Lynkfox
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Spirit Island, a brand new game just shipping now for the Kickstarter backers from Greater Than Games. https://greaterthangames.com/store/spirit-island
Spirit Island is a cooperative, settler-destruction strategy game for 1 to 4 players designed by R. Eric Reuss and set in an alternate-history world around A.D. 1700. Players are different spirits of the land, each with their own unique elemental powers, forced to defend their island home from colonizing Invaders spreading blight and destruction. Work with your fellow spirits and the native islanders to increase your power and drive the invading colonists from your island in this strategic area-control game.
The Kickstarter has just shipped, and this beautiful game holds many many pieces. It came with a great insert, holding all the base game cards, but an expansion also shipped with the kickstarter. It did not really fit with the standard inserts.. The game came with a TON of great baggies to put all your little, high quality tokens in, but I get annoyed at opening and closing baggies all the time. I'm handy with making inserts however, so I made my own for Spirit Island, to fit both the base game, and the expansion, Branch and Claw
The game board pieces have to fit in the box diagonally, so they don't get anything special. Rule book underneath helps make sure everything stays secure. You can see the Branch and Claw rulebook too. So far, everything looks normal...
Ahah! the first trays. It was tough to make room for all of the tokens that will be drawn continuously from the box. The original tray was nice, but I wanted Branch and Claw in there too (the 4 colored tokens on the right, if you aren't familiar) The Dahan Huts (the wooden huts on the left) needed a place too.
The Dahan huts are wood, the Branch and Claw tokens are high quality thick cardboard. The white Invader pieces are all plastic of some kind, but durable. Strong. Reportedly, they've stood up to being sat on all day at demos at cons...
Now the magic! You can see all the necessary tokens come out in their own tray, easily moved around for players to access!
Close up of the tray. It was tough to get it all to fit, the Cities (second from the left) have to be stacked pretty close together to fit, and the Explorers (last white next to the Branch and Claw tokens) kind of overflow. But in the end. It worked.
And now you can see why it did. Second tray comes out, revealing even more magic...
This holds the important information boards, for both the base game and Branch and Claw, the Terror Level dividers, and the mini card sized Explorer Deck. Unseen under the terror level dividers are the additional action tokens used for the various Adversaries.
You can see now 3 more small trays come out, Energy, Fear, and Blight tokens. They fit in above the cards, and handily cover the expansion cards (the left two card trays, that are upside down) in case you don't want to play with Branch and Claw.
Since Energy needs to be accessed by all players often, its good to have it in a more central position than the other tokens, which only are needed once per round or so. Fear and Blight are mostly only needed during setup, so those little tray can be pushed out of the way and forgotten about until cleanup.
Close up. Tight fit again!
Now we remove the heavy duty Spirit Panels, revealing underneath the Adversary and Scenario cards. They fit in with a small little flat divider to keep them from moving. To their right are the last of the baggies I kept - the Presence Tokens for each player, and the special Scenario Tokens. The Presence will all be used during a game, so its OK for it to stay in baggies, and the Scenario Tokens are special use.
Those presence tokens are wood tokens as well, a nice touch for tokens that will get moved about a lot by players
You can kind of see that the Spirit boards, that which the Players play as, are thick. They are good quality, holding together nicely to the six or seven times I've played so far, plus the shuffling through to figure out who I want to play as. Good quality all around!
Close up of the cards, scenarios, and all.
Spirit Island has been a BLAST. Its very high quality (I keep saying that, but everything is nice and sturdy and very well made) and while at first it may feel complicated and overwhelming, the game flows together so very well and has such great mechanics that once you've played a game or two (and it even has a 'First Time' mode that simplifies a lot of the game to get things moving)
It was well worth the kickstarter price, and I think its even worth the msrp that its shipping at now, if just for how -amazing- the pieces are. Try it out!
Cat Tax!
Eevee (yes, thats her name! The shelter gave it to her) was not amused at me using her breakfast table to make these inserts all evening.)