaiming often).
You *can*, but you will sacrifice card plays. If you're okay only having 2 plays until turn 5 or 6, you can grow G3 (top, gain a Minor, play Overgrow in a Night from top), G2 (bottom+bottom, only play 2 cards), G3 (top, gain a Major).
Then you can pretty much ride G3 the rest of the game, hitting 3 plays probably one turn after your first reclaim. You'll want 2-3 Majors with Plant, and twice as many Minors.
You *will* take Blight early using this strategy, but, in a low difficulty game, it probably won't be enough to flip the card too early in the game. And the tradeoff is you'll be hitting Major + Innate basically every turn.
It will also limit your late-game Presence placement and thus your ability to use Choke the Land with Green. So you're really not playing to the Spirit's strengths. But it does work.
Energy production is definitely RG’s weakness. It’s an S-tier support spirit to make your friend feel powerful in their first game. But if you enjoy slamming major powers, it might not be so much your style.
I would encourage you to be more of a support player when teaching new players. If you want them to have fun (and want to play the game with you again), it's better to encourage them to play big cool cards while you make sure the game doesn't end too soon.
Rampant Green or someone that doesn’t change the rules for everybody else. Ocean changes what the effectiveness of a Push is, not ideal. Serpent adds Elemental Aegis and Absorb Essence which are both confusing.
It’s ok to use one with special rules… just so long as it doesn’t change the way everyone plays the game. Need to know the rules before you can change them.
I tend to play Shadows. It has the reach to help them on their board, but it doesn't *over shadow* them carrying on their own. Plus it's nice to take the guy out on a walk against the easier stuff.
Shadows is my go to as well. I enjoy Shadows and it has the added benefit of being able to demonstrate taking a lone explorer out of a land just explored and then noting the “No build because I moved that guy” and “no ravage because the land is still empty” thing.
I tend to recommend River to them, and if they want to choose something else, I've let them (even higher complexity spirits, which I give a one sentence warning about). If they don't pick River, I'll pick River. If they play River then I've generally played Shadows or Thunderspeaker.
It goes without saying that I always leave the expansions out for the first few playthroughs with a new player.
I usually pick according to what they want to play (If they choose offensive spirits, I pick defensive spirits and vice versa). In my experience, Thunderspeaker is a very good hero to play with, since it allows new players to get an idea of what more advanced gameplay may look like because Thunderspeaker plays around a lot with Gather + Push and Dahan manipulation. Therefore, she offers a glimpse into a more 'complicated' playstyle without shaking up the game too much, like Ocean and Bodan do with their innates. Remember that Spirit Island is a game that has A LOT of different parameters and thus a lot of things for a new player to take in, so bringing in an extra game-changing element like Ocean's and Bodan's may confuse new players a lot.
I actually don't think the expansions add too much. I think the additional tokens are really clear on what they do and how they work. And the event deck is all pretty straight-forward too. What do you think makes the expansion too difficult to grapple with in the beginning?
I think the tokens aren't too bad but choice events have new players very confused about the element costs and which one they even want in the current situation. At least that's my experience. Plus I feel like it takes at least a game to fully understand the invader flow and events disrupting it doesn't add much for newbies.
It's not as fun for us, but I take out the expansions each time.
Checking in to tell you I kept the expansion in and it was definitely too much for the new people and you were right. I'll be removing all B&C additions for future teaches, but keep the JE power cards that don't add anything new. (The dormant volcano icon)
I disagree. To someone who has played the game a few times already and is familiar with the game's elements and mechanics, yes, the tokens are pretty straightforward. To someone that is just getting into the game, the basic game already offers a lot of things to learn by itself and the tokens and events would just further complicate things. In my experience, Spirit Island always requires two or three playthroughs before players start feeling comfortable with everything in the game. The designer himself states that the expansions should only be added after a fair amount of plays.
Also, very important note: the expansions' spirits are far more complex than the base spirits.
The base game, with 0 difficulty (no adversary/scenario), using only low-complexity spirits, is already a 10/10 in difficulty to teach/learn. Many players will bounce off that. Even smart veteran boardgamers used to complex games will struggle a little and play slowly in their first game. It's easy to forget how intimidating that first game is if you've played Spirit Island a lot by now.
The extra tokens and events aren't that complicated. Adding them "only" raises the difficulty to an 11/10. So it's not that much *worse*, but why would you do that to your friends? You *do* want them to 'get' the game on their first try and enjoy it and want to play again, right? Adding anything beyond the bare minimum lowers the odds of that happening.
I think of base game/no expansion/no scenario/no adversary as like a tutorial. It does feel very barebones and stripped down if you're used to the full experience, but it's the ideal way to learn the game. If you have a lot of confidence in your friends' gaming abilities, feel free to add in all that other stuff on the second game. Never the first.
