Glossary

Alphabetical reference for Spirit Island terminology — both official (rulebook) and community (BGG + Discord + latentoctopus). For deeper treatment, follow the chapter link.

Alpha player — the coop-game player who optimizes everyone else’s turns, often unintentionally. See The Alpha-Player Problem.

Aspect — variant spirit panels introduced in Jagged Earth + later expansions. See Aspects.

Badlands — token adding +1 damage to any power targeting that land. Central to Ember-Eyed Behemoth and Wildfire plays.

Beasts — token type. Some spirits (Fangs, Many Minds) create + use Beasts for damage or as-presence.

Blight — land corruption. Added when ravage damage exceeds absorption. Cascades when a land hits its 2nd blight. Tracks toward loss.

Blight cascade — when a land acquires a 2nd blight, it triggers a cascade effect, typically adding blight to adjacent lands. Feared end-game spiral.

Board wipe — killing most/all invaders in a land with a single high-damage power. Often a Major Power’s job.

Bounce — moving a power / invader back to its origin land. Trickster-characteristic.

Build — invader phase where invaders construct: town from explorer, city from town.

Card play (CP) — the number of cards a spirit plays per turn. Starts at 1–2, grows via presence track.

CE (Cumulative Energy) — total energy across the game; latentoctopus notation.

CP — see Card play.

Dahan — native humans of the island. 2 HP, deal 2 damage in ravage retaliation. See Dahan fundamentals.

Defend — reduce ravage damage by a specified amount.

Destroy — kill (invaders + dahan) or remove (presence + blight).

Digital bias — ways mindwanderer / Spirit Island Digital data diverges from tabletop reality. See Digital vs. Tabletop.

Disease — token type. Vengeance’s primary tool. Concentrated per land, not spread.

Drown / drowning — Ocean-specific. Pushing a coastal invader into the ocean removes it.

Early Major — opening variant where a spirit gains a Major Power by T2–T3.

Element — one of eight: Sun, Moon, Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Plant, Animal. Used for innate thresholds.

Energy — currency you spend on card plays. Rolls over turn-to-turn.

Engine — a spirit’s repeatable mid-game scaling pattern. “Turning on the engine” = hitting the threshold round where your mechanics chain.

Escalation Effect — adversary-specific rule that fires each turn (often on the Invader Deck advance).

Event card — from the Branch & Claw + Jagged Earth + Nature Incarnate event decks. Fires at start of turn; adds chaos.

Explore — invader phase where new explorers arrive — from ocean into coastal lands, or from lands with invaders into adjacent lands.

Fast — power timing window before the Invader Phase.

Fear — the game’s win-currency. Fills the fear pool; each pool-fill triggers a Terror flip.

Fear card — from the fear deck. Drawn when the fear pool fills. Has Terror-1/2/3 quality.

Fear-farm — archetype where a spirit wins via Terror-3 rather than board-clearing.

Forget — permanently remove a card from your deck. Not the same as discard.

Full bottom / Full top — opening pattern emptying one presence track.

Fundamentals — see Part II of this book.

Gn — the n-th growth option, left-to-right. G3 = third option.

Gather — move a dahan or invader into a target land.

Growth — the spirit phase at turn-start. Pick 1 growth option from your spirit panel.

Hybrid — opening taking presence from both tracks roughly equally.

Incarna — Nature Incarnate–expansion mechanic. A physical token for certain spirits that acts as a powered-up presence.

Innate power — spirit-specific abilities printed on the spirit panel, activated by element thresholds.

Invader Deck — the deck of cards driving ravages/builds/explores. Stage I/II/III phases.

Level (adversary) — 0–6 difficulty gradient. Each level adds rules.

Major Power — expensive universal cards; usually require a Forget when gained.

Mantle — Shadows’ Unique; a defend + fear card.

Martyr play — deliberately letting a dahan or presence die to kill invaders via retaliation. See Dahan.

Minor Power — cheap universal cards.

Mists Shift and Flow — Shroud’s Special Rule for gather-based targeting.

Moon — element. Central for Shadows, Bringer, Many Minds.

Multi-handed — one player controlling 2+ spirits. Common solo format.

Nature Incarnate (NI) — major 2024 expansion adding 9 spirits + Incarna mechanic.

nCP — n card plays per turn.

nE — n energy per turn.

Offer — the 4 cards revealed when you gain a Minor or Major.

Plantation — France-specific adversary mechanic; dahan get enslaved.

Play Difficulty — the official 0–3 rating indicating how hard it is to play a spirit well.

Presence — spirit tokens on the board.

Pressure shape — which axis an adversary presses on: time, board, fear, blight, dahan.

Punish — a matchup that exploits an adversary’s weakness; also: an adversary that punishes mistakes heavily.

Push — move a dahan or invader out of a target land.

Range N — card can target lands up to N away from your presence.

Ravage — invader phase where invaders damage dahan + add blight if damage overflows.

Reclaim — return discarded + played cards to your hand.

Reclaim cycle — turns between one Reclaim and the next.

Reclaim loop — reclaiming every turn (rare, specific spirits).

Sacred site — 2+ presence in the same land. Enables certain innates.

Scenario — pre-game modifier adding rules + objectives.

Second Wave — Branch & Claw scenario where invaders return.

Slow — power timing window after the Invader Phase.

Splat — slang for a massive single-target damage play.

Stage I/II/III — the three phases of the Invader Deck, each shifting adversary rules.

Stat — a win-rate number; always qualify by difficulty + spirit + player count.

Strife — token type. Reduces the target invader’s next-turn damage.

Sun — element. Thunderspeaker and Lightning primary.

Target — the land a power applies to.

Terror Level — 1/2/3. Each flip loosens the win condition.

Terror flip — when the fear pool fills, a fear card draws and the terror level may advance.

Territory split — multiplayer agreement on who covers which part of the board.

Threshold — the element-count requirement to activate an innate’s level.

Time Passes — phase at round end. Fear cards resolve; damage clears from surviving invaders.

Tier list — ordered ranking of spirits by community consensus.

Tokens — Badlands, Beasts, Dahan, Disease, Presence, Strife, Wilds, Blight (on board), Invaders (Explorer/Town/City), Incarna.

Unique Power — spirit-starting cards unique to that spirit.

Wilds — token type. Adds dahan behavior and some element effects.

Win rate — % of games won in a population. Always qualified.

Cross-references

• Core terminology chapter — full tables with strategic context.
• Sources — where each term originated.

Last revised: 2026-04-19