LogFAQs > #933752076

50. Ghost Blitz (2010)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Pattern recognition, reflexes, separate hands
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: 5-10 minutes to go through the deck
Experience: 20+ games over 20+ sessions (2016-2019) with 2-8 players, incl "5 to 12"
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 36/80 (2018)

Summary - Five wooden items sit at the table: a white ghost, blue book, red chair, grey mouse, and green bottle. You compete for cards: one card at a time is flipped, and then you have to race to grab the correct item. The correct item is determined by looking at the picture, which contains two of the items, but possibly of different colors. If one item is of its correct color, you grab that item. If neither item is of the correct color, you examine to see which item is not represented in either color or object.

Design - Another brain-freezing game. Ghost Blitz, like Jungle Speed, knows how to mix things up just the right amount. Most of the cards are of the "grab what's not there" ilk, like a blue ghost and a green mouse (red chair), so you program your brain one way... and then, suddenly, you'll be hit with a card like a blue ghost and a grey mouse. If you try to grab red chair (grey mouse), you'll be wrong and have egg on your face as someone else grabs the correct item.

The 5 to 12 version ups the number of items to nine, among five colors, and has three items represented in its pictures. The same rules apply, but you can also add "advanced" rules that cause the game to behave differently. It's a little less clean and elegant and brainless, but the mix between grabbing and talking, plus the increased brainpower to process, is a really nice change of speed.

Experience - I discovered Ghost Blitz at a marathon meetup where I hadn't really met anyone before. I played maybe seven new games that day, and in the end, this zero-strategy game wound up being my takeaway, which I bought. It's been a brilliant filler many times as a game that anyone can play, as long as they can recognize colors and can compete speed-wise in terms of grabbing. My most fun plays in large groups where it gets contentious (we've done variants where you compete to say the item first, since eight people can't realistically grab sensibly), or in the relatively uncommon cases where I'm evenly matched (my friend got the game to play with her kids, and she is probably the only person who's as good as I am).

Future - I kind of destroy most people I play with - Ghost Blitz is a no luck game - so it's hard to bring out Ghost Blitz in general. The faster player can win over 80% of the cards quite easily. That said, if I'm not going 100% or if I just need to fill space with something cute, I'm still totally up for it. Not like it wastes any time! I might also consider getting the 5 to 12 variant, but not being a centerpiece game, the appetite in my groups for complexity here has to be there - and that's no guarantee.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness