Giving elements to another spirit is always good, but in solo the best part of natures connection is how it lets you have more elements than card plays, which lets you get ahead of the power curve with innates
I was hoping this was going to come soon! Love it. I can't wait to see where Dire Metamorphosis ends up. I know it's not the best, but it's such a fun card when it fits the situation!
Quicken the Earth's Struggles is becoming one of my favorite minor powers. Combo it with Stem the Flow of Fresh Water or Raging Storm and you have a cheap and effective land nuke.
The unreleased sun spirit can repeat Quicken the Earth's Struggles and wipe any number of buildings for 6 energy in the fast phase at a holy site. Both sides are incredible for sun, even if it's off-element, your presence will often be where invaders are since it's mobile and you need 3 stacks of presence for targeting. Amazing card!
Excited for this! Interested to see where all the Blight adding cards will end up. Maybe I don't play high enough difficulty but I think the only one I've ever taken is Lands of Haunts And Embers and thats just for the 0 cost elements
Drought and Scour the Land are great against Habsburg. Good at destroying lots of towns. Definitely situationally strong against other adversaries too.
Huh, I think I may have misplayed hazards. Maybe not in Fangs games I’m sure I at least usually had one adjacent as well as in the land. I always interpreted it as 1 range of which is clearly wrong. Thank you! I’ve been looking forward to this! Only things I would have notably different is I would be pretty close to having natures in S but I get it costing one being a drag but the targeting is super flexible and the fast blight removal of a basically a skip. Feel like Drift down is on the cusp the 2 range can be really handy, the 1 defend is decent, and 4 on half your land types, and tri element. Glad to see fog and golds allure up in A, I think they’re both pretty underrated.
Love these kind of videos. You value Defense very high! Expanding my knowledge of the game is ultra fun to me and your channel is awesome for that, thank you. One question: ¿Do you think that there could be an unbalance between some spirits because his prefered elements match the ones on high tier power cards?
I think Dire Metamorphosis should be an A tier card what do you guys think? Adds a bunch of tokens and usually that island won't be touched again for a long while. My favorite minor power
@@cmckee42 from my understanding, the Dahan would be restructured and play independently from the spirits. This would require a huge rework, but something that was being talked about at some point.
Would love to see you rank all unique powers as well if you ever get the chance! We all know what #1 is but am curious to hear your thoughts on the rest of them
I feel like a lot of the Gift's power relies on having at least 3 card plays. Anything that sits on 2 for an extended period will find it far harder to make good use of these.
I play Gifts a lot of 2 plays. Usually you're leveraging your special rule to impact the board, or taking blight to scale. I had a game recently where I was playing Sun-Bright. Turn 1 I stopped a build with my growth and then opted to play Gift of Power turn 1 (only 1 play).
A tertiary use of Call to Trade: pull a town away to stop city builds. Great vs Sweden. A quaternary use of Call to Trade: pull a town away to avoid England 6 loss condition, or to avoid adjacency builds. Being range 2, it's not all that bad. A final use of Call to Trade: pairing up Dahan to avoid Sweden escalation, again great when you need the range.
I never thought Growth Through Sacrifice was THAT good until last weekend, when my friend playing Relentless Gaze drew it on turn 1 or 2 and completely broke the game
I feel like where I have a problem with Constancy is that you are effectively giving up a card play in the present so you can replay a card in the future. I know its not exactly a net zero for the player but it feels like it is. Mind you, I've done some amazing things with that card with Stone, Earth, Serpent, Startlight, and a few other spirits where the elements align. IMHO, the real bonus in that card is for the target, not the player, so the player has to have room to be able to sacrifice a card play. The claim is that any spirit would want an S-tier card, but I'm having a hard time seeing why Shroud or Trickster would want to pick this up. I think even as Downpour I might turn my nose up at this because they can only duplicate land targeting powers and this isn't one. I might agree to strong A, but based on YOUR definition, I'm not seeing how this is S. How would I use Constancy if I'm playing a spirit where the elements don't align and/or I don't have the card play to spare?