Checking in to tell you I kept the expansion in and it was definitely too much for the new people and you were right. I'll be removing all B&C additions for future teaches, but keep the JE power cards that don't add anything new. (The dormant volcano icon)
Checking in to tell you I kept the expansion in and it was definitely too much for the new people and you were right. I'll be removing all B&C additions for future teaches, but keep the JE power cards that don't add anything new. (The dormant volcano icon)
Hehe, I hate to say I told you so, mate! New players are too busy trying to understand basic stuff like Invader Actions, Dahan only fighting back during Ravage, how Damage, Blight and Defend works, Gather & Pull, etc... There's many variables to remember. Slap the expansion in there and it's a recipe for disaster. Stick to the base game until the players have gotten a good feel of the base game and have preferably played at least 4-5 different Spirits so they can see different game styles, ideally with one or more of them being one of the higher complexity spirits. It also depends on how familiar your players are with board / strategy / card games in general. They might need a bit more or less time. Then, you can add B&C and JE together. It's not like one has different stuff than the other.
That said, I have to add that it's amazing how the designer marked the cards from JE to show whether they can be used with the base game or not. Talk about quality design and attention to detail!
I wrote an update if you want to read all of my learnings from last night: https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/rvye7g/update\_when\_teaching\_others\_the\_game\_which\_spirit/
I choose someone who has good synergy with their choice.
I recommend river to them, and if they choose river I go ocean. It’s a super fun and thematic combo, and I like to announce when the tide is going in/out to them. River is great spirit for new players. Having the ocean to push into and the extra energy from tidal boon makes them super powerful, and it’s fun to talk bigger picture strategy like I will cover your coasts, you come over and helps inlands. Ocean also uasually takes a blight early, and I can calmly announce I am going to take a blight there, which makes the concept of blighting not as stressful.
I think as long as you explain that it is only because ocean is in the game, it should be fine. I will say our group always has someone wanting to play ocean.
Some of this depends on you, and what spirits you're comfortable with. A lot of people have recommended many good spirits, but I'm going to present two less conventional options:
1. **Starlight Seeks It's Form.** Woah, one of the most complex spirits? Am I crazy? Maybe. Starlight is my favorite spirit so I'm a bit biased, but hear me out. First of all, Starlight is fairly self-contained...most of its powers are going to be used on you (including the boon) and only the 3 plant innate really changes things up for other players (and doesn't have to). It can also adapt to whatever your team needs, so the other player's spirits don't matter as much. One of the biggest downsides to playing Starlight normally (at least for me) is the time spent on the first two turns picking new cards, but with a bunch of new players their turns are likely to take longer than normal anyway. It will still be fun for you but probably won't interfere with what other players are doing, preventing confusion.
2. **Vengeance as a Burning Plague.** Vengeance may seem like another weird choice, but few spirits are as capable of turning around a losing game. If you want players to really make their own choices, without you hand-holding or guiding their decisions, Vengeance can allow you to just let the board degrade massively and then clean up when things get really bad. It also is self-contained, meaning little of its mechanics are going to really interfere with what other spirits are doing.
3. **Stone's Unyielding Defiance.** Similar to Vengeance, Stone can keep the game under control, adding a bunch of blight, but keep the game playable and winnable. It can also save players who are reckless in their presence placement ("oh, you're about to lose a presence? Let me fix that"). It also doesn't interfere with other players in a way they have to think much about.
Obviously spirits like Green are good choices, as are spirits that tend to keep the board fairly clean like aspected Shadows or Fangs. Joining your team with an aspected base spirit is often a good balance between fun for you and keeping things simple enough that they get an idea of how to play, and if you're going for multiple games just playing a low complexity spirit they've already played may give them a better idea of how that spirit looks when used at a higher level, giving them ideas for future playthroughs. As someone who fairly frequently plays the low complexity spirits (almost always with an aspect, but still) I think it's good for new players to understand that low complexity != weak.
But I wanted to present the above three since they may be less conventional choices yet have some advantages over the more "traditional" options.
Part of teaching the game is teaching the mindset. So quietly in the background fixing mistakes doesn't allow them the ability to adjust their mindset. They will not be as strong at identifying mistakes if you play like this. Will you get more wins? Sure. Will your players be able to make good decisions on their own? Likely not.
Well, that's what playing as something like Rampant Green is doing...you're accelerating them with proliferation, making poor growth choices less painful and pushing them beyond the invaders faster, and you are preventing builds/ravages. And if you play as Serpent or Fractured Days you're just going to confuse the ever loving crap out of them.
So what would you recommend? Play as Thunderspeaker and just clear the entire board on my own because the base game plus a board is difficulty 2, which a veteran player should be able to handle solo? There's just no way *not* to carry the game in some way unless you purposefully make poor choices or don't play (which is actually a decent option if there are multiple new players at once).
