You can see the complete review here: Boardgamegeek, Ghost Stories: White Moon review by Michael J.

Introduction

Ghost Stories: White Moon is an expansion for Ghost Stories, a cooperative board game by Antoine Bauza. I love games that can be played solitaire in general, and I am a big fan of Ghost Stories and its relentless assault on all things easy, so it was almost a non-decision as to whether I'd buy this expansion or not. So is White Moon worth the purchase? Read on.

Components

The first thing you'll notice when you open the Ghost Stories box is the sheer amount of new components that are added to the game. You get 24 Villagers, 4 Moon Crystal Receptacle tiles, 4 Moon Crystal Receptacles to sit on the tiles, 4 Moon Crystals, a Villager Portal, Su-Ling cardboard and plastic figurines, a Villager Graveyard and a Villager Shelter, 10 new ghosts, 6 new Wu-Feng incarnations, the new Kung Foo School tile, and finally 8 special Artifacts. The new artifacts, ghosts, Villagers, and plastic pieces are all lovingly rendered and dripping with the same artistic style that permeates the original game. The game is gorgeous, and when laid out on the table is an absolute joy to look at. The artistry of the new pieces complements the original's Eastern art style perfectly, and adds to the atmosphere as you play (as if the game needed more). The Taoist mythos is deep, and I can tell that a lot of research went into the design of this game. Ghost Stories and its expansion represent the pinnacle for art in boardgames, and will most likely stand as the example of well-executed art direction for many years to come.

What's New?

Villagers - Yes, the village of Ghost Stories is coming to life! Villagers have moved into the village, and are in need of help. Or perhaps they were there the entire time but just came out of the closets they were hiding in? The Villagers complete the transformation of the village from an abstract puzzle to an abstract puzzle where lives are at stake. Villagers are grouped into families by name, and have titles such as "mom", "dad", and "child". These relationships give them personality, and you'll often find yourself referring to Villagers by name when you say things like "We need to save Father Wu now!" Villagers can be killed, in which case you will be penalized. But they can be saved as well, after which you can earn yourself special rewards and Artifacts. More on the Villagers later.

Kung Foo School - The Kung Foo School is a new village tile that Taoists have at their disposal, and like the Guardhouse tile from the Guardhouse expansion, it is mixed into the tile deck and randomly replaces one of the existing tiles from the game (if it is randomly drawn). The Kung Foo School allows Taoists to perform a special exorcism against all ghosts matching the color of the Taoist's board, or alternatively all black ghosts. It allows you to attack ghosts that you aren't standing next to, which can be a real life saver when you are on the other side of the village and you need to take action against your own board quickly. Combined with the Guardhouse Expansion, there are now 11 official village tiles, 2 of which are unused every game, adding new variety and challenges to each game. Worth mentioning is that the Graveyard tile has become more more useful now, as you can also use it to resurrect a dead Villager (which may be necessary to save all members of a family and hence earn that family's reward; more on that later). The Graveyard was barely useful in games I played with the original Ghost Stories, but with the Villagers added in, I have used it just about every single game.

Moon Crystals - Moon Crystals can be gained by defeating certain ghosts that have been added to the game with the expansion, or by rolling white faces while at the Herbalist Shop. They can be used just like Tao tokens to support exorcisms, except that they can also be used when tokens are banned from play, and they do not get taken when players lose Tao tokens due to a bad Curse Die roll or ghost draw, which makes them extremely valuable to keep around. They can also be used during the new special Mystic Barrier phase, but to reach this phase players will have to have previously placed the 4 Moon Crystals on the Moon Crystal Receptacles in each corner right after the Buddha placement phase. Overall, with only a few ways to get Moon Crystals, you won't be obtaining them easily, or using them too often in every game (although I'm sure some games will see more crystal usage than others). I'm not sure whether they are better spent setting up the Mystic Barrier, or saved for exorcisms. I still have much to learn about the game!

Su-Ling - Next up is Su-Ling, a special character that acts to aid the Taoists in their quest to defeat Wu-Feng. Su-Ling was a young girl in the village who sacrificed her life to defeat Wu-Feng the first time around. This time, she comes to the Taoists aid when needed. But her little plastic figurine hides her awesomeness. In game terms, whenever a village tile is haunted, or the Curse Die is rolled, or a precious Villager is killed, Su-Ling makes an appearance. When called into action, players can place her on their player boards. When placed in front of a ghost, Su-Ling neutralizes the ghost's center-stone power, which can be used to negate a Haunting ghost, a Tormentor, a ghost that prevents the use of tokens, a ghost that captures a dice, or a ghost that devourers Villagers. She is extremely powerful and can save the village from those vicious ghost combinations that would otherwise be nearly impossible to escape from. (The Black Widow and Su-Ling are like a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup as far as I'm concerned; they just go better together! When the Black Widow comes out, I know where my Su-Ling is headed.) When placed on one of the two side spots on a player's board, she can also add a Moon Crystal to the Moon Crystal Receptacles to build up to the Mystic Barrier phase (which occurs when all 4 corner spots have Moon Crystals from Su-Ling or Taoist placements).