I think something strong about Constancy even in solo play if that once you are further along in development, you can reclaim a different card in your discard and thus delay your reclaim cycle. Often I'll have a whole pool of card but there's 1 really choice major card or unique power that I want to play turn after turn but that would mean getting stuck in a reclaim loop. With constancy I can reclaim and play the card, then use constacy on the next turn and on a third turn use the card again.
I think something strong about Constancy even in solo play if that once you are further along in development, you can reclaim a different card in your discard and thus delay your reclaim cycle. Often I'll have a whole pool of card but there's 1 really choice major card or unique power that I want to play turn after turn but that would mean getting stuck in a reclaim loop. With constancy I can reclaim and play the card, then use constacy on the next turn and on a third turn use the card again.
@@nitrorevI once had a very, very, very troll game playing Constancy as Starlight, while playing with Downpour. Every turn, I would get Gift of Abundance, and then Constancy Downpour twice for four energy and two reclaims. This enabled Downpour to, at the cost of a single card play for Starlight, gain 4 energy through Gift of Constancy, reclaim two cards, spam Gift of Abundance (and thus hit the right innate for blight removal and +2 energy every turn), and have enough energy for any major they would want. Getting +6 energy a turn and two reclaims is busted, especially on a spirit that can easily make good use of excess energy. Then, Starlight gets two reclaims, and as I hit the 4 Sun innate, I was generating 3 fear, reclaiming a third card, and gaining an extra energy myself all game. I never had to use the reclaim option, allowing me to use an extra card play/card gain/energy gain option. This combination became pretty deadly. If Downpour gets some extra cards, they can even discard a few power cards to G2 for extra presence. That was an example of a completely broken synergy. Another spirit later drew Gift of Twinned Days, which meant I was throwing out 3 Gift of Constancies and reclaiming a total of 4 cards. Have you ever been able to reclaim your entire hand?
You’ve probably had this conversation 1000 times and it won’t matter with the expansion. But being new to the game, how would you balance GTS? Remove elements and 2 sun threshold? Add energy? Make it slow? Combination? Or if not very balanced, as powerful as constancy without breaking the game.
Parameters: Cannot cost more than 2. Can’t be stronger than Gift of Constancy. My attempt: 1 cost Target Player Slow No elements Target player destroys 2 presence. Add 1 presence at 1 range.
Basically, the card cannot be spammed and when you play it you're opting to hit weaker thresholds on your innates since it has no elements. In addition, several spirits cannot even play this on turn 1 due to it destroying 2 presence instead of 1. Some other options would be to make it add blight in addition to it's current effects, or to make it "target another" so it must be used as a support card exclusively.
I’m new to SI, but I’ve found so far that the minor deck can feel quite swingy, as drafting one of these higher powered cards feels so much better than drafting a set of weaker cards. I’ve also found that fast minors tend to be much stronger on average than slow minors, as they usually help solve a land immediately. This is also evident in that 28/32 of your S & A tier cards are fast. So yeah, loving SI but feel the minor deck can be brutal. Is my assessment correct?
Definitely disagree. Drafting minors tends to be a very safe. What you should look for: 1) Draft a defend. You have a 50% chance to hit one on your first draft. The % increases if you miss. 2) Draft a support card. I believe there's around 8 of them in the deck. 3) Draft an on-element card. 4) Draft an off element card with a powerful effect (call to Isolation). 5) Pre-draft (drafting a card you plan to use with major synergy or a card to forget for an event). It's very rare that a draft has a card that has no uses to your Spirit.
