Summary
A game for 2 – 4 players
Playing time is 60 minutes
Publisher is Ludus Magnus Studio
Introduction
A long time ago, some explorers came to distant lands. They found lush and unspoiled lands upon which they built Kalena, the first settlement. However, they soon realized why these lands were uninhabited. The Specters, spirits of an ancient civilization that could not pass from this world to the next, haunted this wild realm. In response, the people of Kalena shut themselves away in the city, where the Specters rarely appeared. But now times are hard, and the city needs new resources to survive. Some of Kalena’s citizens, called Perceivers, are able to communicate with the Specters and help them reach the other world.
You are one of the Perceivers, and your job is to free the Specters from the chains that bind them to this world so that Kalena can expand and prosper.
Setting up the game
Place the main board on one side of the game area where it is easily accessible to all players.
Create the common reserve with all tokens.
Place the Kalena tile face up in the center of the game area. Randomly place 6 region tiles around the Kalena, forming the game map.
Place the terrain and reward dice next to the main board, and also a track cube on the round space.
Randomly draw 1 card from each skill deck and place them face up on their dedicated space.
Then randomly draw 1 market card, specter card, and place them on their spaces.
Place the reward card of season 1 face up.
Each player will get a player board, associated cubes, perceiver meeple, and assignment cards.
They also start with 4 travel, 1 persuade, 1 harvest, and 1 build token.
Randomly stack the volar tokens of each player on the main board at value 1.
Each player places their perceiver meeple on the high city terrain of the Kalena tile.
The track cube can be placed on the main board and the game is ready 👻
Let’s play
The game Haunted Lands is played over a course of three seasons.
For each season, there is an associated reward card, so start with the right reward card for this first season.
Each season is divided into three rounds. In these rounds, the last player starts by rolling the terrain die. This is called the Haunt.
Then, they place 4 specters on the rolled terrain, one on each of the corresponding terrain tiles. If there are no empty terrain tiles, the specters need to be placed on any terrain or the Kalena tile. If this is not possible and a total of 4 specters cannot be placed, the game ends and everybody is defeated.
The last player is related to the position on the Valor Track where the player’s Valor Token is placed at the beginning of the game and where it will move to determine the turn order of a round.
After surviving the Haunt phase, then proceed with Yield. This phase, each player gets goods and income related to their buildings.
Then the Turn phase starts, where you can take the following actions:
- Travel: a player moves their perceiver meeple by using travel tokens. Each terrain has its own value which determines how many tokens are needed.
- Build: by using your build tokens, you can place buildings which correspond to the terrain they are built on. By building, a player increases in VP associated with the type of building.
-Harvest: With this action, a player will gather goods associated with the terrain type their perceiver meeple is on. You do need to use your harvest tokens to be able to harvest. After, there will be an exploit token placed. This means that during this season, no other player can harvest on that terrain anymore.
-Persuade: A player may discard a specter meeple from the terrain your perceiver meeple is on. Each season, a persuade action will need more tokens, but still, when this action is taken, a player removes the specter meeple from the terrain. Then roll the reward die and get the related rewards, which are active that season.
There are also advanced actions when the players’ perceiver is on the proper terrain. Here, players can take the following advanced actions:
- Sell: By being on the High City terrain, players are able to spend goods and get pecunia based on the costs indicated on the market tile.
- Learn: When a player is on the Borough terrain, they can spend goods to learn a new skill. By learning a skill, players will also be rewarded with VP, which is associated with where they place their cube.
- Train: In this action, players can spend their pecunia to upgrade the action tokens. Players do need to be on the Borough terrain if they want to apply the train action. By upgrading the action tokens, players can also achieve VP.
After everybody has finished the Turn phase, the Rest phase will follow. Now all used action tokens will be restored.
Before ending the season round, the Rankings phase takes place to determine the appropriate turn order for the next season.
After the 3rd season ends, final scoring will take place. All players already have VP collected during the previous seasons. Now they need to reveal their assignment cards they chose during the game, add the VP, and the player with the most VP will be the winner.
Conclusion & final score
Difficulty: 2.33/ 5
Re-playability: 8
Our score: 7 out of 10 dice
At first, Haunted Lands is a fun and easy game to play. It has an ongoing game mechanism that will make you play each round as if you’ve played the game for ages.
Good quality materials are used for this game. All meeples are nicely printed and double-layered player boards. I did have some issues during the games, finding your own meeple because the colors are nearly identical and not visually distinguishable from above. Also, the buildings are really nice, and I like the space on top of each building where you can place your colored cube. Artwork is also in line with the theme.
Playing the game with the full player count, gets really crowded, which makes it a bit less clear. It would help if players had an easier way to keep track of their goods during the harvest phase.
With all the standard components and cards, the replayability is more than enough.
During the game, you are forced to train your meeple, which is the nice thing about Haunted Lands. This creates an interaction that keeps you and all other players focused.
Overall, Haunted Lands is a nice game for a casual game night. It’s individual with some small co-op influences, which makes it nice.
Although the setup of the rulebook looks a bit unorganized, it still works out well.
We want to thank Ludus Magnus Studio for this review copy and the opportunity to write about this game.
