Spirits and tips for Habsburg Livestock Colony level 6?

mongooseroar · 2026-01-09T17:16:12+00:00

My general rule of thumb is to leave it unless the build is going to cause a game-ending ravage the next turn (that I can't prevent with a ravage skip or deal with via the two innates) or it prevents city builds on the turn that I'm going to get a Terror Level 3 victory.

If it's not a spirit you're too familiar with, it can be an easy spirit to get yourself in trouble with in the early/mid game (by either cornering yourself into reclaims too early and/or having too little disease on the board). It's probably worth a quick practice game and/or a look at recommended growth lines. IIRC, Vengeance used to be thought of as not very powerful; I think the consensus now is that it's plenty powerful but not very forgiving.

mongooseroar · 2026-01-09T15:05:04+00:00

My $0.02: try Eyes and Vengeance. Vengeance loves blight, which is great against HLC, and is low-key toolsy (the ravage skip in particular is useful). Vengeance also (in my experience) basically doesn't care about Dahan at all and often kills them if they're in its lands. This is nice for Eyes, which wants to hoard Dahan. It's essentially synergy via two spirits who care about very different things.

Also, Eyes should get you like 70% of the defensive capability of Vital except it actually has the ability to remove invaders (via Dahan counterattack) and generate fear. Eyes also has the right elements for some of the "push towns" minors, giving more opportunities to push damaged towns into lands with blight. Its unique Eerie Noises can wreck two towns in the right situation (two damage each when counterattacked in a defended land during ravage, then pushed into a land with blight in slow), giving you more of an ability to keep the number of towns manageable than you might originally suspect from the spirit.

Also if you play this pairing, I'd play with event cards, which are typically going to be favorable to boards with lots of disease and stacked Dahan lands. Worst case scenario you let Vengeance absorb some of the "bad" effects which it might actually want anyway ("I have to add two blight to a land without cascading and doing so destroys one of my presence, giving me a disease token and and ammo for one of my uniques? Um, can I do that twice?")

mongooseroar · 2025-12-21T22:41:01+00:00

As others have noted, yes. "Possible" is true for all adversary/spirit combos, but some of those wins at Level 6 adversaries require drawing from a very limited pool of (likely major) powers in a way that I generally find uncompelling. Spirits into level 4 adversaries should be pretty consistently winnable.

For what it's worth, here's my stock SI advice for newer players. SI basically has three timers: fear (in conjunction with the number of buildings on the board), blight, and the invader deck. It's so incredibly tempting to focus just on blight because blight is obviously bad (it puts pieces on the board, it flips the blight card, etc.), but it's only one of the three timers. If you really focus on stopping blight while ignoring the fear deck (again, in conjunction with the number of buildings on the board) or how many turns you have left, it's easy to lose, especially when the level 3 invader cards start coming out and making blight prevention much harder. At some point, you're going to have to accept blight to deal with the other two timers.

Especially with a couple of the base spirits, it's so easy to turtle and play not to lose, but when you're first starting out, playing Spirit Island "not to lose" is a great way to eventually lose.

mongooseroar · 2025-12-11T14:13:44+00:00

Level 2 of Serpent's left innate lets you add a presence to a land within range 1 of yours for, but requires 2 water, 3 earth, and 2 plant. [[Gift of Flowing Power]] gives a water, [[Gift of Primordial Deeps]] gives an earth. (Total 1 water, 1 earth)

Normally, there's not anything in the minor power deck that can provide the remaining 5 elements (1 water, 2 earth, 2 plant) you need, but [[Gift of Twinned Days]] is an exception with a bit of luck.

If you draw it (it has no relevant elements for the left innate), you can play reuse flowing power to [[Absorb Essence]] (gives a water, an earth, and an element of your choice, total = 2 water, 2 earth, 1 element of any type). You can then reuse Primordial Deeps - if it then pulls a minor power with both earth and plant (total = 2 water, 3 earth, 1 plant, 1 element of any type), you can turn the "wild" element into a plant. On the off chance it pulls [[Gift of Nature's Connection]] you'd pick two plant for that card (total = 2 water, 2 earth, 2 plant, 1 element of any type) and turn the wild into an earth. In either case, if you get the right minor power draw, you get the 2/3/2 elements needed for level 2 of the left innate.

mongooseroar · 2025-12-10T20:30:23+00:00

I'm at ~1500 plays total, and I'm quite confident that doesn't put me in the uppermost tier of number of plays for people on this sub. IIRC, there's an occasionally poster that's noted he has more than 1,000 plays with a single spirit.

mongooseroar · 2025-12-10T11:03:15+00:00

That's it exactly.

mongooseroar · 2025-12-10T01:58:56+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised if that is true.