@@RedReVenge007 fair enough. The consistency question aside, do you agree that the slow minors tend to be worse on average (noting the spread of “high tier” minors in this video)? Also curious if you think JE makes the minor deck stronger or not, as I haven’t played with that expansion yet
I never feel like I get much value out of Call to Guard. It always feels very situational. It's not enough defend to stop most ravages. It's damage ability seems good against France/Russia but underwhelming otherwise. For me an S tier minor has to accelerate my position or solve a problem reliably (without requiring another card/innate to combo). So I would generally agree with the rest of S tier. That said, I only have several hundred games under my belt not several thousand like @redrevenge. I am interested to hear what I'm missing about Call To Guard.
Call to Guard comes with Dahan movement as well as defend and costs 0. Usually you can get defend 2 or 3 to cover a land, but I agree, the higher damage lands the card feels much worse.
Suppose you know the next explore is either Coastal lands, or land type X, where there is a coastal X, because it's stage 2 and it's the last stage 2 card. You can use Call to Guard to then nuke the explorers that explore in land type X, regardless of the explore card. Otherwise, Call to Guard is great at pairing up Dahan to clear town + explorer (especially against England, where lone Dahan are pretty useless). If you're playing Keeper, River, Thunderspeaker, Many Minds, or Hearth Vigil, for whom it is relatively easy to move Dahan around, you can easily amass 4 or 5 Dahan in a land for a zero cost, range 1 defend 4-5, AND grab an extra Dahan for a boosted counterattack. Don't undervalue the ability to grab another Dahan in the counterattack, as it can easily destroy an extra building. The card also scales with repeats.
I have a tier list posted on BGG. It’s been ongoing for the last 3 years! However I don’t plan to release the updated one until the NI embargo is removed.
No ordering on S tier outside of Gift of Constancy being the best card in the game. Tier list is designed for multiplayer, though I do take solo into account.
I love Elemental Boon but only when the three different elements actually get a good threshold or you've got someone in the game that needs the same elements you need. Natures Connection I find is more consistently helpful though. You can always use it for the energy (though I don't think I ever have) plus it being 0 cost means every spirit can pick it up.
+1 to what Glen says. EBoon used to be one of my auto take cards but as my group is getting more experienced we are finding that if its not being offered to someone who shares elemental synergy with another player, all you're doing is triggering an innate with no card text. Why not just take a card that will also trigger your innate and give you something else with it? Mind you, its still a great card, but I understand why Red says its not S tier.
@@davypi2unless Snake is in the game, and there's no other way of hitting the second tier of 'Serpent Wakes in Power' when your card text becomes "Slow: Snake and spirit with absorbed presence add one presence at range 1". Then it's probably stronger than Constancy.
I never understood why powers that don't impact board are so highly rated. Is spending precious card play on it really worth it instead of playing something that helps deal with board?
Usually the advantage these cards give is larger than a minor that would impact the board. For instance, Constancy gives 2 energy (which allows that player to push for earlier majors), but also allows both spirits to push back their reclaim turn. Nature's and Elemental Boon can allow certain majors to be thresholded far easily (Cast Down, Dream, etc).
Giving elements to another spirit is always good, but in solo the best part of natures connection is how it lets you have more elements than card plays, which lets you get ahead of the power curve with innates
Love your videos so much! Been playing Spirit Island quite a bit lately and always great to see content on it
I was hoping this was going to come soon! Love it.
I can't wait to see where Dire Metamorphosis ends up. I know it's not the best, but it's such a fun card when it fits the situation!
Quicken the Earth's Struggles is becoming one of my favorite minor powers. Combo it with Stem the Flow of Fresh Water or Raging Storm and you have a cheap and effective land nuke.
The unreleased sun spirit can repeat Quicken the Earth's Struggles and wipe any number of buildings for 6 energy in the fast phase at a holy site. Both sides are incredible for sun, even if it's off-element, your presence will often be where invaders are since it's mobile and you need 3 stacks of presence for targeting. Amazing card!
Excited for this! Interested to see where all the Blight adding cards will end up. Maybe I don't play high enough difficulty but I think the only one I've ever taken is Lands of Haunts And Embers and thats just for the 0 cost elements
Drought and Scour the Land are great against Habsburg. Good at destroying lots of towns.
