Breath of Darkness has turned into one of my favorite spirits in the game. It's like another iteration on the "What if Silent Hill was a spirit" idea that Shroud has going on, except you've got your incarna playing the role of Pyramid Head.
Im noticing a lot of my favorite spirits are in this tier, which checks out. When i win I feel like it was me that won, not just the spirit winning for me. On the other hand, when I lose, I don't feel like I never had a chance to begin with.
Hey my dude, I have some feedback on Shifting Memory Intensify. Here are my findings on the playstyle and why it might end up much higher than it originally was: 1) You're getting Insights into the World's Nature for free every turn, usually with second threshold from the Moon/Any, so you can bank tons of element markers. You can be very aggressive and discard 2-4 different element markers on some cards to really make them crazy, then fill right back up on markers quickly. 2) Consistency goes way up because there is no bad minor draft for Intensify. Almost every minor turns into straight gas after spending markers, and you should draft minors as often as possible. Minors which are usually mid, such as any of the slow Call to ___ cards in the minors deck, become crazy at fast; Moreover... 3) Ability to turn token-generating minors into mini-majors. 2 Disease or 3 Wilds basically removes a land from the game. Cards like Thriving Chokefungus and The Shore Seethes with Hatred are suddenly premium hits and sometimes better than the best minors. 4) Ability to turn token-generating majors into absolute houses. The good majors become ridiculous, and even normally mediocre/terrible hits like Savage Transformation or Grant Hatred a Ravenous Form become playable and worth considering. How does this add up to ranking higher? In my opinion, all of the above combine to form an unusual strategy for SMOA hat runs low-energy and high-card plays, which can create pockets rapidly and cheaply. - You can aggressively draft minors every turn with G2 and cycle the deck looking for your premium minors quickly. A lot of the great hits even cost 0. - You can rush the third card play for two element markers aggressively. I've had games where I have 8 or 9 prepared element markers sitting around by the time I hit this at Growth, often on turn 4 and sometimes even turn 3 if I'm drafting zero-cost gas. - Because of these, you can draft the durdly Boons when they appear, and still make great use of them since you have 3 plays fast. - The incentive to take tons of drafts incidentally makes you even better at paying for element Events and you can often carry a table when these come up. - You're incentivized to prepare element markers of every type, which means when you do start going for majors, you'll have the markers to boost them already. - Lastly, it's just fun to get to play with the weird and medium-power side of the decks. Intensify can break you out of habits and get you looking at powers differently. The big drawback is that you can't auto-pick huge majors and threshold them for free. I think this is mitigated somewhat by being able to boost them and "make your own threshold" by spending element markers. Adding an extra token, an extra Push and +1 damage to a major that already does these is the real deal. It's sufficiently different than other SMOA playstyles, being focused on support and control than dropping nukes, and I think it's worth exploring more - especially if you need a fresh look at the game. Cheers hope this is interesting and informative!
Yes, I agree! Intensify has been a spirit that I picked up the last few months (since making the video) and I can confirm that in the final list, it's rated a bit higher (I think mid-high B tier).
Wow, I've been playing Intensify wrong. I thought it was max one marker spent per action, rather than one of each. And it already seemed really good like that. Just played a game with the card drafting scenario, got a set of beast synergy cards including Tigers Hunting. Having all my beast makers make an extra beast was amazing.
@@Seanovan The +1 damage is only 1 per action though! But you could spend an animal marker to add an extra beast then a fire marker for 1 extra damage.
I'm glad to see darkness was here as it felt to be on the weaker end of spirits in the expansion for myself (albeit not even that weak, just the rest are stronger). Also happy to see love for intensify, definitely more appealing to me personally than the others as I love seeing it playing minors to great effect! I definitely need to get more games in with so many of these, which I hopefully can soon! Looking forward to all the new content you'll be putting out over the weeks and months to come, ranging between the discussions, gameplay and guides. Thanks for all the hard work!
I love Lure Lair so much that I struggle to go back to classic Lure, he lack the ability to help other board early, but manage is own quite well. And can be the win condition for the team, the last innate Lair power can suck up all the board then deal with it. Always love your video and tier list really helped me to discover and got better at the game with them!
When talking about sparking lightning you can give yourself cards on both turns 1 and 2. G2 TT then G3 bot. I like to save the sun card to give myself a 4th card play on turn 2. After my first two uses for myself i have enough to give it out to people. The ability to look for a single element to help threshold a major can be super clutch.
Noooo! Was really hoping to see Breath higher. It’s been my fav to play from NI, and I have been having some strong games from it. Love the theme too. I expected it to be stronger :) but your points totally make sense.
