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.
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