Oh how I missed having this game on my table. But waiting for Nature Incarnate made me avoid this one. Not that I needed new content but… I don‘t really know, I was angry about the whole mess GTG made of this expansion in Europe.
Last night, after a long and stressful day though Spirit Island proved again why it remains my favorite game of all time 
I played with 2 of the new spirits. I deliberately chose 2 of moderate complexity and no opponent. I had a hard enough time as it was.
Ember-eyed Behemoth is a an angry hill (not a mountain I think) that moves across the land stomp-stomp style with their Incarna. Good fun but a bit fiddly in the management of movement vs stomping invaders (probably only because playing 2 handed).
Towering Roots in the Jungle also has an Incarna (new spirit avatars that strengthen the land they reside in a lot and they can move around more freely than normal presences). This one strengthens the land’s resilience with a new token type that prevents the grey ickiness from spreading in that land. They can also draw invaders to their Incarna where they don‘t do damage anymore but also can‘t be damaged until Towering Roots uses their innate „Withdraw Sanctuary“ to … remove them.
Both spirits are on the slow side… so it took me a while to get a grip on things and I won by stomping enough invaders to generate so much fear that when Behemoth stomped the last city I won.
For a weird reason, I had lots and lots of beast tokens on the board and the beasts never ever did a thing. Every time they would have damaged something the invaders were already somewhere else.
I like the Incarna mechanism of these two a lot. Next, I have set up a game with Relentless Gaze of the Sun (some kind of super-laser that moves around the lands shooting invaders from the sky while also burning the land, oopsie) and Hearth-Vigil, a Dahan enhancing watchdog.