Definitely situationally strong against other adversaries too.
Huh, I think I may have misplayed hazards. Maybe not in Fangs games I’m sure I at least usually had one adjacent as well as in the land. I always interpreted it as 1 range of which is clearly wrong.
Thank you! I’ve been looking forward to this!
Only things I would have notably different is I would be pretty close to having natures in S but I get it costing one being a drag but the targeting is super flexible and the fast blight removal of a basically a skip. Feel like Drift down is on the cusp the 2 range can be really handy, the 1 defend is decent, and 4 on half your land types, and tri element. Glad to see fog and golds allure up in A, I think they’re both pretty underrated.
Love these kind of videos. You value Defense very high! Expanding my knowledge of the game is ultra fun to me and your channel is awesome for that, thank you. One question: ¿Do you think that there could be an unbalance between some spirits because his prefered elements match the ones on high tier power cards?
I don't believe so. Defend cards are very powerful and tend to be useful regardless of the spirit. Usually spirits want 1-2 of them in their arsenal
I think Dire Metamorphosis should be an A tier card what do you guys think? Adds a bunch of tokens and usually that island won't be touched again for a long while. My favorite minor power
Awesome video. Thanks for offering your analysis! You helped me understand the value of some cards I didn't think much of.
Great and educational video🎉 I am wondering if you want more minor cards in the future, or prefer consistency with the current 100.
The designers have mentioned thar the minor deck is more or less complete, so I would not expect much more in the future.
There has been talk of separating the minor power deck into a deck for Dayan based cards and non Dahan based.
@@RedReVenge007 how would that work? Do you just pick which deck you draft from whenever you draft a minor?
@@cmckee42 from my understanding, the Dahan would be restructured and play independently from the spirits. This would require a huge rework, but something that was being talked about at some point.
Would love to see you rank all unique powers as well if you ever get the chance! We all know what #1 is but am curious to hear your thoughts on the rest of them
I feel like a lot of the Gift's power relies on having at least 3 card plays. Anything that sits on 2 for an extended period will find it far harder to make good use of these.
I play Gifts a lot of 2 plays. Usually you're leveraging your special rule to impact the board, or taking blight to scale.
I had a game recently where I was playing Sun-Bright. Turn 1 I stopped a build with my growth and then opted to play Gift of Power turn 1 (only 1 play).
Defend 5 is probably a perfect card. Invaders usually build a town and then a city, they deal 6 damage so defend 5 completely protects such lands
Completely agree. Defend 5 is GOAT
And happy New Year!
Thank you for this!
You forgot the secondary use of call to trade - push a town away from a land ravaging.
Definitely a tactic that can be used with the card, but I use it far less than the ravage skip line of text.
A tertiary use of Call to Trade: pull a town away to stop city builds. Great vs Sweden.
A quaternary use of Call to Trade: pull a town away to avoid England 6 loss condition, or to avoid adjacency builds. Being range 2, it's not all that bad.
A final use of Call to Trade: pairing up Dahan to avoid Sweden escalation, again great when you need the range.
I never thought Growth Through Sacrifice was THAT good until last weekend, when my friend playing Relentless Gaze drew it on turn 1 or 2 and completely broke the game
It’s actually removed from the game with the NI expansion!
I feel like where I have a problem with Constancy is that you are effectively giving up a card play in the present so you can replay a card in the future. I know its not exactly a net zero for the player but it feels like it is. Mind you, I've done some amazing things with that card with Stone, Earth, Serpent, Startlight, and a few other spirits where the elements align. IMHO, the real bonus in that card is for the target, not the player, so the player has to have room to be able to sacrifice a card play. The claim is that any spirit would want an S-tier card, but I'm having a hard time seeing why Shroud or Trickster would want to pick this up. I think even as Downpour I might turn my nose up at this because they can only duplicate land targeting powers and this isn't one. I might agree to strong A, but based on YOUR definition, I'm not seeing how this is S. How would I use Constancy if I'm playing a spirit where the elements don't align and/or I don't have the card play to spare?
