Zoinks!!

What happens when games sit too close together on the shelf? They intermingle! Oh, NO!!! Scooby Doo and the gang (and the ghosts) from Scooby Doo Hide and Shriek have invaded Ghost Stories! Will they rip the fake mask off Wu-Feng only to hear him hollar "You meddlin' kids!!" (while shaking his fist, of course)

2 Player Ghost Stories

The BFF and I tried Ghost Stories yesterday as a two-player game. My overall reaction: wait for another two people.
The first game, we played by the official two player rules, each player takes one random board, across from each other, and the other two boards are randomly placed on the sides. The two non-player boards still play, but in a modified way; they only do their 'bad' stuff!
Backing up a little, in regular play, each player has two phases, the Yin where they have to do ghosty stuff, draw an additional ghost card, move ghosties up, haunt villagers, roll the curse die, fun bad stuff like that. The Yin phase is followed (again, in regular play) by the Yang phase, in which you get to move your pawn and either use the villager power you land on, or try to exercise the ghosty in front of you. So in normal four player mode, all four players get both phases.
Except in two player, you get all four times worth of bad stuff, with only two times worth of good stuffs! Sure, you can occasionally use abilities from the two non-player boards, but that doesn't work out very often. So without a full compliment of good things that can happen, the game was pretty slanted straight down into hell. It definitely made me not want to try the solo play (right on the week I have time to try solo games!)
The second time we played two player, we did it our own way: we each played as two players. We both had assumed that this would be the official rule until we read it. So it felt much more balanced, getting four times the good along with four times the bad. We still didn't win! We were doing a little better at the beginning, keeping the villagers unhaunted, and killing off the ghosties as they came out, but a couple times when drawing the required ghost caused another, then ANOTHER ghost to come out, and all-of-a-sudden we were down to the big baddy. And he was really big and really bad. We actually got the last 10 ghosties on the board after him, so we actually lost on the ghost deck being expired.
Funny side note: The BFF always wants to play green in whatever game we are playing (I always want purple, if you're keeping score), but with all four times of playing Ghost Stories, we've handed out the boards completely randomly, like shuffled behind my back and tell me when to stop and tell me a number and I'll count from there, randomly. And every time he's gotten green. At least in the last game, he got to play something in addition to green, but green still came up for him first.
Green must want to play him, too.

Ghost Stories Links

The very helpful videos we watched to help us understand game play.
The latest podcast at The Spiel features cooperative games including Ghost Stories and Pandemic.

Ghost Story

Sunday we played two new games, Ghost Story and Zombiegeddon. Ghost Story was part of the last game order, waiting behind Dominion, Call of Cthlulu card game, and World of Warcraft miniatures to be played. Zombiegeddon was purchased Saturday night after seeing The Watchmen*, we love the theatre that's in the same mall as the big box hobby and game store, and the chain craft store.
The BFF and I both read through the rules (huge complaint on the white print on black background), and we checked out some videos for more clarification. The rules by themselves were a bit confusing, explaining things that hadn't happened yet, but we got them figured out. The bits are beautiful, with symbols instead of words, which is good and bad. It looks simple and no words to clutter up the art, but we had to keep looking up what the symbols mean. But it was our first couple of plays, we were just getting the symbols into our heads.
We played four player, The BFF, Rawk Star, Yehaw McK, and me, and it worked great with four. I honestly didn't take time to read the rules for 1-3 yet, but I imagine it will be a handicapped game.
We lost the first game. I should say we got creamed the first game! In your ghost deck, you put one random big bad ghosty in towards the bottom. The first game, we didn't get through 1/3 of the deck, never even saw the big baddy. The second game, we were killin' ghosts left and right, using our abilities to our best advantage, but getting so worn down...and then the big baddy came out, and he wasn't that big or that bad, and we actually won. It was a much uncelebrated win, we all felt like we hadn't won at all, and I still am thinking that we must have done something wrong to be able to kill the big bad guy so easily. But I guess it was just luck that we got an easy one, plus working well together to even get to him.
It is, in it's cooperativeness, much like Pandemic. You really have to work together to use everyone's abilities at the right time, and cooperatively plan ahead. It was a good gaming experience for the gamers playing. Great pretty bits, and a good solid game. With the different levels of difficulty, it will be a game that can come out a lot, I imagine.


*Mini Review: I loved the movie. I actually collected The Watchmen twenty years ago, waiting each month for the next one to come out. It was my first and only experience with being a comic book nerd, really, driving at least an hour to get the next one, waiting patiently for that next edition. Again, I loved the movie. It was like reading the comic with action between the cells. They were very true to the comic, it was much appreciated. One voice I had heard a little differently in my head than it ended up on the screen, but that's the beauty of getting to know characters on their own, letting them show themselves to you, before just watching and being told what the characters are.