The horrifying story of the infamous Jack the Ripper is known by nearly all. A popular tabletop game based on the hunt for the serial killer is Letters from Whitechapel. We played Letters from Whitechapel this week. I'll describe a bit about the game and our experience. Letters from Whitechapel is a hidden movement game by Fantasy Flight games for two to six players, designed by Gabriele Mari and Gianluca Santopietro. Hidden movement games are typically one vs many. In this case one player plays as Jack the Ripper while the others are the police cooperatively attempting to track him down. The way this and most hidden movement games work is that the one being chased (Jack) secretly marks down locations that he/she is located on a map. The rest of the players, unaware of where their target is, attempt to move around the map and search for locations where the target has been or ideally identify his/her exact location. Letters from Whitechapel is played over the course of 4 nights. In short, each night the police get positioned on the map of the Whitechapel district in London and Jack designates where a murder has taken place. This will be his origin point on the map/board. The first night he also designates (secretly) a hideout located elsewhere on the map. This hideout is "locked in" for the rest of the game as the location that Jack must return each night. To be successful, Jack must get back to his hideout each night within a total of 15 moves. The police attempt to either successfully make an arrest or block Jack from returning to his hideout, which would result in a win for the police players. Each night a new murder occurs (the third night two murders) and Jack starts again trying to make it back to the secret hideout. The police have abilities to make some shifts or adjustments from one night to the next, but for the most part are starting from where they left off the previous night. If Jack can go all four nights committing a total of five murders and make it back to the hideout in time, then he wins. As mentioned above, the police win when successfully arresting or keeping Jack from being able to return to his hideout on any night. In our game of Letters from Whitechapel, Chris was "Jack the Ripper". He wanted to try his hand at eluding the team of police. Jeff, Nikki, Jennie, Dave and I all took on the roles of the investigators. It had been a while since any of us had played, so we reviewed the rules together and Jeff gave some pointers to Chris about how to play as Jack. After about 30 to 45 minutes of review and conversation, we got started. Chris came out of the gate trying to make some distance from his first murder scene using three consecutive carriage rides. These carriage rides are special moves of which Jack has limited use, allowing him to move two locations on one turn and can allow him to pass through/over a police officer if needed. Our team was able to locate his trail by searching for clues at suspect locations, some of which he had been, marking those confirmed locations with a clear plastic yellow chip. Near the end of the first night, his trail went cold. He made it back to the hideout in time, ending the first night (round). The next night began after Chris (Jack) made his murder location known. The hunt was back on. Now we had a general idea of the vicinity of his hideout and positioned our police meeples on the board accordingly. Within a short time we caught the trail of the murderer. We surmised how he might be attempting to get back to the hideout region. Then, we lost the trail again. Scrambling to stop him from returning to the safe haven, the officers positioned themselves in a blockade of sorts to attempt to deny him access to his hideout if we couldn't make an arrest. At the end of the round, that's exactly what happened. We boxed him in and he wasn't able to make it back in 15 moves. The good guys won! This was a fun evening and I believe we all enjoyed the chase, even thought it seemed to run a little long. It took us about three hours to complete ... and we were able to win by the end of the second night/round. The game is rated for an average play time of 60 minutes. Ha – not for our group! We found a way to stretch it out to epic proportions. Part of the disparity lies in the fact that we played with the full player count of six. That's Jack, plus five different people each playing as police officers. Since this is a cooperative effort for the police, there is much deliberation over where to move and where Jack might be, etc... You might find that your gaming group is much the same. I would suggest you allot at least two hours to play this game. The 60 minute rating is ridiculous. Another item to note is that after playing several times, it seems that the police have a slight advantage and tend to win the majority of times. There are some optional rules that add special abilities to Jack, helping to offset this. We played with one of the optional rules allowing for Jack to place a false clue. The other optional rule, we didn't play with. There are four "letters" that can be used by Jack granting him additional chances to elude the police. Perhaps we'll add those into our next play. A great option for a cooperative (one vs many) game. Gets the group working together to deduce where the culprit might be hiding and creates a lot of banter. If you enjoy hidden movement games, this is one of the best. I recommend checking this one out. If you'd like to check out the Board Game Geek entry for Letters from Whitechapel click here. For additional information on the game and its expansion, check out the Fantasy Flight Games' page by clicking here. Have you played Letters from Whitechapel? What about other hidden movement games? Weigh in with your opinion by leaving a comment. Send me a note with any suggestions using the contact page. And as always...
Game on!