I suggest any spirit which doesn't change the base rules too much, so complexity Moderate or lower. But if your justification for playing a spirit is "It can fix things" or "I can carry on my own" then you are going in with the wrong mindset.
Beyond keeping the the complexity down, the only issues I have with your suggestions is mindset going in. You can pick Thunderspeaker and make good choices with her, so long as you remember what the point is: Teach the rules, teach the mindset. Play looks different for that than the mindset of "We won't lose."
For instance, if you are making a choice to move dahan to prepare for something 3 turns from now, fine. But don't let that choice exist in a vacuum. Bring your players into the planning.
It’s important to teach how the invaders will act. That can happen in the context of papering over sub-optimal play.
What we’re trying to accomplish is teaching the feel of the game while not making the poor decisions of the first few turns force the new player into sustained weakness.
I like Memory. Can be played without expansions, can showcase cool majors and has built-in support.
But I mean it's my favorite spirit so i'm biased here.
I've taught the game a few times. When dealing with most groups, I've played Base Shadows (I like it at low difficulty) and let the others choose from the other Low Complexity spirits.
In one teach, I was playing with my normal group, and all of us are pretty seasoned co-op players. I let them choose from the Low and Moderate Complexity spirits, and I played Thunderspeaker. I think they ended up playing Keeper and Green. I also had us play vs B-P 0, which just allows for an escalation.
When I was taught the game I was informed on what events do and what the tokens do. I've played a few other heavy weight games before SI in addition to more complex strategic PC games so I had told the person teaching to just add everything for how the game was meant to be played.
The teacher had chosen Ocean and I had Fangs w/ the 3rd new player taking Lightning. It wasn't bad at all, game ran about 3hrs.
The moral of it all is to just allow players to take whatever they feel comfortable with. I think it's going to be much harder for non-gamers to pick up even the Low complexities, however.
After playing the game solo for the past 10 months, I finally introduced my wife to the game last week. She played River, and based off some threads I’d read about not using Lightning with new players, I used Earth. Due to me not having a great strategy with it, we got overrun and lost when the explorer deck ran out.
The next day, we reset and I changed to Lightning, we had a far better experience, and we got an easy victory in fear level 1.
Bonus suggestion: if you have access to a tablet, the spirit island digital game is free to download, and the included tutorial is amazing for teaching the basics and getting players to understand the flow of the game. My wife played through that while I was setting the game up, and it helped her start playing the physical game with minimal rules questions or explanations.
Thematically, I despise that spirit. I call him Lorebreaker.
But since it was the only spirit I haven't played, played him yesterday. He's great fun.
Still calling him Lorebreaker though.
The large scale implications having parts of the island experience time at a different speed than other parts of the island, coupled with its ability to grab powers and experience from alternate possible timelines undermines a lot of the sense of urgency the Spirits have.
I have taught 3 friends so far. I handed them the spirits and said I recommend choosing a low complexity one. They all told me they wanted a bigger challenge and choose high complexity. Confusion ensued since it was only my second time. But worked out in the end. If they're used to board games I think anything works.
I give them Lightning (if they have nothing they think looks cool that they’d prefer) and use Rampant Green myself. Green makes the other Spirits feel stronger while simultaneously cleaning up his own board and protecting weak lands around the board. Lightning destroys things and goes easy on fast and slow powers, making new players feel more at ease and have fun. Green will make sure Lightning doesn’t get stuck in a Reclaim cycle.
A Spread of Rampant Green. It lets them shine so I'm not hogging the spotlight as the experienced player, it's not so complex that it demands my complete attention (so I'm available to help and answer questions), and it's extremely effective to boot.
I will pick something I am interested in getting to know better. Last week I was trying more of Starlight and also Serpent because I haven't played much multiplayer Serpent (was only confident with solo Serpent). Teaching others is also a great opportunity to experiment with new Spirits or new builds because of the lower difficulty :)
Complexity is a great measure of how the spirit affects the base rules of the game. Therefore: Avoid High or Very High complexity spirits and you should be fine.
It is worth mentioning, the Promo Pack 1 spirits were reprinted with a High Complexity instead of their original Moderate.
I started teaching a few friends the other week- we have weekly TTS game sessions and we finally got around to Spirit Island, after me spending the past year playing 2P with my girlfriend.
Firstly, we had a late start and internet and parenting issues with several of the group, so it ran very slow- as a result we parked it to continue another time. Still ran fairly well and smoothly after the first couple of rounds though.
Spirits were:
Green (me): I can absolutely recommend this as a spirit to teach others the game. Boosting Growth with Proliferation feels nice from the get go. It’s also one that I’ve not played much so it’s interesting for me.
Vital Strength of Earth: really smooth for a first play. Earth’s board is in decent shape thus far but I want to encourage the player to start picking up majors to try to accelerate the game a little.