I think something strong about Constancy even in solo play if that once you are further along in development, you can reclaim a different card in your discard and thus delay your reclaim cycle. Often I'll have a whole pool of card but there's 1 really choice major card or unique power that I want to play turn after turn but that would mean getting stuck in a reclaim loop. With constancy I can reclaim and play the card, then use constacy on the next turn and on a third turn use the card again.
I think something strong about Constancy even in solo play if that once you are further along in development, you can reclaim a different card in your discard and thus delay your reclaim cycle. Often I'll have a whole pool of card but there's 1 really choice major card or unique power that I want to play turn after turn but that would mean getting stuck in a reclaim loop. With constancy I can reclaim and play the card, then use constacy on the next turn and on a third turn use the card again.
@@nitrorevI once had a very, very, very troll game playing Constancy as Starlight, while playing with Downpour. Every turn, I would get Gift of Abundance, and then Constancy Downpour twice for four energy and two reclaims. This enabled Downpour to, at the cost of a single card play for Starlight, gain 4 energy through Gift of Constancy, reclaim two cards, spam Gift of Abundance (and thus hit the right innate for blight removal and +2 energy every turn), and have enough energy for any major they would want. Getting +6 energy a turn and two reclaims is busted, especially on a spirit that can easily make good use of excess energy. Then, Starlight gets two reclaims, and as I hit the 4 Sun innate, I was generating 3 fear, reclaiming a third card, and gaining an extra energy myself all game. I never had to use the reclaim option, allowing me to use an extra card play/card gain/energy gain option. This combination became pretty deadly. If Downpour gets some extra cards, they can even discard a few power cards to G2 for extra presence. That was an example of a completely broken synergy. Another spirit later drew Gift of Twinned Days, which meant I was throwing out 3 Gift of Constancies and reclaiming a total of 4 cards. Have you ever been able to reclaim your entire hand?
You’ve probably had this conversation 1000 times and it won’t matter with the expansion. But being new to the game, how would you balance GTS? Remove elements and 2 sun threshold? Add energy? Make it slow? Combination? Or if not very balanced, as powerful as constancy without breaking the game.
Parameters:
Cannot cost more than 2.
Can’t be stronger than Gift of Constancy.
My attempt:
1 cost
Target Player Slow
No elements
Target player destroys 2 presence.
Add 1 presence at 1 range.
Basically, the card cannot be spammed and when you play it you're opting to hit weaker thresholds on your innates since it has no elements. In addition, several spirits cannot even play this on turn 1 due to it destroying 2 presence instead of 1.
Some other options would be to make it add blight in addition to it's current effects, or to make it "target another" so it must be used as a support card exclusively.
Basically if it starts with “Gift of…” take it.
Where does the card get "banned"? is it written in the rules somewhere?
NI expansion rules. I’m also a playtester
@@RedReVenge007 thanks a lot! :)
I’m new to SI, but I’ve found so far that the minor deck can feel quite swingy, as drafting one of these higher powered cards feels so much better than drafting a set of weaker cards. I’ve also found that fast minors tend to be much stronger on average than slow minors, as they usually help solve a land immediately. This is also evident in that 28/32 of your S & A tier cards are fast. So yeah, loving SI but feel the minor deck can be brutal. Is my assessment correct?
I should also note I’ve mostly played digital without jagged earth. Perhaps the minor deck is more balanced on average with the JE cards included?
Definitely disagree. Drafting minors tends to be a very safe.
What you should look for:
1) Draft a defend. You have a 50% chance to hit one on your first draft. The % increases if you miss.
2) Draft a support card. I believe there's around 8 of them in the deck.
3) Draft an on-element card.
4) Draft an off element card with a powerful effect (call to Isolation).
