Mr. Grapes! posted:

I think if people want to switch things up it really helps to use the Thematic Board.

It gives games a different tempo as different boards have varying numbers of lands so some of them have practically no desert or no wetlands or whatever. I think it really emphasizes the co-op nature of the game as Spirits have to glide toward each others land a lot earlier instead of just cleaning up the predictable messes at home.

I guess it adds +3 difficulty?

Typically we do 4-5 player games and we always start newbies on the Thematic Board with usually a Level 3 or maybe 4 adversary for a first go. I think winning about 1/2 the time is the sweet spot for a co-op for us at least.

Mr. Grapes! posted:

It is also nice because it starts the game with some animals, diseases, etc on the board which make things a lot more fun with Spirits and powers and such. We never really try to meta-game it with starting positions but it is cool to start somewhere near a lot of animals and then lucky-draw some animal-based minor power that you would normally just ignore.

Perry Mason Jar posted:

I get that, it's just unclear whether JE is adding something that mitigates this change because it's also JE that adds the rule. That is, is it balanced with just B&C - is it errata or expansion-specific?

The B&C rulebook also doesn’t say to skip events on the first invader phase, but it feels like errata so I went with it. Skipping versus discarding changes things for France but, should I be doing neither? Both? If I'm only playing with B&C?

Just demolished France Level 2 with Keeper (on second try, to be fair) (and everything going in my favor... lol) so maybe I should favor just sticking to the vanilla B&C rules and not skip first invader event at all?

Fellis posted:

The important thing is the time scale I think. The Dahan are the humans of the land and, in time they could grow and alter the terrain on the level of Invaders, but it wouldn’t be immediate and scarring, and the spirits and land might evolve with them. The Invaders are showing up and clear-cutting, strip mining, and driving animals out of their habitats which blights the land and causes immediate response.

I think it also might be attitude, as there are cards that change Invaders to Dahan and vice versa. Like what is your disposition toward the land and living alongside the spirits?

I don’t think the Dahan being expendable is weird. Its definitely a case by case basis on the attitude of the spirits and evolves within the game as Tekopo mentions, which I think is very apparent in the theming of the cards and spirits. Volcanoes and such don’t care what’s in the way, while things like Shadows are much more dependent on Humanity existing to give the spirit form.

That is what I was going for

ConfusedUs posted:

Grinning Trickster is my favorite spirit, lore-wise.

He has my favorite card in the game: Overenthusiastic Arson.

He's my third favorite terms of gameplay, behind Many Minds (swooping about causing havoc) and Ocean (drowning fools).

Toshimo posted:

Is there a good consolidated place to read all the lore? I primarily play on the Steam App, so I guess if it's in the rulebooks, I'd have to go find the PDFs.

Molnija posted:

Gave up fiddling with the little bags for the tokens with solo play, invested in local dollar store tubs and plano.




Spirit boards + cards in the core box, everything pictured in the Jagged Earth one.
Nature Incarnate needs 4 storage tubs to neatly store its stuff so gonna merge the 1+3 energy tokens into a single tub and the same for the two sets of scenario markers.

No idea how to handle the 8 new spirit boards from NI and 4 5 from Horizons once it's available here

Tekopo posted:

I just noticed that one of the pictures in the OP of the thread has a Ocean board set up with yellow pieces. Who uses anything other than blue pieces with Ocean?? You have to choose thematically appropriate colours for your spirits, people. Yellow for Lightning, Blue for Ocean, Green for Keeper or Spread!

ConfusedUs posted:

For Horizons spirits, I really love Mud. I can’t even tell you why. He’s just fun.

Screaming_Gremlin posted:

Screaming_Gremlin posted:

I can't emphasis enough, just how much I overpaid for this. I wonder if you have your own 3D printer, if you could just buy the files off the seller for a fraction of the cost. Oh well, I play SI almost weekly with one of my friends, and about half of that involves going to his house.