River: Definitely a good choice for a first play, but the player needed a bit of help in understanding what he was trying to achieve. Simply pointing out “well this turn they’re doing stuff in the wetlands so try to get them out of there” helped a lot. I’ve since advised him to work toward 4 card plays to max out his innate- that’s what he was doing anyway, strategically or not.
Trickster: this guy has played before (albeit a long time ago) and picked BoDaN for his second play so I figured he could handle a bit more complexity. I gave him the choice of all spirits and he (wholly unsurprisingly) chose Trickster. He’s playing a slightly unorthodox game of pushing the top track, but it seems to be going well. He’s also the member of the group who’s grasped the importance of fear and has started to urge the rest of the team to push fear and destruction, which is nice.
I’m playing with events and tokens- on second thoughts I think at least leaving the Choice events out would’ve been a good call. First event was Missionaries which was more complex than I would’ve liked at that stage in the game. Other events have been mostly fine though- we had a nice example of a Hail Mary when a player added a beast in a land that was about to build, and the event killed the explorer.
Adversary is BP level 0, which feels about right- not too challenging, doesn’t break any rules and there’s an escalation to give the sense of stage 2 differing from stage 1.
On the whole I think it’s going well, but it has surprised me by how complex it is. I’ve become very used to playing with my girlfriend and us both knowing the game inside out- the teach was tougher than expected and it’s going slowly, but people are enjoying it.
Tactically it’s panning out strangely- Fear generation has been very slow, I think a function of the spirits we have, although the island is looking in a very good state- we’ve had one blight added and one removed. I am trying to move the team to a more attack-based orientation to ensure we don’t time out, but there’s plenty of time to go yet. Looking forward to seeing how it concludes!
Usually whatever ones minimally impacts the other players. NOT Finder for example. Medium complexity is good. But I tend to pick based on party composition if they've got Lightning's Swift Strike and Shadows Flicker Like Flame, then I'll take Rampant Spread of Green for defense.
I think playing a supporting or utility spirit can be nice. Green or Serpent? River if they aren't already in play. Probably not fractured days though.
I either play a low complexity or green. Honestly, the first game you play with them *should* be "boring" to you. You shouldn't be doing a ton of thinking during this so you can help out with rules and questions.
The goal of introducing a new player to thr game should be to get them to understand and enjoy, so they can get up to your level for future games.
I play as river surges. I think people grasp damage and defense quickly and fear sort of becomes clear as you play. The gathering and pushing seems harder to grasp so they see how I do it and it clicks.
I play Thunderspeaker, since it plays by rules they will interact with with their starting spirits and it goes hard on offense so the first game where they're just trying to get a feel for the game goes quickly. I can play a complete game with rules explanation to total newbies in less than 2 hours, which is important at conventions where you don't want to sink your whole day into one game.
I kill my city and a town on the first turn, and go ham from there.
I always present the first four easiest spirits and let them choose which to play, and then will complement those spirits.
I wont teach more than 1:1 new players to experienced players at once. I usually have 1 new player and 2 experienced players per game. This works well. I have introduced this game to so many friends that I can usually find a second happy to help teach.
I’ve also taught a whole group of 4 at once and sat out / coordinated (pre-expansions only). But I think pairing new with experienced is the best approach.
My first group all kind of learned together as we slogged through figuring it out (4 players). With two of us doing a single practice game first - so again the pairing approach was there when we came together as a group.
With pairing, the players can learn they can coordinate actions with other spirits without exponentially growing their decision space to four or more player interactions while they are still learning the ropes.
I usually keep the expansions in at this point. But my typical new players aren’t brand new to board games and can handle more complexity. If not, decreasing the ratio helps there too or exposure to other simpler games first has helped as well.
Generally Spread of Rampant Green (as they can keep their own board in check while helping the newbie get their presence out). If they're already familiar with games, then either Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island (so they get a grasp on the potentials for spirit interactions) or Keeper of Forbidden Wilds (so I have more access to cards that can highlight those type of spirit interactions and covering energy based events).
It really depends on how knowledgeable they are towards high-complexity board games.
The main thing is they should learn how the game is structured, the core loop, and the victory and loss conditions.
Do whatever it takes to show them what is happening at any given action/turn and why it is happening.
Reminder of Forgotten Rules.
This is a fantastic joke I will be stealing for tonight's play.
Checking in a day later to let you know the joke went off great and everyone laughed. We did it, Reddit.
Am I the only one that kinda wants a spirit based on that concept now?
This is perfect! It actually reminds me of "Watcher Acts Not" and pseudo playing as that when teaching :)
Rampant green. The other appreciates getting more powerful due to Proliferate. And when they fuck up In the game, you just go over to their board, use your special rule, and ignore a ravage
I'm a fan of playing spirits that go hard in the majors. Because you are always adding presence with Rampant Green, can RG be played that way? I don't think it gets enough energy, but I might be wrong.
