Ghost Stories Review

One of my friend's favorite co-operative games is Ghost Stories; so I took the opportunity to play it.

In Ghost Stories, you take on the role of a Taoist priest that is fighting (along with three other priests) to excise Wu Feng from the world.  Unfortunately, Wu Feng has legions of ghostly minions, which are terrorizing you and your village.  Each turn, the active player reveals a ghost from the deck and places it on the board.  Next, they can move one space and take that space's action (if it has not been haunted).  Some of the actions include reviving a dead priest, rolling dice to gain more tao tokens, setting up a universal tao token that can be used in every fight, pushing ghosts away from the village, unhaunting village tiles, etc.  Conversely, instead of utilizing a space's action, you may choose to attack any adjacent ghosts.  Each ghost has a color and a strength.  In order to excise him, you roll three dice (and potentially add tao tokens).  If between the dice and your tao tokens you have enough strength in the ghost's matching color, then he is discarded.  Eventually, Wu Feng will emerge from the deck (if you don't die first).  If you are able to successfully defeat him before you all die or your village becomes especially haunted (you know - that time in a village's life when even the wind seems like it is whispering ghastly ramblings into your ear; oh - I mean three village tiles are haunted), then you win!

My first pro for Ghost Stories is that it does an amazing job of providing a feeling of "optimistic doom."  By this, I mean that you feel like you're going to lose.  From round one.  Yet, as the game progresses and you continue holding off your loss, you start to get the impression that you have a chance.  I doubt that you will ever feel like you just dominated a game of Ghost Stories.  Instead, you will constantly be balancing how you're going to keep your team just barely alive.  This might be by sacrificing a team member periodically to destroy an especially strong ghost, or it might be in pushing ghosts back for one more turn so that one of your fellow priests will have a chance to attack before being haunted.  What you do will never be enough to completely defeat the ghosts - but it may allow you to survive long enough to defeat Wu Feng!

It never hurts that it looks awesome

The next thing that I enjoy about Ghost Stories is that it truly encourages you to take advantage of your priest's special powers (which I haven't told you about).  Each priest has a different power - you might be able to move twice, collect a tao token each turn, ignore curse dice, or several other insanely useful things.  And, if you want to have any chance at victory, you will desperately fight to abuse these powers whenever possible.  For example - is one of you able to ignore the curse die?  Then they should fight every ghost that gives you a curse.  Can your priest move another priest?  Then you should move them to your location so that they can contribute their tao tokens in an upcoming battle.  Can you both attack and activate a location?  Then you need to make sure that you place ghosts so that they are adjacent to good locations that you want to activate.

The third pro I have for Ghost Stories is that I like how the die rolling is implemented.  When attacking a ghost, you roll the dice to see if you defeat them.  Any die roll that matches their color (or is white, which is wild), counts as a hit.  However, many ghosts have three or four hitpoints - which is very hard to defeat when you're only rolling three dice.  This is when tao tokens come into play.  Your priest can collect tao tokens (and there can be a universal tao token), and these tao tokens can be contributed towards your battle, thus counting as additional hits on the adjacent ghost(s).  This means that there is a random element in the game, but you can still mitigate the chances of getting frustrated by the dice.  And, occasionally you will even roll exceedingly well, thus keeping all of your tao tokens (for next time - because there will definitely be a next time).

Since no game is perfect, Ghost Stories has a couple cons that I feel are worth mentioning.  First, I think that bad luck can really make the game too overwhelming.  I already mentioned how the die rolling works, and how luck is somewhat mitigated when attacking ghosts.  Yet, sometimes the dice will completely defy the odds and you will lose an attack that you would win 99 out of every 100 times.  Yet, that's not really what I mean.  Where I think that bad luck can be too powerful is when rolling the curse die and drawing ghosts.  The curse die has two blank faces, and four awful faces.  The different rolls can cause you to haunt a space, lose all of your tao tokens, lose a life point, or draw and place a new ghost.  Some of these things can instantly cost you the game (the others might make you lose, but more slowly).  Similarly, when drawing ghosts, some of the ghosts cause you to draw another ghost.  If several of these are drawn in a row, then you can instantly go from surviving fairly well to being slaughtered by the game.  With any game that has random elements to it, luck can help you or hurt you.  But, though Ghost Stories mitigated the luck of die rolling when attacking, I wish they had mitigated the curse die a bit more.  (The different things that can be rolled are why you really want the priest that can ignore the curse die to take as many of the curses as possible.)

