Spirit Island

Spirit Island

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A Spread of Rampant Green
By LichOubliette
This guide goes into the basics of playing A Spread of Rampant green, with a focus on solo play. This guide assumes you already understand the basic mechanics of the game.
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Growth Options


You have a mandatory growth option that targets jungles and wetlands at range 2. Because of this targeting restriction, you may end up stacking more than two presence in these areas. This is fine, as it's more important to clear off your presence tracks, and you can reposition it later. Though this growth option is listed first, you can do your optional growth before it. That said, the order is rarely relevant.

Your first non-mandatory growth option is reclaim and gain a power card. You won't have to use this option very often in the mid to late game since you will gain a heavy grip of power cards. You may have to use this in an emergency to recover defence cards, or use it repeatedly in the late game to grab Overgrow in a Night to build up fear.

Your second non-mandatory growth option places presence at range 1 and gives you an additional card play. This is your only non-mandatory growth option that adds a presence, and you'll want to use it often along with Gift of Proliferation and Overgrow in a Night to sweep your presence track clean early. You can also use it to quickly set up a spiritual sight to meet targeting restrictions or to make it easier to hit elemental thresholds this turn. Do note that this growth option has low range, meaning your mandatory growth option and powers will largely be responsible for getting your presence to far away lands.

Your third non-mandatory growth option gains you a power card and 3 energy. This will likely be a more rare option, used to supplement your low energy gain in the very early game to allow you to play Overgrow in a Night and in the mid game to get additional cards.
Presence Track


Your energy gain track is terrible; starting on a 0, ending on a 3 and having a solid three spaces with no increase. This will be your biggest early game obstacle, though you can supplement this limitation with your energy gain growth option. In the mid to late game you will have to manage with your 3 energy/turn, forcing you to take mostly or even exclusively minor powers.

Your card plays track is slightly below average, though you can bring it up with one of your growth options. Given the number of elements on your track, you should have little trouble using either of your innate powers, but don't expect to hit max ranks of both together that often.

You'll want to alternate progress on each track starting with energy gain (1 energy gain, then 2 plays, then 2 energy gain, then 3 plays, etc.). This will minimize the number of times you have to use your energy gain growth option.

Given your around average plays and low energy gain, you'll need to take mostly or even exclusively minor powers. Though you can stretch to some cheap major powers, be careful not to clog your hand with them or you'll end up with a lot of missed plays.
Presence Placement
Your special rules encourage you to place your presence aggressively. Keep in mind, though, that you can only stop ravages in areas where you have spiritual sites. Don't give the invaders a free presence by leaving one alone in a land that's about to ravage. Fortunately, between your starting powers and flexible growth options, you should rarely be put in a position where you need to do so.

Don't worry if by the late game you have five or six destroyed presence. As long as you still have enough reach on the board to be effective, it doesn't matter.

Your mandatory growth option will fill jungles and wetlands with presence. Don't use your other presence placing powers and growth options to add presence to these land types unless there is immediate benefit for doing so. If you do, you may find non-jungle non-wetland lands woefully undefended.
Special Rules


When using Choke the Land with Green, keep in mind the cost of loosing a presence. Downgrading a spiritual site can prevent a slow power from being able to find a target, and it's too expensive to stop both builds and ravages. In fact, it is often more beneficial just to let invaders build and then stop the ravage. You will want to stop builds in cases where a new city might prevent you from meeting the victory condition, or when doing so keeps the invaders health pool low enough to die to a defended counterattack next turn.



Keep in mind that Steady Regeneration only allows you to place destroyed presence via your growth options. Once your presence tracks dry up, you'll be limited to two presence/turn max. This means you'll have to be very careful with your late game presence if the invaders aren't already under your thumb.
Innate Powers


All Enveloping Green can cause power card selection to be tricky. Always keep in mind that based on the elements on the powers you play, you could end up with an extra defence ability. Watch out for this so you don't waste power slots on redundant defence. The last tier can be useful by itself even if you use it on a land that isn't ravaging.