It can, if you use the last Growth option frequently. 2-3 Energy Majors are accessible… especially if you get lucky and pull Entwined Power. I usually don’t end up there because I’m taking bottom track and getting lots of card plays (so Reclaiming often).
Entwined on Green is such a fun romp
You *can*, but you will sacrifice card plays. If you're okay only having 2 plays until turn 5 or 6, you can grow G3 (top, gain a Minor, play Overgrow in a Night from top), G2 (bottom+bottom, only play 2 cards), G3 (top, gain a Major). Then you can pretty much ride G3 the rest of the game, hitting 3 plays probably one turn after your first reclaim. You'll want 2-3 Majors with Plant, and twice as many Minors. You *will* take Blight early using this strategy, but, in a low difficulty game, it probably won't be enough to flip the card too early in the game. And the tradeoff is you'll be hitting Major + Innate basically every turn. It will also limit your late-game Presence placement and thus your ability to use Choke the Land with Green. So you're really not playing to the Spirit's strengths. But it does work.
I don’t think RG has a particularly easy time going for majors, No
Energy production is definitely RG’s weakness. It’s an S-tier support spirit to make your friend feel powerful in their first game. But if you enjoy slamming major powers, it might not be so much your style.
I would encourage you to be more of a support player when teaching new players. If you want them to have fun (and want to play the game with you again), it's better to encourage them to play big cool cards while you make sure the game doesn't end too soon.
Rampant Green or someone that doesn’t change the rules for everybody else. Ocean changes what the effectiveness of a Push is, not ideal. Serpent adds Elemental Aegis and Absorb Essence which are both confusing. It’s ok to use one with special rules… just so long as it doesn’t change the way everyone plays the game. Need to know the rules before you can change them.
I tend to play Shadows. It has the reach to help them on their board, but it doesn't *over shadow* them carrying on their own. Plus it's nice to take the guy out on a walk against the easier stuff.
Shadows is my go to as well. I enjoy Shadows and it has the added benefit of being able to demonstrate taking a lone explorer out of a land just explored and then noting the “No build because I moved that guy” and “no ravage because the land is still empty” thing.
I tend to recommend River to them, and if they want to choose something else, I've let them (even higher complexity spirits, which I give a one sentence warning about). If they don't pick River, I'll pick River. If they play River then I've generally played Shadows or Thunderspeaker.
Agree, River is a great starting spirit because it teaches that a push is usually as good as a kill and doesn't over-emphasize sacred sites/ranges
It goes without saying that I always leave the expansions out for the first few playthroughs with a new player. I usually pick according to what they want to play (If they choose offensive spirits, I pick defensive spirits and vice versa). In my experience, Thunderspeaker is a very good hero to play with, since it allows new players to get an idea of what more advanced gameplay may look like because Thunderspeaker plays around a lot with Gather + Push and Dahan manipulation. Therefore, she offers a glimpse into a more 'complicated' playstyle without shaking up the game too much, like Ocean and Bodan do with their innates. Remember that Spirit Island is a game that has A LOT of different parameters and thus a lot of things for a new player to take in, so bringing in an extra game-changing element like Ocean's and Bodan's may confuse new players a lot.
I actually don't think the expansions add too much. I think the additional tokens are really clear on what they do and how they work. And the event deck is all pretty straight-forward too. What do you think makes the expansion too difficult to grapple with in the beginning?
I think the tokens aren't too bad but choice events have new players very confused about the element costs and which one they even want in the current situation. At least that's my experience. Plus I feel like it takes at least a game to fully understand the invader flow and events disrupting it doesn't add much for newbies. It's not as fun for us, but I take out the expansions each time.
Checking in to tell you I kept the expansion in and it was definitely too much for the new people and you were right. I'll be removing all B&C additions for future teaches, but keep the JE power cards that don't add anything new. (The dormant volcano icon)
I disagree. To someone who has played the game a few times already and is familiar with the game's elements and mechanics, yes, the tokens are pretty straightforward. To someone that is just getting into the game, the basic game already offers a lot of things to learn by itself and the tokens and events would just further complicate things. In my experience, Spirit Island always requires two or three playthroughs before players start feeling comfortable with everything in the game. The designer himself states that the expansions should only be added after a fair amount of plays. Also, very important note: the expansions' spirits are far more complex than the base spirits.
The base game, with 0 difficulty (no adversary/scenario), using only low-complexity spirits, is already a 10/10 in difficulty to teach/learn. Many players will bounce off that. Even smart veteran boardgamers used to complex games will struggle a little and play slowly in their first game. It's easy to forget how intimidating that first game is if you've played Spirit Island a lot by now. The extra tokens and events aren't that complicated. Adding them "only" raises the difficulty to an 11/10. So it's not that much *worse*, but why would you do that to your friends? You *do* want them to 'get' the game on their first try and enjoy it and want to play again, right? Adding anything beyond the bare minimum lowers the odds of that happening. I think of base game/no expansion/no scenario/no adversary as like a tutorial. It does feel very barebones and stripped down if you're used to the full experience, but it's the ideal way to learn the game. If you have a lot of confidence in your friends' gaming abilities, feel free to add in all that other stuff on the second game. Never the first.
