I’m 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 the colonizers. You can read about how this piece is played and what makes it stand out in the following paragraphs.
- Number of players: 14
- Game time: 90 – 120 minutes
- Price: 1799 CZK (Tlama Games)
- Age: 14+
The colonizing powers want their piece of land to be named “Ghost Island”.
The conquest of new territories has always been quite bloody. However, no intangible creature with terrifying power has ever stood in the way of the colonizers. Island Ghosts takes you to your own island, where you become a spirit that has somehow always existed in harmony with the local population. However, people with a completely different mindset are now appearing on the scene, which practically means that you must destroy them before they destroy you.
The size of the plot of land you receive on Ghost Island depends on how many players log into the game. You have pieces of the map at your disposal that you can collect in different ways. Once you’ve built the world you’ll be fighting for, you can start playing or not, because there’s still the option to choose one of the available scenarios, as well as bring a colonial power into the battle, which, like the story map, brings elements , which form the basic shape and flow of the game.
After you have made your choice, you still will not be able to start crushing the annoying insects that dare to appear in 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, and playing field with different advantages, actions, and 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 gameplay, which you will feel in some scenarios in that certain spirits will be stronger in some and weaker in others, because their base settings are simply not enough for the given ones. situations or encounters with a particular colonial power. Personally, I think this idea is brilliant because it makes sense that the sea spirit would have a hard time dealing with the colonists inland, while the green spirit wouldn’t have much trouble dealing with the colonists. This is due to the fact that he has regeneration, disrupts buildings, and has no problem sacrificing presence tokens to eliminate potential colonizer expansion.
Cards determine the height of enemies
Their expansion in Spirits of the Island is based on cards, which 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 pillage the area properly. Actions are carried out by the colonists gradually, since they are associated with the journey of a card depicting a certain territory on the playing field. Once activated at all three points, it goes into the discard pile. When it comes to action, plundering your world hurts deeply.
The more colonists present in a given space, the more the area will suffer. Fortunately, you have help at hand in the form of natives who fight back 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 truly diverse. You can support, for example, the defense of the natives and thereby help them cope with the onslaught without much harm, and nothing prevents you from using magic to drive the colonizer to another field.
While you can play fast ability cards right away, there are also cards that have a slow build-up and the spell listed on them doesn’t take effect until the colonists end the game. Some of these pieces are incredibly powerful. These are often associated with certain elemental essences that you can gain from cards drawn, as well as your spirit board, which evolves during the game, giving it the ability to play more cards per turn or cast stronger spells thanks to the more energy it has.
Both you and the colonizers undergo development in Ghosts of the Island. Therefore, it is necessary to choose the right abilities and, above all, try to use your skills to instill fear in the invaders, with which you can expel them from your territory. If you don’t succeed, you can count on territories they control, disaster tokens that will eliminate your presence in that space. Once the bad guys take all your tokens, too many disasters hit the island, or the colonists’ eviction period runs out, you’ll be done for. 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 me. Perhaps this is why I liked Ghost Island’s co-op strategy so much. You will have to think ahead a lot while fighting the colonists and try to cover the island with your presence, where enemies are spreading at the speed of a deadly virus.
One of the biggest trump cards in my opinion is the handling of individual spirits, which are different from each other and with the right communication between players can create some really interesting action. If you’re one of the co-op fans and you also like strategies that don’t have any missing cards, definitely pick this thing up.
We would like to thank Czech distributor REXhry for providing us with a copy of Ghosts of the Island.
Source :Indian TV
