Clash of ghosts with colonists.
I am a big fan of strategy games, so I couldn’t miss the cooperative board game “Ghosts of the Island”, in which you have to fight against the colonizers. You can read about how this work is played and what makes it stand out in the following paragraphs.
- Number of players: 1 – 4
- Play time: 90 – 120 minutes
- Price: 1799 crowns (Tlama Games)
- Age: 14+
The colonizing powers want their piece of land to be named “Ghost Island”.
Conquering new territories has always been bloody enough. However, no intangible being with terrifying powers has ever stood in the way of the colonizers. Island Spirits sends you to your own island, where you become a spirit that has somehow always existed in harmony with the local population. But now humans with a completely different mindset are appearing on the scene, which practically means that you must destroy them before they destroy you.
The size of the land you get on Ghost Island depends on how many players log in. You have map pieces at your disposal that you can assemble in a variety of ways. Once you have built a world to fight for, you can choose to play or not, as you can still choose from the available scenarios, as well as involve a colonial power in the struggle, which, like the story map, introduces elements that shape the basic shape and flow of the game.
Once you have made your choice, you still cannot start crushing the annoying insects that dared to appear on the territory under your control. You still have to choose your “hero”. Spirits of the Island offers players a truly wide range of options. Each of the ghosts is essentially unique: it has its own cards, abilities, a playing field with various advantages, actions, and also difficulty. Of course, it cannot be said that each of the creatures is as demanding as the others.
Likewise, they differ from each other in terms of gameplay, which you will feel in some scenarios that certain spirits will be stronger in some and weaker in others because their base setup is simply not enough for a given situation or encounter with a certain colonial power. Personally, I think this idea is brilliant, as it makes sense that the sea spirit would have a hard time dealing with colonists inland, while the green entity would have no problem dealing with colonists. This is because it has regeneration, disrupts building status, and has no problem sacrificing presence tokens to eliminate potential colonizer expansion.
Cards determine the growth of enemies
Their expansion in the game Spirits of the Island is based on cards that always give them the opportunity to explore a new part of the island, build a settlement/city on a given piece of land and then plunder the territory thoroughly. The actions are carried out by the colonists gradually, as they are related to the travel of the card, which depicts a certain territory on the game board. After activating in all three points, it goes to the discard pile. When it comes to actions, plundering your world hurts a lot.
The more colonists are present in a given space, the more the area will suffer. Fortunately, you have helpers at hand in the form of natives who resist and try to repel the onslaught of the colonists. And, of course, there are ability cards. In the case of quick “spells”, they are activated before the colonizers’ turn, which can make it very unpleasant for them. The range of possibilities is really diverse. You can support, for example, the defense of the natives and thus help them cope with the onslaught without much damage, and nothing prevents you from driving a colonizer to another field with magic.
While you can play fast ability cards right away, there are also slow build cards, and the spell on them is only played after the colonists have finished the game. Some of these pieces are incredibly powerful. They are often tied to certain elemental essences that you can get from the cards you draw, as well as your spirit board, which evolves over the course of the game, allowing it to play more cards per turn or cast stronger spells thanks to the greater amount of energy it has.
Both you and the colonizers are evolving in Ghosts of the Island. So you need to choose your abilities wisely and, above all, try to use your skills to instill fear in the invaders, with which you can drive them out of your territory. If you fail, you can count on the territories they control, on disaster tokens that will exclude your presence in this space. As soon as the bad guys knock out all your tokens, too many disasters hit the island, or the colonists’ eviction period ends, you will be finished. Victory is associated with the implementation of the scenario, or with the expulsion of the conquerors.
Strategy fans will love Spirits of the Island.
Strategy is a genre that is very close to my heart. Perhaps that is why I was so eager to play the cooperative strategy game Ghost Island. You will have to think ahead a lot while fighting colonists and try to cover the island with your presence, where enemies are spreading like a deadly virus.
One of the greatest assets, in my opinion, is the handling of individual spirits that are different from each other and, with the right communication between players, can create some really interesting action. If you are one of the fans of cooperation and you also like strategies where there are no missing cards, definitely pick this one up.
We would like to thank Czech distributor REXhry for providing us with a copy of Ghosts of the Island.
Source :Indian TV