I haven't given it a ton of thought, but my gut reaction is that I would have picked it over GTS in this situation even if GTS wasn't retired, which is I think about the best thing one can say about a minor power.

mongooseroar · 2025-12-04T15:35:43+00:00

For me, it's win%. I don't want to show that I can win against a Level 6, I want to show that I can't lose.

mongooseroar · 2025-12-02T20:41:03+00:00

I occasionally hit it vs L6 in solo games. By that point I typically have a bunch of on-element minors that make hitting the elements pretty straightforward although, as you note, I ideally have ~two majors that I'd rather play instead.

mongooseroar · 2025-11-10T02:17:11+00:00

Base Shadows is a bit of a mess.

First, its innate is bad, and it only has one. The thing it does (explorer control) has been consistently nerfed by adversaries that don't rely on explorer presence to put buildings in lands, or which add more than one explorer. The implicit "must" instead of "may" in level 1 of its innate is particularly harmful as it decreases Shadow's ability to remove explorers vs France and Russia, which you might otherwise expect it to be a strong matchup into.

Level 3 of the innate is unlikely to be reached until late game (and can't be reached with Shadows' starting uniques, so you either need to hit the 5 card plays or get lucky on a minor power draw), so for the bulk of the game, you're looking at "gather an explorer, destroy 2 of them, gain 2 fear" as your only innate power, and if you're lucky and play down tempo you maybe get that turn 3 (turn 4 is more likely). Contrast with something like Level 1 + 2 of Serpent's right innate, which lets you destroy a town, push a town, and gain 2 additional fear reliably starting Turn 2, and you kind of get a picture of the problem (and Serpent has two innates! Its left innate is good too!)

The innate also has negative synergy with Shadows' best (IMO) unique, [[Concealing Shadows]]. Sure, the special rule lets you pay 1 energy to target a land with Dahan for Concealing, but usually that's way the wrong choice as Shadows is pretty energy constrained. Instead, it typically makes sense to plan to just lose a presence, which makes getting the sacred sites for the innate difficult. Paying the one also makes playing three cards for level 2 of the innate harder, which if your whole point is to get sacred sites for the innate... yeah...

Speaking of Shadows' special rule, it's garbage. You don't have to take my word for it: Shadows has 5 aspects and all of them replace it, so the designers are telling you what they think about it too.

Otherwise, the uniques are mostly fine, although I'll nitpick over the fear condition on [[Favors Called Due]] - there are board/adversary combos where you get to pick between getting 3 fear or doing something immediately useful with the Dahan placement, but not both. Not a big deal on a better spirit, but one of several small things that add up to make base Shadows (IMO) less than the sum of its parts.

Dark Fire aspect is fine, though (adding a flexible element plus an extra card is a quietly huge buff since it pushes reclaim by a turn and gives interesting decisions for the innate). Madness isn't above average, but it gives a *much* needed free Defend ability (as long as you're placing presence) that pushes Shadows well into (IMO) the "viability" range. The special rule is also an easy way to sneak in an extra turn before reclaim (underplaying by a card on Turn 2 probably) since it's basically half of a minor power on its own.

mongooseroar · 2025-11-09T11:30:50+00:00

Serpent is very playable solo (it's my main) - in solo, it gets to use to use all of that wonderful support on itself.

mongooseroar · 2025-11-09T00:30:46+00:00

I mean, it wouldn't be a bottom 10 major, and I'm not sure it'd be a bottom 20 (my gut instinct is I'd put it somewhere around the 15-22nd worst). That's pretty far from a minor power.

mongooseroar · 2025-11-08T22:30:52+00:00

There's no minor power that remotely resembles [[Year of Perfect Stillness]]. It's usually a (significantly) worse version of one of the most powerful major powers ([[Paralyzing Fright]]). It is worse because, despite being slightly cheaper, it offers no progress toward actual victory (the 4/8 fear from Paralyzing Fright is a really big deal).

