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Eric: I agree to the terms for creating Spirit Island game elements set forth in the FAQ.
So a few friends and I were inspired by all the custom spirits that showed up a few months ago and wanted to challenge ourselves to make our own. I am a huge fan of River Surges in Sunlight and Many Minds Move as One. The simplicity of River and the ability to prevent builds and how Many Minds really looks at the board as a puzzle of gather and pull to solve for the current problem without mortgaging their future. I was also really inspired by the Savage Transformation Major Power and this idea of turning invaders into beasts. Like what is the Spirit like that does that to invaders?
So with that in mind I wanted a Spirit that relied on beasts and Dahan and really had to focus on movement to solve its problems, and also thematically inspired by Savage Transformation. Enter Secret's Whispered Echo.
Thematically they're from another world, like Starlight, and they've gained a foothold whispering the unknowable into the ears of the denizens of the island. They whisper secrets to the Dahan in the night and promise invaders power beyond their wildest dreams. Those who delve too deep are infected by the madness and become something else, something primal. Faceless creatures and unamable horrors.
The art is all entirely from an artist on Reddit that really captures the ethereal nature of such a concept: https://www.reddit.com/user/Ewenf. Their work is hypnotizing and really adds a lot to the spirit. Definitely want to properly commission card art when it's a bit more balanced out.
Couldn't get the back image to fit right so apologies there
Growth Options
- Uses Fangs as a base to ensure consistent presence is added and has some choice over utility or new cards. I found the spirit gains a lot of cards, which is fun but I might need to remove the gain a power card when reclaiming because that might be too much.
Presence Track
- Similar to Lure but with the additional of reclaim. I really wanted to include the "Echo" element thematically and found the reclaim was really important because the elements can be hard to hit with consistency. The card getting reclaimed usually helps set-up innates so the utility felt good.
Special Rules
- Really simple, I found if an event removed a beast early on it was REALLY hard to walk back from because without defend it's hard to avoid early blights
Innate Powers
Familiarity with the Unknowable
- The idea is the Dahan have experience with this Spirit so the presence of these beasts doesn't bother them as much where the Invaders are caught off guard. Beasts counting as Badlands also makes Leaking Madness take out Dahan which felt like an impactful choice.
Primordial Descent
- Savage Transformation the power. Originally had it turning City > Town. Town > Explorer. Explorer > Beast But that was a layer of complexity and felt similar to lure without a good differentiation.
Cards
Promises of Power
- Build prevention. Can't target areas with beasts because thematically it felt silly to promise someone the world while also having the horrible thing you may become right there.
Unseemly Bargain
- Heal Prevention is just a cool mechanic I don't think it is utilized enough and I love a good co-operative card.
Leaking Madness
- I was really inspired by Thunder Speaker's opener to just go ham and nuke the city with Manifestations of Power and Glory with just a pile of energy and mortgaging your future a little. I wanted to do a take on it that players could discover themselves with this card.
- Basically if an explore happens in the starting city land, you can deal 1 damage to the city and kill the Explorer making a beast. Then prevent healing with Unseemly bargain. So on the following turn you can use an innate for a Dahan to strike first, taking out a city. It's super situational, but it's fun to have a path to take out cities early on and sort of discover it.
Sleepwalking
- Really core to moving presence, for targeting on innates and setting up future turns. The fact it can't target lands with Dahan really means you find yourself peeling Dahan apart for small skirmishes, which feels a lot different than someone like Thunder Speaker or defend heavy spirits who enjoy a big Dahan war party.
Play-wise. I've played about ten games with them so far. The spirit really relies on reclaiming Sleepwalking to consistently use both innates. The targeting requirements and short ranges on powers really feel puzzly, because I found myself having to work around large groups of Dahan because it's difficult to pull beasts into these lands since it relies on Sleepwalking to move a beast after solving a problem.
The main areas I'm concerned about are, Unseemly Bargain is a bit too strong. I originally thought preventing healing on Dahan and Invaders would be an interesting choice or benefit, but it rarely came up (except increasing the utility of leaking madness) and it's a bit too much utility on elements. That said -- without it, it's really challenging to trigger innates.
The other area is whether or not innate number two should generate fear at lower levels. The original idea is that Secret's Whispered Echo is slow early on then hits a critical mass of beasts on the board and then pulls them all up generating a lot of fear. It felt VERY rewarding, and is mechanically fun counting it all up, plus I felt a lot of pain the next few rounds without beasts to help support the Dahan there is a heck of a lot of bloodshed. At low difficulties I think the trade works, but I'm worried that at higher difficulties it'll be a big challenge to actually use.
Open to feedback, and would love to hear alternate Unseemly Bargain versions -- co-operative powers that make the other spirit think twice before they say yes, but don't break the game.
Subreddit
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- 2 years ago
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