5) Pre-draft (drafting a card you plan to use with major synergy or a card to forget for an event).
It's very rare that a draft has a card that has no uses to your Spirit.
@@RedReVenge007 fair enough. The consistency question aside, do you agree that the slow minors tend to be worse on average (noting the spread of “high tier” minors in this video)? Also curious if you think JE makes the minor deck stronger or not, as I haven’t played with that expansion yet
I never feel like I get much value out of Call to Guard.
It always feels very situational.
It's not enough defend to stop most ravages. It's damage ability seems good against France/Russia but underwhelming otherwise.
For me an S tier minor has to accelerate my position or solve a problem reliably (without requiring another card/innate to combo). So I would generally agree with the rest of S tier.
That said, I only have several hundred games under my belt not several thousand like @redrevenge. I am interested to hear what I'm missing about Call To Guard.
Call to Guard comes with Dahan movement as well as defend and costs 0. Usually you can get defend 2 or 3 to cover a land, but I agree, the higher damage lands the card feels much worse.
Suppose you know the next explore is either Coastal lands, or land type X, where there is a coastal X, because it's stage 2 and it's the last stage 2 card. You can use Call to Guard to then nuke the explorers that explore in land type X, regardless of the explore card.
Otherwise, Call to Guard is great at pairing up Dahan to clear town + explorer (especially against England, where lone Dahan are pretty useless). If you're playing Keeper, River, Thunderspeaker, Many Minds, or Hearth Vigil, for whom it is relatively easy to move Dahan around, you can easily amass 4 or 5 Dahan in a land for a zero cost, range 1 defend 4-5, AND grab an extra Dahan for a boosted counterattack. Don't undervalue the ability to grab another Dahan in the counterattack, as it can easily destroy an extra building. The card also scales with repeats.
Could you rank the spirits too? :)
I have a tier list posted on BGG. It’s been ongoing for the last 3 years! However I don’t plan to release the updated one until the NI embargo is removed.
@@RedReVenge007 Could you get ´me a link please? :)
@@Nimmersang NI content is restricted to playtesters. I believe there is a mod that contains the horizon supplements
@@RedReVenge007 The BGG Link please :) nothing else. i cant fine the tier list on ur profile.
@@Nimmersang boardgamegeek.com/thread/3013539/january-march-tier-list-6868
Elemental Boon is stronger than gift of natures connection. Am I misreading your list or is this for solo play or something?
No ordering on S tier outside of Gift of Constancy being the best card in the game.
Tier list is designed for multiplayer, though I do take solo into account.
I love Elemental Boon but only when the three different elements actually get a good threshold or you've got someone in the game that needs the same elements you need. Natures Connection I find is more consistently helpful though. You can always use it for the energy (though I don't think I ever have) plus it being 0 cost means every spirit can pick it up.
+1 to what Glen says. EBoon used to be one of my auto take cards but as my group is getting more experienced we are finding that if its not being offered to someone who shares elemental synergy with another player, all you're doing is triggering an innate with no card text. Why not just take a card that will also trigger your innate and give you something else with it? Mind you, its still a great card, but I understand why Red says its not S tier.
@@davypi2unless Snake is in the game, and there's no other way of hitting the second tier of 'Serpent Wakes in Power' when your card text becomes "Slow: Snake and spirit with absorbed presence add one presence at range 1". Then it's probably stronger than Constancy.
Many of these A tier cards are busted with downpour
Yeah, pulling mesmerized tranquility is pretty much an instant win for downpour.
I never understood why powers that don't impact board are so highly rated. Is spending precious card play on it really worth it instead of playing something that helps deal with board?
Usually the advantage these cards give is larger than a minor that would impact the board. For instance, Constancy gives 2 energy (which allows that player to push for earlier majors), but also allows both spirits to push back their reclaim turn.
Nature's and Elemental Boon can allow certain majors to be thresholded far easily (Cast Down, Dream, etc).