For stranded, while I really appreciate the free isolate in the kit, I absolutely find the movement to be worse. It's definitely better in the first turn, maybe two turns, but after that I find it to be a pure downgrade. Almost certainly an element of preference biasing my opinion, but having 2 pushes each fast and slow phase compared to base which has 4-6 spread between the two phases already, leaning more towards the slow phase where the movement is most useful. Furthermore, I'd argue that (at least for me) the movement on base is actually easier to play with, since it's effectively just a "you can push a presence before each power, whereas for stranded I find it pretty easy to forget how many pushes I've used, even if I have a counter for it. I still agree that the aspect is probably overall stronger simply due to the isolate, but I'm unlikely to play it often as I find base to feel much nicer. I wish that, instead of replacing the movement mechanic, this adjusted the energy system for the spirit as I find that to be much more in need of a tweak. Very happy it's gotten more people playing shroud and that people are less likely to be against having it in their multiplayer games, but it's sadly less my thing.
@@RedReVenge007 That's correct, for 4 total pushes. But base shroud gets more (4-6) with more being in the slow phase which I find to be more useful in general (e.g., 1 fast 4 slow would be a pretty realistic turn).
@@RedReVenge007you do, their point is base shroud already got four movements turn 2 anyway between your two cards and two innates. As the game goes on and you play more cards you normally get even more movement than this aspect gives. That much could be overkill but they prefer the extra movement the base rule gives. I don’t care either way for the movement but I agree that changing the energy rule to be flipped to playing fire cards costs 1 more (or some other change) and then increasing top track values by 1 would have been a more fun/useful change
Early game you have the same amount of pushes. Late game you get more pushes as Base Shroud compared to the aspected Shroud. But by then you should have presence all over the island. I know when I play I don't need to use 5 or 6 movement over the turn because I already have placed my presence all over the island. I think the excess pushes are not very helpful. Also the aspected shrouds let you move presence from locations that are very far away from where you currently are. Sometimes I would pocket the back of the board, and I want to bring those presence from deep inland closer to the coastal lands. But I can't because base shroud only lets you move presence into the target land or an adjacent land. I love shroud and the ways that base shroud are better than aspected shroud just don't really come up or apply. I think the Aspect is a strict upgrade in actual play.
@@angelnoa6327 Very reasonable point, I can agree that after a certain point the movement matters less and that stranded does let you dart to specific further away lands (e.g., on someone else's board) if necessary. For me the key bit is that base has specifically more in the slow phase and in that early-mid-game I am actively using my 4 or so presence moves in the slow. I'm sure some stronger players than myself can counteract that point by just having more foresight and using the fast presence moves more effectively than myself, but knowing myself and how I play, that is key to my playstyle. Another point that I've just remembered is that shroud already has the ability to get 2-3 presence into good locations fast, one from the presence move on its tracks and the others are just from placing presence as you can pretty readily place them where you need them (or an adjacent land) if you're in need of range for fast powers. My bias is almost certainly related to both my playstyle as the spirit and my preference for how the two mechanics feel to play. I definitely don't expect everyone to agree, and it's certainly not going to affect the tier positions (I think they're both pretty well placed), but I'll just be hoping for a future shroud aspect that changes the pieces I deem more worth a change.
This is a complete list of spirits I simply do not play ever. I main a couple A/S tiers (Team Fracture, Solo Starlight) and I frequent some really low tier (I quite like the non-advisory/vanilla challenge bump, or am playing teaching games with them), but I genuinely dont give ANYTHING in your B-tier a second glance as I flip though the boards when setting a game up. As the video went on, I was really looking for even ONE. That is a strange coincidence. lol
Shroud Stranded I got to "cheat play" with my usual 3 player group but in person this summer. Cheat play means I just told my team the new rules and played it that way. OMFG , yes please! SoOOOOOOOO much more consistent against all adversaries. You still tend to take that early blight as Shroud does but that Isolate does wonders for not taking that secondary blight on turn 2/3 and you can stop trying to play from behind a turn or two earlier , which is HUGE for Shroud and the team. Not saying it makes Shroud a world beater but as a player that loves Shroud but is a realist this is a straight upgrade. If you don't get edgecased with Events/Explores you are so much better off. if you are on a bad board but get lucky with an isolate (or even better two) and have some breathing room you can either start stacking powerhouse plays earlier OR super oddly lend some board assist to a teammate. Stranded Shroud easily deserves its place here.
Can you give a ballpark level of consistency that you consider to be acceptable for a certain tier? I don’t know if a character being B tier means it has a 25% win rate vs high level adversaries, 50%, 75%, etc. It would be helpful to hear the expected win rate range for each tier. Thanks for the videos! Really enjoy them
I use consistency in a general sense and really should get more specific. I use it to describe: 1) win% vs given adversaries. 2) general strategy / what's needed to succeed. 3) Performing the same action plan over and over again. So I can't answer your question at the moment, but something I'll need to spend time when making my tier list for next year.
I think top track might actually be better for spreading hostility. You don't really need the higher levels of your innate, and having less card gains makes high plays harder to sustain. The top track is much weaker now, but it was so absurdly good before that it's basically just average with the aspect
I think bottom track is preferred for SH because you still get 1 energy from reclaim and 1 energy from growths. Really the spirit is at 2-3 energy a turn which is all that you need.
