2023-07-26

spirit island turn 1 victories

section 1: the original reddit post

a year ago, someone made a reddit post about winning on turn 1. there were several solutions found. there was one each with trickster, fractured, volcano, and snek. trickster, volcano, and snek all won against prussia 0, while the solution with fractured won against up to prussia 3. additionally, trickster and volcano won before the invader phase entirely, while fractured won during the invader phase using fear cards. snek took until the slow phase to win. the distinction between these was quite interesting, and i found the solutions that won before the invader actions generally more interesting. the solution with volcano has stopped working, because it uses a retired card, but all other solutions still work.

section 2: the skies herald challenge

fast forward 6 months to when nature incarnate was being previewed on backerkit, somebody named jonathan found a way to win on turn 1. it was apparently unconstrained enough that he had to add an additional constraint of using skies herald. this did take the entirety of turn 1, including the slow phase, however. it used ember-eyed behemoth and transformative sacrifice (which i will refer to as tsac), both of which were announced in the preview.

a bit later, someone in the si discord came up with a way to win with might earth, also using tsac and following the confines of using skies herald. this is even less constrained, since it won without actually resolving skies herald, and it also won before the invader actions. that way didn't use a spirit from ni, but it used one of the newly announced blight cards, shattered fragments of power. this solution no longer works after nature incarnate delivery, since shattered fragments of power was nerfed from 3 energy to 2 between the reveal and the delivery. however, since skies herald wasn't really used here, it could be replaced by something that grants energy with similar elements like gift of living energy, which would make up for the lost energy from the blight card.

it turns out that nature incarnate just has a bunch of cards that are amazing for early wins. this probably came at a cost of them being weaker as yolo majors.

section 3: exaltation of the incandescent sky

fast forward another 6 months, when another cool major was revealed in a very cool fashion. the card itself did a lot of supportive things, including granting an extra card play and two slow-to-fasts, or twice that in true solo. i felt like this card may be useful for causing some early wins.

since i was far more familiar with exaltation than most others were, i decided to try doing things with it. i tried getting fractured to win with it on turn 1, though it was pretty hard without any of fractured's other cards being affordable. fractured would be 1 energy short of being able to win on turn 1.

so the next spirit i turned to was bringer. a good perk about bringer is that they have a way to gain and play a major on turn 1 without needing to have enough energy to play it at the start of the turn. however, it still needed to actually pay the energy to play the card, so i would need to figure out how to gain the 7 energy in the first place.

enter the infinite loop. the most updated version is powerstorm, unlock, and most importantly, unleash. unleash was how this infinite loop ended up being energy positive.
with unleash, bringer could gain 8 extra energy at the beginning of the turn, and then call could be used to gain and play exaltation.

the general plan would be to start with call and unleash, forget unleash for energy, use call to gain and play exaltation, then use exaltation to play dreams and predatory nightmares, making predatory nightmares fast. optimally, this would generate 10 fear from exaltation, 2 from predatory, 2 from night terrors, and 3 from dreams, for a total of 17. however, the only way to get the 10 fear from exaltation is to destroy 2 cities. the only board where bringer can get 2 cities into its lands with a range 1 presence placement is board g against scotland, but then there would be no dahan among bringer's lands to let bringer gain call on midnight's dream. so the best is actually 14 fear, by exaltation destroying a city and a town. however, only one adversary would make this possible with the dahan positioned to let bringer gain the major with call, and that didn't mess with the damage in a different way, like england does with its extra health.

fortunately, saltsburg was accidentally entirely revealed in the unboxing video. its setup added a city in the inland land that already had the town, so if bringer could get a presence in that land, it could get the 7 fear from exaltation. also fortunately, on boards d and f, that's the land that bringer starts in. additionally, on board d, that land also starts with 2 dahan.