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I thought I'd cover a couple things in this post. I'll discuss a little bit about a new game I played recently and an overview of some of the this year's tabletop game awards. Terrors of London At a friend's game night last week I had an opportunity to play a new game from Kolossal Games called Terrors of London. Originally launched as a Kickstarter, this horror-based competitive deck builder is a set in Victorian era London. The artwork by artist Ryan Pye is absolutely gorgeous! I was quite impressed by the photo-realistic character art on the overlord tableaus and the comic-style artwork on the cards. Very nicely done. The graphic design of the intricate Victorian latticework and other details all fit nicely together. I only have one minor complaint about the typography ... the flavor text on some of the cards is quite tiny. I can appreciate the limited space available and flavor text is not integral to the play of the game, so this is a very minor knock on the otherwise well-done graphic layout. Typically the game is played with two-players or four-players with expansions. In our game we had expansions at our disposal however, had to modify to accommodate five players. Even with this modification, I found the gameplay to hold up well. Players each take an overlord with a unique ability. During the game players acquire monsters and relics with additional advantages and abilities from a common line of centrally located cards. Players play cards from their hand and try to do damage to their oponent(s) each turn. The first to knock his/her oponent's life to zero wins the game. I quite enjoyed the game and artwork. I would need to play a two-player or four-player game to give a full recommendation. It's safe to say that my first impression was a positive one. A special thanks to Troy who hosted the game night and taught Terrors of London. Check out the links below for Board Game Geek and Kolossal Games pages for this game: Terrors of London links: BGG; Kolossal Games Game Awards Overview Just like nearly every other form of entertainment, tabletop games also have a number of awards in which publishers and designers compete for top honors. These awards can help publishers get additional press and promotion for their games. Most award winners will add the award logo to their packaging and other forms of marketing. These awards are a big deal in helping to drive long-term success for many games. I have picked a few of the game categories and awards that I follow to share. I'll note only a portion of the categories and nominees to keep the lists from getting too long. There are so many games that launch each year, I'm always amazed at how many of the awards nominees I haven't even had a chance to play. See for yourself how many you have heard of or had a chance to play. 2019 Origins Awards Board Games Nominees - Winner in Red
Card Games Nominees - Winner in Red
Family Games Nominees - Winner in Red
Miniatures Games Nominees - Winner in Red
Origins Game of the Year Award: Root *also won Board Game Award Congratulations to all the games nominated for the Origins Awards. I'm sure they are quite deserving. The sad truth of it is ... I have only played two of the Origins awards games nominated (listed above), Gizmos and Villanous. I don't know if that says I have a poor selection in games, I don't play that many new games each year, or maybe both. Nonetheless, these are the games to keep your eye out for and play if you have an opportunity. If you would like to see the full nomination list, click Origins Awards 2019. Dice Tower Awards Each year the Dice Tower hosts an annual awards show in which a panel of gamers select winners in several game categories. The Dice Tower Awards are presented for games released in the previous year. I have selected a few of this year's (2018) nominees and winners to share with you. I'll provide a link to the full list at the end of this section.
Spiel des Jahres Generally considered to be the top prize in all of board gaming is a nomination and win in the Spiel des Jahres (German Game of the Year awards). The award has now been expanded to three different categories. Spiel des Jahres is the original award for Game of the year and is now focused primarily on games with appeal to large audiences - games that are considered to be family games, party games, or gateway games are within this group. Kinderspiel des Jahres is reserved for the best children's game of the year. Kennerspiel des Jahres is the Connoisseur – Enthusiast Game of the Year. These are typically the games that are a bit more strategic and heavier in nature. A nomination for any of the three awards is considered a great honor. At this time only the Kinderspiel des Jahres (children's game of the year) has been announced. The other two winners have not yet been announced. Below are the nominees for each Spiel des Jahres category with the Kinderspiel award winner in red: Kinderspiel des Jahres (Children’s Game of the Year):
Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year):
Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur – Enthusiast Game of the Year):
The official announcement of nominations and honorable mentions can be found here. I've actually played two of the three Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees: Detective and Wingspan. Both are deserving of the title. I've not played the third game in that category, Carpe Diem, however the designer Stefan Feld is very highly regarded as one of the top designers. The Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres awards will be announced on July 22nd. These games will get a lot of attention. I threw a lot out there in this post. If you have any comments or thoughts regarding Terrors of London or the Game Awards, please use the comments form. Send me a personal message with any suggestions, topics or concerns using the contact page.