Creepers Tear into Mortar serves as a built in win condition, allowing you to chip away at the invader's buildings in the mid to late game. In the early game, you'll often have to combine it with other damage sources to kill buildings. Don't neglect Dahan damage, which can be used to soften up buildings to be cleaned up by this power in the slow phase. Don't forget that this power has a range of 0, though this will often not be an issue since you'll spread all over the map quickly.
Starting Powers


Gift of Proliferation will be your bread and butter early on. It lets you clean out your presence tracks quickly, which is necessary considering how low the early numbers on that track are. It also provides you with a moon, helping you trigger Creepers Tear into Mortar and start cleaning up buildings. Also keep in mind that this power must be used on other spirits in multiplayer. If you have a player with a very powerful presence track like Vital Strength of the Earth it can pay to switch to helping them clear off their presence track in the mid game, but always consider who gets the most out of an extra presence placement right now.



Overgrow in a Night won't be a common play in the early game, though you should probably take the energy gain growth option on turn two in order to get a play in early. It becomes invaluable in the late game, when you have plenty of card plays and need a way to close the game. 3 fear/turn will flip fear cards very fast, and with a moon symbol this card makes it just a little bit easier to kill the one town you need to get your four fear in.



Stem the Flow of Fresh Water will be a common play, as its 0 cost and consistent damage makes it easier to set up Creepers Tear into Mortar in the early game and combine well with your low damage cards late game. Don't get too caught up in the mountains/sands bonus on this card, as you often won't have the damage output to capitalize on softening multiple buildings.



Fields Choked with Growth may appear to be the worst card in your lineup, but it is deceptively powerful. Moving invaders away from the center of the island or off a space that is going to build/ravage next turn is plenty powerful, even at slow speed. Don't overlook the second option, the ability to move a group of Dahan around after a counterattack can help you clear out sparsely populated lands. This card can easily become an important part of your plays when you are working with another spirit that cards about positioning such as Vital Strength of the Earth or Thunderspeaker.
Power Selection
Unlike most spirits, A Spread of Rampant Green is tilted hard towards collecting a lot of minor powers. With two of your growth options netting you new cards and a low energy gain, you'll have to stick to minor powers for most of the game. You can support one or two major powers, particularly the cheap ones, but won't be able to play them often.

Moon, water, earth and plant are very defensive elements, which aligns well with what you want to do. Look for defend cards to help you control ravages and some mix of movement (invaders or Dahan) and/or fear generation and/or slow damage to be your finisher. Prioritizing moon will let you slowly chip away at buildings while prioritizing water will let you maintain control over ravages.

For minor powers your best pick ups are:

  • Dark and Tangled Woods/Shadows of the Burning Forest - These powers help you protect lands while pushing you towards a fear victory,
  • Encompassing Ward - This power can provide a significant amount of defence, which will be necessary if you have a messy board once stage 3 starts. It works especially well with a spirit so talented at spreading out across the map.
  • Pull Beneath the Hungry Earth/Voracious Growth - These powers help clean up the board. Unlike Creepers Tear into Mortar, these powers can take out explorers, helping control builds without relying on Dahan.
  • Gift of Power - This power mainly helps you dig for the others while providing every element you care about.

Also of note are Steam Vents, which can be great in a pinch for clearing out towns and Quicken the Earth's Struggles, whose downside is less relevant to a spirit that can make two sacred sites/turn.

For major powers your best pick ups are:

  • The Jungle Hungers/Poisoned Land/The Trees and Stones Speak of War - These powers will make short work of any remaining invaders in the late game and play into your strengths (having heavily populated lands, having lots of blight to spare and keeping the Dahan alive, respectively).

Also of note is Blazing Renewal, which can let you keep dumping presence on to the board in the late game, but will cost quite a chunk of energy that you will rarely be able to afford.
First Turn
A typical game will start with the extra play growth option, pulling a presence off the 1 energy gain space with Gift of Proliferation and Stem the Flow of Fresh Water as your power cards.

This allows you to place three presence on the board turn one, probably preventing a ravage on turn two, and gives you enough damage to kill a town. Keep in mind that Creepers Tear into Mortars has range 0, so you'll only be able to kill a town in one of your lands. Also note that Stem the Flow of Fresh Water can only draw a target from a spiritual site, so don't destroy your only spiritual site to stop the first build. The remaining presence should come off of the plays track so that you have two plays on turn two.