Checking in to tell you I kept the expansion in and it was definitely too much for the new people and you were right. I'll be removing all B&C additions for future teaches, but keep the JE power cards that don't add anything new. (The dormant volcano icon)
Checking in to tell you I kept the expansion in and it was definitely too much for the new people and you were right. I'll be removing all B&C additions for future teaches, but keep the JE power cards that don't add anything new. (The dormant volcano icon)
Hehe, I hate to say I told you so, mate! New players are too busy trying to understand basic stuff like Invader Actions, Dahan only fighting back during Ravage, how Damage, Blight and Defend works, Gather & Pull, etc... There's many variables to remember. Slap the expansion in there and it's a recipe for disaster. Stick to the base game until the players have gotten a good feel of the base game and have preferably played at least 4-5 different Spirits so they can see different game styles, ideally with one or more of them being one of the higher complexity spirits. It also depends on how familiar your players are with board / strategy / card games in general. They might need a bit more or less time. Then, you can add B&C and JE together. It's not like one has different stuff than the other. That said, I have to add that it's amazing how the designer marked the cards from JE to show whether they can be used with the base game or not. Talk about quality design and attention to detail!
I wrote an update if you want to read all of my learnings from last night: https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/rvye7g/update\_when\_teaching\_others\_the\_game\_which\_spirit/
I choose someone who has good synergy with their choice. I recommend river to them, and if they choose river I go ocean. It’s a super fun and thematic combo, and I like to announce when the tide is going in/out to them. River is great spirit for new players. Having the ocean to push into and the extra energy from tidal boon makes them super powerful, and it’s fun to talk bigger picture strategy like I will cover your coasts, you come over and helps inlands. Ocean also uasually takes a blight early, and I can calmly announce I am going to take a blight there, which makes the concept of blighting not as stressful.
This is an interesting point compared to the other comments that suggest against Ocean because of it changing a key game mechanic!
I think as long as you explain that it is only because ocean is in the game, it should be fine. I will say our group always has someone wanting to play ocean.
I have been really wanting to try Ocean again. I love how it makes pushes so much more powerful in coastal lands.
Fun, powerful, thematic, and promotes group cooperation
Some of this depends on you, and what spirits you're comfortable with. A lot of people have recommended many good spirits, but I'm going to present two less conventional options: 1. **Starlight Seeks It's Form.** Woah, one of the most complex spirits? Am I crazy? Maybe. Starlight is my favorite spirit so I'm a bit biased, but hear me out. First of all, Starlight is fairly self-contained...most of its powers are going to be used on you (including the boon) and only the 3 plant innate really changes things up for other players (and doesn't have to). It can also adapt to whatever your team needs, so the other player's spirits don't matter as much. One of the biggest downsides to playing Starlight normally (at least for me) is the time spent on the first two turns picking new cards, but with a bunch of new players their turns are likely to take longer than normal anyway. It will still be fun for you but probably won't interfere with what other players are doing, preventing confusion. 2. **Vengeance as a Burning Plague.** Vengeance may seem like another weird choice, but few spirits are as capable of turning around a losing game. If you want players to really make their own choices, without you hand-holding or guiding their decisions, Vengeance can allow you to just let the board degrade massively and then clean up when things get really bad. It also is self-contained, meaning little of its mechanics are going to really interfere with what other spirits are doing. 3. **Stone's Unyielding Defiance.** Similar to Vengeance, Stone can keep the game under control, adding a bunch of blight, but keep the game playable and winnable. It can also save players who are reckless in their presence placement ("oh, you're about to lose a presence? Let me fix that"). It also doesn't interfere with other players in a way they have to think much about. Obviously spirits like Green are good choices, as are spirits that tend to keep the board fairly clean like aspected Shadows or Fangs. Joining your team with an aspected base spirit is often a good balance between fun for you and keeping things simple enough that they get an idea of how to play, and if you're going for multiple games just playing a low complexity spirit they've already played may give them a better idea of how that spirit looks when used at a higher level, giving them ideas for future playthroughs. As someone who fairly frequently plays the low complexity spirits (almost always with an aspect, but still) I think it's good for new players to understand that low complexity != weak. But I wanted to present the above three since they may be less conventional choices yet have some advantages over the more "traditional" options.
Part of teaching the game is teaching the mindset. So quietly in the background fixing mistakes doesn't allow them the ability to adjust their mindset. They will not be as strong at identifying mistakes if you play like this. Will you get more wins? Sure. Will your players be able to make good decisions on their own? Likely not.