I think I've finally put my finger on what bugs me about this Tier list (or at least the part that I think is a reasonable critique and not just a difference of opinion). It would probably benefit from a discussion of playstyle and table culture. The first (Tier F) video has a discussion of expected gameplay parameters, and eventually you get into some detail about how long you expect games to take. But underlying pretty much all these rankings of performance are some unspoken assumptions about playstyle (and maybe a discussion/justification of whether certain playstyles are more successful/"consistent").
What it feels like is a MTG/Hearthstone/etc. tier list that is ranking cards on how good they are in a tempo(zoo/aggro/whatever) deck. But if I play combo/control/..., we're going to have a lot of disagreements. And with Spirit Island it's not just this concept of tempo that's relevant, but also levels of communication/collaboration at the table, desired outcomes [HOW do you want to win? are more performant spirits winning by a larger margin or just more often or earlier in the game?], how decisions are made on teamcomp...
I've been slowly building an image of what I think multiplayer play must look like at your table and how that relates to what makes spirits strong. I'll be interested to see as I watch the higher ranking videos whether in discussing what works well, I'll get a clearer picture.
There are lots of spirits I was surprised were in A tier. Then heard more B tier spirits are coming, makes sense 😅 You touch on this a little but I'd be interested to hear more about what you think is the right power level. People get unhappy because spreading hostility and lair are nerfs but if the spirits were overpowered before then it feels necessary. Also seems like you can pretty much win all level 6 matchups with all spirits fairly consistently. I'm curious if you feel like the spirits in S tier trivialize the game too much. Or maybe it's ok because it takes a while to learn how to play them well so players still get to enjoyment of struggling through the puzzle of discovering how to win those matchups that are easy if played optimally but maybe hard if not experienced. I find myself gravitating primarily to the stronger spirits right now because I'm not very good at the game but not sure if my opinions would change if I played more
Very tough question and something that we discussed during playtesting. First, I don't think S tier or even X tier spirits trivialize the game. Winning a game with Fractured Days (a X tier spirit), is a accomplishment and the win isn't free. There are a few spirits where I see the win being free. Mainly Stone and Keeper. I'd argue pretty much the rest of the spirits, you'll have to work to win. Now ofcourse there are some matchups like Trickster vs Sweden 6, where the matchup is really easy, but those are a bit more seldom. I don't think my group (or I) should be the ideal person to playtest power level. The devs figured this out half way through NI, because some spirits were turning out too weak (Roots is probably the most extreme example of this). Too weak to where I was getting a 90%-100% win rate with it, but more casual players were really struggling to win and thought the spirit was complete garbage. It was boosted, and now it has a very high win rate for me, but is now fun/playable for those casual players. The casual crowd is most important as they are the primary consumer of the product. I think there is a place for a tier list that looks at spirit accessibility. Such as: Which spirit is easiest to play and leads to good results? First thoughts lead me to Stone then Keeper. Which makes me think that this might be an idea for another date! This tier list is looking at, what happens when you take a very experienced player and give them a spirit. What can they do in a random setting? What can they do in a controlled setting? What are the odds of winning?
this is also my thought yesterday, I'm surprised way too many are A since I have a few in mind that are still B haha. Looking forward to watching the rest of the B's
Deeps ocean is a spirit i actually really like having in the game. Goes from hungry hungry ocean to the HUNGRIEST ocean (not even land can satiate its appetite). For keeper I really think it’s aspect would have been helped with the locus serpent treatment with a free prolif off the top track to start the game. The new growth and “free” badlands are pretty fun, but the huge powercut elsewhere really should have been a bit more compensated than you are now a mobile badland especially since it’s at most one badland. It is nice that the aspect gives keeps some “fast” damage that doesn’t need wilds at least.
So the list of spirits that should remove one presence at the start of the game is now: all shadows except dark fire, base vital strength, lurking teeth and hostility keeper
@@RedReVenge007 thanks, might try it out this week. I enjoyed the aspect for the most part but since keepers uniques are costed based on its track, taking two turns to get to two energy was very annoying and if you ignore the top track then you could be short a sun turn one if you don’t get a decent minor power with sun. The fire and mobility of the aspect fix the other annoyances I’ve had when I’ve played keeper but not being able to play towering wrath is kinda lame.
For specific spirits, you seem to have stopped comparing them to the tier requirements and just compare them to their other forms (their other aspects/base version). Haven River, for example, you just kept saying that it was worse than base river, but didn’t actually say why it was good or why it was as high as B tier. Similar with several others in this vid
When it comes to aspects, I tend to focus more on a direct comparison to base, since I already focused on the base spirit in previous videos. This helps cut down on the time it takes per spirit and even with those short cuts, the video is almost an hour long! If you have any questions regarding a specific spirit placement, I can elaborate further in the comments. Lastly, I did say that at the beginning of the video, and that was my original intention, but ofc, sometimes things change. I found it's tough to argue why a spirit is weak if I solely focus on its strengths.
