Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate Expansion Review

boardgamequest.com:

Spirit Island is currently my favorite board game. I love playing solo. I love playing with two players. I like playing with three players… aaannnddd it stops there. I own all the gameplay content Spirit Island has to offer. Well, I did, until I decided not to back the crowdfunding campaign for Nature Incarnate. I hesitated because I already had so much content. Did I really need more?

Well, that was answered when I was lucky enough to receive a review copy. I guess I do need more! But the question remains, if you like Spirit Island, will you want Nature Incarnate? Yes… but no… well definitely… maybe??

P.S. Jason had it wrong in his review of the base game. It should have been 5 Stars. I forgive you Jason.

Nature Incarnate adds 8 new spirits to Spirit Island. Of those, 3 are moderate complexity, 4 are high complexity, and one is very high complexity. New here are 20 new Aspects for the spirits (more on that below). Also included are new power cards (major only), fear and blight cards, and various new tokens. For those that like the added challenge, also included are two new scenarios and a new adversary.

There were aspects (get it?) that I enjoyed about the expansion and other design decisions that had me scratching my head.

What made me want to join the Dahan

My favorite inclusion in Nature Incarnate is the twenty new Aspects. At this point, with owning 37 Spirits, I prefer learning an Aspect to a new Spirit. An Aspect is easier to learn if you have already played with a spirit before. They simply modify the original spirit. An aspect can replace a special rule, or an innate power, modify its setup, or even add a new Power Card. These tweaks allow you to play your favorite Spirit with new content. My favorite Aspect included in Nature Incarnate is the Warrior Aspect for Thunderspeaker (from the base game). It replaces one of its Innate Powers with a new one, changes setup, adds an Incarna (more on this in a minute), and replaces one of its Unique Power Cards with