Who you gonna call? Let's Play Ghost Stories!

What is Ghost Stories, anyway?

Ghost Stories is a board game for one to four players by Antoine Bauza, better known as the designer of 7 Wonders. The game has received two full expansions (Black Secret and White Moon) and several promotional cards. This game will use only the base set.

Ghost Stories has also been ported to iOS. If you have an iThing and enjoy this LP, consider it as a cheaper alternative to the board game. Note that I haven't played it and can't speak to its quality. The board game has absolutely beautiful art and very high quality components. If you are the kind of gamer who likes looking at the game you're playing, then I really recommend this game.


The backstory

Many fell, putting an end to the reign of terror of Wu-Feng, Lord of the Nine Hells. The funerary urn housing his ashes was buried in the cemetery of a village in the Middle Empire. Years have elapsed, and the cursed legacy has been forgotten by the living.

Hidden away in hell, Wu-Feng has forgotten nothing. His incessant search allowed him to locate the receptacle. The shadow of his former incarnation already extends to the villagers, who are unaware of the threat.

Fortunately, the Fat-Si (Taoist priests) keep watch, guarding the border between the dead and the living. Armed with their courage, their faith, and their powers, they are dedicated to send the reincarnation of Wu-Feng back to Hell.


How to play

The full official rules are available here. The game is translated from French and the manual suffers for it. A summary of the rules follows, and a quick reference sheet can be found here.

SHORT VERSION: Four monks have to beat up ghosts until a big ghost shows up. They have to beat that ghost to win. (If you're not planning to play, you may want to skip down to "How we're gonna do this" below.)

A player's turn has two phases.

Yin phase:
1. Any ghosts on the player's mat trigger their "each turn" effects, if any.

2. If the player's mat is not full, the player draws a ghost card and places it on any empty space of the player mat of the matching color. There are five colors and only four players -- if a black ghost is drawn, the player places it on his own mat. If the ghost has any "into play" effects, those trigger now.

Yang phase:
1. The player may move to an adjacent village tile (including diagonally).

2. The player may either use the village tile on which he is located or attack all adjacent ghosts (not diagonally).

3. If the player has a Buddha figure that he obtained during a previous turn, then he may place it on an empty, adjacent ghost space. A ghost that would be placed there is discarded instead, and the Buddha figure is returned to the temple.

Each Taoist starts with a Yin-Yang token. At any time during the Yang phase (except during an action), a Taoist may spend his Yin-Yang token to either use any village tile or to turn a haunted village tile back to its unhaunted side.

The game ends in victory when the Taoists defeat the incarnation of Wu-Feng -- a particularly powerful ghost that will appear 11 cards away from the bottom of the ghost deck. The Taoists lose if any of the following conditions are met:

• All Taoists are dead (i.e. they have no more Qi tokens). With no one left to face the threat, the village becomes lifeless under the assault of the ghosts.
• Four village tiles become haunted. The ghosts have retrieved Wu-Feng's funerary urn. The world of the living does not exist anymore.
• The last ghost card of the deck is put into play. The village will never again see the daylight.

The village



There are nine village tiles, which are arranged in a 3x3 square. Each player sits on one side of the square, as seen here. All four Taoists begin play in the center village tile.

Each player mat has three slots where ghosts can reside, corresponding to the three village tiles in front of that mat. To attack a ghost, a Taoist must be in the corresponding village tile.

Each village tile has a different effect:

• Cemetery: Return a dead Taoist to the game with two Qi tokens, then roll the Curse die.
• Taoist Altar: Un-haunt a village tile, then draw a ghost card.
• Herbalist's Shop: Roll two Tao dice and take Tao tokens of the corresponding color from the supply.
• Sorcerer's Hut: Discard any ghost in play (except Wu-Feng) without activating its "out of play" effects. Lose 1 Qi.
• Buddhist Temple: Take a Buddha figure. (There are only two Buddha figures.)
• Night Watchman's Beat: Move all the Haunters on one player's mat backward on the card.
• Circle of Prayer: Place a Tao token from the supply on this tile. (If there is already a token on this tile, return it to the supply.) All ghosts have their resistance reduced by one point of the matching color.
• Pavilion of the Heavenly Wind: Move a ghost of your choice to any free space (even one that has a Buddha on it; Wu-Feng cannot be defeated this way), then move another Taoist (not yourself) to an adjacent (to him) village tile. A ghost that is moved retains all its properties.
• Tea House: Take a Tao token of your choice from the supply and a Qi token, then draw a ghost card.