@@RedReVenge007 To keep the video more condensed that makes sense, but again if we take Haven River, why not compare it to the weaker aspects of River? Based on just this video I was told nothing good about the spirit, even though you placed in B-tier, which should mean that you think it is fairly powerful. The way you described it you're making it sound as bad as sunshine, but you placed it 3 tiers higher, so now I'm just confused.
This just shows that there are so many styles of play in SI, and different styles will rank spirits differently. In my example, I found Haven to be very strong, much above base/Travel. It's basically a major power slinger with a lot of defense and Dahan counters/movement. You can easily pay for events, and you also give energy to other players. And of the NI spirits, I found Darkness to be the strongest. In my tier list, it is one of the strongest spirits in the game. If you have never played it: there is a lot of depth to Darkness and unintuitive combos that you can discover. In my hands, it is probably the only NI spirit consistent against all level 6 adversaries. Mind you, I have not really tried Dances yet.
Darkness has a lot of edge cases that come up that other spirits don't have. I do think it's a bit higher (atleast above WWB), then my existing rating, but not by much. Darkness also performs a lot better in solo than multiplayer since you have fewer adjacencies and a smaller fear pool. Haven is rated alot lower than Travel because Travels greatest tools are: #1 Have a land clearing innate every turn starting turn 4 #2 BoV every turn starting turn 4. Haven seldom plays BoV, and loses it's ability to clear lands. I also believe Haven has weaker matchups outside of England.
@@RedReVenge007 I play BoV a lot with Haven because I like hitting the fast remove innate and it needs the plant from BoV. But I'm not sure if I play Haven (or Travel) optimally. Also, I think the fast Dahan movement with defense is practically a land clear, but of course you can only play it reactively. In general, I think defensive spirits that have Dahan creation are powerful. Is Sun rated A or S in your ranking? Really curious how you play it :)
@@sukemeny3718I tried to play BoV alot with Haven, but found it played it less consistently, because you don't have the reclaim 1 on bottom track if you commit top track for energy and defend. So it's usually every other turn (which isn't bad, just less than Travel). The Dahan counter attacking does clear lands, but it's very different than being able to clear any land regardless of invader count. I agree, Dahan defense spirits are quite strong and my preferred. Haven was the aspect that I primarily playtested and whose feedback ended up getting it nerfed. It used to Aegis defend all lands with your presence! Sun is rated at the bottom of S tier, but I can see arguments for it being top of A.
Usually I agree with you, but I do find it strange you are tier-listing spirits you have never played like Breath of Darkness. How can you be sure of a tierlist when there are spirits you haven’t put your hands on? Yes I know with your experience playtesting you are probably pretty good at assessing a spirits power based on its kit, but there’s more power in a skilled hand with that kit. That’s just my 2 cents with it, I feel like it compromises your lists when there are spirits you have yet to even play yourself
While I understand this sentiment, I would point out that he has likely played MANY games with other highly competent players piloting the spirits he has not played and has had extensive discussions about those spirits with high level players. That, in my opinion, is likely enough to understand the power of those spirits pretty well.
The group that I play with has played the game ALOT! In fact, the person who helped playtest Darkness (and has a Darkness guide), is the one who I've listened to when ranking Darkness. There's so many ways to play SI, it's hard for me to rate things without listening to the feedback of people that I trust. I can say with some games played now, I think Darkness is pretty close (probably a bit higher than where it is listed here).
I do not understand the logic behind going bottom track on Hostility. Your starting hand is 7 energy and at two plays per turn, you need an average of 3.5 energy to make the spirit work. Even with the +1 from G3, you're only pulling 2 energy per turn. The only way this works is if you're targeting zero cost minors on your draft to get your per turn energy cost down and even with two zeroes, you're still looking at an average of 7 energy every two turns once you unlock third card play. In fairness, I've not actually played this aspect yet, so maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see how the energy economy works unless you just never play Towering Wrath. You hit that at the very end, but what the solution then? You burn TW for an equally expensive major that you also can't afford?
Towering Wrath unfortunately never gets played as it costs 3 energy and scales with presence number (which you now lack). So really your hand costs 4 energy, but most of the time you won't be playing Regrow from Roots. So I consider Keepers hand to cost 3 energy. This version of Keeper isn't playing majors because you don't need to. You use your new G4 innate to gain tempo and get ahead of the invaders.
Breath of Darkness has turned into one of my favorite spirits in the game. It's like another iteration on the "What if Silent Hill was a spirit" idea that Shroud has going on, except you've got your incarna playing the role of Pyramid Head.
0:52 Thunderspeaker (Tactician Aspect)
3:57 Memory (Intensify Aspect)
10:02 Ocean (Deeps Aspect)
14:29 Shroud (Stranded Aspect)
16:45 Earth (Might Aspect)
21:43 Lightning (Sparking Aspect)
25:45 River (Haven Aspect)
29:20 Fathomless Mud
33:30 Keeper (Spreading Hostility Aspect)
37:58 Whirlwind
40:47 Lure (Lair Aspect)
43:59 Breath of Darkness
Im noticing a lot of my favorite spirits are in this tier, which checks out. When i win I feel like it was me that won, not just the spirit winning for me. On the other hand, when I lose, I don't feel like I never had a chance to begin with.
