Ghost Stories - Tips & Strategies

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.

I find that leveraging the Buddhist Temple early and often is essential for managing the ghost population, and I did not start to have success against the game until I started doing so regularly.

My personal suggestion for which monk can best utilize the Buddhist Temple is the blue monk with the Second Wind power. This allows the blue monk to collect both tokens simultaneously and then potentially deploy them simultaneously, if on a corner, on a future turn. If the temple is located on a corner, then this is the best possible situation, as the blue monk can enter a cycle of exorcising both ghosts, placing statues, and then picking up any used statues on a later turn.

You can use the Pavilion of the Heavenly Winds to move troublesome ghosts, such as ghosts from full player boards, onto a placed Buddha statue to instantly exorcise them, without the benefit they provide or punishment they impose when exorcised normally.

As to when a placed Buddha statue should be utilized depends on your individual game state. I have the following suggestions:

• If you find your player boards are becoming full or if you have one or more player boards already full, do not hesitate to use a Buddha statue to exorcise low-level ghosts with the ability to add another ghost when placed, such as Sharp-Nailed Mistresses or Coffin Breakers. Although very easy to kill, an unlucky draw can lead to a chain of these ghosts being deployed, causing player boards to quickly become filled.

• If you are having a problem with Haunters, then place or move Haunters closest to haunting a tile onto the statues. The same goes for ghosts that haunt the first village tile in front of them when initially placed, even if they are not Haunters themselves, such as Shapeless Evil.

• If your player boards are well managed and not in danger of becoming full, and you do not have problems with Haunters, only then would I suggest placing ghosts with the ability to deactivate powers and Tormentors onto the Buddha statues. Blocked powers are always a serious problem, as you will find how critical those powers are when you are unable to use them. Tormentors can quickly become a problem even on well-managed boards, though I would generally suggest exorcising them normally, if at all possible, since they all provide a Qi or Yin-Yang token when exorcised. Note that Tormentors on the green board can be ignored if the green monk has the Strength of the Mountain power.

One final note that I alluded to earlier is that I have found that some people play the Buddha statues incorrectly. Per the instructions, Buddha statues can only be placed on the turn after they are acquired, which prevents the game from being too easy.

If you’ve played this game at all, read any reviews, watched videos, etc. then you know, ghost stories is hard. It’s hard to learn, hard to win, hard to remember the rules, and on and on…..in the beginnning.

When I first started playing, I got discouraged. This game seemed so complicated and impossible to learn. Then after I started to figure it out (finally!), we’d just lose over and over. I still liked it, but it was frustrating sometimes. I thought it seemed ridiculous anyone would ever play it on any level other than initiation, because that was already unbeatable!! But the more you play, the more you learn, and you do start to win. Not every time, but sometimes.

So, just give it time. Don’t play it once or twice or even 10 times and just give up. You’ve got to really give it a chance before making a decision. If that sounds like too much effort, maybe this game isn’t for you- it’s definitely not for everyone. But if you can give it time, you may find that your opinion will change, and it may become one of your favorites!

Me and my friends love fighting games. One of the things we’ve enjoyed for years is when a game has a random select for which fighter you are going to use. With this in mind, here’s the method we use for randomly selecting a character in Ghost Stories:

1 – shuffle the character tiles and place them on the table
2 – flip the 2nd and 4th tile places to the other side
3 – roll one of the included dice until you roll a colour that has not been chosen
4 – flip a coin, head’s up you take the character tile of the matching colour face up, head’s you take the same tile but flip it over

This allows you to try out each of the special powers and really understand how they work. Doing this also makes you a better team player, as you have a better idea what your partner can and can not do when choosing what to do on your turn.

Ghost Stories is hard, and (at least for my husband and I) a bit complicated to learn at first. So, after our first few tries we decided to play without using the Haunters. This made the games last longer (although we still lose 97% of the time! Haha) so we had more time to learn the game and figure out strategies for all the other ghosts and curses, etc. Once you add the Haunters back in, your priorities and strategies change of course, but hopefully you have a better grasp of how the game works at least. This is also a fun way to play if you want it a bit more “relaxing”…..if ghost stories could ever be called relaxing! 🙂

The Sorcerer’s Hut and the Buddha spirit traps can automatically destroy a ghost regardless of its strength. You might think this means you should use them on the strongest ghosts, but you often shouldn’t, because the strength-4 ghosts also give sizable rewards if you fight them normally.

The strength-3 ghosts with no rewards and the strength-2 ghosts that curse you when they depart are both excellent targets (though the latter can also be handled effectively by the green monk, who is either resistant or immune to curses). You should sometimes kill these with the sorcerer even if you have the tao tokens to exorcise them normally; it can be more efficient.

Tormentors (curse you every turn) and Black Widows (lock tao tokens) are situational targets. Exorcise them normally if it’s convenient (for the yin-yang reward)…but if it’s not, don’t hesitate to use the nukes. You don’t want them hanging around. (Though if green has the ability that lets him ignore the curse die, you can also move tormentors to his board to neutralize them.)

The buddha spirit traps can also stop ghosts from using their arrival abilities, so you should trap the Shapeless Evil (haunts a tile immediately) and any ghost that triggers another ghost draw, whenever possible. It may feel like a waste to use them on a strength-1 ghost, but preventing the second ghost draw effectively buys you another turn, which you can use to reset the trap.

Ghost Stories is tough to win on the easiest level. When we play, we tried pulling some of the toughest ghost cards from the deck. Rather than pulling the specified number of cards randomly, take some of the super challenging ones. Having easier ghosts during your first few rounds of Ghost Stories helps ease the frustration of learning the icons on the cards.

I highly recommend this variant you can get at Artscow (link below). It’s meant to be played with White Moon, but you can take those cards out. This is one of my favorite games, and its always nice to add some new twists. The 54 cards in the expansion include 24 Yin-Yang cards, 12 Animal Totems and 18 Chambers of ****. Check it out!

http://www.artscow.com/share/udwmsebyagm7

For players looking for a more challenging alternative to the solo game described in the rules, setup the board for 4 players and play the game according to the standard 4-player rules. The neutral power tokens are not used in this variant, as they are not part of the standard 4-player game.

This version makes the solo game more strategic than tactical, and advanced planning is a must for survival. One suggestion for success is to review the entire play area before starting and ending each monk’s turn, which is especially important for Haunters and Tormentors, as this forces the player to be cognizant of the game state before committing to actions or developing forward plans. It is easy to get focused on a particular monk’s upcoming turn and then lose to a bad roll from a Tormentor leading to a third haunted tile.

A monk needs his or her concentration to fight evil spirits! During another players turn, the table refrains from making play suggestions unless solicited. (Eliminates quarterbacking)