Choosing Power Cards in Spirit Island

Once you put the Power Progression away, every Power Card you gain is a choice. You draw 4 cards from the Minor or Major deck and keep 1. That small decision, made five or ten times a game, shapes what your Spirit can do more than almost anything else.

The rules

From the core rulebook:

• When you gain a Power Card, choose Minor or Major, draw 4 from that deck, keep 1, and discard the rest to that deck’s discard pile. Reshuffle the discard if the deck runs out.
• The base game has 36 Minor Powers and 22 Major Powers.
• After you gain a Major Power, you must Forget one of your Power Cards. It can be any card: from your hand, your discard pile, or even the Major you just took. Forgotten Minors and Majors go to their deck’s discard pile; a Forgotten Unique Power goes under your Spirit panel.
• New Power Cards go into your hand, so you can play one the turn you gain it, if you have the Card Plays and Energy.

Reading a card

Every Power Card shows the same six things. Before you choose, check each one against your Spirit:

1. Cost. Energy in the top left circle.
2. Speed. Fast or Slow, shown by the symbol and the ring color around the cost.
3. Elements. The symbols you gain when you play it.
4. Range. How far from your Presence it reaches, and sometimes from where: a Sacred Site, or a certain terrain.
5. Target. What land it can hit: any land, Coastal or Inland, a land with Dahan, with Invaders, and so on.
6. Effect and thresholds. What it does, plus any extra effect if you have certain Elements.

Five questions for any draw

When you look at four cards, ask:

1. Can I pay for it soon? A card you cannot afford for three turns does nothing for three turns. Compare its cost to your Energy per turn, not your current total.
2. Can I reach where it matters? A Range 0 card that needs a Sacred Site is great for a Spirit with Sacred Sites near the Invaders, and dead weight for one without.
3. Does it do a job my team needs? Look back at the three early jobs from the starter Spirits lesson: stopping Builds, stopping Ravages, and destroying buildings for Fear.
4. Is the speed right? Fast cards answer this turn’s threats. Slow cards set up next turn’s. A Spirit with few Fast Powers often values a Fast one more.
5. Do its Elements feed my Innate Powers? A card that helps you reach a threshold every turn can be worth more than its printed effect. The next lesson covers this.

Minor or Major?

Minors fill gaps. They tend to be cheap and flexible, they add Elements, and you gain them without losing anything. Early in the game, when Energy is tight and threats are small, a Minor is usually the safer choice.

Majors change the board. They tend to cost more and hit harder, and many have threshold effects that make them much stronger with the right Elements. The price is the card you Forget and the Energy you need to play it.

A useful test: take a Major when you can afford to play it within a turn or two, and when you have a card you will not miss. Majors tend to pay off best in the middle game, when Stage II and III cards put Towns and Cities in many lands at once.

What to Forget

You must Forget a card after every Major. Good candidates:

• A cheap card you have outgrown. Something that was useful on turn two may do little on turn eight.
• A card your Spirit never wants to play. If it has the wrong speed, Range, or Elements for how your Spirit has grown, let it go.
• The Major itself, if none of your other cards can spare a place. This is allowed, though it means you spent a Growth for nothing.

Be careful with Unique Powers. Some are the backbone of your Spirit’s plan, and a Forgotten Unique Power is gone for the game. Read your panel’s Play Style notes before you Forget one.

Gaining cards costs time

Gaining a Power Card almost always costs a Growth choice, and Growth is also how you add Presence and Reclaim. A Spirit that gains a card every turn may fall behind on Presence, which means less Energy, fewer Card Plays, and less Range. Balance the two. More cards in hand only help if you have the Card Plays to use them.

Draws you can share

Draws are made alone, but the table can help. If you draw four Minors and see a card that fits a teammate’s Spirit better, say so. It may come back around when the deck reshuffles, and knowing which cards are in the deck helps the whole table plan.