so it was fairly easy to achieve terror 2 against saltsburg 2. hell, it's even possible against saltsburg 6, since its terror 1 has only 4 cards. we just need to somehow gain 2 more fear using tl1 fear cards. and that's pretty easy to do with dahan reclaim fishing grounds, especially since i'd already need 3 dahan in d2 for maxing dreams of the dahan.

g3 anywhere, gain unleash a torrent, forget dread apparitions
play unleash, call (should have 0 energy remaining)
unleash forgets itself to gain 8 energy
call on midnight's dreams in d7 gains and plays exaltation, forgetting itself (should have 3 energy remaining)
exaltation plays dreams of the dahan and predatory nightmares, and deals 6 damage in d7 (1 energy remaining, 7 fear generated) and kicks the town from d7 to d1
predatory nightmares in d1 kicks the town back to d7, and pushes the 2 dahan from d1 to d2 (+2=9 fear generated)
dreams of the dahan generates 3 fear in d2, night terrors generates 2 more fear (+5=14 fear in total)

the board should now look like this:

dahan reclaim fishing grounds deals 3 damage in d2 (16 fear in total, hitting tl2)
mimic the dahan in d7 replaces the town with a dahan
dahan raid deals 3 damage in d7, destroying the city (18 fear in total) for a tl2 victory

section 4: violence

nature incarnate finally arrived at the end of june. with that came a lot of content, the most notable being bringer's violence aspect. it started with an extra energy, doubled card plays, and earned more fear.

i wondered how much violence could do on turn 1. i started with the turn 1 win of base bringer against saltsburg 6, and looked at how that win would play out with violence.

violence would generate 1-2 more fear from exaltation depending on the initial explore, 1 more from predatory nightmares, and 2 more from having bats scout instead of dreams. i could also play bats scout without exaltation, which lets the right innate gain 1 more fear. that would be 5-6 more fear in the fast phase, which could total 20 fear. that would be enough to take down a double adversary! i'd just need to figure out how to get rid of some extra buildings with the fear cards, which is pretty easy since we could easily have 1 fear card deal with each building. i will demonstrate this combo with saltsburg + france, that and saltsburg + prussia are the two simplest double 6s to demonstrate.

initial explore sands
g3 anywhere, gain unleash a torrent, forget dread apparitions
play unleash, call, and bats scout (should have 0 energy remaining)
night terrors generates 3 fear
unleash forgets itself to gain 8 energy
call on midnight's dreams in d7 gains and plays exaltation, forgetting itself (should have 3 energy remaining)
exaltation plays predatory nightmares, and deals 6 damage in d7 (1 energy remaining, 9 fear generated for 12 in total) and kicks the town from d7 to d1
predatory nightmares in d1 kicks the town back to d7, and pushes the 2 dahan from d1 to d2 (+3=15 fear in total)
bats scout deals 3 damage in d2 (20 fear total, hitting tl2)

the board should now look like this:

dahan reclaim fishing grounds deals 3 damage in d2, destroying the city (+2=22 fear in total)
mimic the dahan in d7 replaces the town with a dahan
dahan raid deals 3 damage in d7, destroying the city (+2=24 fear in total)
emigration accelerates removes the town in d1
wary of the interior removes the town in d8 for a tl2 victory

this, possibly with slightly modified kicking destinations and fear cards, work with most combos of saltsburg, france, prussia, and russia. the combos involving russia need some setup to earn fear from russia 2 kicking explorers, as russia starts with 5 fear cards at tl1.

section 5: tl4 on turn 1!?

violence starting with a free energy also has the extra bonus of being able to play tsac turn 1, so i started thinking about what i could do with tsac and call as the two initial card plays.

first, i wanted to get as much energy as i could with that use of call. so the 2 minors i got with tsac would both be to move dahan together, and i needed 2 minors because one minor could only move 3 dahan at a time. however, 6 energy from one use of call wasn't enough to play exaltation.

