Peril racks Spirit Island. The invaders are more numerous and more capable than ever before. As hope begin to fade, defense of the island falls to those spirits more in tune with the danger and chaos of the natural world. Will you be able to harness their power to protect the island or will it fall to the persistence of the invaders? Whatever the outcome, Spirit Island will never be the same after the time of Jagged Earth! 

• 10 new Spirits!
• 2 new Adversaries!
• 5 optional Aspects for 4 of the core game spirits!
• Badlands tokens - a new way to fight the Invaders! 
• Element tokens!
• 2 new Scenarios!
• 2 new Island boards (labelled E and F), for more island variety / 5 and 6 player games!
• Enough new plastic, wood, and punchboard tokens for a 5 or 6 player game!
• 50+ new Major and Minor Power Cards!
• 30+ new Event Cards!
• 6 new Fear Cards!
• 6 new Blight Cards, including some "Still-Healthy Island" Blight Cards!

Spirit Island: Jagged Earth also contains rules for a variety of play options - combining Adversaries, playing with an Archipelago (split island), and more. You can try those out right now - download the PnP playtest rules for them here!

All that you need to play Spirit Island: Jagged Earth is the core game of Spirit Island! While some spirits, adversaries, and cards do use tokens and rules introduced in Branch & Claw, all needed components and rules are included, making everything playable with just the core game and Jagged Earth.

Of the 10 Spirits in Jagged Earth:

• Two require only rules from the core game (one has a way of interacting with the Event Deck, which is simply ignored if playing without it)
• Two use concepts or components new to this expansion, but don’t require anything from Branch & Claw 
• Four use one or more of the tokens introduced in Branch & Claw (also included in Jagged Earth), some of which also use new rules and components
• And all 10 of them bring fun and interesting gameplay options to the table, not seen in Spirit Island before!

Aspects are new ways to play the existing four low-complexity Spirits. They swap in a new Special Rule or Innate Power, replacing one of the standard Special Rules or Innate Powers of that Spirit. You’re still playing the same Spirit — you use its Spirit Panel and Unique Power cards - but you’re exploring a different aspect of its nature, which changes up its dynamics… sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

Some Aspects are direct replacements (e.g., swap one Innate Power for another), while others replace a Special Rule with an Innate Power or vice versa, or use other changes to make them balanced.

Here is a short video that goes into more detail:

Badlands are a 5th type of token that can be placed onto the board by Powers and other effects, much like the 4 types of tokens from Branch & Claw (Beasts, Wilds, Disease, & Strife). Badlands tokens indicate lands hostile to long-term human habitation: this could represent “no fresh water”, “everything is poisonous”, “way too much lava”, or any other constant hazard you can’t readily avoid even once you know it’s there. 

Mechanically, after an effect other than a Badlands token damages humans (Invaders or Dahan), each Badlands token in that land does 1 damage to the type of human damaged.

Badlands are great for helping take care of lands with lots of Invaders - or just in general for helping out Spirits that have multiple smaller damage-dealing Powers. However, they do make Dahan more vulnerable, so they are not without risk and should not be used lightly!

For more detailed information regarding Badlands and the other new mechanics, check out this update.

Spirit Island: Jagged Earth introduces players to the stories of the following EIGHT new island Spirits: 

• Volcano Looming High
• Grinning Trickster Stirs Up Trouble
• Vengeance as a Burning Plague
• Lure of the Deep Wilderness
• Shroud of Silent Mist
• Fractured Days Split the Sky
• Shifting Memory of Ages
• Stone's Unyielding Defiance

Plus the two unlocked Spirits:

• Starlight Seeks Its Form
• Many Minds Move As One

These Spirits introduce new strategies, more complex presence tracks, and even a new game mechanic called "isolation". Incorporate these Spirits with the core game or Branch & Claw expansion to save the island through countless new combinations of cooperative play.

Jagged Earth includes two new adversaries! The Russian Empire and The Hapsburg Monarchy! We will talk about the stories and mechanics for these two new fearsome foes in updates over the course of this campaign!

Jagged Earth comes with 2 new island boards, for more variety and 5-6 player support.  

“Crab” - a central island with two pincers coming off of it - is a standard board setup for a 5-player game. 

“Double round” - two round regions (as per the 3-player layout) joined together - is a standard board setup for a 6-player game.

However, the Play Options section of the rules will give other island layouts, along with some guidance on how certain arrangements may be easier or harder with specific spirits, adversaries, or scenarios.

 Check out this update that goes over all of the different board options!

Finder of Paths Unseen comes with 6 starting powers instead of the usual 4, and has a exciting spirit panel with unique paths for gaining presence!

Below, we have some images and details about the various add-ons we are offering as part of this Kickstarter campaign! 

If you are new to Kickstarter, it might not be clear what we mean by "add-ons" or how they work, so here's a quick overview! Basically, these are items that you can add to your basic pledge level. All that you have to do when you back this campaign is increase your pledge level by the appropriate amount for each add-on that you would like. Then, once the campaign ends, all of the money you pledged will be added as a credit to our pledge manager software. You'll be able to log in, look at how much you pledged during the campaign, and select the specific pledge level and all of the specific add-ons that you would like to receive!

For example, if you pledged $59 for the Aspect of Jagged Earth pledge level, you'll get Spirit Island: Jagged Earth and the Spirit Promo Pack. But, if you also want the Broken Token insert and the Premium Token Pack, you'll need to manually add $39 for the insert and another $39 for the wooden tokens. $59 plus $39 plus $39 is $137, so that's what your pledge amount should be (before shipping, if applicable).

Shipping is free for the first add-on of each type (except for adding additional VAT for European customers; see the Shipping section below). However, if you live outside of the US, you will have to pay shipping again for each subsequent copy of an item that you add on after the first.

Backers from our original campaign for Spirit Island might find this playmat familiar. It's certainly similar to the first playmay we made, but we've gathered a lot of backer and player feedback and, with those notes in mind, we've crafted a refined and improved playmat for an even better canonical island experience. The playmat is now 30"x 35" as opposed to the original 24"x 28"playmat. We've also specifically delineated key gameplay guides such as ocean boundaries and map coloration. And we've also included new terrain cues to simplify identifying land types. Like the first playmat, the icons on it are "future-proofed" to include any potential new token references, so this mat will be perfect for play for years to come!

 Check out Update #8 where we discuss the improvements to the playmat!

A set of 218 custom, wooden tokens including Energy, Fear, Beasts, Wilds, Disease, Strife, and even the new Badlands tokens! (We've updated the numbers to include more tokens for Jagged Earth, as detailed in the latest update). This set of tokens comes packaged in a full-color box roughly the size of the Branch & Claw expansion. 

 Check out this update for more pictures and information!

In addition to the amazing box insert that The Broken Token created below, they also crafted a custom crate to fit it in! 

This crate is made of ¼” premium birch wood with a unique acrylic element design and the engraved Spirit Island logo lid. It can contain everything that exists in the world of Spirit Island so far AND everything that is being added in this campaign! 

 Check out Update #13 for more information about the Broken Token Crate!

The fantastic folks over at The Broken Token have painstakingly crafted a custom, premium wooden insert that organizes all of the Spirit Island core game content, as well as Branch & Claw and Jagged Earth, and even everything from both promo packs into just one box! The wooden trays expand the box up about 34mm, which still leaves enough overlap to close securely while organizing everything for efficient space management and also faster and easier setup. Check out this update for more detailed pics and click the video below to see how it fits in the Broken Token Crate!

Spirit Island is a cooperative, settler-destruction strategy game for 1 to 4 players set in an alternate-history world around A.D. 1700. Work with your fellow spirits and the Dahan (local islanders) to increase your power and drive the invading colonists from your island in this deep and complex area-control game! 

•  8 different Spirits, each with 4 Power Cards unique to that Spirit
• Over 50 distinct Major and Minor Power Cards which Spirits can grow into
• 4 modular Island Boards, for a variety of layouts
• Over 100 pieces for representing the Invaders and Dahan (native islanders)
• 15 Invader cards, driving a distinctive Invader expansion system
• 15 Fear cards, indicating the effects of terrifying the Invaders
• 3 multi-tier Adversaries (specific Invaders) for play variety and fine-tuned challenge: England, Brandenburg-Prussia, and Sweden
• 4 optional Scenarios for even more play variety 

In Spirit Island: Branch & Claw the Spirits of the Island must grow, change, and choose new paths, embracing the metamorphosis of life. They will call forth the wilds, disease, beasts, and strife to destroy the Invaders. 

Spirit Island: Branch & Claw adds:

• Invader Board Extension
• 2 Spirits
• 1 Adversary
• 4 Scenarios
• 20 Scenario Markers
• 22 Beasts/Wilds/Disease/Strife tokens
• 31 Minor Power Cards
• 21 Major Power Cards
• 25 Events Cards
• 7 Blight Cards
• 15 Fear Cards

The Spirit Island Promo Pack 1 (released as part of the first Spirit Island Kickstarter) includes 2 additional Spirits - Heart Of The Wildfire and Serpent Slumbering Beneath The Island - and their associated unique Power cards. 

Heart of the Wildfire

Burning, blazing, rising, consuming - Heart of the Wildfire is quite fond of humans, in a general sense: they keep hearths and use fire as a tool all the time, and those sparks give birth to so many lovely conflagrations! It is the nature of Spirits to be true to what they are, so even though Wildfire knows on some level that too much fire is bad for the land, it just doesn't think about that sort of thing very much. 

 It fights the Invaders partly due to the exhortations of other Spirits, but more for the sake of the Dahan, as it's become clear that the Invaders have no compunctions about putting them to the sword. The Dahan and Wildfire have a long and storied history together, beginning with the very first Dahan settlements. It is also somewhat gleeful over the chance to really cut loose without the other Spirits getting all riled up and putting out its firestorms.

The Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island

Deeper and larger than other Spirits lies the Serpent Slumbering Beneath The Island. It could be argued that it is the island, or at least its roots. Like all spirits of such size and power, it is slow beyond human reckoning. Unlike many of them, it is also asleep.

Or, now, mostly asleep. The distant sting of the Invaders' blight has begun to rouse portions of its consciousness towards waking, those fragments aware of the land's surface far above. Even that small aspect of the Serpent is slow to act, slow to awaken... but contains the potential for power greater than most spirits could ever muster.

The Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island is a high-complexity spirit. If Ocean's big limitation is "coastal" and Wildfire's is "blight", Serpent's is "waking up": it's a very slow spirit, limited in its development, but with the prospect of great power if it wakes up fully.

 "Jagged Earth continues to give the seemingly endless amount of replayability, challenge and customize-able parameter goodness that players have come to love. " 

-Jack Eddy, The Cardboard Herald

Game Designer: R. Eric Reuss

Developer: Ted Vessenes

Lead Playtester: Chris Burton

Editor-in-Chief: Christopher Badell

Creative Director: Jennifer Closson

Managing Art Director: Jennifer Closson

Graphic Design: SaRae Henderson, Sarah Kelly

Iconography: Darrell Louder

Cover Art: Lucas Durham

3-D Model Design: Jorge Ramos

Spirit Panel Artists: Lucas Durham, Moro Rogers, Joshua Wright, Emily Hancock, Damon Westenhofer (Final game artists will include these and more of your favorite Spirit Island artists.)

Alternate Historian: Paul Bender

Thank you to all of our playtesters. A special thanks to Dylan, Bryan (broccoli), Carolyn, Ted, and Brian (grysqrl). Eric would also like to thank his wife, Anne. Without her unwavering support he would have been unable to continue building the world of Spirit Island.

Here are the shipping charges for this campaign! We've got a lot of details below if you want to know why your particular country has the shipping charges that it does.

•  US: $0
•  Canada: $9
•  Australia: $39
•  Europe (EU+Norway+Switzerland): $15 + VAT
•  Other: $49

Shipping charges will be processed through Kickstarter. However, VAT charges will be charged separately through the pledge manager after the campaign ends.

These shipping fees cover up to one copy of each item offered through this Kickstarter. However, if you live outside of the US, you will have to pay shipping again for each subsequent copy of an item that you add on after the first. These charges will be processed through our pledge manager after the campaign ends.

For US backers, we are offering free shipping. This is not because we have invented a teleporter, and shipping is suddenly free. We will still pay a substantial amount to ship each parcel to US backers, both in actual shipping charges, and in labor & materials. However, we know that everyone likes the idea of free shipping (including us!), and has come to expect it in Kickstarter campaigns, so we are subsidizing shipping enough to make US shipping free.

For Canadians, we are offering $9 shipping. This also covers import taxes and customs duties, which we will pay at the point when the products enter Canada. Of course, $9 is not the actual cost of shipping and import duties to Canada. It is not even the difference between the actual cost of Canadian shipping and the actual cost of US shipping, which is more like $10-$20. This means that US backers are subsidizing Canadian backers slightly, in the amount of $1-$11 per parcel (depending on where in Canada you live). However, we really want to make our games as accessible as possible in Canada, and $9 is a nice, low flat rate.

For Australians, we are offering $39 shipping. This also covers import taxes and customs duties, which we will pay at the point when the products enter Australia. Even though it might seem high, $39 is not the actual cost of shipping to Australia. It is not even the difference between the actual cost of Australian shipping and the actual cost of US shipping, which is more like $45-$50. This means that US backers are subsidizing Australian backer in the amount of $6-$11 per parcel. However, we really want to make our games as accessible as possible in Australia because we know how hard it can be to get US products in AUS.

