Do you have spirit? Spirited is the game of rallying historic nations like the Persians, Scythians, and Aztecs in Allegiances and building Wonders in order to acquire the most Spirit in your homeland. But more than that, it’s a game of ever-shifting situations and strategies that will keep you on your toes from start to finish.
The core of Spirited is your Road. At the start of your turn, you’ll add two Clan cards to your Road. You need to be careful with this, however; have too many cards of the same Clan on your Road, and you are Overrun. Being Overrun means you lose all the cards in your Road and in your Camps.
This is a disaster because the cards in your Camps are what you use to build Allegiances. An Allegiance is 3 or more cards of the same Clan. The more Cards in your Allegiance, the more powerful the Allegiance is, measured in Medals of Bronze, Silver, and Gold. However, Allegiances can be stolen from you by players who build a more powerful Allegiance with the same Clan.
You can also build Wonders. These can’t be stolen, but you must have one card from all twelve Clans from the cards in your hand, your Road, and your Camps to build it. Wonders all have effects that are played as soon as they are built, many of which allow your opponents to do things, but Wonders can’t be stolen and give you a lot of Spirit.
Clan cards can also be played for the effects on the cards. These allow you to do things like swap cards from your Road with the other players’ Roads, add or remove cards to your Road, and other cool effects. In addition, an active Allegiance also as special effects, like changing how many cards from a Clan result in being Overrun.
Occasionally, a Battle will result. This allows players to convert the Medals of their Allegiances into Spirit. However, this makes the Allegiance weaker and makes it easier for another player to steal that Allegiance.
This is a game of ever-shifting realities on the board. As players add and remove Clan cards from their Roads, forge Allegiances, and build Wonders, the situation changes not only for themselves, but often for the other players. This is not a game where you slowly build one or more engines to win the game; this is a game where you are constantly shifting your strategy to account for the current state of the board. This means the game isn’t the sort where one player has won the game by turn three and then you play out the rest of the game in hopes of something changing. In this game, things are constantly changing, and you’ll be kept on your toes the whole time, looking for opportunities to make the best of an ever-shifting set of circumstances.
Spirited is also a game that rewards multiple play-throughs. The first few times you’ll play, you’ll have the fun of discovering the different ways the cards, Clans, and Wonders interact. Once you have a firmer grip on the possibilities, you’ll be constantly shifting your strategy based on the cards in play at any given time. In short, replayability is what Spirited is all about.
Spirited can be played by up to six players, but also has a very clever solo-play mode. A game typically takes about an hour to play, so you can expect to get in multiple plays in a single evening, especially as it doesn’t take long at all to set up. If you like games that keep you constantly needing to shift your strategy, or to come up with a Plan B for when Plan A doesn’t survive contact with the enemy, you absolutely need to check out Spirited. Talk to the spirited board-game experts at your local Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® today about adding Spirited to your board game collection.
