Chris Hawkins

This combination requires that the Blue and Green monks have particular abilities. Blue must have the double-village-tile-or-double-fight ability (Second Wind). Green must have the never-roll-the-curse-die ability (Strength of a Mountain). If you play strictly by the rules, this combination must be drawn randomly, but given the difficulty of Ghost Stories, you may want to allow players to pick their abilities.

In the first few rounds, all players may do whatever seems best in the situation. For example, picking up the Buddhas and activating the Circle of Prayer tile are good ideas. Once a couple of the tougher ghosts come out, switch to the Blue/Green strategy below.

Blue uses the Sorcerer’s Hut twice per turn to exorcise two ghosts, at a cost of two HP. After the first couple of turns of doing this, Blue will die. Then Green uses the Cemetery to resurrect Blue, and Green’s ability negates the usual cost of rolling the curse die. Blue returns to Sorcerer’s Hut, and the cycle repeats until the boss (the incarnation of Wu-Feng) appears.

Yellow will have the job of fighting the lesser ghosts. The Bottomless Pockets ability (receive a Tao token every turn) is probably the better one for this strategy. If the Cemetery and the Sorcerer’s Hut are not adjacent, Red should take the ability to move another monk (i.e., Blue) or use the Pavilion of Heavenly Winds village tile. Otherwise, Red can help Yellow to exorcise weaker ghosts.

Here are a few quick pointers that might give you an edge:

• Try to build a section or make a monument offering every turn.

• Keep your crystal tokens face down so that others won’t know exactly how many you have.

• In the early game, conserve your cards. Compare the crystal reward to the number of cards you would play to get it.

• In the early game, try to stay close to at least one other player, so long as your cards allow you to do that and also build on every turn.

• If someone has summoned a dragon without completing the building, build in the same place to get a dragon scale without spending an extra dragon card.

• If you don’t have the cards to build anything on a turn, that’s a good time to make a monument offering.

• If you can use a Pillar (yellow) card power to make more than one offering on a turn, that will save a turn. However, don’t wait too long to make a first offering.

• Use the discard option aggressively so that you can draw more cards.

• In the late game, look carefully for where the big neighborhood bonuses are. Finish those buildings if you can, and don’t worry about conserving cards. You want as few others as possible to share in the big payouts.