Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8484546/wraith-and-the-giants

Designer: Scott Almes
Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Artist: Christian Benavides

Wraith & The Giants was a bit of a rash purchase as I’d never heard of it but ended up buying it from our FLGS maybe 20 minutes after the husband found it. I’m not a huge Warp’s Edge fan (I know, I’m the worst), but I’m OBSESSED with Unstoppable, so I decided to give it a go! Each game, you play as a wraith working to defeat a giant by attacking its weak spots while also protecting yourself from the giant’s attacks.

At the start of each game, the player selects a wraith to play as and a giant to fight. There is a sort of natural progression with both, young wraith being the least complex to elder wraith being the most complex (with the adult in between), and earth giant being the least difficult to fire being the most difficult (with water and air in between). There is a storybook you can use to follow the path of a wraith facing the giants in order, but it’s certainly not necessary if you want to skip the many pages of reading.

Each round, players select two cards to play to move around the giant, try to damage it, and work to protect themselves from the future giant attacks. One of my favorite aspects of this game is how the cards get played and how their effects activate. Each wraith board has two rows for action cards, so the player places one in the top row and one in the bottom row each turn. Some card effects have a hard number, but others are dependent upon how frequently a certain symbol (or combination of symbols) appears in the row to which it’s played. This is where the main decision making and strategy comes in, as you always have to play to the top row first and then the bottom, but you also want to maximize your symbol combinations while still achieving your goals for the turn. It’s really clever!

After the player completes their card actions, the giant then attacks back. At the start of the game, five giant cards are placed in a row, each detailing a specific weak spot, as well as potentially a negative effect or event or something that can trigger when it’s played and/or when that card attacks. Each turn when the giant attacks, only the first card in the row is triggered, but there are certain areas outlined on the card that indicate where the attacks occur. It’s also possible to damage that weak spot during the player turns to prevent this attack. Once that first card’s attack is complete, it gets discarded and a new card is added to the end of the row. Before the giant stops attacking, players also must evaluate if any symbols on the giant’s newly added card match any symbols on the other four cards existing in the row, in which case, those matching cards get triggered and also attack.

There are a few more nuances to the game (like optional free actions on your turn), of course, but this covers the basic ideas. Play continues until the giant is destroyed, the wraith dies, or the giant reaches the town, which occurs if the giant deck ever runs out of cards. There are also specific rules for the different wraiths that impact their turns like additional actions that can be unlocked and utilized, and spells that can take effect.

One thing I really appreciate about this game is the variety in the wraiths and the giants. In general, they all play similarly, but they are each still nuanced and vary in complexity and/or difficulty. The wraiths are especially different and very fun to experiment with. The young wraith is easy to learn, which is why it’s the suggested starting wraith, but it also seems less powerful than the other two. Because of this, I felt I lost more often as the young wraith which can get discouraging considering those are your first experiences in the game. Those initial games can be quite punishing and can make the game feel less fun than it is. If you’re willing, persevere because the other wraiths are much better!

I also think the design of this game is really unique and well thought out without being overly complex or convoluted in any way. It’s quite straightforward, but there is some interesting strategy to consider and there can be some tough decisions to make to optimize your turns and try to minimize damage from the giant. I also find the open information on the giants to be an interesting twist, albeit necessary for the functionality and design of the game. You know exactly which areas will be (and could potentially be) targeted and what the damage will be, so you can try to plan your turns accordingly if you so choose. It also plays pretty quickly, which is nice, and the art is absolutely stunning. The giants are gorgeous!

All this said, I do have some issues with this game, first and foremost with the rulebook. There is an online FAQ on BGG that details out some of these, but there are a lot of edge cases and standard occurrences that aren’t explained or outlined in the rulebook. The general gameplay descriptions are great, but there is a lot of vague and/or missing information which is just ridiculous. Also, the fire giant seems extremely unbalanced and difficult in comparison to the other three.

My other main complaint is the significant amount of luck present in this game. The first major aspect of this is with the wraith decks. It is very possible to draw cards with the same or similar actions for your entire hand when you don’t even need to perform that action, or you can get cards that don’t let you move around the giant so you can’t attack or protect yourself from any attacks. To add to this, the giant deck also introduces a serious element of luck. There were multiple games where the weak spots on the cards were all very spread out and hard to reach and/or attacked areas I was in a lot. Also, the symbol matching is completely based on luck and can be very swingy. It can get very frustrating to get multiple turns of unlucky cards.

This is a minor quibble, but I also don’t like that the storybook aspect is marketed as a campaign. It was cool, well written, and enjoyable, but it’s not a campaign. It’s just playing through all the giants (as a story) with the young wraith, which I think most people would do anyway.

Overall, this is a good, fun game with some interesting strategy, but it’s not great. I’d say, circling back, it falls somewhere closer to my feelings on Warp’s Edge than Unstoppable, but I still plan to keep it for now, and experiment more in the future. There’s enough to this game to keep me interested and create a fun puzzle, you just have to go into with the expectation that you could lose solely based on luck.