For Europeans (including EU countries as well as Norway and Switzerland, but unfortunately not Russia or other non-EU countries), we are offering $15 shipping + VAT. What does this mean? Well, it turns out that the EU has been really tightening the rules on VAT and import duties recently as a result of widespread VAT fraud on the part of foreign companies. You can read some of the details here, but the summary is that, according to EU law, any items imported into the EU are subject to VAT charges (generally 24% in the case of board games) based on the actual sale price PLUS the actual shipping cost. That means that, for a $59 game with $15 shipping, the 24% VAT will be assessed against the total $74 price, and will come out to approximately $17.76.

Note that this law applies no matter how we fulfill the games. If we ship from the US, each parcel is subject to the VAT charge once it enters the EU. On the other hand, if we ship a bunch of games to a fulfillment center in the EU, the whole shipment is subject to VAT when it enters the EU, and, even though the games are arriving in bulk, the VAT is based on the actual sales price to consumers (in this case, on Kickstarter), not the lower wholesale or manufacturing cost, so this method doesn’t actually save any money on VAT charges (though there can be other benefits).

European Shipping Questions

Q: So, why are you charging VAT separately from shipping charges for Europeans?

A: For two reasons. First, as we mentioned above, the VAT charges are based on the sale price + shipping. If we include VAT as part of the “shipping” charge, EU customs is likely to consider that whole charge to be “shipping” and charge VAT based on the full amount, including what we already charged for VAT! Second, the exact VAT rate is subject to a lot of fluctuation right now, both due to the ongoing EU crackdown on internet retailers, and due to the ongoing low-level trade war between the US and the EU (which we think is incredibly dumb but can’t do anything about). Fortunately, we should be able to ship the games to Europe directly from China and avoid any US-EU tariffs.

Q: Ok, so, how much am I going to pay to get this game in Europe?

A: There is a fixed $15 fee for shipping, which you will pay via the pledge manager when the Kickstarter ends. Then, before the campaign is fulfilled, we will calculate each European backer’s VAT and charge you for VAT before shipping out your parcel.

Q: Will I have to pay any customs clearance fees or anything when I receive my shipment?

A: No, you will not! We will have Spiral Galaxy Games in the UK fulfill this Kickstarter for European backers, which means that, after we charge you for VAT through our pledge manager, we’ll handle the payment processing for VAT and import duties on the games. Then, Spiral Galaxy will ship all of your parcels out from within the EU and avoid any weird delays or further charges.

Q: Where are you getting all of this information? It seems stupid and wrong and I don’t like it.

A: We talked to a lot of shipping companies, attorneys, and other professionals about the implications of EU law and how, exactly, VAT works. For a decent summary, the government of Finland has a pretty helpful website (and the information is, for the most part, broadly applicable across the EU).

Q: Wait, but [insert other Kickstarter here] shipped stuff to Europe for way cheaper than this. Why can’t you just do what they did?

A: They either lost a ton of money on shipping, or they committed customs fraud, and we don’t want to do either of those things. 

Q: You say above that you are subsidizing shipping to Canadians and Australians. Why don’t you subsidize shipping to Europeans?

A: We do! The $15 we are charging for shipping is not the actual cost of shipping and import duties to Europe. It is not even the difference between the actual cost of European shipping and the actual cost of US shipping, which is more like $20-$30 (there is a lot of variance, because it depends on the size of the shipment we are importing to Europe, and to which country in Europe the shipment is heading). This means that US backers are subsidizing European backers slightly, in the amount of $5-$15 per parcel.

Q: Wait, why is the shipping price the same for every backer level? Shouldn’t larger parcels cost more to ship?

A: That is a very astute observation. Yes, they do! However, to make things easier, we are charging a flat rate. We have based all of the examples in this section off of the smallest parcel on this Kickstarter. For any of the larger pledge levels, our shipping costs will be higher, but you will not pay any extra for shipping (VAT will be higher based on the higher pledge).

Q: Why do Norway and Switzerland have to follow these rules? They aren’t in the EU!

A: That is true! However, the customs regimes in Norway and Switzerland are very similar to those of the EU, by design.

Q: What about Brexit?

A: Brexit could complicate a lot of things, but what, exactly, it might complicate about this depends on the final form it takes. We’ll cross that bridge if/when we come to it, and let you know about anything we wind up doing to work through it.

Q: I hate VAT; is there anything I can do about it?

A: Us, too! Honestly, the only thing you can do is vote and call your local politicians. We’ll do the same over here to see if we can avoid a long, stupid trade war.