Circle of Prayer and Buddhist Temple are indispensible! Circle of Prayer's effect is permanent; sticking a black token on it at the start of the game gives you an easier time against the nastiest ghosts in the game. Night Watchman and, to a lesser extent, Sorcerer's Hut are newbie traps. You usually have better options. Finally, drawing a ghost card is not always a drawback: remember that you need to burn through the ghost deck to get to Wu-Feng.


Defeating ghosts

To attack a ghost, a player rolls three six-sided dice. The dice have one face for each color of ghost (red, blue, yellow, green, and black) plus one white face. The white face is wild. The player must roll matching colors to overcome the ghost's resistance. If the player does not roll enough matching colors, he may spend matching Tao tokens from his supply or from the supply of any other player present on that tile. If the ghost is defeated, it is removed from the board, and any "out of play" effects it has trigger.

For the purposes of our LP, we will use regular d6es with the regular colors in alphabetical order:
1 = Black
2 = Blue
3 = Green
4 = Red
5 = Yellow
6 = Wild/White (Yes, W comes before Y, but it makes more sense for 6 to be wild, okay?)

Normal ghosts have between one and four points of resistance, but various means exist to reduce the resistance of a ghost. It is generally recommended to attempt to defeat a ghost only when you can do so with only one matching die. The odds of rolling two matching dice out of three are relatively low.

If a Taoist attacks from a corner tile that has two adjacent ghosts, he can choose how to allocate the dice and can possibly defeat both ghosts with a single attack. If it is possible to defeat a ghost without spending Tao tokens, the Taoist must defeat a ghost.


Special powers

Each Taoist has two special powers. A Taoist's power is decided randomly at the beginning of the game.

Yellow Taoist
1. Enfeeblement Mantra: The yellow Taoist can bewitch ghosts to hamper them. Before his move, he may place the Enfeeblement Mantra token onto any ghost in play. That ghost's resistance is reduced by 1, regardless of which Taoist is performing the exorcism. When that ghost is removed from the game, or if the yellow Taoist loses his power, the token is returned to the yellow Taoist, who may play it again later.
2. Bottomless Pockets: The yellow Taoist is never short of mystical components. Before his move, he may take a Tao token of any color available in the supply.

Of the two, Enfeeblement Mantra is a bit more subtle, but it's my preferred power. It's easier to help out an ally with it.

Red Taoist
1. Dance of the Twin Winds: The red Taoist has the ability to guide his fellow monks. After his move, he may also move one other Taoist according to the normal movement rules. (When playing a solo game, do not use this power.)
2. Dance of the Peaks: The red Taoist has the ability to fly. During his move, he may reach any village tile, not just an adjacent one.

The red Taoist's powers are comparatively unimpressive: the red Taoist is the only one who doesn't have any advantage in exorcising ghosts. Twin Winds can be very handy, though.

Blue Taoist
1. Second Wind: The blue Taoist can slow down the time flow. After moving, he may use the village tile twice or attempt two exorcisms. The exorcisms are performed independently; you can't bank dice from the first to use on the second.
2. Heavenly Gust: The blue Taoist can act in a heartbeat. He may use a village tile and attempt an exorcism on the same turn, in either order.

The blue Taoist's powers are less subtle. They're both good, but which one is better is situational.

Green Taoist
1. Strength of the Mountain: The green Taoist has an exceptional power. He may roll a fourth Tao die when performing an exorcism. In addition, he never rolls the Curse die.
2. Gods' favourite: The ancestral deities accompany the green Taoist. Any time he rolls Tao dice or the Curse die, he may reroll some or all of those dice (he may keep some of the Tao dice and roll the others). If he does, he must keep the results of the second roll.

Gods' favourite (spelled as per the manual) is an incredible exorcism tool, but the power to never roll the Curse die is amazingly valuable.


The ghosts



Red, blue, yellow, and green each have a set of ghosts that is identical except for color. Black ghosts are all special and deadly in their own way. Here are some ghost powers you can expect to see:

Each turn

• Haunters. These ghosts take a Haunter token, placed in the rear position. Each time the ghost gets a turn, the Haunter token advances: first to the forward position, then to the village, where it haunts the nearest tile and returns to the rear position to haunt again. Left unchecked, Haunters will quickly end your game.
• Tormentors. Each time this ghost gets a turn, you roll the Curse die, which can cause you to haunt a village tile, draw a ghost, lose all your Tao tokens, lose a Qi, or do nothing. I like to kill these ones very quickly.
• Immune to dice. You can't roll the Tao dice against this ghost. You must beat it using Tao tokens or by reducing its resistance to 0 (such as by using the Circle of Prayer; a ghost with 0 resistance must still be exorcised).