instead, i could do it using unlock the gates, which would also be an automatic threshold. tsac already had plenty of elements that bringer doesn't use, so all i needed to threshold unlock were sun, earth, and animal. promises of protection has all 3 of those elements and gathers dahan, which was perfect. however, i also remembered that skies herald existed by thinking about jonathan's challenge earlier, and it also gathered dahan, and had sun and animal. i eventually decided on using rites of the land's rejection instead of promises, because rites is 1-cost, and wouldn't interfere with as much if i wanted to play twinned days later, and all i needed besides skies herald was earth.

now that i have a way to threshold unlock the gates, i thought about if i could extend this combo even further, as i would only have 2 extra energy by this point which isn't enough to play both predatory nightmares and bats scout. i remembered that the threshold of solidify echoes existed, which would let me re-gain call and play it again.

with the second use of call, i could gain 6 more energy, and another major. i figured that a good major to play with this would be powerstorm, as it would be thresholded and let me repeat the 3 majors i already had in play.

so with the 8 energy that i'd have, it would probably be best to repeat tsac, then solidify, then unlock, as tsac gives destroyed presence for solidify to return, and solidify gains energy so it can't really be played last. 8 energy isn't quite enough to play all of these, but if tsac gives an energy-gaining minor, i could use it on myself to afford unlock. then unlock could give me exaltation for free, and i am still allowed to forget a card with unlock so i can forget that minor if it's a zero-cost. if i also get twinned days, i could repeat the energy-giving minor and give myself 4 extra energy, which would be enough for me to play a 4-cost major with call, and then exaltation could play both of the cards still in my hand.

so now that i had the setup done, i started looking at how this would actually defeat adversaries. i noticed immediately that melt earth would be able to double the fear i generate from towns and explorers, so that was obviously the major to take with the third call. i also looked into some minors that would be good, and some of the best minors turned out to be scour, drought, and twinned days. it took me a while to notice that scour required a sacred site to use, and that twinned days cost energy, so i dealt with those by having tsac sac fewer presence so i could use scour, and not playing predatory so i could repeat 1-cost cards with twinned days.

drought and scour also add blight, and depending on how i handle things, i could also end up flipping the blight card and getting aid from lesser spirits for another power card that i can use, though that isn't always necessary.

this combo is fairly easy to demonstrate with sweden plus a non-cowsburg adversary, so i'll demonstrate against scotland with the thicc fear deck.

initial explore mountains, royal backing sands
g3, gain tsac, forget dread apparitions
play tsac, call (0 energy left)
t sac both presence in d7, take skies herald and rites
skies herald and rites gather all the dahan into d1, and add a destroyed presence to d1
call gains 6 energy from d1, gains and plays unlock (2 energy left)
thresholded unlock gains and plays solidify
thresholded solidify adds destroyed presence somewhere, regains and plays call
call gains 6 energy from d1, gains and plays powerstorm (5 energy left)
thresholded powerstorm gains 3 energy, repeats tsac (5 energy left)
thresholded t sac everything but 1 presence in d1 plus 1 presence from tracks, take nature's connection, twinned days, and drought
give yourself 2 uses of nature's connection (9 energy left)
powerstorm repeats solidify (5 energy left)
thresholded solidify adds destroyed presence in d5, d7, d8, regains and plays call
call gains 6 energy from d1, gains and plays melt earth (7 energy left)
powerstorm repeats unlock (3 energy left)
thresholded unlock gains and plays exaltation

before any fear is generated, you're already playing 6 majors. the board looks like this:

melt earth d7 kicks a town to d5 and a town to d1 (7 fear total)
exaltation plays bats scout and deals 3 damage in d5 and 3 damage in d8, kicking it to d7 where melt earth kicks everything to d1, and generates 5 fear (2 energy left, +21=28 fear total)
drought in d1 kicks the 3 towns to d7, then melt earth kicks everything back to d1 (+18=46 fear total)
bats scout in d1 kicks the 3 towns to d7, then melt earth kicks everything back to d1 (+18=64 fear total)
twinned bats scout in d1 kicks the 3 towns to d7, then melt earth kicks everything back to d1 (1 energy left, +18=82 fear total)

scotland and sweden only have 20 fear cards when combined, which only needs 80 fear total. so this is already a victory at tl4!