In multiplayer, this opening won't be quite as fast, due to the targeting restriction on Gift of Proliferation, and using Overgrow in a Night on turn two will be especially important. You can still reach 2 plays by turn two, using the next turn's growth.
Strategy
While it is always important to keep your eye on the future, it is especially important for A Spread of Rampant Green. With most of your non-defensive powers being slow and your sacred site placement being so important, you always need to consider how you're going to deal with the next ravage/build and which growth option you'll take. You may have to take a reclaim action to get your defense cards if you won't be able to set up enough sacred sites next turn or move Dahan to be ready for a counterattack.

Your strategy should be a control game. You excel at keeping the invaders from accomplishing anything. Push the invaders away from the center of the island to minimize your uses of Choke the Land with Green. Between this innate power and your defense powers, you should almost never see the invaders blight a land on low difficulty.

Build spiritual sites early and refresh them after you Choke the Land with Green. Spread out quickly so that you have maximum options both for targeting and dealing with builds/ravages.

If you need to move invaders but can't decide where, keep in mind that you have an easier time dealing with invaders in forests/wetlands thanks to your automatic growth option.

Don't fall into the trap of stalling the game too long. Every turn you aren't killing invaders or generating fear is a turn that the invader deck is ticking down for free. Always be moving the game towards its conclusion.

You are better at destroying buildings than you are explorers, so don't be surprised if the number of buildings dwindle but the land becomes lousy with explorers. Invaders can't explore without nearby buildings and explorers can't blight a land on their own. That said, they can become troublesome once they group up. Invader movement powers and Dahan counterattacks will become necessary to keep them from blighting as they cluster up.
11 Comments
nahbee 12 Sep, 2024 @ 1:21pm 
Question: when adding the "always" growth, if my tracks are empty, do I add from the destroyed pile? And, if so, must I pay 1 energy?
Nanashi 25 Mar, 2022 @ 3:19pm 
I feel going for 2 cardplays on your track early isn't as attractive immediately. I typically have a balance of focus between energy and card play tracks. Keeping card play at 1 for a bit while hitting the growth 1 +1 card play option and taking the time to ensure I have sufficient elements and energy is also a good plan, I've found. Its more of a growth focused strategy, where you will be hitting the middle growth option and reclaim more than the card plus 3 energy option for the first several turns.
michael.wojcik.msu 13 Jan, 2022 @ 4:28pm 
Argh. Of course it requires a sacred site. That's not clear on my monitor when the spirit card is displayed at the regular size, but it is if I zoom in. Should have zoomed or checked the wiki. I knew I was missing something obvious. Thanks.
LichOubliette  [author] 12 Jan, 2022 @ 7:01pm 
Did you have a spiritual site? Choke the Land with Green only triggers if you have 2 or more presence in the land the invaders build in.
michael.wojcik.msu 12 Jan, 2022 @ 6:41pm 
I've played the board game several times, but only recently purchased the Steam version of SI and started playing it. When I'm playing Spread, how do I make use of Choke the Land with Green? I was expecting some prompt to let me pick presence to destroy at the start of or during the Invader phase, but the game just went right into Build (it was turn 1, so no Fear or Ravage) without letting me destroy a presence to stop it. Presumably I should have the option to select presence(s) to destroy, if I have any in lands that will build or ravage, immediately before those actions, because a Fear card, for example, might make it unnecessary.

Clearly I'm missing something obvious here about using Special Rules. In most situations the game is great about prompting, but it doesn't seem to be for Specials that are optional. (Special rules that always take effect, like Vital Strength of the Earth's automatic defend, just take effect in the Steam game, so they're fine.)
JF 14 Nov, 2020 @ 10:57am 
Cool guide :)
utabe11 20 Jul, 2020 @ 11:56am 
Love the article. Another major power I love to see when playing this spirit is Entwined Power. It's relatively easy to hit the threshold and gives some nice ramp over a couple of plays.
LichOubliette  [author] 9 Jun, 2020 @ 9:39am 
@Anguis I've been considering it. Are you looking for something in particular?
Racheecha 9 Jun, 2020 @ 12:37am 
Excellent guide, do you plan on doing any others?
LichOubliette  [author] 5 May, 2020 @ 9:54am 
@emeramber Good points, I completely missed the "Another Player" targeting restriction on Gift. I'll update the guide shortly to reflect this.