Terminology
Every game has a jargon cost. Spirit Island’s is especially heavy because the community developed its own shorthand on top of the rulebook. Read this once; then refer back when the Glossary isn’t enough.
Core game terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Dahan | the island’s native human population — not you, not the invaders, but the humans you protect |
| Invaders | explorers, towns, cities |
| Ravage | invader attack in a land — invaders deal damage equal to their total count |
| Build | invaders construct: 1 town added if any town was there; else 1 explorer becomes a town; etc. |
| Explore | new invaders arrive — from ocean into coastal lands, or from adjacent lands |
| Presence | your spirit’s physical token on the board |
| Sacred Site | a land with 2+ of your presence |
| Blight | land corruption; on the board, and cascades when a land acquires a 2nd blight |
| Fear | the win-condition currency; generated by killing + by specific cards; fills the fear pool |
| Terror Level | 1/2/3 — the fear-track flips that unlock easier win conditions |
| Reclaim | return your played + discarded cards to your hand |
| Forget | permanently remove a card from your deck (not the same as discard) |
| Push / Gather | move an invader or dahan out of / into a land |
| Destroy | kill (invaders + dahan) or remove (presence + blight) |
| Defend | reduce damage during the Ravage step |
| Badlands | a token that adds +1 damage to any power targeting that land |
| Beasts | a token type; some spirits create/use them |
| Disease | a token type; reduces invader effectiveness; Vengeance’s engine |
| Strife | a token type; reduces the target’s damage next ravage |
| Wilds | a token type; adds dahan behavior and some elemental effects |
Card-related terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Unique Power | spirit-specific starting cards |
| Minor Power | common universal card pool, cheaper |
| Major Power | common universal card pool, more expensive / powerful |
| Offer | the 4 cards revealed when you gain a Minor or Major |
| Forget | permanently remove; often required when gaining a Major |
| Fast / Slow | card timing window — before (fast) or after (slow) the Invader Phase |
| Innate Power | spirit-specific abilities printed on the spirit board; activated by element thresholds |
| Threshold | the element-count requirement to activate an innate’s level |
| Range N | card can target lands up to N lands away from a source of your presence |
| Target Land | required land type restrictions (e.g., “jungle or wetland”) |
| Any | no land-type restriction |
Growth & track terminology (latentoctopus notation)
See How to Use This Book for the full notation table. Quick recall:
- Gn: growth option n from left. G3 = third option.
- nE: n energy/turn.
- nCP: n card plays/turn.
- Full bottom / Full top / Hybrid: opening presence-track patterns.
Element terminology
Elements are printed on card costs, spirit presence tracks, and innate thresholds. The eight elements are:
Sun, Moon, Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Plant, Animal
Compound element types matter for certain cards (e.g., “fire-plant” = fire + plant on the same card).
Adversary-specific jargon
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Stage I / II / III | three escalation phases of the Invader Deck, with adversary-specific rule shifts |
| Escalation Effect | the adversary’s unique rule that fires each turn |
| Loss Conditions | extra ways to lose this adversary adds on top of base |
| Difficulty | composite score 0–10+ combining level + scenario |
Community jargon (that rulebooks don’t teach)
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Drown / drowning | Ocean-specific — removing a coastal invader by pushing it into the ocean |
| Bounce | moving a power / invader back to origin; often Trickster |
| Board wipe | killing all (or most) invaders in a land with one high-damage power |
| Alpha player | the coop player who “solves” everyone’s turn for them — see Part VII |
| Multi-handed | one player controlling 2+ spirits; common solo format |
| True solo | one player, one spirit (not multi-handed) |
| Energy spike | a turn with unusually high energy for aggressive plays |
| Reclaim-one | a growth slot that lets you reclaim a single card (not your full hand) |
| Early Major | opening that gains a Major Power by T2–T3 |
| Punish | exploiting a specific adversary weakness; also: an adversary that punishes mistakes |
| Splat | slang for a massive single-target damage play |
| Engine | a spirit’s repeatable mid-game scaling pattern; “turning on the engine” |
Stats / analysis terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Win rate | % of games won; always qualify by difficulty level, spirit, player count |
| Sample size (n) | number of games the stat was derived from |
| Wilson interval | confidence interval method for win rates; see Statistics |
| Digital bias | the systematic ways digital-game data diverges from tabletop reality |
| Meta | the currently-prevalent community understanding of which spirits are strong/weak |
| Tier list | ordered ranking of spirits; see Cardboard Crew + multiple BGG lists |
Quick-orientation for this book
When you see:
- a bolded term without link → it’s in this page’s table, read above.
- a linked term → it has its own deep chapter.
- notation like G3 or 3CP → How to Use This Book.
- Rei’s or latentoctopus citations → Sources.
If you’re confused by a community jargon term at the table, ask: “Is that in the Spirit Island glossary?” The Glossary appendix of this book collects what the rulebook doesn’t teach.
Last revised: 2026-04-19