How to Play Spirit Island

Spirit Island turns the usual colonization game around. You are not the settlers. You are the spirits of an island where settlers, the Invaders, have just landed. With the Dahan, the people who already live there, you grow in power and drive the Invaders off before they ruin the land. The whole table wins or loses together.

This lesson follows the current core rulebook (version 23.08) and doubles as your teaching script. The teach sheet puts the whole game on one printed page.

What is in the box?

Spirit Island plays 1 to 4, ages 14 and up. The rulebook puts a game at about 90 to 120 minutes once you know it. You get an Invader board, four Island boards, eight Spirits with four Unique Power Cards each, Power, Fear, Invader, and Blight cards, three adversaries, four scenarios, and the pieces.

How do you set up?

Using an adversary or scenario? Choose it first; it can change setup.

The Invader board

1. Put 4 Fear markers per player in the Fear Pool.
2. Shuffle the Fear Cards and stack 9 in three groups of 3: the Terror Level 3 divider goes 3 cards from the bottom, the Terror Level 2 divider 3 cards above it.
3. Build the Invader Deck from random cards: 3 Stage I on top, then 4 Stage II, then 5 Stage III. Put it on the Explore space.
4. Put a random Blight Card on the Blight space, Healthy Island side up (if everyone is new, use the printed Blight space instead). Add the Blight it shows plus exactly 1 more, a rulebook erratum.

The Island and supply

5. Use one Island board per player, arranged as the rulebook’s map for your player count shows. Add the Invaders, Dahan, and Blight shown in each land.
6. Shuffle the Minor and Major Power decks, leaving room for discards. Put the Energy, Invaders, and Dahan within reach.

Each player

7. Take one color’s Presence, a Spirit panel, and its four Unique Power Cards, your starting hand. Start on your own Island board and follow the Setup on the back of your panel.
8. Flip the panel and fill the dashed circles on both Presence Tracks, leaving the leftmost number on each uncovered.

Last, the Invaders act once: reveal the top Invader card, Explore in those lands, and put the card face up on Build.

What happens on a turn?

Everyone plays at once, and table talk is expected. Each turn has five phases.

1. Spirit Phase. Each Spirit does three things, in order:

• Grow. Pick one Growth option on your panel and do everything in it. Options mix adding Presence, gaining a Power Card, Reclaiming played cards, and gaining Energy.
• Gain Energy equal to the highest uncovered number on your Energy track.
• Play and pay for Power Cards, up to the highest uncovered number on your Card Plays track. Pay for every card now, Slow ones too, and gain their Elements now. Do not pick targets yet.

2. Fast Powers. Resolve Fast Power Cards and Fast Innate Powers, in any order. A Fast Power cannot wait for later.

3. Invader Phase. The Invaders act, as described below.

4. Slow Powers. Resolve Slow Power Cards and Slow Innate Powers.

5. Time Passes. Discard the cards you played. All Damage and Elements go away.

What do the Invaders do?

The Invader Phase runs in a fixed order.

1. Blighted Island. If the Blight Card has flipped, follow its instructions.
2. Fear. Resolve any Fear Cards you earned, in the order you earned them.
3. Ravage in every land of the Ravage card’s type that has Invaders. Explorers deal 1 Damage, Towns 2, Cities 3. If 2 or more Damage hits the land, add 1 Blight. Every 2 Damage destroys a Dahan, then each surviving Dahan deals 2 Damage back.
4. Build in every land of the Build card’s type that has Invaders: a City if the land has more Towns than Cities, otherwise a Town.
5. Explore. Reveal the top Invader card. Add 1 Explorer to each land of that type that has a Town or City, or touches a Town, a City, or the Ocean.
6. Advance. Slide each card one space left: Ravage to the discard, Build to Ravage, Explore to Build.

That slide is the heart of the game. A land type Explored this turn Builds next turn and Ravages the turn after. The Invader cards lesson shows how to use it.

What does Blight do?

After setup, every Blight added to a land destroys one Presence of each Spirit there, and destroyed Presence leaves the game. If the land already had Blight, one more Blight cascades into one adjacent land, which can cascade again.

Blight comes from the Blight Card. When the last of it leaves the card, follow the card: some say you lose, others flip to a Blighted Island side.

How do you win or lose?

Fear breaks the Invaders’ will. Destroying a Town generates 1 Fear and a City 2, and many Powers generate Fear directly. When the last marker leaves the Fear Pool, you earn the top Fear Card and reset the markers. When an earned card reveals a divider, the Terror Level rises and winning gets easier.

You win the moment the Island meets the current Terror Level’s condition:

• Terror Level 1: no Invaders.
• Terror Level 2: no Towns or Cities.
• Terror Level 3: no Cities.

Earn the last Fear Card and you win outright. The Fear lesson covers it in depth.

You lose if the Blight Card runs out and says so, if any Spirit has no Presence left on the Island, or if you need to Explore and the Invader Deck is empty.

Your first game

The rulebook’s advice for the first game or two:

• Choose a low-complexity Spirit: Lightning’s Swift Strike, Vital Strength of the Earth, River Surges in Sunlight, or Shadows Flicker Like Flame, the trickiest of the four.
• Use that Spirit’s Power Progression card. When you gain a Power Card, take the next card on its list instead of drawing.
• If everyone is new, skip the Blight Card, adversaries, and scenarios.

Getting crushed? The rulebook’s easier settings: a bonus Growth for every Spirit after setup, skipping the Invaders’ first Explore, or both.

How do you teach it?

With the teach sheet on the table, teach the goal and the three ways to lose, then the five phases, then one full Invader Phase with real pieces, then Growth and Power Cards on each player’s own panel, then Fear. Before the first turn, repeat the two Blight rules the rulebook says are easy to misplay: a Ravage adds only 1 Blight to a land, however much Damage it deals, and a cascade reaches only one adjacent land.

For questions about a specific card, the rulebook points to the Living FAQ. Our guides to board game weight and how to teach a board game help you plan a heavy night.