Sources & Citations

This book is a synthesis, not an original work. Every strategy claim draws from the community’s public deep-dives, designer interviews, statistical datasets, and authoritative rules references. This page credits them.

Primary strategy authorities

Rei (BGG) — the canonical format source

Rei’s BGG guides for Many Minds, Shroud, and Vengeance define this book’s spirit-chapter template and terminology. When Rei has a guide on a spirit, it is cited as the #1 source.

• Many Minds Move as One — guide
• Many Minds — advanced guide
• Shroud of Silent Mist — guide
• Vengeance as a Burning Plague — guide
• Rei interview — Vengeance on Spirited Discussion podcast

Credit: Rei’s deep-dive format (Framing → Core Mechanics → Strategic Principles → Opening → Card Priority → Adversary Notes → Board Eval → Game-Phase) is the spine of every spirit chapter in this book.

latentoctopus (Spirit Island Hub) — openings + glossary

Per-spirit opening guides with per-variant card sequences, and the canonical community notation (Gn, nE, nCP, etc.).

• Site root
• Glossary — canonical notation
• Q&A — author philosophy
• Per-spirit opening guides: indexed at the site root.

Credit: notation standards (Gn, nE, nCP, x/y, CE), opening classification vocabulary (Full top/bottom, Hybrid, Minor/Major/Mixed), and confidence-rating pattern (red/yellow/green).

Cardboard Crew — contemporary tier

Current (2025-Q4) tier list for all 42 spirits + aspects.

• Tier list + beginner guide

Phantaskippy — per-spirit community guides (Discord-originated, Wiki-hosted)

Named teaching frameworks that originated in the Spirit of the Island Discord and were curated onto the Wiki. Notable idioms lifted into this book: juggle the invaders, don’t chase thresholds you won’t reach, damage-to-fear exchange rate, minors-feed-innates, multi-tasking card plays across lands.

• A Spread of Rampant Green — Phantaskippy’s Guide
• Thunderspeaker — Phantaskippy’s Guide
• Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares — Phantaskippy’s Guide
• Pattern: additional per-spirit guides linked from each spirit’s Wiki page.

Spirited Discussion podcast — ongoing analysis

Weekly podcast with Alex + Thomas covering strategy, adversaries, and guest-interview spirit deep-dives (including Rei on Vengeance).

• Substack (primary)
• Spotify
• YouTube

The Kindred Spirit Podcast — SI-dedicated

Ryan Grenier’s weekly Spirit Island podcast. Uses community survey methodology (e.g., “best/worst spirit for Guard the Isle’s Heart”) and multi-player battle reports.

• Spotify

The Thoughtful Gamer — strategy essays

Widely-cited long-form posts that formalize several community heuristics (prevent-Builds priority, narrative-arc mindset shift, cut-your-losses framing).

• 7 Strategy Tips for Spirit Island

Statistical datasets

mindwanderer — digital win-rate project

Continuously-updated win-rate stats from Spirit Island Digital play logs.

• Stats dashboard
• Site root — 100+ detail pages (per-spirit, per-adversary, per-scenario, per-layout sub-pages with blight-flip rate, avg score, and difficulty model)
• BGG project announcement
• Methodology updates thread — cite this when quoting mindwanderer numbers; the Handelabra analytics migration changed collection methodology mid-stream.

Credit: per-spirit, per-adversary, per-level win rates; digital-vs-tabletop discussion; card-frequency data.

SI Digital Data Analysis Series (BGG, Jonathan4290) — 2.27M log lines

Twenty-six-entry community series mining Spirit Island Digital play data for setup preferences, spirit win rates per adversary, scenario difficulty rankings, aspect performance. Its “2.27M” figure counts log lines, not games (BGG 3569421).

• Series index / entry #5 — “How does each spirit perform vs. each adversary?”
• Entry #7
• Entries 1–26 linked from series index.

Handelabra Tableau — two-spirit combo dashboard (Heidi Kalbe)

Pairwise win-rate visualization for two-player synergies, built on Digital stats.

• TeamSpiritIsland Tableau dashboard

BGG quantitative threads

• Draws: Odds Calculations (hypergeometric, card-draft)
• Card Stats / Power BI analysis
• Fear & Event Card composition stats
• Event Card Analysis (JE)
• Fear evaluation thought experiment
• Complete Difficulty Chart (BGG filepage 262410) — supersedes thread 2483958; covers NI content.
• Spirits ranked by difficulty (community, post-NI)

Open-source tools

• talshorer/spirit-island-144p-lair — Lure-of-the-Deep-Wilderness optimizer (action-sequence solver)
• 2cjenn/spirit_island (R/Shiny) — personal score tracker with CSV export

PlayTracker + SteamSpy (general aggregate stats)

• PlayTracker Insight
• SteamSpy

Rules authority

Querki Living FAQ

Authoritative rulings + errata, maintained by Darker (designer-approved).

• FAQ root
• Summary of Action rules
• Gaining Power Cards
• Rules commonly misplayed
• BGG living FAQ thread

Spirit Island Wiki

Comprehensive fan wiki, read-only as of writing (accounts closed due to spam).

• Main page
• All Spirits
• List of Adversaries
• List of Scenarios
• List of Power Cards

SICK — Spirit Island Card Katalog

Unofficial but comprehensive card database with element + effect filtering.

• SICK — searchable card DB

Designer + publisher

R. Eric Reuss (designer)

• Personal site / Spirit Island page
• Interviews archive
• Elevation Games interview
• Low Player Count interview
• TCbH Jagged Earth interview

Greater Than Games (publisher)

• Spirit Island product page
• Official forums
• Favorite Spirit Combos forum thread
• High-Level Guides thread

Community forums

BGG — strategic discussion

• Strategy forum root
• Combined Difficulty Chart — legacy; prefer filepage 262410 above for current content.
• Updated Match-Up Axis v2.0 + guide archive — community’s canonical spirit × adversary rating framework. Basis for the Matchup Axis appendix.
• Introducing Spirit Island Guides (hub)
• Improving at Spirit Island
• Tier list thread (BGG)
• Board Theory with Rei
• Stats-Based True Solo Tier List
• Lightning Reclaim Loop discussion — canonical community thread on Reclaim-loop economics.

Greater Than Games forums — canonical strategy threads

• Cut Your Losses — Blight and Presence
• Overcoming Alpha-Player Blues

Spirit of the Island Discord

• Server invite

Discord content is not quoted verbatim in this book; patterns attributed to Discord discussion are summarized + linked to a BGG cross-post where possible.

Reddit

• r/spiritisland

Steam Community

• Steam guides

Video / audio

YouTube strategy channels

• Cardboard Academy — 5 Strategy Tips
• Basic Strategy playlist
• Spectacular Synergies playlist
• Tier List & Matchup Axis playlist
• Tier Ranking All Official Spirits (2025)

Ethical sourcing principles

Per CONTRIBUTING.md:

1. Summarize, don’t copy. No verbatim paragraphs from external sources.
2. Always credit. Every pattern claim links to source(s).
3. Link, don’t mirror. Don’t host copies of community tools’ data.
4. Primary over secondary. Querki + designers first; community interpretations second.
5. Discord caution. Quote only with user permission; prefer BGG cross-posts.

Reference verification status

A weekly GitHub Action will re-verify these (with a warn policy) and open issues on rot.

Last revised: 2026-04-19