Ghosts - There are 16 new ghosts included with White Moon. 10 are standard-fare ghosts, while 6 of them are new Wu-Feng incarnations. All of them have new abilities dealing with Villagers, Moon Crystals, and Portals. The new Devourer ghosts are quite brutal, as they eat Villagers every single turn! Ouch!

Mystic Barrier - Lastly, there is a new Mystic Barrier game phase that is triggered when players have managed to put Moon Crystals in all 4 corner Moon Crystal Receptacles. The crystals can be placed in Moon Crystal Receptacles by Taoists at the end of a Taoist's turn if the Taoist already has a Moon Crystal and they finish their turn on a corner tile. Or, Moon Crystals can be placed by Su-Ling when she is called into action on a side board space next to a receptacle. The Mystic Barrier phase happens at the end of the turn where the 4th crystal was placed. Starting with the player to the left of the active player, and continuing once around the table, each Taoist can take one of two actions: 1) Rescue a Villager by spending one of the 4 Moon Crystals (hence no more than 4 may be rescued), or 2) Roll 4 Tao Dice to defeat monsters on the rolling player's board with any remaining Moon Crystals available as wild tokens (but you cannot use Tao tokens during this special phase). This phase is quite powerful, and can come into play near the end of the game when players desperately need it. Some people have claimed that the phase is too powerful, and makes the game too easy. I'd like to be able to offer an opinion on this, but, to be honest, I have yet to be able to trigger the Mystic Barrier once in any game I've played. Either I was unable to obtain enough Moon Crystals to place in the receptacles, or Su-Ling had more important things to do than leave her current location to visit a corner space. I think I haven't used the right strategy yet to set up the Moon Barrier (e.g. put the ghosts I'd want Su-Ling to block on a corner space in the first place...). Either way, I can see how the Mystic Barrier can be too powerful in some cases, clearing space on player boards at the exact time the game should be ramping up in difficulty, not ramping down. I've seen some people suggest to weaken the phase, either by making it harder to set up, or reducing the number of dice that can be rolled in the exorcism from 4 to 3, so at least some thought is being given to ways to level out the impact the phase might have on the game. I will reserve judgment on this, however, as I have yet to be able to put the phase into action. (For those in the know, the Mystic Barrier phase also has one of the most confusing sequence diagrams ever created on the back of the rulebook. The Yin/Yang diagrams are fairly confusing anyway, but the one representing the Mystic Barrier phase is something else, full of symbols, arrows, and other incomprehensible goodies. If you thought Race For The Galaxy's icons were confusing, don't look at White Moon's rulebook...

More On Villagers

I only briefly touched on the new Villagers above. The Villagers are, for many reasons, the stars of White Moon, and they take the immersion factor of the game to a whole new level. You start the game with 24 Villagers (3 on each of 8 tiles, excluding the tile where the Villager Portal rests). Villagers can be rescued by bringing them to the Villager Portal, and sending them through the portal as an action on the portal tile. But with ghosts raining down on the village, the Villagers are far too cowardly to attempt to reach the portal on their own, hence you need to escort them around town. To move a Villager, you simply declare that the Villager is walking with your Taoist, and the Villager will move to any tile your Taoist moves to. You can only bring one Villager with you at a time, and you can never have more than 3 Villagers on any one tile in the game (this is a hard limit). Once a Villager has been moved to the Portal tile, you can take an action on the tile to send the Villager through the Portal. Therefore, on the Portal tile, you now have a 3rd action choice to choose from: 1) Exorcise a ghost, 2) Take the tile's action, or 3) Send a Villager through the Portal. As you may recall, giving up any turn in Ghost Stories can be fatal, but now you will find yourself in the position of having to give up multiple turns throughout the game just to rescue villagers. The timing of when to make these choices is crucial. But fear not, as the Villagers can give you ample rewards for rescuing them, making the lost action pay for itself down the road (if you can succeed in saving the Villager's entire family, which is not guaranteed).