Game On! This week Nikki, Jeff, Chris and I continued our ongoing mission-based game of Mechs vs Minions. We had progressed to the 9th mission, hoping to make it to the finale of the game. Were we able to get it done or did we fail miserably? NOTE: If you haven't played mission #9 and don't wish to see any information about this mission or the game, you may want to save this blog post for later. My advice is: It's not a big deal to see and read this post, even if you plan to play in the future. During our latest GameNight, a group of four of us set out on mission #9 of Mechs vs Minions. I'll give a general synopsis of our gameplay without any major spoilers. Our goal was to crush the four crystal shards on the map thereby dropping the boss mech's defenses and allowing us to deal damage, all while combatting the never-ending influx of minions. The desired result would be to defeat the boss before he can blow us to oblivion. We started off by selecting our schematic cards (individual abilities). This took a while as we wanted to be best prepared for the mission at hand. The game began a little slowly as we traversed the new map tile layout and tried to build command lines to move, turn and attack with our mechs. It looks us a few rounds for us to really get things underway. As we played, the enemy continued to get more powerful which we discovered was a "timer" of sorts. If we didn't take down the boss's defenses and start doing damage soon, it would be all for naught. That's when we started picking things up, getting the first two crystal shards out of the game. Each round we needed to overcome continually increasing amounts of damage and the effects thereof. Eventually we got the two remaining shards out of the game, dropping the enemy's outer defenses and allowing us to launch attacks upon our foe. As we started doing damage to the boss, he continued to grow in strength, adding new cards to his command line each round. Eventually it came down-to-the-wire as we realized that our next round would be our last. We needed to draft well and program our command lines to do three more damage for the win. That's when it seemed to unravel. We didn't get a favorable draw on the draft and couldn't get shots through to the big baddie, ending up doing only one more damage to him. On his turn he used the dreaded GG-101 Doom Cannon to blow us all into next month. A disappointing defeat, yet we all seemed to truly enjoy the game. Now...to find an opportunity to give it another go. One of the unexpected, fun aspects of this game is failing a difficult mission. Yes ... failing. Once we completed the mission in defeat, we immediately had a discussion of what could be done differently or better when replayed. Knowing how things went in our first attempt and the downfalls of this mission got our brains cranking. I believe I speak for the group, when I say we are anxiously anticipating our next play. I've brought up this game in previous posts. It's a clever cooperative action programming, mission-based game. I highly recommend to nearly everyone. I guess, if you really didn't like the action-programming mechanic or cooperative games, it may not be for you. However, this might be the game that changes your mind, as it's done so well. Click if you want to learn more about Mechs vs Minions. I hope you're enjoying following along with King's GameNight. Sharing these experiences allows me to contribute my two cents to the board-gaming community. If you enjoy this gaming blog or particular posts, please share with your friends. Let everyone know what your thoughts are in the comments section or send me a personal message via the contact page. Until next time ...
Game On! Gen Con is the biggest board game convention in North America. It will be held the first weekend of August in Indianapolis, IN. In preparation for attending this year's Gen Con, I thought I'd share some of the board games I'm most interested in that will be featured or introduced at the convention this year. If you have never gone and would like to attend, I believe there are still single-day tickets/badges available. I've provided a link to Gen Con's website and one to the attendance badge page below. To make things a little easier, I used the 2019 Gen Con Preview list on Board Game Geek (BGG) and made selections of the games I'm most interested in. If you have a BGG account you can make use the Gen Con preview list and make some notes and choices of your own. I would like to share my list with you. See if you've heard of any of the titles or have played one or more of them. I encourage your feedback on these games. Below is a link to the top games I'm interested in at Gen Con this year. NOTE: You must be a registered user of Board Game Geek in order to view the linked page. BGG - 2019 Gen Con Games. I've included a bullet list below in the event you aren't able to view my link to BGG. OR if you would just prefer to read the list within this post.
There were several games not listed in the BGG Gen Con Preview that I'm also interested in. I'm not exactly sure why certain games weren't on the preview list. These games may have already had Kickstarters last year and are just now releasing or it might just be that the game was previously introduced at Essen, Origins, or another venue. Nonetheless, I wanted to make sure I also bring up these additional games I'm excited to check out at Gen Con. One thing all of these additional games have in common is that they each sport a popular intellectual property (IP). Cthulu is technically public domain, but is still a subject matter that I would refer to as an IP. Each are IPs that I have a particular affinity to. My friend Don and have been hanging out together at Gen Con for the past several years. We already have tickets to play some of these games and are excited to get to see and hopefully play many of the others. I will highlight a few of the items on my list (marked with an asterisk) and give you a little more detail as to why I'm interested in checking them out: Catan Starfarers A rework of an older Catan variant named Starfarers of Catan. I never got to play the original, however I do enjoy the original Catan game and several of the other variants I've played. The space theme and the description of updates get me juiced to try this one out. Monster Slaughter This game was in prototype stage at last year's Gen Con. I got to see some of the early 3D-printed pieces and learn a little about the game. It is a miniatures board game in which you play as a family of monsters attacking humans ... a fun twist to the more typical take on this genre where the players take on the role of humans evading and defeating monsters. PARKS Based on actual U.S. National Parks, this game looks gorgeous. The artwork is graphically pleasing yet simple. 59 National Parks are featured. As hikers, you traverse trails in all four seasons. What a unique concept. I first noticed this game on Kickstarter and thought it was intriguing. I'm looking forward to seeing how the game turned out and am curious to see how this unique subject matter translates to a board/card game. Return to Dark Tower A childhood favorite of mine was Dark Tower. When Restoration Games asked gamers which old game they would like to bring back, this was the top request. Return to Dark Tower is in the late stages of development and is due to have a Kickstarter launch this fall. It will be available for preview and demo play this year. I'm so anxious to see how they're going to modernize this awesome game from the past. My game choices might be different than yours. I encourage you to explore the preview list on Board Game Geek and to see what kinds of games get you excited. Some of the games are already available, some will be released in the next month or two, while others may still be in production/development or launching Kickstarters not releasing until next year. It's fun for me to look at new versions of old games, variants and expansions to current games, and the latest new and exciting games that are soon to come. My list of games to see and/or play is long. I'm certain I won't get around to all of them. Take a moment to post your thoughts and feedback in the comments or send me a message on the contacts page. As always...
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