Relaxing to listen to. Can't wait to play again on the weekend
Hey my dude, I have some feedback on Shifting Memory Intensify. Here are my findings on the playstyle and why it might end up much higher than it originally was:
1) You're getting Insights into the World's Nature for free every turn, usually with second threshold from the Moon/Any, so you can bank tons of element markers. You can be very aggressive and discard 2-4 different element markers on some cards to really make them crazy, then fill right back up on markers quickly.
2) Consistency goes way up because there is no bad minor draft for Intensify. Almost every minor turns into straight gas after spending markers, and you should draft minors as often as possible. Minors which are usually mid, such as any of the slow Call to ___ cards in the minors deck, become crazy at fast; Moreover...
3) Ability to turn token-generating minors into mini-majors. 2 Disease or 3 Wilds basically removes a land from the game. Cards like Thriving Chokefungus and The Shore Seethes with Hatred are suddenly premium hits and sometimes better than the best minors.
4) Ability to turn token-generating majors into absolute houses. The good majors become ridiculous, and even normally mediocre/terrible hits like Savage Transformation or Grant Hatred a Ravenous Form become playable and worth considering.
How does this add up to ranking higher? In my opinion, all of the above combine to form an unusual strategy for SMOA hat runs low-energy and high-card plays, which can create pockets rapidly and cheaply.
- You can aggressively draft minors every turn with G2 and cycle the deck looking for your premium minors quickly. A lot of the great hits even cost 0.
- You can rush the third card play for two element markers aggressively. I've had games where I have 8 or 9 prepared element markers sitting around by the time I hit this at Growth, often on turn 4 and sometimes even turn 3 if I'm drafting zero-cost gas.
- Because of these, you can draft the durdly Boons when they appear, and still make great use of them since you have 3 plays fast.
- The incentive to take tons of drafts incidentally makes you even better at paying for element Events and you can often carry a table when these come up.
- You're incentivized to prepare element markers of every type, which means when you do start going for majors, you'll have the markers to boost them already.
- Lastly, it's just fun to get to play with the weird and medium-power side of the decks. Intensify can break you out of habits and get you looking at powers differently.
The big drawback is that you can't auto-pick huge majors and threshold them for free. I think this is mitigated somewhat by being able to boost them and "make your own threshold" by spending element markers. Adding an extra token, an extra Push and +1 damage to a major that already does these is the real deal.
It's sufficiently different than other SMOA playstyles, being focused on support and control than dropping nukes, and I think it's worth exploring more - especially if you need a fresh look at the game. Cheers hope this is interesting and informative!
Yes, I agree!
Intensify has been a spirit that I picked up the last few months (since making the video) and I can confirm that in the final list, it's rated a bit higher (I think mid-high B tier).
Wow, I've been playing Intensify wrong. I thought it was max one marker spent per action, rather than one of each. And it already seemed really good like that.
Just played a game with the card drafting scenario, got a set of beast synergy cards including Tigers Hunting. Having all my beast makers make an extra beast was amazing.
@@Seanovan The +1 damage is only 1 per action though! But you could spend an animal marker to add an extra beast then a fire marker for 1 extra damage.
@@RedReVenge007 And a water to gather or push an extra beast! So an extra dead city altogether.
@@Seanovan I can’t wait to show some of my intensify games. So much fun!
I'm glad to see darkness was here as it felt to be on the weaker end of spirits in the expansion for myself (albeit not even that weak, just the rest are stronger).
Also happy to see love for intensify, definitely more appealing to me personally than the others as I love seeing it playing minors to great effect!
I definitely need to get more games in with so many of these, which I hopefully can soon! Looking forward to all the new content you'll be putting out over the weeks and months to come, ranging between the discussions, gameplay and guides. Thanks for all the hard work!
Seems like B tier is what the devs wish they could make every spirit. Several nerfs or buffs to reside in tier B!
Great coverage! Looking forward to the A and S-Tier spirits!
I love Lure Lair so much that I struggle to go back to classic Lure, he lack the ability to help other board early, but manage is own quite well. And can be the win condition for the team, the last innate Lair power can suck up all the board then deal with it.
Always love your video and tier list really helped me to discover and got better at the game with them!
When talking about sparking lightning you can give yourself cards on both turns 1 and 2. G2 TT then G3 bot. I like to save the sun card to give myself a 4th card play on turn 2. After my first two uses for myself i have enough to give it out to people. The ability to look for a single element to help threshold a major can be super clutch.
Noooo! Was really hoping to see Breath higher. It’s been my fav to play from NI, and I have been having some strong games from it. Love the theme too. I expected it to be stronger :) but your points totally make sense.
