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Spirit Island is a cooperative game where you take on the role of a spirit defending your island against colonising invaders. The game is challenging, complex and highly strategic but offers deep, rich and satisfying gameplay. The Feather And Flame expansion is no exception!
Each player takes on the role of a different spirit of the land with their own unique elemental powers. The spirits responsibility is to rid the land of the invading forces. Each turn players simultaneously select power cards to play, paying the required energy. Players can activate power cards in any order but come in fast and slow cards. Fast cards are played earlier on in the round and slower power cards played towards the end of the round (after the invader phase). Playing certain power cards may give you access to your spirit's inherent abilities.
The invaders will also ravage, build and expand into various regions of the map each round. They will attempt to spread blight, destroy your presence and remove the indegenous Dahan. As the spirits you have powerful attacks and powers at your disposal to fight back and save your land.
Each spirit feels different and plays different. Each game, despite trying to achieve the same objective, feels different. The replayability is high just in the core game. Add to this the Branch & Claw expansion from 2017, the Jagged Earth expansion from 2020 and now the Feather & Flame expansion which has just been released there is a huge amount of content which will keep you entertained for many, many plays. Feather and Flame expansion is a combination of promo packs one and two boxed together in a single expansion.
Final Thoughts
So, what does Feather and Flame bring to the table? In this small box expansion you will get four new spirits to get to grips with, one new adversary to tackle, two new scenarios to test yourself against and a bunch of new cards.
Feather And Flame: Spirits
The spirits in this box are probably the main draw for me. However, these are not for the faint hearted. Ranging from high complexity (x3) to very high (x1) complexity these spirits bring depth and complexity that will take some time to get grips with. The growth paths branch off in multiple directions with Finder of Paths Unseen and to a lesser extent Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island. Heart of the Wildfire gives you fire tokens which, with certain powers trigger additional actions. Similar to Heart of the Wildfire, Downpour Drenches the World gives you access to water tokens. The use of these additional tokens is not new and was seen in Branch and Claw but I like how they have been incorporated and utilised in this expansion.
The spirits took me a good few plays to get to grips with and I am still not sure how to effectively run them but they are a lot of fun to play. I am always amazed at how different the spirits feel in each expansion and Feather and Flame is no exception. These spirits are a great addition if you are huge Spirit Island fan and will give you a lot of additional content to play.
And The Rest
Scotland is included in this expansion as an adversary, with a base difficulty of one. Whilst the adversary is just more of the good stuff that was included in the core game, it again adds more content and more replay value to the game.
There are two new scenarios, A Diversity of Spirits and Varied Terrains. Diversity of Spirits adds some limited communication elements for a thematic touch. Why should the air spirits and the water spirits speak the same language? This is not my favourite scenario to be honest but I can see how some people will enjoy the limited communication aspect. Varied Terrains which adds a unique effect to each terrain type. This is a pretty interesting scenario which I have only touched on in my plays but I had fun with it. Both of these scenarios, as with everything in this expansion, adds more replayabilty and more content for hardcore Spirit Island fans to dig into.
Overall, if you are a fan of Spirit Island and have not picked up the promo packs one and two yet then this could be a good option for you. It adds more content, more replayability and four challenging spirits to get to grips with that have some interesting mechanisms. This is not an expansion that I would recommend picking up first however. But it is a must if you are a fan.