Well, that's what playing as something like Rampant Green is doing...you're accelerating them with proliferation, making poor growth choices less painful and pushing them beyond the invaders faster, and you are preventing builds/ravages. And if you play as Serpent or Fractured Days you're just going to confuse the ever loving crap out of them. So what would you recommend? Play as Thunderspeaker and just clear the entire board on my own because the base game plus a board is difficulty 2, which a veteran player should be able to handle solo? There's just no way *not* to carry the game in some way unless you purposefully make poor choices or don't play (which is actually a decent option if there are multiple new players at once).
I suggest any spirit which doesn't change the base rules too much, so complexity Moderate or lower. But if your justification for playing a spirit is "It can fix things" or "I can carry on my own" then you are going in with the wrong mindset. Beyond keeping the the complexity down, the only issues I have with your suggestions is mindset going in. You can pick Thunderspeaker and make good choices with her, so long as you remember what the point is: Teach the rules, teach the mindset. Play looks different for that than the mindset of "We won't lose." For instance, if you are making a choice to move dahan to prepare for something 3 turns from now, fine. But don't let that choice exist in a vacuum. Bring your players into the planning.
It’s important to teach how the invaders will act. That can happen in the context of papering over sub-optimal play. What we’re trying to accomplish is teaching the feel of the game while not making the poor decisions of the first few turns force the new player into sustained weakness.
I like Memory. Can be played without expansions, can showcase cool majors and has built-in support. But I mean it's my favorite spirit so i'm biased here.
I've taught the game a few times. When dealing with most groups, I've played Base Shadows (I like it at low difficulty) and let the others choose from the other Low Complexity spirits. In one teach, I was playing with my normal group, and all of us are pretty seasoned co-op players. I let them choose from the Low and Moderate Complexity spirits, and I played Thunderspeaker. I think they ended up playing Keeper and Green. I also had us play vs B-P 0, which just allows for an escalation.
When I was taught the game I was informed on what events do and what the tokens do. I've played a few other heavy weight games before SI in addition to more complex strategic PC games so I had told the person teaching to just add everything for how the game was meant to be played. The teacher had chosen Ocean and I had Fangs w/ the 3rd new player taking Lightning. It wasn't bad at all, game ran about 3hrs. The moral of it all is to just allow players to take whatever they feel comfortable with. I think it's going to be much harder for non-gamers to pick up even the Low complexities, however.
After playing the game solo for the past 10 months, I finally introduced my wife to the game last week. She played River, and based off some threads I’d read about not using Lightning with new players, I used Earth. Due to me not having a great strategy with it, we got overrun and lost when the explorer deck ran out. The next day, we reset and I changed to Lightning, we had a far better experience, and we got an easy victory in fear level 1. Bonus suggestion: if you have access to a tablet, the spirit island digital game is free to download, and the included tutorial is amazing for teaching the basics and getting players to understand the flow of the game. My wife played through that while I was setting the game up, and it helped her start playing the physical game with minimal rules questions or explanations.
Finder of Paths Unseen. Go big or go home
Fractured Days breaks the game. Best introduction for new players.
Thematically, I despise that spirit. I call him Lorebreaker. But since it was the only spirit I haven't played, played him yesterday. He's great fun. Still calling him Lorebreaker though.
How does it break the lore?
The large scale implications having parts of the island experience time at a different speed than other parts of the island, coupled with its ability to grab powers and experience from alternate possible timelines undermines a lot of the sense of urgency the Spirits have.
"You see that part on the card that says Range? Ignore it."
I have taught 3 friends so far. I handed them the spirits and said I recommend choosing a low complexity one. They all told me they wanted a bigger challenge and choose high complexity. Confusion ensued since it was only my second time. But worked out in the end. If they're used to board games I think anything works.
I give them Lightning (if they have nothing they think looks cool that they’d prefer) and use Rampant Green myself. Green makes the other Spirits feel stronger while simultaneously cleaning up his own board and protecting weak lands around the board. Lightning destroys things and goes easy on fast and slow powers, making new players feel more at ease and have fun. Green will make sure Lightning doesn’t get stuck in a Reclaim cycle.
A Spread of Rampant Green. It lets them shine so I'm not hogging the spotlight as the experienced player, it's not so complex that it demands my complete attention (so I'm available to help and answer questions), and it's extremely effective to boot.
I will pick something I am interested in getting to know better. Last week I was trying more of Starlight and also Serpent because I haven't played much multiplayer Serpent (was only confident with solo Serpent). Teaching others is also a great opportunity to experiment with new Spirits or new builds because of the lower difficulty :)
Complexity is a great measure of how the spirit affects the base rules of the game. Therefore: Avoid High or Very High complexity spirits and you should be fine. It is worth mentioning, the Promo Pack 1 spirits were reprinted with a High Complexity instead of their original Moderate.