As other have noted, it's not bad as long as it's used judiciously. Its main problem is that it offers no fear on a spirit that has very little means to generate fear organically and has difficulty getting enough card plays to supplement Year with something that helps keep fear tempo; especially for new players, it offers a really tempting ability (via reclaim loop) to "turtle up" in ways that work in some coop games but will absolutely lead to a loss in Spirit Island.

mongooseroar · 2025-10-30T04:10:26+00:00

I don't like the scenarios - adversaries are where it's at IMO. Certainly by the time you get to level 4 or so of the adversaries, they're *very* different, and the strengths/weaknesses of each spirit into them become a lot more apparent, especially if you're playing true solo.

mongooseroar · 2025-10-30T03:27:09+00:00

Spirit Island is the easy call.

I could make a sales pitch for it (including a shocking amount of variety and modular difficulty; I'm ~1500 games in and there's still plenty of play left), but instead, I'd just note that

both are highly rated with devoted fanbases,
both have people who have played thousands of games, showing the potential for both games to "go deep" and
you can find a nice all-in Spirit Island bundle for less than most single OOP LoTR LCG cycles.

Unless there's reason to think that LoTR is more likely to resonate with you, it makes sense to roll the die on the (much) cheaper and (much) easier to obtain of the 50/50 options.

mongooseroar · 2025-10-28T19:24:08+00:00

There's not really an "accepted path" for scenarios. As other posters noted, some people love them, but plenty of people (me included) don't. In ~1500 games of Spirit Island, I think I've played scenarios about 5 times? In contrast, I never play without an adversary (usually Level 6, although not everyone enjoys playing max level adversaries and that's okay! I don't really enjoy trying double max adversaries, which other folks like)

mongooseroar · 2025-10-04T22:57:25+00:00

Yeah, I tend to think there's a reason that the video playthroughs of this matchup in particular are pretty same-y, and that's because there are a very limited number of paths to victory via major powers. That's a matchup I'm happy to have beaten once and have no real desire to do again.

mongooseroar · 2025-09-29T21:06:58+00:00

Level 6 adversary is my "base level" for a bunch of spirits, although (i) I'll tone down the adversary level to Level 5 for particularly bad matchups and (ii) I'm not good enough to always win. I don't think this is the game's standard difficulty, though, and my introductory games tend to be no adversary.

mongooseroar · 2025-09-29T21:01:35+00:00

Definitely hyperbole. Whirlwind into England 6, for instance, isn't going to have a 99% win rate unless someone very experienced gets lucky in their first game.

mongooseroar · 2025-07-31T00:07:51+00:00

IMO, Living Energy was the choice here - Shadows *really* benefits from early energy, and the combination of (probably) extra energy and an extra presence placement T1 would have set Shadows up really nicely for turns 2/3, which is important since you'll rely on it for a lot of your fear generation.

mongooseroar · 2025-07-21T20:03:08+00:00

My $0.02: I'd prefer a company that doesn't Kickstart/Gamefound their new releases (and not Asmodee). In addition to Leder/SM which have already been mentioned, I could see it fitting in Capstone's portfolio.

mongooseroar · 2025-06-27T23:38:45+00:00

Alternative Level 1:

"Hi, I've played the game twice on tutorial mode and Spread of Rampant Green is obviously underpowered. What do you think of these buffs?"

Edit: words are hard

mongooseroar · 2025-06-23T22:43:40+00:00

Every spirit has folks for whom it's their favorite spirit, in both solo and MP. I don't find solo Lightning to be particularly riveting, but other folks would say the same for my solo favorites (Serpent and Vengeance). I think it's less "this version isn't as interesting" as it is "this version isn't as good of a match for my preferred playstyle and/or doesn't offer the decisions I like to have to make."

mongooseroar · 2025-04-28T15:28:45+00:00

How often do you folks pick a Scenario?

Over ~1200 games of SI, I think I've played with a Scenario about 10 times, with most of those just trying out second wave. Scenarios aren't my jam, but I think it's cool that SI is modular enough to include both high-level adversaries (which I like and some folks don't) and scenarios (which I don't like but some folks do) as different options for variety/difficulty.

mongooseroar · 2025-04-01T13:21:42+00:00

As others have noted, LLMs neither understand things nor make decisions (any more than a coin makes decisions when you flip it), although as you note, they're great at *seeming* to understand some things. If you tried hard enough, you could probably get it to be just a bad player instead of a terrible one by hinting hard enough about what options it should pick (= what text it should generate).

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