Presence Economy

Presence is the game’s most overloaded resource. It’s simultaneously:

• a targeting anchor (most powers require presence in or near the target land),
• a board currency (sacred sites unlock innate abilities + certain card effects),
• a tempo investment (growth slots that place presence trade against energy/CP growth).

Treating presence as any one of these is the beginner mistake. This chapter teaches you to reason about all three simultaneously.

The opening budget

Your spirit’s Setup places its starting presence, and the count varies by spirit: River Surges in Sunlight and Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island start with 1 on the board, Lightning’s Swift Strike with 2, Shadows Flicker Like Flame and Vital Strength of the Earth with 3, and Vengeance as a Burning Plague starts with one of theirs already Destroyed. Every other presence starts on your Presence Tracks until Growth adds it to the board. Count your panel’s track spaces and ask how many you realistically uncover by the turn you expect the game to end; the rest stay on the track unused.

The rule: not every presence needs a home. Sometimes the right play is to leave a slot unplaced and take an energy/CP growth instead. Presence just-in-case is a common tempo leak.

The three presence roles, quantified

1. Targeting anchor

Powers with “Target: your presence” or “Range N from your presence” require at least 1 presence in the relevant area. Spread-heavy spirits (Green, Lightning, Thunderspeaker) need broad coverage. Focused spirits (Wildfire, Starlight) need density, not spread.

Heuristic: count the ravage lands on your spirit’s horizon. You usually need 1 presence adjacent to each critical ravage target. Minimum coverage for most base-adversary games: 5 lands.

2. Sacred sites

A land with 2+ of your presence is a sacred site. Many innates and some powers require “target a sacred site.” Stone, Keeper, Earth lean on sacred-site density; Fangs deliberately avoids them.

Heuristic: if your spirit’s innates or cards say “sacred site,” you want 2–3 sacred sites by T4. If they don’t, a sacred site is wasted presence density — spread instead.

3. Tempo investment

Every presence placed costs an energy/CP growth you didn’t take. Over 8 turns, 4 presence placements means 4 growths not taken elsewhere.

Heuristic: if you’re at 2E and 3CP by T5 with 5 presence on the board, you spent right. If you’re at 1E and 2CP with 9 presence, you over-invested in placement.

The presence curve

There is no universal presence arc: starting presence, track length, and growth options all differ by spirit. Build your own from the panel. Write down your starting board count and track spaces, then, for the growth sequence you plan, note turn by turn how many presence are on the board and which track spaces are uncovered.

Your board count usually falls because presence is Destroyed — most often by Blight added to one of your lands. When it falls, find the Blight that did it and ask whether you could have seen that Ravage coming two turns earlier.

Presence destruction isn’t always bad

For most spirits, losing presence is painful. For some, their own rules soften or reward it:

• Vengeance: when their presence is Destroyed by anything except a Spirit Action (e.g., by Blight from a Ravage), they add 1 Disease where it was (Lingering Pestilence). Destroying their own presence with a Power is a Spirit Action and adds no Disease.
• Wildfire: Blight added by Spirit effects, cascades included, doesn’t Destroy their presence (Destructive Nature).

For these spirits, read the presence economy through their own rules, not the default.

Territorial spirits vs. flexible spirits

Some spirits care about which lands their presence occupies. Others don’t.

Territorial spirits (presence position matters):

• Shroud — wants presence surrounding invaders in specific lands.
• Stone — sacred-site clusters determine which lands are “safe.”
• Shifting Memory — presence location gates memory cycling.

Flexible spirits (presence location is fungible):

• Lightning — short-range; moves where targets are.
• Trickster — cares about element sources, not positions.
• Fractured Days — the time-skipping engine is mostly independent of position.

Your opening should acknowledge this. Territorial spirits bias toward presence-placement growths; flexible spirits bias toward energy/CP growths.

The “destroy your own presence” trade

Rare but real. Some plays give you the option to destroy your own presence for an effect (e.g., certain unique powers, certain Majors). Do this only when:

1. The effect clears a ravage that would otherwise cost 2+ blight.
2. The presence destroyed was in a terrible land (low value for targeting and sacred sites).
3. Your spirit’s own rules reward the destruction. Read the exact trigger: Vengeance’s Lingering Pestilence, for one, excludes Spirit Actions.

Reading presence on other spirits (multiplayer)

When you have a partner, count their presence too. Cross-spirit presence coverage matters for:

• Defend sharing — a partner’s Defend Powers reach your Ravage lands only within their Range, which is measured from their presence or sacred sites. Check which of your lands they can actually cover.
• Fear coordination — the same Range check decides which lands a partner’s Fear Powers can reach.
• Territory splits — see Teaching Methods for conventions on who takes which terrain.

Cross-references

• Tempo — how presence interacts with the energy/CP axes.
• Terrain — where to place presence by land type.
• Dahan — dahan take Ravage damage; presence doesn’t.
• Blight Track — Blight, the usual cause of presence destruction.

Last revised: 2026-10-19