Good luck with these icons.

My second con for Ghost Stories is that the icons are not as clear as I would like.  I realize that this is a matter of playing the game more frequently so that you will learn what they all are.  Yet, the entire point of icons is to make the game easier to play - both to teach new players, and to remind old players of different game elements.  But, even after having played Ghost Stories a few times, there are still symbols that I don't know the meaning of because they come up very infrequently (such as the symbols on the different versions of Wu Feng).  When you play the game (especially your first few times) be ready to either ask other players what things means, or have the rulebook handy to clarify.

One last thing that I will mention about Ghost Stories (not really a pro or a con) is that it is only a four player game.  The box says 1-4, and there are rules for playing with less than four, but, ultimately, the entire game was designed for four.  The very setup of the game is dependent on having four player boards, and if less than four people are playing, then you will have each board activate, just like in a four player game.  There's nothing wrong with a game that requires a specific number of players, and you even can play this with less.  But, if you have a choice, I would recommend playing this with four so that you can avoid extra rules that work around you having less players.

Overall, I give Ghost Stories an 8.5/10.  Though it isn't my favorite cooperative game, it is still a highly enjoyable experience.  If the theme doesn't bother you, then you should definitely try it out.  (And, as an added bonus, Ghost Stories has several promotional Wu Feng cards that are puns.  Like "Chuck No Rice" and "Steven Qi Gal".  And, puns are wonderful!)

If you are looking for more cooperative games, you should also check out Lord of the Rings, Shadows Over Camelot, and Forbidden Island.

Lord of the Rings: The Duel Mini Review

A game that sat on my shelf for a long time before finally getting to the table is Lord of the Rings: The Duel.

In Lord of the Rings: The Duel, players relive the duel between Gandalf and the Balrog.  And, since they don't want to be dueling forever, they agree to only duel four times, and whoever has done the best will be declared the winner.  In the first three duels, you draw nine cards and play six of them (putting the rest towards the final duel - in the final duel you actually use all nine cards that you've set aside).  Each card that is played is used both for offense and defense, and this is determined by the gems showing on the sides of the card.  There are four slots for gems, and each one that is filled in counts as an attack against the opponent's adjacent card.  Thus, when playing a card, the left-side of the card attacks your opponent's last played card (attacking the right-side of their card).  In each of the four slots that one player has a gem and the other doesn't, the player without the gem loses a health (because they just got energy punched in the stomach).  Each duel continues until one player has run out of energy or until both players have played all of their cards.  Then, the winning player scores points (moves up on the bridge) based on how badly they defeated their opponent.  After one player goes to the top of the bridge (scores five points) or the players have completed four duels, whoever has the most points (is highest on the bridge) wins the game.

My initial pro for The Duel was that I thought it was interesting and unique how the cards are played.  Each card serving a dual purpose of both attacking and defending is neat, and it is executed in a unique, yet intuitive, way.  I liked how easy it was to determine who was dealt damage, and how much.  However, after I played it for a little while, I realized that it doesn't matter terribly much where the gems are located.  If I play a card with three gems against your card that has one gem, I'm going to have an overall gain of two energy points against you.  This may be that I lose one energy and you lose three, or that you lose two and I don't lose any.  But, ultimately, the difference in number of gems is vastly more important than their location.  The only time that their actual location matters is when one player is very close to running out of energy, and dealing each player damage will push them over (or at least precariously close to) the edge.  But, for the most part, the number of gems is much more relevant than the placement of them.

Line up the gems to see what damage is dealt

The next pro for Lord of the Rings: The Duel is that it is kid friendly.  I think that you could play the game with anyone that can read, and they would understand the game.  (Some of the cards have special abilities, and if your child is old enough to read, they're probably also old enough to understand how those abilities work.)  And, as long as your wee one is at least fairly strategic, I think that they will have a decent chance for victory and that they will probably enjoy it.

And, honestly, I think that it is important that The Duel is kid friendly, because I view it more as an activity than a game.  There aren't tough strategic decisions that pull me in and want me to play it repeatedly and explore what the game has to offer.  I'm sure that there are some strategic elements to the game that I've missed (like when you should try to obliterate your opponent, and when you're better off keeping stronger cards for the final duel), but, honestly, I did not find the game engaging enough to come back and try it out more.  The game is so well balanced (as it needs to be) that it just seems a bit dull, in my opinion.  There are a few special cards, but mostly, the players have the same cards - so if I get a one attack/three defense card now, you will probably get a comparable card later. So, we're probably going to lose roughly the same amount of energy - the strategy is simply determining when to deal this damage (which quite possibly will be dictated by when you draw various cards).