Villager families are comprised of 1 to 3 members. If you can save an entire family of Villagers, you earn rewards, from 3 Qi, to one of 8 various Artifacts that give you special powers throughout the game, etc... The rewards are definitely worth it if you can get them, but to do so you will need to really coordinate which Villagers move where. Because you can only move the top Villager from any village tile, you sometimes have to move Villagers from one space to another just to see which Villager is beneath the first one (they are all hidden until they become the top Villager on the tile). This adds a new mini-game to the already complex game, and forces you to do some investigative work to find the family members in the village. This is somewhat thematic. When the ghosts descended on the village, I imagine that the Villagers were all going about their business, and could be anywhere in the Village. I wouldn't expect families to be sticking together, nor know where their kid was at when the chaos hit. Once the ghosts come out, and the Villagers run and hide, so it makes perfect thematic sense that you can't see where anyone is without a little investigation.

If a Villager dies, you suffer an immediate penalty. If 12 Villagers die, you lose the game. Villager penalties can be harsh at times, such as "bring a new Wu-Feng incarnation into play" or "kill another Villager", or fairly minimal, such as "permanently remove a Green Tao Token from play", or "put a new ghost into play". Some of these effects are worse at different times. For example, losing a Green token at the beginning of the game is worse than losing it at the end, when you only have 2 ghosts remaining. Losing a Qi may mean nothing if you have 4 left, but other players may not agree. And if you have to face 10 penalties in a game, the sum of all the minor hurts add up to a huge burden for the Taoists. You will find yourself working to figure out who to save and in which order, which penalties the Taoists can persevere through at that moment, and which ones must be avoided at all costs (hint, don't let new Wu-Feng incarnations come into play...). Again, there is more to think about with the expansion than with the base game.

Villagers can be killed in multiple ways (would you expect anything else from Ghost Stories?). First, some of the new ghosts are called Devourers. They kill the first Villager in front of them every single turn. These ghosts are downright nasty, and must be killed quickly if you want to win the game, or you will suffer too many penalties to overcome. Oh, wait. I thought the Haunters needed to be killed quickly to win the game? Yeah, they do too. Hmmm. Tough dilemma... Haunters have a new ability as well. When a Haunter moves from the ghost's card to the stone in front of it (the turn before they haunt a tile), the first Villager in front of the ghost must flee to the next tile further away from the ghost or die of terror. If the Villager is already on the last tile of the Village, and cannot escape to a further tile, he (or she) will be killed. If the Villager cannot be moved to the next tile because there are already 3 Villagers standing on the tile, the Villager is stuck, and is killed. Lastly, if a ghost actually attempts to haunt a village tile, all Villagers on that tile are killed instead, and the player will immediately pay the penalty for each killed Villager one after another. Lose 1 life or draw 1 ghost, no big deal, but face 3 of those penalties in one turn and you are in big trouble! Losing 3 Villagers in 1 turn is almost a sure way to destroy your chances at success. To neutralize some of the difficulty, tiles cannot be haunted as long as there are Villagers on it; the Villagers are killed first, and then the next time, if the ghost has still not been killed, the tile is haunted. Villagers act as a sort of buffer this way, and you'll sometimes move a single villager in the path of a Haunting ghost just to absorb the ghost's haunting blow and send him back to his card for one more haunting cycle. As I will discuss later, the "villager buffer" makes losing village tiles less frequent, and makes the game slightly easier if you can manage to overcome the Villager death penalties. But the buffer does add another layer of strategy regarding villager sacrifices, albeit a dark one.

Artifacts

The new Artifacts that can be obtained by rescuing Villagers are generally very good, but there are definitely better Artifacts than others. One lets you get extra Tao tokens, another allows you to move all other Taoists to your tile all at once (helpful for a big ghost), another gives you more Qi, etc... They are a varied lot. Overall, I wouldn't rescue most families at the expense of attending to my regular duty of saving the village just to get most of these Artifacts. However, saving Villagers to avoid penalties is often times necessary, so why not go for the Artifacts too? The Artifacts look cool, and may be the best looking pieces in the entire game now (and that says a lot for a game as beautiful as Ghost Stories). For a component that is used so infrequently (you won't get more than one or two artifacts in a game), a lot of attention to detail was put in them. And in a nice touch, the back of each artifact has a description of what that artifact does (although it is written in Ghost Stories Iconography Language like the back of the rulebook).

How Does The Expansion Play?