section 6: thematic boards

so a bad thing about using the balanced side is that it only has 6 dahan. the thematic boards have a lot more. on northeast and east boards, it's pretty easy to get 7 dahan into one land with the 2 minors from tsac. this means i can get more energy with call, which means more flexibility with majors.

also, i found a way to play 1 more major, instead of predatory and bats scout, which would usually be better since i can probably find a major that works better than both of those combined. i settled on sweep into the sea as a pretty good one, especially when comboed with melt earth.

to make it work, i would gain entwined instead of melt earth, and use entwined to gain 2 majors, one of which is melt earth. this would also gain 4 more energy than how i had it previously, which would make it so that i didn't need to gain nature's connection and could play 2 distinct destructive minors plus twinned days with tsac. i would even have 2 spare energy at the end to pay for both of the repeats from twinned days.

so by this point i've worked through all the building-heavy combos by repeatedly droughting into the melted land. except for one pair: england cowsburg. for the longest time, i thought melt earth didn't work into this combo (it apparently works normally if the melt earth land is blighted), so i looked for a solution without it. scour didn't work nearly as well against this adversary pair either, since if it is used in an unblighted land, it would only have enough damage to destroy 2 towns. drought was unaffected because of the 1 damage to each building. so i decided to not use scour, and that freed up a minor for an energy-gaining minor, which let me play a 6-cost instead of melt earth. i settled on rumbling earthquakes, since that completely ignores the health bonuses from both adversaries.

since rumbling earthquakes needs a sacred site, i chose unnatural prolif as the blight card, especially since it also adds cities for rumbling earthquakes to target. also, to make even more invaders for sweep to destroy, i put thriving crops as a still-healthy island before unnatural prolif, and did some extra blight cascading.

initial explore mountains
g3, gain tsac, forget dread apparitions
play tsac, call (0 energy left)
t sac both presence in east4, take skies herald and rites
skies herald and rites gather all the dahan from east3 and east9 into east4, and add a destroyed presence to east4
call gains 7 energy from east4, gains and plays unlock (3 energy left)
thresholded unlock gains and plays solidify
thresholded solidify adds destroyed presence somewhere, regains and plays call
call gains 7 energy from east4, gains and plays powerstorm (7 energy left)
thresholded powerstorm gains 3 energy, repeats tsac (7 energy left)
thresholded t sac everything but 1 presence in east4 plus 1 presence from tracks, take nature's connection, twinned days, and drought
give yourself 1 use of nature's connection (9 energy left)
powerstorm repeats solidify (5 energy left)
thresholded solidify adds destroyed presence in east5, east7, east9, regains and plays call
call gains 7 energy from east4, gains and plays entwined power (10 energy left)
thresholded entwined power gains earthquakes and sweep, forgetting nature's connection and predatory, and gains 6 energy (16 energy left)
powerstorm repeats unlock (12 energy left)
thresholded unlock gains and plays exaltation

the board now looks like this: (ignore the lack of high immigration tile)

thresholded exaltation deals 6 damage in east7, kicking a town to east3 and an explorer to east4, plays earthquakes and sweep, and gains 5 fear (2 energy left, 9 fear total)
drought kicks 2 towns from east3 to east4, blight cascades to east2 (+11=20 fear total)
twinned drought kicks 3 towns from east2 to east1, blight cascades to east1, flipping thriving crops (1 energy left, +9=29 fear total)
thriving crops builds a city in east1, 2 towns in east4, and a town in east5
twinned drought kicks 3 towns from east1 to east2, blight cascades to east6, flipping unnatural prolif (0 energy left, +14=43 fear total)
unnatural prolif adds a presence and 2 cities in east5, and a dahan in east10 (not in east4 because of space concerns)
rumbling earthquakes destroys the 4 cities in east1 and east5, the town in east5, and 2 towns in east4, kicking all towns to east2 (+32=75 fear total)
sweep into the sea sweeps both towns and both explorers from east4 into east2, then destroys all 8 towns and 2 explorers in east2, kicking in a way to not have 7 buildings in 1 land (+26=101 fear total)