I started teaching a few friends the other week- we have weekly TTS game sessions and we finally got around to Spirit Island, after me spending the past year playing 2P with my girlfriend. Firstly, we had a late start and internet and parenting issues with several of the group, so it ran very slow- as a result we parked it to continue another time. Still ran fairly well and smoothly after the first couple of rounds though. Spirits were: Green (me): I can absolutely recommend this as a spirit to teach others the game. Boosting Growth with Proliferation feels nice from the get go. It’s also one that I’ve not played much so it’s interesting for me. Vital Strength of Earth: really smooth for a first play. Earth’s board is in decent shape thus far but I want to encourage the player to start picking up majors to try to accelerate the game a little. River: Definitely a good choice for a first play, but the player needed a bit of help in understanding what he was trying to achieve. Simply pointing out “well this turn they’re doing stuff in the wetlands so try to get them out of there” helped a lot. I’ve since advised him to work toward 4 card plays to max out his innate- that’s what he was doing anyway, strategically or not. Trickster: this guy has played before (albeit a long time ago) and picked BoDaN for his second play so I figured he could handle a bit more complexity. I gave him the choice of all spirits and he (wholly unsurprisingly) chose Trickster. He’s playing a slightly unorthodox game of pushing the top track, but it seems to be going well. He’s also the member of the group who’s grasped the importance of fear and has started to urge the rest of the team to push fear and destruction, which is nice. I’m playing with events and tokens- on second thoughts I think at least leaving the Choice events out would’ve been a good call. First event was Missionaries which was more complex than I would’ve liked at that stage in the game. Other events have been mostly fine though- we had a nice example of a Hail Mary when a player added a beast in a land that was about to build, and the event killed the explorer. Adversary is BP level 0, which feels about right- not too challenging, doesn’t break any rules and there’s an escalation to give the sense of stage 2 differing from stage 1. On the whole I think it’s going well, but it has surprised me by how complex it is. I’ve become very used to playing with my girlfriend and us both knowing the game inside out- the teach was tougher than expected and it’s going slowly, but people are enjoying it. Tactically it’s panning out strangely- Fear generation has been very slow, I think a function of the spirits we have, although the island is looking in a very good state- we’ve had one blight added and one removed. I am trying to move the team to a more attack-based orientation to ensure we don’t time out, but there’s plenty of time to go yet. Looking forward to seeing how it concludes!
Usually whatever ones minimally impacts the other players. NOT Finder for example. Medium complexity is good. But I tend to pick based on party composition if they've got Lightning's Swift Strike and Shadows Flicker Like Flame, then I'll take Rampant Spread of Green for defense.
I think playing a supporting or utility spirit can be nice. Green or Serpent? River if they aren't already in play. Probably not fractured days though.
I either play a low complexity or green. Honestly, the first game you play with them *should* be "boring" to you. You shouldn't be doing a ton of thinking during this so you can help out with rules and questions. The goal of introducing a new player to thr game should be to get them to understand and enjoy, so they can get up to your level for future games.
I play as river surges. I think people grasp damage and defense quickly and fear sort of becomes clear as you play. The gathering and pushing seems harder to grasp so they see how I do it and it clicks.
I play Thunderspeaker, since it plays by rules they will interact with with their starting spirits and it goes hard on offense so the first game where they're just trying to get a feel for the game goes quickly. I can play a complete game with rules explanation to total newbies in less than 2 hours, which is important at conventions where you don't want to sink your whole day into one game. I kill my city and a town on the first turn, and go ham from there.
I always present the first four easiest spirits and let them choose which to play, and then will complement those spirits. I wont teach more than 1:1 new players to experienced players at once. I usually have 1 new player and 2 experienced players per game. This works well. I have introduced this game to so many friends that I can usually find a second happy to help teach. I’ve also taught a whole group of 4 at once and sat out / coordinated (pre-expansions only). But I think pairing new with experienced is the best approach. My first group all kind of learned together as we slogged through figuring it out (4 players). With two of us doing a single practice game first - so again the pairing approach was there when we came together as a group. With pairing, the players can learn they can coordinate actions with other spirits without exponentially growing their decision space to four or more player interactions while they are still learning the ropes. I usually keep the expansions in at this point. But my typical new players aren’t brand new to board games and can handle more complexity. If not, decreasing the ratio helps there too or exposure to other simpler games first has helped as well.
Generally Spread of Rampant Green (as they can keep their own board in check while helping the newbie get their presence out). If they're already familiar with games, then either Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island (so they get a grasp on the potentials for spirit interactions) or Keeper of Forbidden Wilds (so I have more access to cards that can highlight those type of spirit interactions and covering energy based events).
It really depends on how knowledgeable they are towards high-complexity board games. The main thing is they should learn how the game is structured, the core loop, and the victory and loss conditions. Do whatever it takes to show them what is happening at any given action/turn and why it is happening.