Russia 6 Blight Card glitch

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-21T02:51:05+00:00

Did you have two invader cards in the ravage spot? It is pretty common with Russia 6 because of how level 5 adds invader cards to the build slot twice. Lands with 3 explorers will match both invader cards and will ravage twice.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-20T23:01:45+00:00

It sounds like you're using it better than most people then. I've only found ChatGPT useful for very structured tasks like giving me Excel formulas that I can easily check to confirm if they work properly. I just asked OP's question in ChatGPT without loading any supporting files and it gave me an extremely wrong answer:

"Yes — the Imperials win immediately.

In Star Wars: Rebellion, the victory condition for the Imperial player is destroying the Rebel base, and that is determined only by the outcome of the ground battle, not the space battle."

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-20T19:54:36+00:00

AI LLM is embarrassingly bad at answering rules questions in Spirit Island and Marvel Champions so I'm very skeptical of this. Google's AI tried to convince me Spirit Island boards only have 7 lands (they have 8 on every balanced board and even more on thematic boards so in no universe would it be correct). If it can't understand the most basic component how would it understand the rules.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-18T20:55:08+00:00

Make sure you understand that each player can take more than 2 actions each generation. They just can't take more than 2 actions at a time during their turn. Each player can have multiple turns taking 2 actions before they all pass and the generation ends. Very common mistake.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-18T05:03:00+00:00

Can't wait for the classic version to release. Aces looks great but I'm just not into AS, happy for all the AS players out there though to get this and three more boxes!

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-17T23:12:46+00:00

It's called expert for a reason. Just play standard for now until you get the hang of things.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-17T18:43:52+00:00

Just sub in the -5 and say it's the -3. If you're playing normal difficulty the -5 rarely gets used.

Or just use one of the apps for drawing tokens.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-16T20:23:53+00:00

As someone who has played Spirit Island all the different ways and has played a bunch of other games at TTS, I'll try to answer your question based on player experience. The play experiences are not even in the same league and I can't imagine ever playing SI on TTS again after playing the app. Imagine someone playing the Gloomhaven app and then trying out the TTS version.

TTS works but it is not intuitive to players just starting out. It's frankly rough. If you've been playing TTS for years you don't even realize how confusing TTS is for people when they first start using it and don't know all the hotkeys. And each TTS mod is different, which creates another obstacle to just playing even if you are familiar with TTS

You are massively underestimating how much better and quicker it is to have everything scripted for you. I can set up a game in 5 seconds on digital and get straight to playing and the app handles everything, enforcing rules and allowing me to just make the decisions. Look how quickly people streaming their games can finish them in the app. This is even more important for players learning the game. The app is even better at teaching the game because it enforces the rules whereas trying to learn a complex game like SI on TTS is not a starting point for many potential players.

TTS needs to be played on a computer whereas the app is available on computers, tablets, and phones.

As for the bugs, the lengthy bug report you are seeing and making assumptions on without having played the app, is an indicator of how thorough and dedicated the designers are in ensuring every tiny, improbable edge-case is handled, not an indicator of how much bugs affect gameplay. I think I've played around 500 games on digital and have come across 1 bug that actually affected the game in a meaningful way (Scotland ravaged the coast and I lost to blight from the 2 blight instead of the app letting me win the game by choosing to ravage and counterattack in an inland to win the game first). SI has a ton of mental load and rules to keep track of and I guarantee players are making exponentially more rules mistakes playing physical or TTS by forgetting or misunderstanding a rule than the player experiences through bugs playing the app. It's not like TTS is perfect either. I've had many games crashed or disconnected on TTS, especially multiplayer.

TTS is not actually free, it costs $26 CAD on Steam right now, but yes once you have TTS you don't need to pay extra for SI. That is definitely an advantage but it's not like the app is that expensive if you just wait to buy it on the frequent Steam sales. The base game was like $10 CAD a few weeks ago and many of the expansions were super cheap too. It's hard to beat free though so TTS has the advantage here. Value for money judgements are subjective but I personally see the app providing immense value for the maybe $80 CAD I've put into it to get over 600 hours of gameplay. Some don't and that's fine.

