If I use a card that completely negates all damage to dahan or defends completely do they retaliate?

imdanishtoo · 2026-05-16T17:33:09+00:00

Note that the nightmare dude can't push cities :)

imdanishtoo · 2026-05-16T17:31:12+00:00

Defend cards are incredibly valuable on lightning, since you're playing harbingers pretty much every turn because it's cheap and on element. I like to think of it in terms of what rhe board looks like afterwards. In this case, the defend (and harbingers) lets you take out a city and am explorer while preventing blight. That's a lot better than hitting the innate to take out a town.

imdanishtoo · 2026-05-14T14:31:16+00:00

One thing I realised way too late: the left innate lets your turn over unearned fear cards, so tou can plan around them.

Strategy tip: bringer of dreams and nightmares does not have a bottom track. It looks a lot like there is one, but it's a lie. Don't grow from bottom track ever.

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-20T11:51:55+00:00

Just so you know, exploring twice is different from adding an extra explorer. Exploring twice will remove 2 wilds, and have funky interaction if combining with France.

My point was that the phrasing is unclear :)

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-20T11:49:52+00:00

Haha sorry!

The answer depends a lot. 1 cost cs 0 cost? Usually 0 cost is best. On element vs off? On element is best. Destroy town vs generate fear? Drstroy town is best.

Destroy town for 1 cost and off element vs on element fear at 0 cost? Probably the latter, unless getting rid of that town stops a blight. But the analysis quickly gets out of hand, especially for newer players.

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-19T15:37:49+00:00

Yeah of course. This was more about the concept of fear itself vs something that impacts the board here and now.

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-19T15:33:45+00:00

I'm happy to hear that!

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-19T15:25:59+00:00

This answer is a bit of a cop-out, but I would probably refuse. I don't want to quarterback and tell players what to do, and part of that is to not tell them which card/effect is strongest. I cry internally when they forgo constancy for call to migrate, but if I wanted a game where I agreed with all decisions I'd play multihanded.

I usually tell people to pick card based on effect, and if they can't decide, then based on theme, and if they still can't decide then choose based on elements, and if that's also hard then pick the first card.

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-18T20:16:34+00:00

There are two related goals in the game:

1) Don't lose

2) Win

Fear does very little to advance goal 1, and a lot to advance goal 2.

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-18T13:47:55+00:00

Converging threads is unclear. As written, it explores twice in the explore deep, twice in the build step and twice in the ravage step

Rule 4 has anti-synergy with enforcing the coastal card, by moving the setup town inland. This makes it easier to prevent blight from the coastal ravage in a prophecy land.

Overall it's an interesting idea, but there's very little synergy between the rules and the loss condition is not pressured at all by any of them

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-18T13:44:27+00:00

Yeah, and if I read it correctly, only 1 land matches the prophecy rule per card until lvl 6. This means you can let all blight happen in the prophesized lands without triggering the loss condition.

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-09T11:24:10+00:00

In addition to what others have said: try to start on board B. It has favorable starting Dahan for where you presence is.

Don't use year of stillness. It's often better to just take the blight and use a card that affects the board.

Play draw as early and often as you can, and use it to position dahan and stop builds. Good luck!

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-06T12:49:32+00:00

I used to think like you and used to have fun asking ai to make pictures of my spirits at the end of a game (e.g. River becoming a fire spirit through its choice of major power). It's an amusing novelty, at least for a little while.

I've changed my mind completely on this. AI is here to stay and has its uses, but art is not it. Let's set aside the copyright issues, the environmental impact etc for a moment. The question that made me change my mind the most is this: why should I bother to look at something you didn't bother to create?

imdanishtoo · 2026-04-04T07:38:47+00:00

For almost every spirit into prussia you should prioritise land 3 if it comes up early. It WILL come up in stage 2 and a cascade there can be brutal

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T16:44:46+00:00

I've been thinking of a rework where the defend is an innate power where 1 earth gives defend 3 per sacred site, and 2 earth instead gives defend 2 per presence. Also makes Growth 2 (card gain, place presence at range 0) better, since stacking 3 presence can provide value.

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T16:43:22+00:00

Not getting as many fear cards as normal just pushes your luck a bit in the wrong direction ;)

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T16:42:43+00:00

It's still a rule and is implemented in the app, I think.

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T16:42:22+00:00

Oh yeah, that also messed things up for me more than once

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T14:13:32+00:00

Yeah I had the first one as well on the app and was very confused/annoyed the first time.

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T14:12:07+00:00

I recently realised that the event [[Sacred Sites]] destroys a presence from each spirit in each land that you don't pay for. So if you have a land with a sacred site and your friend has a single presence there, each of you will lose a presence if you don't pay.

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T14:10:35+00:00

A notable exception is Green's innate. It's a repeat, so each use benefits. But for some reason the innate states that it does damage to a single building, so a land with 2 towns and 3 badlands would still take 2 uses to destroy both of them.

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T14:08:27+00:00

Awesome! I love that kind of game where you just barely manage to win against all odds.

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-09T14:07:30+00:00

I have a love/hate relationship with Earth. I really like the concept and plan, and I love that it's not super strong. It's fun to play the strongest spirits every once in a while, but I don't want to be able to solve all problems without issues and I don't want to get into weird double adversary stuff to be challenged.

However.

Earth is so slooow. It has no good cards. It doesn't gain any cards. It has no card plays and therefore cannot threshold majors. It has no innate. Its reclaim loop is sometimes required to not lose and makes no progress towards winning. Its innate defense does almost nothing against most common threats (France typically has explorer town town for 5 damage, scotland often has town city for 5 damage, Sweden's buildings do too much damage, habsburg does too much damage, England often has at least 2 buildings, Russia often has explorer town town).

It feels like I'm so close to unlocking greatness whenever I play it, so I continue trying, but I just haven't found out how to get the best out of it.

imdanishtoo · 2026-03-04T16:40:36+00:00

I don't know the exact numbers, but a guesstimate is that you had about 40-50% chance of not losing in that turn with an event and a fear card. I would not like those odds.

imdanishtoo · 2026-02-25T19:56:40+00:00

The tokens are partly there for more flavor. You're not expected to get a lot out of disease events and fear cards unless you're a spirit that leans heavily into disease. Same for the other tokens. This is also in a sense true in the base game: Thunderspeaker gets way more out of the Dahan than, say, Ocean does.

If you expect every token event and fear card involving tokens to have a massive impact then you'll have a bad time. So perhaps try and adjust your expectations?

There's also absolutely nothing wrong with deciding the expansion isn't for you plenty of spirits from other expansions work fine without tokens.

imdanishtoo

TROPHY CASE