the board before sweep looks something like this, though in this picture i kicked a town from east2 to east4 instead of east4 to east2:

cowsburg 6 + england 6 have a total of 18 fear cards combined, which is only 90 fear, so this is already a victory at tl4!

section 7, all together now

using the combined sweep + melt earth strategy, i can actually generate enough fear to take out all adversaries at level 6 together!

the fear deck is pretty thicc. it's 15/19/12 which is a total of 46 fear cards, which makes 230 fear to burn through.

because of england lc, the most fear i can generate is around 240, if england lc is removed it's possible to generate upwards of 300 fear by adding thriving crops.

to place the escalation buildings where i want them to be, i will force scotland to escalate after prussia, france, and cowsburg, since scotland can add towns in lands with towns, while the other escalations can't. england escalation is forced to be in lands 2 or 3, since they each start with 4 buildings.

if i have prussia's deck changes after scotland, the stage 3 card will be first, which is better because i want mountains and wetlands to be the initial explore for maximum fear generation.

initial explore mwetlands, triggering cowsburg, france, russia, and saltsburg escalations, adding towns in east4, east5, and east6, adding 2 explorers in east9, and exploring in east1 and east5.
royal backing mescalate, triggering prussia, sweden, scotland, and england escalations, adding towns in east7, east9, and east4, and removing a disease in east2.
do the same thing as the previous section up to using powerstorm
thresholded t sac everything but 1 presence in east4 plus 1 presence from tracks, take scour, twinned days, and drought
powerstorm repeats solidify (3 energy left)
thresholded solidify adds destroyed presence in east5, east8, east9, regains and plays call
call gains 7 energy from east4, gains and plays entwined power (8 energy left)
thresholded entwined power gains melt earth and sweep, forgetting bats scout and predatory, and gains 6 energy (14 energy left)
powerstorm repeats unlock (10 energy left)
thresholded unlock gains and plays exaltation
exaltation kicks 3 explorers from east9 and east8 into east4, and plays melt earth and sweep (2 energy left, 11 fear total)

now that all the cards have been played, the board looks like this: (still without the high immigration tile. i also forgot to forget bats scout)

melt earth in east3 kicks both towns into east4 (+7=18 fear total)
drought in east2 kicks 3 towns into east3, melt earth kicks them back into east2 (+23=41 fear total)
twinned drought in east2 kicks 3 towns into east3, melt earth kicks them back into east2 (1 energy left, 64 fear total)
unnatural prolif adds a presence in east9 and adds a dahan and 2 cities in east10
scour kicks all 3 explorers and 2 towns from east7 into east3, melt earth kicks a town into east2 and everything else into east4 (+18=82 fear total)

now we're ready to use sweep into the sea. (the fear count is slightly off in this picture, there should be 6 less fear generated)

sweep into the sea pushes all 12 explorers and 5 towns from east4 into east3, melt earth kicks it all into east2 (+27=109 fear total)
this doesn't hit england lc because it's in the middle of an action tree (sweep threshold repeat is a triggered action), and losses are checked at the end of action trees
sweep into the sea kicks everything from east2 into east3, melt earth kicks all 15 explorers into east4, and evenly distributes the 9 towns among east2, east4, and east7 (+84=193 fear total)
twinned scour in east4 kicks 2 towns and all 15 explorers into east3, east3 kicks them back to east4 (+42=235 fear total)

235 is greater than 230. tl4 victory!

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