Ghost Stories: Black Secret is a pretty, but odd game.
Hard as hell…
The blurb tells the story…
The cooperative game Ghost Stories often has players on the edge of their seats with uncertainty over whether their monks will be able to protect a village against the many aspects of Wu-Feng that threaten it. With Ghost Stories: Black Secret, the players will face an even more powerful dilemma: Wu-Feng himself.
Yes, the player count for Black Secret is 2-5 (instead of 1-4) as one player will take on the role of Wu-Feng and harass the monks in a more direct manner than they’ve experienced previously. Wu-Feng now chooses where the incoming ghosts will be placed on the individual monk boards. Instead of placing the ghost on the board, Wu-Feng can use that ghost to power colored spells matching the color of the ghost or to bring new figures in play that scour the catacombs underneath the village; these figures are searching for the remains of Wu-Feng by digging in the dirt located there, and should they find the three icons required, the shadow of Wu-Feng descends on the village to fight directly with the monks.
The game went quickly from “This is easy” to “This is hard” to “How the hell do we win?”
It’s a very nice-looking game and quite fun but rough on the Monks.
Game Play Overview
This is fairly complex and to be honest, I’m writing this bit 9 years in the future so it’s not exactly fresh in my mind.
One player plays a Wu-Feng and will control all the bad guys. They’ll move, spawn attack etc all in a phase called ‘Ying’.
The rest of the players play as monks defending the village and take their actions in the ‘Yang’ phase.
First players can move, I believe they always have to do that at the start of their turn. Then they can do 1 of 3 actions.
The first is to get rid of a Ghost Monster thing with an exorcism.
If successful, the Ghost is discarded and the bonus effect is granted after any curse is activated if there is one.
The second action is to request help from a villager… No idea what that does, to be honest. Even the rulebook just says “Check the player sheet”. How bloody lazy is that?
The third and final action is to rescue a villager.
If the players manage to exorcise the incarnation of WuFeng
WuFeng wins if they get rid of all the player’s QI tokens by overrunning the board and doing other stuff if 3 villages are haunted and if the ghost deck runs out.
Summary
You can tell from my apathy that I didn’t like this game much. It was just OK. It’s a bit leader-y? At points, I was just being told where to go and what to do as that was the best move. In fact, for most of my turns, I wasn’t really in control which is why I had trouble remembering the rules. (Which is why I came back to rewrite this years later instead of just pointing to someone else’s video)
Nice to know Antoine Bauza isn’t perfect 🙂
Ghost Stories: Black Secret Update 22/05/2018
So, looking back, this is one of my least favourite games. It’s a fairly complicated open information co-op. Alpha gamer a-hoy!
Jesta ThaRogue