For stranded, while I really appreciate the free isolate in the kit, I absolutely find the movement to be worse. It's definitely better in the first turn, maybe two turns, but after that I find it to be a pure downgrade. Almost certainly an element of preference biasing my opinion, but having 2 pushes each fast and slow phase compared to base which has 4-6 spread between the two phases already, leaning more towards the slow phase where the movement is most useful. Furthermore, I'd argue that (at least for me) the movement on base is actually easier to play with, since it's effectively just a "you can push a presence before each power, whereas for stranded I find it pretty easy to forget how many pushes I've used, even if I have a counter for it.
I still agree that the aspect is probably overall stronger simply due to the isolate, but I'm unlikely to play it often as I find base to feel much nicer. I wish that, instead of replacing the movement mechanic, this adjusted the energy system for the spirit as I find that to be much more in need of a tweak. Very happy it's gotten more people playing shroud and that people are less likely to be against having it in their multiplayer games, but it's sadly less my thing.
Maybe I'm playing the rule wrong, but I thought you get to move 2 presence in the fast phase and 2 presence in the slow phase?
@@RedReVenge007 That's correct, for 4 total pushes. But base shroud gets more (4-6) with more being in the slow phase which I find to be more useful in general (e.g., 1 fast 4 slow would be a pretty realistic turn).
@@RedReVenge007you do, their point is base shroud already got four movements turn 2 anyway between your two cards and two innates. As the game goes on and you play more cards you normally get even more movement than this aspect gives.
That much could be overkill but they prefer the extra movement the base rule gives. I don’t care either way for the movement but I agree that changing the energy rule to be flipped to playing fire cards costs 1 more (or some other change) and then increasing top track values by 1 would have been a more fun/useful change
Early game you have the same amount of pushes. Late game you get more pushes as Base Shroud compared to the aspected Shroud. But by then you should have presence all over the island. I know when I play I don't need to use 5 or 6 movement over the turn because I already have placed my presence all over the island. I think the excess pushes are not very helpful.
Also the aspected shrouds let you move presence from locations that are very far away from where you currently are. Sometimes I would pocket the back of the board, and I want to bring those presence from deep inland closer to the coastal lands. But I can't because base shroud only lets you move presence into the target land or an adjacent land.
I love shroud and the ways that base shroud are better than aspected shroud just don't really come up or apply. I think the Aspect is a strict upgrade in actual play.
@@angelnoa6327 Very reasonable point, I can agree that after a certain point the movement matters less and that stranded does let you dart to specific further away lands (e.g., on someone else's board) if necessary.
For me the key bit is that base has specifically more in the slow phase and in that early-mid-game I am actively using my 4 or so presence moves in the slow. I'm sure some stronger players than myself can counteract that point by just having more foresight and using the fast presence moves more effectively than myself, but knowing myself and how I play, that is key to my playstyle. Another point that I've just remembered is that shroud already has the ability to get 2-3 presence into good locations fast, one from the presence move on its tracks and the others are just from placing presence as you can pretty readily place them where you need them (or an adjacent land) if you're in need of range for fast powers.
My bias is almost certainly related to both my playstyle as the spirit and my preference for how the two mechanics feel to play. I definitely don't expect everyone to agree, and it's certainly not going to affect the tier positions (I think they're both pretty well placed), but I'll just be hoping for a future shroud aspect that changes the pieces I deem more worth a change.
This is a complete list of spirits I simply do not play ever. I main a couple A/S tiers (Team Fracture, Solo Starlight) and I frequent some really low tier (I quite like the non-advisory/vanilla challenge bump, or am playing teaching games with them), but I genuinely dont give ANYTHING in your B-tier a second glance as I flip though the boards when setting a game up. As the video went on, I was really looking for even ONE. That is a strange coincidence. lol
Shroud Stranded I got to "cheat play" with my usual 3 player group but in person this summer. Cheat play means I just told my team the new rules and played it that way.
OMFG , yes please! SoOOOOOOOO much more consistent against all adversaries. You still tend to take that early blight as Shroud does but that Isolate does wonders for not taking that secondary blight on turn 2/3 and you can stop trying to play from behind a turn or two earlier , which is HUGE for Shroud and the team. Not saying it makes Shroud a world beater but as a player that loves Shroud but is a realist this is a straight upgrade.
If you don't get edgecased with Events/Explores you are so much better off. if you are on a bad board but get lucky with an isolate (or even better two) and have some breathing room you can either start stacking powerhouse plays earlier OR super oddly lend some board assist to a teammate.
Stranded Shroud easily deserves its place here.
do you have/will you make a list for true solo spirits?
Maybe one day! I do think this list will be fairly similar though!
Can you give a ballpark level of consistency that you consider to be acceptable for a certain tier? I don’t know if a character being B tier means it has a 25% win rate vs high level adversaries, 50%, 75%, etc. It would be helpful to hear the expected win rate range for each tier. Thanks for the videos! Really enjoy them
I use consistency in a general sense and really should get more specific.
I use it to describe:
1) win% vs given adversaries.
2) general strategy / what's needed to succeed.
3) Performing the same action plan over and over again.
So I can't answer your question at the moment, but something I'll need to spend time when making my tier list for next year.