Overall, I give Lord of the Rings: The Duel a 6.0/10.  The game works; I just didn't find it exciting enough to keep coming back to it.

If you're looking for light two-player games, you might check out Jaipur, Mr. Jack, and Atlanteon.

Village Review

One game that I've been hearing about for a while now is Village.

In Village you're doing..... something... in order to gain the most victory points.  Specifically, you are trying to make your family rich and famous and whatnot.  In order to do this, each round will consist of various resources (cubes) being placed on the board.  Then, players alternate taking turns by selecting a cube from the board and following the corresponding action.  The actions can include collecting food, traveling, joining the monastery, getting married, becoming a village politician, selling at market, or performing a trade.  Some of these activities take a while to master - and this is indicated through each player's "time" track.  And, whenever a player makes a full loop around their time track, one of their oldest family members passes away and is either honored in the book of elders, or is buried in an unmarked grave (because there is only so much ink in this village - so once they write a couple of names down, they have to be very selective).  Each round is completed whenever all of the cubes have been taken - at which point a Mass is performed, and the player with the most monks in the monastery gains some victory points.  Then, the board is re-seeded with cubes and a new round begins.  Play continues in this manner until either the book of ancestors is completely filled, or until all of the unmarked graves are filled.  At that point, there is one final Mass, and then players check to see who has had the most successful family (by comparing what really matters to the people of Ye Olde Village - victory points).

Those who have gone before - the book of ancestors

So, starting with the pros, the thing that I find most interesting about Village is that your people can die.  This is a fascinating new addition to me.  I have played a lot of worker placement games, and in many of them you can gain extra workers as you play.  However, I've never played one where you actually lose workers as well.  And, what I like even more about this is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to lose workers.  In fact, having five of your workers in the book of ancestors at the end of the game is worth quite a few victory points (12 to be exact).  But, it is also good if you keep your people alive.  Workers in the church and in the council chamber are worth victory points at the end of the game - up to six points per worker!  So, there are interesting strategic decisions that you have to make about which worker you want to place, which are expendable, and when is it better to try to keep them alive (as much as possible).

The next pro that I have for Village is that I like the distribution of the resource cubes on the board.  These resources are not evenly spread - some actions will have drastically more cubes than others (the Market action only gets one cube per round).  And, the round doesn't end until all of the cubes are gone.  This provides a nice dynamic which forces you to either take advantage of a lot of different actions, or have an opportunity cost of taking a cube without performing an associated.  It also forces you to prioritize your actions as some of them may not be available later in the round.  So, the best players in the game will learn to gain at least a few points from actions that don't necessarily fit well within their overall strategy - or at the very least, they will take advantage of these extraneous actions to position some of their workers in different areas of the board in order to kill them and have them added to the corresponding section of the book of elders.

Along the same lines as the previous pro, I also appreciate that the distribution of "resource" cubes doesn't only contain resources - it also has plagues.  So, sometimes you have to make the decision between performing the action that you want, while advancing twice on your time track, or performing a different action and gaining a resource.  Where this becomes even more interesting is through an action that I didn't mention before - you can always trade in three matching resources in order to perform any action.  Which means that when there is a plague as the only resource available for an action you want, you can decide to spend three of your resources to avoid that cube.  Or, in another situation, if there are only plague cubes remaining, you can also decide it is worth your resources to circumvent the plagues (and even select an action that doesn't have a cube associated with it).

Sending meeples to Mass

Now with some solid pros listed, I have two specific cons that I will address.  The first con is that I feel like the first move of the game is too prescribed.  Specifically, I do not see a reason why anyone would ever choose not to perform a marriage action as their first action of the game.  When your workers die, you always have to lose the lowest numbered workers first.  Performing a marriage action first allows you to unlock a worker with a "2" on him - one that will die after all of your starting workers.  This worker, then, is able to be placed in a region of the board where you will want a worker to live a long time - possibly even all game.  I can see reasons why you may or may not want to perform a marriage action every round, but if you don't do it in the first round, then (in my opinion) you are handicapping yourself for the rest of the game - and if you don't perform it as your first action, then there is a good chance that it will not be available to you later in the round.  Now, I am admittedly writing this con out of my limited number of plays - feel free to share your experience with this and if you think that I am correct in this, or if you think that I'm off base.

