It took me 3 hours to teach my group the rules for one game of Spirit Island

I was so excited to finally get this to the table last weekend. Everyone was on board, we had snacks, the whole deal. But by the time I explained the invaders, the blight, the growth phases, and the event cards, it was almost 11 PM. We got through maybe two rounds before everyone was too tired to keep going. Has anyone else had a game night derail because a rulebook turned into a novel?

2 comments

2 Comments

briancampbell12d agoMost Upvoted

Flip through the rulebook first and make a cheat sheet on index cards. I did that for my group when we first tried Spirit Island, and it cut the explanation time down to about an hour. I wrote down the turn order step by step, the invader actions in plain English, and a quick reference for what the different symbols mean. We still had to look up a few things, but nobody fell asleep or checked their phones. The blight cards still tripped us up, but that's a problem for the second game, not the first one.

calebw5012d ago

Yeah the cheat sheet thing is a lifesaver. I did the same thing for Dune Imperium and it saved our night, I just wrote out the turn phases on a post it note and passed it around. Honestly half the time the rulebook is just way too wordy for what you actually need to remember mid game.