I think top track might actually be better for spreading hostility. You don't really need the higher levels of your innate, and having less card gains makes high plays harder to sustain. The top track is much weaker now, but it was so absurdly good before that it's basically just average with the aspect
I think bottom track is preferred for SH because you still get 1 energy from reclaim and 1 energy from growths.
Really the spirit is at 2-3 energy a turn which is all that you need.
I think I've finally put my finger on what bugs me about this Tier list (or at least the part that I think is a reasonable critique and not just a difference of opinion). It would probably benefit from a discussion of playstyle and table culture. The first (Tier F) video has a discussion of expected gameplay parameters, and eventually you get into some detail about how long you expect games to take. But underlying pretty much all these rankings of performance are some unspoken assumptions about playstyle (and maybe a discussion/justification of whether certain playstyles are more successful/"consistent").
What it feels like is a MTG/Hearthstone/etc. tier list that is ranking cards on how good they are in a tempo(zoo/aggro/whatever) deck. But if I play combo/control/..., we're going to have a lot of disagreements. And with Spirit Island it's not just this concept of tempo that's relevant, but also levels of communication/collaboration at the table, desired outcomes [HOW do you want to win? are more performant spirits winning by a larger margin or just more often or earlier in the game?], how decisions are made on teamcomp...
I've been slowly building an image of what I think multiplayer play must look like at your table and how that relates to what makes spirits strong. I'll be interested to see as I watch the higher ranking videos whether in discussing what works well, I'll get a clearer picture.
There are lots of spirits I was surprised were in A tier. Then heard more B tier spirits are coming, makes sense 😅
You touch on this a little but I'd be interested to hear more about what you think is the right power level. People get unhappy because spreading hostility and lair are nerfs but if the spirits were overpowered before then it feels necessary. Also seems like you can pretty much win all level 6 matchups with all spirits fairly consistently. I'm curious if you feel like the spirits in S tier trivialize the game too much. Or maybe it's ok because it takes a while to learn how to play them well so players still get to enjoyment of struggling through the puzzle of discovering how to win those matchups that are easy if played optimally but maybe hard if not experienced. I find myself gravitating primarily to the stronger spirits right now because I'm not very good at the game but not sure if my opinions would change if I played more
Very tough question and something that we discussed during playtesting.
First, I don't think S tier or even X tier spirits trivialize the game. Winning a game with Fractured Days (a X tier spirit), is a accomplishment and the win isn't free. There are a few spirits where I see the win being free. Mainly Stone and Keeper. I'd argue pretty much the rest of the spirits, you'll have to work to win. Now ofcourse there are some matchups like Trickster vs Sweden 6, where the matchup is really easy, but those are a bit more seldom.
I don't think my group (or I) should be the ideal person to playtest power level. The devs figured this out half way through NI, because some spirits were turning out too weak (Roots is probably the most extreme example of this). Too weak to where I was getting a 90%-100% win rate with it, but more casual players were really struggling to win and thought the spirit was complete garbage. It was boosted, and now it has a very high win rate for me, but is now fun/playable for those casual players.
The casual crowd is most important as they are the primary consumer of the product.
I think there is a place for a tier list that looks at spirit accessibility. Such as: Which spirit is easiest to play and leads to good results? First thoughts lead me to Stone then Keeper. Which makes me think that this might be an idea for another date!
This tier list is looking at, what happens when you take a very experienced player and give them a spirit. What can they do in a random setting? What can they do in a controlled setting? What are the odds of winning?
this is also my thought yesterday, I'm surprised way too many are A since I have a few in mind that are still B haha.
Looking forward to watching the rest of the B's
Deeps ocean is a spirit i actually really like having in the game. Goes from hungry hungry ocean to the HUNGRIEST ocean (not even land can satiate its appetite).
For keeper I really think it’s aspect would have been helped with the locus serpent treatment with a free prolif off the top track to start the game. The new growth and “free” badlands are pretty fun, but the huge powercut elsewhere really should have been a bit more compensated than you are now a mobile badland especially since it’s at most one badland. It is nice that the aspect gives keeps some “fast” damage that doesn’t need wilds at least.
Great idea regarding the Keeper aspect. Something that (if it was discussed) would have probably gotten through.
Apologies if this sounds dumb but with "free prolif" you mean "put the presence on the sun element on the starting board"?
So the list of spirits that should remove one presence at the start of the game is now: all shadows except dark fire, base vital strength, lurking teeth and hostility keeper
@@liekegerritsen1620 That is correct!
@@RedReVenge007 thanks, might try it out this week. I enjoyed the aspect for the most part but since keepers uniques are costed based on its track, taking two turns to get to two energy was very annoying and if you ignore the top track then you could be short a sun turn one if you don’t get a decent minor power with sun. The fire and mobility of the aspect fix the other annoyances I’ve had when I’ve played keeper but not being able to play towering wrath is kinda lame.