The second con is this - the theme.  Or, perhaps I should say, "Theme?  What theme?"  I honestly had to look up what the theme of the game was before starting to write this review (after having played the game multiple times).  And, after looking in the rules, I'm still not sure what it is.  I think it is just that there are people in a village doing stuff, and they want to do it well.  The last sentence of the "Game Idea" section is, "Those that worked hard during their lifetime may find themselves immortalized in the village chronicle and thus increase their families' fame."  Yeah; so I guess you're trying to become a famous family.  Anyway, this didn't bother me especially much, as I enjoy a strong theme, but it's not a requirement for me to enjoy a game.  However, I can see where this would be a drawback to a lot of other people.

Overall, I give Village an 8.5/10.  I enjoyed my plays of it, and will probably keep playing it on an occasional basis - which, when you consider the number of new games I keep learning, is a pretty good feat!

If Village sounds interesting, you might also check out Kingdom of Solomon, In the Year of the Dragon, and Lords of Waterdeep.

I would like to thank Tasty Minstrel Games for providing me with a review copy of Village.

Quarto Review

A little while back, I ranked my top ten abstract games. After I made that post, you all (my readers) suggested a few more that I should try. Notably, Quarto and Arimaa. Well, I listened and traded for a copy of each of them. And, though Arimaa is yet to hit my table, it is time to give Quarto a review.

Quarto is a simple game (read: "this review will be short") of piece placement.  The game is played on a 4x4 grid, and there are 16 total pieces.  Each piece has four different attributes - color, height, shape (square or round), and hollow or filled-in.  On each turn, one player selects a piece and hands it to his opponent.  That player then places the piece on the board.  When placing a piece, if you successfully create a line of four pieces in a row that all share an attribute (and realize it), then you win the game!  If you didn't notice it, but your opponent does, then he can claim it and win.  Play continues until either all of the pieces have been played and there are nobody noticed a four-in-a-row's (you tie), or until one person has won.

The most brilliant pro about Quarto is that you select which piece your opponent plays.  If each person got to pick their own piece, there would be half as much strategy (maybe even less) and the game simply would not be fun.  However, since you get to pick your opponent's piece, you can give him pieces to try to force him into setting you up for a victory on your turn.  You also have to be much more aware of how your opponent is trying to win - if you give him the piece he needs, then you will inadvertently give him the victory! I was very impressed with the strategic depth that this presented.  I found myself thinking about which pieces would win the game, how I could setup more pieces to be "winning" pieces, and how to stage it so that I could give my opponent the last possible non-winning piece.  (And yet, with all this thinking, I still lost!)

There are only so many things to take pictures of in Quarto.

The next pro that I have for Quarto is that the game is easily visible.  In many of these "get a bunch of things in a row" games, there is something that either makes it hard to visualize what is going to happen, or makes it hard to actually physically see what is going on (Quadrago is a good example of this).  However, in Quarto, you can easily see all of the pieces, and each attribute is distinct enough that, though you may miss what your opponent is trying to do, it won't be because your vision was blocked.

My third pro for Quarto is that it is a great combination of fast and replayable.  Since the game can only take up to 16 turns (and each turn only consists of placing a single piece), it goes fairly quickly.  However, when you win the game (especially if you lose), you will find yourself wanting to play a rematch.  This makes Quarto a really good game to play when are looking to fill an indeterminate amount of time (when you're waiting on someone to show up, for example).  I also see Quarto being a great game to play while simply hanging out with friends to socialize - a coffee shop type of game.

The only real con that I have with Quarto is that each game seems to have a bit of a ramping up element early on.  What I mean by this is that the first few piece selections and placements probably will not have very much strategy.  After all, when there's nothing on the board, there's nothing that you really have to watch out for.  So, at least when I have played, the first few turns are somewhat like, "here, take this one - throw it on the board somewhere; then, randomly pick another piece, and I'll do the same."  I'm sure that people who have played Quarto a lot more than I have will find much deeper strategies, and will start executing them from the beginning of the game.  But, I still think that the first few turns (though necessary to make the game work) don't really matter very much strategically.

Overall, I give Quarto an 8.5/10.  I really like the game, and I will continue playing it.  However, I will play it as a time-filler or as a game to play when I'm wanting to chat while playing, not a game that I will get together with a friend specifically to play.

If you like abstract games, you should also check out Quoridor, Brandubh, and Dvonn.