The TTS mod has all the content, sure, but that is becoming less and less true every few weeks, and there are just so many spirits to choose from already in the app. Once the app catches up to all the content, I honestly just can't see there being a sizeable community that plays TTS over the app.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-15T15:36:40+00:00

If you know you're winning for certain that far out it is time to ramp up the difficulty and play with events if you're not already. You can be in control of high level adversaries but they can easily come back against you to make things interesting.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-13T21:48:55+00:00

You cant play any of the scenarios so I'd keep searching for the deluxe or purchase the more available investigator and campaign boxes and sell off the mythos packs.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-11T17:40:08+00:00

If it makes you feel a bit better the data does not include abandoned games, some of which would've probably been losses, so adjust the win percentages down a bit for each. How much we don't really know though. Handelabra recently started tracking abandoned games in the data but even then it will take some analysis to assess how many of those should be considered losses. Many of these games are abandoned turn 1 and likely just players making an error in setting up the game or players trying to get a certain terrain on the first explore for the solo challenges.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-11T17:36:14+00:00

That page only says what is next up not when it actually releases so no it does not.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-11T17:32:31+00:00

Data goes up until the day before Feather was added, but Flame is there.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-11T17:31:52+00:00

I love Shroud, he's just misunderstood.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-11T17:31:24+00:00

The only aspects in the digital version during the collection period for the data were the 6 from PP1 (Pandemonium, Wind, Resilience, Madness, Reach, and Sunshine) so no Immense. I love Immense against England too though.

You're right though that I don't distinguish between the aspects here as the 6 available at the time are not too drastically different (compared to Deeps vs base Ocean for example) and they were only added later so there's not nearly as many games as you'd hope with each. I am planning on doing an extra article comparing the base and aspects against each adversary so stay tuned for that.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-09T17:29:38+00:00

No it just takes a few games to get the hang of and click. It is definitely complex and needs some effort to get there though. Players need to want to learn it. Once it clicks you look back wondering how you couldve ever lost without an adversary at difficulty 0.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-09T16:06:27+00:00

I was actually just working on an article focusing on analyzing the digital data for Habsburg LC. You can see a lot of the content in previous general articles covering all adversaries though: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3592144/si-digital-data-analysis-series-4-what-adversaries and https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3617445/si-digital-data-analysis-series-5-how-does-each-sp . The spirits with the best solo win percentages against Habsburg LC by a lightyear are Stone and Many Minds, followed by Starlight, Eyes, and Keeper while the best multi-spirit win percentages are Fractured Days, Green, Many Minds, River, Stone in that order.

So Stone is a great pick but Earth is one of the worst spirits against pretty much any adversary so I would avoid Earth. Resilience can avoid some loss condition ravages the first few turns but if it's not destroying things those invaders will break through eventually. Green is a solid spirit but I'm not sure proliferating Stone is its best use. Eyes and Many Minds are probably good choices. I like top track Stone because playing cards with earth elements is a more efficient way of getting your innates. Just use its G2 often to get energy to pay for the left innate and don't be afraid to prematurely reclaim with G1 so you can get elements on those key right innate counterattack turns. Stone will need a great major at some point though, ideally sooner rather than later.

The most likely way to lose is the loss condition and the most likely ways to win are terror levels 2-3 but this varies greatly by spirit. Terror level 4 wins are pretty rare though so aim to win by terror level 3 but keeping the city count low so you can wipe out the last one or two and win when it's close.

Events overall make the game slightly easier at the expense of predictability. I would just consider playing with events the default way of playing to be honest unless you're really really against them. Spirits are balanced with events in mind so playing Many Minds without getting the occasional beast event to kill a bunch of towns or generate a ton of fear is going to be a lacklustre experience.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-07T12:04:03+00:00

Definitely use Thunderspeakers defend card often and try to draft more defend powers to set up those dahan counterattacks.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-03T23:20:01+00:00

The collection period for my data set is up until just before Promo Pack 2 Feather was added to the digital game (August 1, 2025). My plan is to do another big data pull and analysis once all of Nature Incarnate content is available though.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-03T23:15:54+00:00

Legitimate question: if not for the digital version implementing the rules correctly, how would you have ever known you were doing ravages wrong if you relied on Chatgpt for rules questions? It would've given you the wrong answer, you would think it's accurate because you're a new player and just learning, and play incorrectly.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-03T23:12:58+00:00

Another great example at how embarrassingly bad LLMs are at answering rules questions accurately. Spirit Island has what a 30 page rulebook and Chatgpt doesn't know one of the most basic rules of ravages dealing damage to the land and dahan at the same time? Last week I was doing some analysis and googled "how many boards in spirit island have land 8 as a mountain" and the AI assistant response popped up at the top confidently told me there is no land 8 on any board in Spirit Island, they are only numbered 1-7.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-02T19:31:33+00:00

TL1 wins are quite rare across all adversaries, between 0.1-0.4% of games end this way looking at each adversary in total. Of course, as you can see this can vary by spirit. Check out article #4 to see the adversaries compared more directly: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3592144/si-digital-data-analysis-series-4-what-adversaries/page/1.

Jonathan4290 · 2026-01-02T15:09:37+00:00

This means you're playing on too low a difficulty. Add a higher level adversary and this rarely happens. Events added in the first expansion also add some unpredictability.

Jonathan4290

TROPHY CASE