Into play

• Draw a ghost. Commonly seen on 1-resist colored ghosts.
• Block Taoist powers. While this ghost is present, the Taoist whose mat it occupies cannot use his power.
• Advance Haunter. Seen only on black ghosts, these are Haunters that start in the forward position.
• No Tao tokens. While this ghost is present, you may not use Tao tokens to exorcise ghosts. The Circle of Prayer and Enfeeblement Mantra are unaffected by this. Another high-priority target.
• Steal a Tao die. While this ghost is present, roll one fewer die when exorcising ghosts. This is potentially cumulative, not to mention extremely deadly if combined with the previous effect.
• Lose 1 Qi / Haunt a village tile. Seen on one ghost each, these effects are unpreventable. Be aware of their presence in the deck, lest they catch you with your spiritual pants down.

Out of play

• Roll the Curse die. Remember, you can prevent this if the ghost is removed with a Buddha or the Sorcerer's Hut.
• Gain 1-2 Tao tokens. Seen on high-resistance ghosts. You choose which colors.
• Gain a Yin-Yang or 1 Qi. Seen on some of the most powerful ghosts. Ghosts like this are the only way to recover a spent Yin-Yang token. You can spend your Yin-Yang token more than once in a turn if you happen to pick it back up.

Ghosts that have no negative "each turn" effect and no positive "out of play" effect are sometimes best left alone.

Finally, there are the ten incarnations of Wu-Feng. Some of them have only 3 resistance, but require special measures to defeat. Some of them have up to 8 resistance and will require coordination to take down. Many of them have nasty powers to make your task more difficult. Luckily, you only have to defeat one of these.


How we're gonna do this

Ghost Stories is playable solo or with up to four players. In this LP, we will run two games in parallel: one played by four of you on Initiate difficulty (the easiest), the other played solo by me on Nightmare difficulty (the second-hardest). There are four differences between these two difficulty levels:

• Initiates start with one extra Qi.
• Initiates start with one black Tao token in addition to the token of their color.
• Above Initiate difficulty, the game ends if three village tiles become haunted.
• Nightmare mode has three Wu-Feng incarnations that must be defeated rather than one. (When playing with four players, this number is increased to four.)

I will be playing my turns along with the LP and using the same village, card order, and Taoist powers, but I will post them with a delay in order to minimize the influence I have on our LP guinea pigs. I have never played Nightmare mode, so I will probably lose.

Then again, our players have never played Initiate mode, so they will probably lose.


The cast

Austin, Gerad, Falselogic, and Tefari are our players for this game, with Shinkirou as an alternate.

Please feel free to sign up as an alternate. In the probable event that I run Ghost Stories a second time, you will be given a reserved slot, even if you end up replacing into this game.

Asian themed ghost stories? I'm in.

I have played this game twice.

The first time was with the White expansion. Somehow, we pulled off a win, and everyone present said that having a win on your first game sours your expectation of the game.

The second time was with the Black expansion. Everything went fine until it all went catastrophically wrong forever, which everyone agreed was much more in keeping with the game's feel.

Having read this I kinda wish I signed up.

Can you mark me down as a sub?

Noted.

Players: Please select a color.

Blue Taoist please!

Movement is always extremely important in these games, I'll take Red.

It doesn't matter to me. If Austin doesn't care I'll pick one.

I'll be Green.

Here's our village:



Slots are marked for convenience of reference during the LP: village tiles are numbered 1-9 as on a telephone, and ghost slots are marked A-L clockwise. The order of the players is randomly selected, with Tefari going first.

For reference, the village tiles are:
1. Circle of Prayer - place a Tao token to reduce co-colored ghosts' resistance.
2. Graveyard - revive a fallen Taoist with 2 Qi, then roll the Curse die.
3. Pavilion of the Heavenly Wind - move a ghost and another Taoist. (In a solo game, move yourself instead.)
4. Taoist Altar - unhaunt a village tile, then draw a ghost.
5. Herbalist's Shop - roll two dice and take the corresponding Tao tokens from the supply.
6. Sorcerer's Hut - lose 1 Qi and discard a ghost from play.
7. Night Watchman's Beat - move all haunters on one player's mat to the rear.
8. Buddhist Temple - take a Buddha.
9. Tea Shop - gain 1 Qi and a Tao token, then draw a ghost.

