I want to lead with the thing that actually got me to buy this over other heavy co-ops, which is the premise, you’re not the invaders, you’re the island’s own spirits pushing settlers back out. Compared to the usual colonial-adjacent theming a lot of area control games shrug off without comment, that reversal alone made me sit up. It’s not just flavor text either, the mechanics reward you for actually reclaiming land rather than just optimizing damage output.

Teaching this one is genuinely the hardest part of owning it. My first attempt at explaining it to my group ran almost ninety minutes before anyone touched a card, and even then two players spent the whole first game just trying to keep their own spirit’s powers straight, let alone anyone else’s. Once it clicks though, and it does click, usually somewhere around game two or three, the whole table starts talking in this shorthand, “I’ll fear this section, you blight that one,” that’s genuinely fun to be part of. One reviewer put it as close to a straight combo-combo-combo engine, cards chaining off each other’s triggers, and that’s exactly the moment I’m chasing every session, the turn your spirit’s board state all lines up and fires together.

My one physical complaint, and I know I’m not the only one who has it, is the wooden invader/blight discs. They’re lovely to look at and a pain to sort at the end of a long session, and a decent insert or a set of small trays makes a real difference in how much I dread teardown. Get one if you can. It changes how often the game actually comes back to the table.

Five stars, though I’ll say the advice to never play this at four players unless everyone already knows the game is advice worth actually following, we ignored it once and the session dragged to nearly four hours with two people quietly checking out. At two or three, with people who’ve committed to learning the system, this is one of the best cooperative games I own, unique player powers, meaningful difficulty scaling, and an actual point of view about who the real invaders are.