For specific spirits, you seem to have stopped comparing them to the tier requirements and just compare them to their other forms (their other aspects/base version). Haven River, for example, you just kept saying that it was worse than base river, but didn’t actually say why it was good or why it was as high as B tier. Similar with several others in this vid
Also you said you were going to be more positive in this video and because of the above, that was infrequently true
When it comes to aspects, I tend to focus more on a direct comparison to base, since I already focused on the base spirit in previous videos. This helps cut down on the time it takes per spirit and even with those short cuts, the video is almost an hour long!
If you have any questions regarding a specific spirit placement, I can elaborate further in the comments.
Lastly, I did say that at the beginning of the video, and that was my original intention, but ofc, sometimes things change. I found it's tough to argue why a spirit is weak if I solely focus on its strengths.
@@RedReVenge007 To keep the video more condensed that makes sense, but again if we take Haven River, why not compare it to the weaker aspects of River? Based on just this video I was told nothing good about the spirit, even though you placed in B-tier, which should mean that you think it is fairly powerful. The way you described it you're making it sound as bad as sunshine, but you placed it 3 tiers higher, so now I'm just confused.
This just shows that there are so many styles of play in SI, and different styles will rank spirits differently. In my example, I found Haven to be very strong, much above base/Travel. It's basically a major power slinger with a lot of defense and Dahan counters/movement. You can easily pay for events, and you also give energy to other players. And of the NI spirits, I found Darkness to be the strongest. In my tier list, it is one of the strongest spirits in the game. If you have never played it: there is a lot of depth to Darkness and unintuitive combos that you can discover. In my hands, it is probably the only NI spirit consistent against all level 6 adversaries. Mind you, I have not really tried Dances yet.
Darkness has a lot of edge cases that come up that other spirits don't have. I do think it's a bit higher (atleast above WWB), then my existing rating, but not by much.
Darkness also performs a lot better in solo than multiplayer since you have fewer adjacencies and a smaller fear pool.
Haven is rated alot lower than Travel because Travels greatest tools are:
#1 Have a land clearing innate every turn starting turn 4
#2 BoV every turn starting turn 4.
Haven seldom plays BoV, and loses it's ability to clear lands. I also believe Haven has weaker matchups outside of England.
@@RedReVenge007 I play BoV a lot with Haven because I like hitting the fast remove innate and it needs the plant from BoV. But I'm not sure if I play Haven (or Travel) optimally. Also, I think the fast Dahan movement with defense is practically a land clear, but of course you can only play it reactively. In general, I think defensive spirits that have Dahan creation are powerful.
Is Sun rated A or S in your ranking? Really curious how you play it :)
@@sukemeny3718I tried to play BoV alot with Haven, but found it played it less consistently, because you don't have the reclaim 1 on bottom track if you commit top track for energy and defend. So it's usually every other turn (which isn't bad, just less than Travel).
The Dahan counter attacking does clear lands, but it's very different than being able to clear any land regardless of invader count.
I agree, Dahan defense spirits are quite strong and my preferred. Haven was the aspect that I primarily playtested and whose feedback ended up getting it nerfed. It used to Aegis defend all lands with your presence!
Sun is rated at the bottom of S tier, but I can see arguments for it being top of A.
Usually I agree with you, but I do find it strange you are tier-listing spirits you have never played like Breath of Darkness. How can you be sure of a tierlist when there are spirits you haven’t put your hands on? Yes I know with your experience playtesting you are probably pretty good at assessing a spirits power based on its kit, but there’s more power in a skilled hand with that kit. That’s just my 2 cents with it, I feel like it compromises your lists when there are spirits you have yet to even play yourself
While I understand this sentiment, I would point out that he has likely played MANY games with other highly competent players piloting the spirits he has not played and has had extensive discussions about those spirits with high level players. That, in my opinion, is likely enough to understand the power of those spirits pretty well.
The group that I play with has played the game ALOT! In fact, the person who helped playtest Darkness (and has a Darkness guide), is the one who I've listened to when ranking Darkness. There's so many ways to play SI, it's hard for me to rate things without listening to the feedback of people that I trust.
I can say with some games played now, I think Darkness is pretty close (probably a bit higher than where it is listed here).
I do not understand the logic behind going bottom track on Hostility. Your starting hand is 7 energy and at two plays per turn, you need an average of 3.5 energy to make the spirit work. Even with the +1 from G3, you're only pulling 2 energy per turn. The only way this works is if you're targeting zero cost minors on your draft to get your per turn energy cost down and even with two zeroes, you're still looking at an average of 7 energy every two turns once you unlock third card play. In fairness, I've not actually played this aspect yet, so maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see how the energy economy works unless you just never play Towering Wrath. You hit that at the very end, but what the solution then? You burn TW for an equally expensive major that you also can't afford?
Towering Wrath unfortunately never gets played as it costs 3 energy and scales with presence number (which you now lack).
So really your hand costs 4 energy, but most of the time you won't be playing Regrow from Roots. So I consider Keepers hand to cost 3 energy.
This version of Keeper isn't playing majors because you don't need to. You use your new G4 innate to gain tempo and get ahead of the invaders.