Quick Look: Ghosts on Oak Island
Designer: Timothy Smallwood
Artists:
Publisher: Highland Point Games, Inc.
Year Published: 2020
You find yourself in an ethereal world of Ghosts. Four Pirates, a Viking, and a Nights Templar are stuck on the Island and need your help. There is a curse keeping them on the island until the treasure is found.
Find the Treasure to set them free, but you need to prove yourself as well. Collect Equipment for their ship so they can sail away in full gear or as much as you can get and in return, they will reward you.
Players will journey around the board collecting equipment, camps, treasures and skills, taking and repairing damage along the way. Use your Skill to traverse the Island digging your way to find small treasures and to the final big treasure.
When a player finds all of the Blue equipment, that player receives a map giving them access to Oak Island by unlocking the secrets of when to approach the island. That player then continues the journey on the island spaces. Be the first player to find the big treasure to end the game, count your victory points to see who wins.
Review:
• Place the board in the middle of the table.
• Each player chooses a set of movement meeple currently by color, stretch goal meeples upgrade may include a rune to distinguish each players meeple.
• Place one meeple at the Start position on the outside track of the board. The second meeple remains with each player until island movement is unlocked.
• Give each player;
1 Equipment board and 1 Resource board
1 Skill tile counter and 1 Skull tile for damage tile counter
2 Gold tile counters, each player begins with 10 Gold
1 deck of Rune/movement cards. Each deck has nine cards and each marked with a rune and color per deck. Players shuffle the deck, then take two cards to hold in their hand. Place the remaining 7 cards face down in front of them.
• Separate the remaining tiles into individual stacks and place the equipment tiles on the main board on top of the dotted circle (see above photo for example) and place the small treasure tiles in order near the island (see above photo for example), place the jewel tiles in a corner of the main board.
• Note: place the small treasure tiles next to the space they were found on when a small treasure is found, showing that small treasure is “unlocked”
• Place the 3 Dirt tiles and 2 Success tiles into the bag.
• Shuffle all the Actions cards and deal two action cards to each player face down. These cards are for each players hand. Then place the remaining action cards face down next to the game board.
• The player that has been to an island the most recent (within 6 months) is the first player. If not, then the youngest player becomes the first player or each player rolls a die with the highest roll winning. The first player gets the Navigator board and the 2 D4 dice.
Game overview
A game round consists of three phases for each player. Started by the first player who performs as the Navigator for that round, then going clockwise to the left. Three phases are done by each player before the next round begins passing the Navigator board. The phases are as follows;
Phase 1: Outer ring movement
Phase 2: ActionRumor card
Phase 3: Island movement
Phase 1: Outer ring movement
The Navigator will roll 2 D4, then looks at their hand of two Rune/movement cards and determines which of the two dice results they want to play, placing that dice on the Navigator Rune board for the other players to see. This is where the navigator has a slight advantage over the other players but that’s ok because each player gets to be the Navigator.
The first player then discards face up the chosen card and moves their meeple that many spaces and performs the space actions, then passing the play to the next player until each player has completed the move phase.
Phase 2: Action Phase 2: ActionRumor Cards
Following the Move Phase is the Action card phase. Each player on their turn will select and play one of the two action cards in their hand. Follow the rules on the Action card. Some Action cards will have a Rumor, in which case you will check the Token bag for success or fail, follow the details of the cards, refer to rules if needed.
To determine a success or fail check with the token bag, each player gets two free draws. The Star token is a success and a Dirt token is a fail. Once a success token is drawn, it is a success. Tokens drawn from the bag remain with the player. So, after two draws from the bag, there remains three tokens. If a player draws two Dirt (fail) tokens, additional draws from the bag may be given but will cost the player one Skill per draw to do so. Players that have zero skill cannot do additional draws. Return all of the drawn tokens into the bag when done.
When an Action card is played or placed down as a small treasure, replace the card by taking the top card from the deck, shuffle when all cards have been used.
Place used action cards in the discard pile next to the deck.
When using an action card for Battle must also follow rules under “Player damage level effects during battle”.
Phase 3: Island Movement Phase 3: Island Movement
This is where the player will move on the island if they have unlocked the map and have their meeple on the island. Move the number of spaces desired and when you stop moving you can take the option of “find” to see if you can find a small treasure or the final big Treasure.
Lake Leafty – Owner
Lake was a pharmacy tech in just about every facet you can think of including as a veteran of the United States Air Force. He’s also a husband to his wonderful wife with whom he has been blessed to be the father of 5 great children. Due to circumstances beyond his control he got thrown into the world of Tabletop gaming. As an overachiever he couldn’t just sit there quietly playing games. So he started podcasting about games in May of 2017. Ever since then has been slowly trying to grow his evil regime starting with The Giveaway Geek and now EBG.
See Lake’s reviews and interviews HERE.