Player powers:
Dance of the Twin Winds (replaced with Dance of the Peaks for the solo game)
Heavenly Gust
Enfeeblement Mantra
Gods' Favourite

The solo game has randomly picked green as the player Taoist. The absent Taoists' powers will be available for use during the game by expending power tokens. A solo player starts the game with three power tokens, which can be regained by ending his turn in the center village tile (on our board, this is 5 - Herbalist's Shop).

At the start of the game, each player has 4 Qi, a black Tao token, and a Tao token of his color. The game will start within a few days.

Well uh, since I've got Twin Winds I guess we should figure out what we're going to do with it huh?

There are really only two things to do with Twin Winds:
- move someone with Tao tokens to someone who acts first and needs to borrow them (perhaps yourself)
- move someone to the center tile so they can reach any tile on their turn

Yeah I totally failed to realize we don't have an active board yet so there's nothing to plan for at the moment. Sorta panicked when I saw I was first up and had a skill I can use on others.

Taoists:
Ghosts:


Tefari of the Twin Peaks draws:

Blood Drinker (**)
Defeated: Roll the Curse die

This is a red ghost with two points of resistance (RR). It does nothing while alive, but the Taoist who exorcises it must roll the Curse die. Place it in slot A, B, or C, then take your Yang phase by moving and either requesting a villager's help or attempting to exorcise the ghost.

Alright, I'm unclear on where I start location wise. =\ I'd like to try to exorcise the ghost since I already have a red token on me so we might as well not let things start off poorly. Alternatively I can wait for Austin to come around with his Curse reroll and he can use my red token to exorcise it and reduce the odds anyone ends up cursed and get myself and someone else to a useful place on the board with my turn, what do people think?

We all start in the center of the town. The ghost seems easy enough to beat but you will have to take the curse roll. I'd wait for Austin and maybe do a town event.

You could use your turn by placing your black tao token at the circle of prayer.

You could then put the ghost at A, and if I'm reading this correctly, when I go to kill it (at A) I could then use your token to attack it and also attack any green ghosts drawn if they are placed at L.

CoP takes a token from the supply. (The supply has five tokens of each color, so one black token remains in the supply.)

Correct. It may be unnecessary to use the tokens, depending on the Tao dice.

Are nonplayers allowed to sit here discussing strategy too?

That's up to Mogri, and the other players, but seeing as I've only played this game once and got trounced I can use all the help I can get

This is just me, but I'd rather you didn't.

If you've never played the game, feel free to chime in with questions. I don't care who table talks, but please respect the players' wishes.

As much as it would help us out I think the whole point is that we've never played before and part of the fun is us stumbling around flailing wildly.

Is it possible to basically use the old MTG -X/-X trick to kill a ghost by putting its resistance down to 0? I could move to the CoP, pull a red token from there, then move Austin on top of me (huhuhuhuh), he could use my red token and instakill the ghost with curse reroll protection. Also when do token replenish to the supply? Does the CoP token go back to the supply immediately after being used for an attempted exorcism?

You can totally instakill if something is at 0, but if you pull the black token from the stash that means that from now on every single ghost we kill will have -1 resist. Then if I roll and don't get any reds I can use your token but if I get even 1 red I don't even need your token, AND I can reroll once to try for a red. Speaking of, can I reroll for colors and then reroll again if I don't like the curse? Or just one reroll.

If the black token is really that powerful then fuck yes that's what I'm gonna do, and I'll Wind you up here to save you a movement unless someone else has a better plan.

You still have to exorcise a ghost with 0 resistance, though it will automatically succeed, regardless of the ghost's special resistances (e.g. immune to Tao dice). Ghosts with 0 resistance do not immediately die.

Putting black on the CoP will only affect ghosts with black resistance. (Outside of Wu-Feng, ghosts only have resistance of their own color.)

EDIT:
The CoP Tao will stay there indefinitely, leaving only if the CoP is haunted or you place a different Tao token there. Tao tokens spent from your stash are sent back to the supply.

Alrighty then, I'm gonna move to the CoP, place a red token, put the ghost at A, then move Austin up here so he can handle it safely. UNLESS he wants to move himself and I could move someone else to the Buddha statues to keep on top of those. With Winds we should be able to keep up useful resistances for the important kills, I feel good about this.

Question: Do I have to move in order to trigger my ability? I assume I do from the way its worded and that its called Twin Winds.

Also could you post card art of the ghosts? I love shit like that. :D

Black. Black token.

Black won't do anything against the red ghost I pulled. O_o

Black will affect every type of ghost
Whoops! Ok then.