In my opinion, the expansion plays beautifully. It feels like it was part of the game in the first place. It is not tacked on; it does not change rules; it does not require a special board; it only adds to the things I liked about Ghost Stories. Decisions become much tougher now because of the Villagers, the penalties, the potential to use the Mystic Barrier, the potential reward of the Artifacts, and a myriad of other new considerations. I always liked Ghost Stories because of the varied tactical puzzle it presented each and every game. With the new choices that can be made, the puzzle is even better. On the other hand, if you hate puzzles in your board games (I love them, but some of you are loco), you'll like Ghost Stories less now than you did before.

You have to decide where to place ghosts to effectively use the fleeing ability (e.g. scare Villagers towards the place you want them to go, not away). You'll have to decide where to put Devouring ghosts so that the Villagers that are killed are the "lesser" ones (some families gotta sacrifice, y'all). You have to decide which ghosts to kill, which Villagers to save, where to move the Villagers, when to place Moon Crystal Tokens, etc... There is just more, more and more stuff to decide. Table-talk will be even greater now.

For example, you may want to kill the Black Widow, but Mr. Wu is about to be devoured at the other side of the village, and if he dies, a new Wu-Feng comes into play. But, if you can place the Haunting ghost you just drew to the right of Mr. Wu and then walk him one tile to the left, then on the next turn he will flee the haunting ghost to the Portal tile, and get out of the way for the Devourer ghost. But, Mrs. Xiang is on the Portal tile now, and if you save her this turn, you get 5 Tao tokens as a reward for rescuing the entire Xiang family. So do we rescue Mrs. Xiang now, do we let Mr. Wu cover up Mrs. Xiang after he flees to the Portal tile, or do we go right for the Black Widow because that is what I'd do in the base game. Such is life in the village with White Moon.

Is Ghost Stories Easier?

You may think that with everything I have said, that Ghost Stories' difficulty level has increased. The number of choices and puzzles has certainly increased, but my overall win rate has gone up too. And for many people, this is a problem. My Ghost Stories would never let me win 2 in a row, or 2 out of 3. But with the expansion, I do. And here's why:

1) The new ghosts dilute the deck a bit. This means the Haunting ghosts are fewer and farther between, leading to less tiles being haunted.

2) Villagers are killed before tiles are haunted. They act as a "haunting buffer". While you suffer penalties when Villagers die, the fact that the village tile is not haunted is even bigger. You have two haunting cycles to get to that haunting ghost now, so you will suffer fewer haunted tiles overall.

3) Su-Ling is incredibly powerful. If you find a ghost you don't like, like the Black Widow, or an unwelcome Haunter, just throw Su-Ling in front of it and forget about it. Su-Ling can buy you tons of time throughout the game.

4) The Mystic Barrier is incredibly powerful. This is a point of contention for many, but I will not disagree. I have not managed to set it up yet, but I am sure that when it is activated, we will easily kill 3+ ghosts in one fell swoop. And at the end of the game when things are always falling apart, the Mystic Barrier brings some calm to the storm. Does this new phase dull the crecendo that is the Ghost Stories end game? Does it relieve the tension? I think it does, somewhat.

5) As you rescue Villagers, you get Artifacts. Again, like the Mystic Barrier, these appear later in the game when you've saved families, and therefore as you near the end-game, you'll find yourself with more powers than you had at the beginning. Maybe this is how a good old-fashioned RPG should feel, but there is a sense that the end game is slightly easier with the expansion.

Overall, I don't care if the game is easier. I love, and I mean, absolutely LOVE, the presence of the Villagers. The game felt empty before. Now it feels just right. In fact, the game with the expansion is downright awesome. And for those that thought the game was too hard in the first place, White Moon may be just what the doctor ordered.

But if you do find the game too easy for your taste, you can start to play on Nightmare or Hard mode. Problem fixed! I tried this, and was suitably humbled half way through the deck. At least some things haven't changed. For me, who never managed to get passed Initiate Mode, I think Nightmare and Hell modes are a great way to play, as you get to see more Wu-Fengs in every game, and have more challenge than ever before.

The one downside to White Moon that I can definitely agree on is that the game is harder to explain now than before. With new players, it is probably advisable to give them a "training game of death" on just regular old Initiate Mode. Let them get crushed once before introducing the families. Or, if you are like me, you can't stand playing without the people now, and would never think of leaving them out... newbie players be warned.

Conclusion

Ghost Stories: White Moon is an incredible expansion that every Ghost Stories owner should pick up. It adds more of what is good to Ghost Stories, without ruining the gameplay or sacrificing theme. The expansion fits into the main story line like an OJ and a glove. Along with Pandemic, On The Brink, it is one of the two best expansions to hit the board gaming scene in the past few years, and is an absolute must buy!