OUR REVIEW

Scotland, the Brave … And Spooky!

The Phantom Society

Ghost-hunting in a hotel

"The dangerous days of the gold fields live again
in this tale of a ghostly hotel …
that suddenly becomes very VALUABLE!

Donald Duck (looking behind into the room, shivering):

‘Now there’s nobody left in the hotel but US DUCKS and the ghosts!’

Huey, Dewey & Louie (while climbing down a rope, out of a hotel room window):

‘You mean there’s NOBODY left but the GHOSTS!’"

Carl Barks, "Uncle Scrooge – Mystery of the Ghost Town Railroad", U$ #56

Two teams chase in "The Phantom Society" through the corridors of a posh Scottish hotel. More specifically, they roam through the various rooms and destroy not only furniture or wallpaper, no, entire parts of the building fall victim to their actions! One of the teams sees this destruction as their task - the team of the four ghosts who love to inflict as much damage as possible. The members of the other team, the Ghost Hunters, are here to track down the mischievous spirits and prevent them from laying to ruins the whole hotel. After all, they were summoned by the proprietress for the purpose of assistance and protection. Apparently, though, the self-proclaimed exorcists like demolishing as much as their targets, at least in the end there is not much difference in the outcome: a destroyed room is and remains a ruined room!

"The Phantom Society" is a strategic tile-laying-and-removing game. The game components comprise: the Hotel, represented by a game board, assembled from  of two folding parts; 36 room tiles in four colors with different values; four (round) ghost tokens of (the same) four colours. In addition to the rules of the game, the box also comprises two sets of eight cards. These cards show the Ghost Hunters (surprisingly, there are nine of them in all - one card depicts two of them) and are only required in a tournament variant ("Master Game"). But, anyway, they are very pretty.

 "The Phantom Society" works best when played by four players and is probably also the most fun with this number of players, but three can play almost as well - one player plays the hunters, two play the ghost masters with two ghosts each, the hunter plays every hunter turn to equal the two ghost team turns each round.

All players together (whether two, three or four, in special situations  maybe even five or six players, always split in two groups of hunters and ghosts) place the room tiles into the 36 slots in the hotel game board. After this set-up, the Hunters close their eyes (or turn around or leave the room – whatever the gaming group thinks appropriate) and the Ghost team places their four protagonists beneath four room tiles in corresponding colours. The aim of the Ghosts is to inflict the highest possible damage. This goal is achieved by destroying rooms, which must be situated adjacent directly, orthogonally or diagonally, to the hidden Ghosts. For this purpose, the room tiles, showing undamaged interiors, are flipped over to their reverse side. This reverse side shows an image of extreme devastation in the same room; the value of which (varying from £ 1.000 to £ 6.000, presumably this being the value of the room before being vandalized or the cost to repair the damage in the room) is printed on both sides. The aim of the hunting party is to prevent the ghosts from devastating the hotel, that is, stop them before they have achieved a pre-arranged amount of damage (game rules suggestion: £ 45.000). To get there, the Ghost Hunters (three of them are female, by the way, if you will believe the portraits on the cards) must find the hidden ghosts and thereby end their rampage. The Hunters, too, turn over the room tiles, thus also ruining ye good ole building. However, the value of the rooms in which the ghosts are hidden does not add to the sum of damage. If the hunters are lucky, they will discover the four opponents before that amount is reached. Then they are the winners. In any other case, the ghosts, probably giggling eerily (players’ choice), win the match.

In a certain sense, "The Phantom Society" is a successful mix of "Memory" and "Draughts" with no pieces moved; instead, the spaces (room tiles) are removed. It is important (for the ghost players) to remember exactly the hiding place of the ghosts and to devastate the rooms in a way that the hunters do not get wise to soon whence the destructive spook has its origin, that is to say, where the respective spirit token is hidden. The Ghost Hunters on the other hand should not hesitate to "investigate" expensive rooms, provided they expect the discovery of a poltergeist there. Each ghost detected cannot cause any additional damage. Moreover, hunters do not have to enter rooms of the same color as the found-out troublemaker – remember: a ghost token may only be hidden beneath a room tile of the same color.

Quick and easy to learn, this game is pretty much fun. For designer Frédéric Colombier it is his debut as a game author. Hervé Marly, co-designer, has worked with Bruno Faidutti before, according to Wikipedia. Spartan game components and a very reasonably designed box (slots for cards and tiles, even recesses for the pins of the game board halves) even help cleaning up at the end of playing. The rules booklet is a bit problematic, though. Although concise (8 pages) and easy to understand, we had the impression that either in the translation from French into English something went wrong, or the publishers decided on some changes in the last minute without adjusting the rules accordingly. For example, four game board pieces to be put together are mentioned – there are in fact only two halves and nothing is missing. The rules for a three player game are described somewhat vague. But these are merely trifles. However, the description of the use of the character cards seems a little strange: only needed for a variant called "Master Game" – making bids for being either hunted or hunter –, they are quite unnecessary. We did do very well without it. Maybe there is already a bande dessinée / graphic novel known in the French-speaking world featuring these personnel, but we were unable to find out anything about that. Though nice to look at, they are not really an improvement to the game. The story behind the Phantom Society’s mission is not necessary or important for the game, either, but at least it is fun to read about Scottish ghosts and their liking for closed-down whisky distilleries.

Anyway, the graphics and illustrations are beautiful and the game itself – one play-through takes less than half an hour, which already includes a whisky-and-haggis-break in the bargain – has great charm and is also inviting players to go ghost-hunting again and again.

Martina & Martin Lhotzky, Marcus Steinwender

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer:

Artist:

Price: ca. 25 Euro

Publisher: Funforge 2013

Web: www.funforge.fr

Genre: Deduction, memory

Users: For families

Version: en

Rules: en fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Best with four players

Nice game, nice story, nice design

High replay value

Compares to:

Memory, Dicke Luft in der Gruft

Other editions:

Asterion Press, Iello

My rating: 6

Martin, Martina und Marcus:

The Happy Hunting Grounds transferred into a quite different setting: Chase the spirits or tease the Ghost Hunters – either way, it is great fun combined with deductive challenge in this game of French origin.

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 0

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 3

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0