by Manfred Burggraf, Dorothy Garrels, Wolf Hoermann, Fritz Ifland, Werner Scheerer and Werner Schlegel
Players: 3 - 6
Ages: 10+
Time: 45+ minutes
Type of game: Deductive / Hidden Movement
Reccomended?: Yes
"Chase me! Chase me!" I called as I ran, laughing through the streets of London. Jumping onto buses, using the tube to cover long distances and using taxis to get myself lost in the back streets.
Meanwhile, my opponents did their best to figure out where I was, aided by my odd need to reveal my position every 5 moves or so.
Scotland Yard is a 1 versus many game. One person plays the mysterious Mister X whilst the other players are the police trying to track X down.
The police move openly. I can always see where the are and plan my moves as X secretly. They also start with a limited supply of tickets for the various transport types which, when they use them, become part of my supply widening my options as theirs decrease.
X moves secretly. He'll start in the open and then, as soon as his first move is decided, will disappear leaving just the ticket that he used to make the journey behind as a clue to where he could have gone.X writes his destination and covers it with the ticket he used to get there. Using a black ticket? That'll get you on anything obscuring your possible destination even further.
Like most good co-op games this is difficult for the many and to really be sure of winning would involve some clever mapping. This kind of shenanigans while making an interesting logic problem would also be quite a fun sucker. Which would make the game a puzzle rather than a game.
The other issue with this is, as it's one versus many rather than many versus the game it feels unbalanced. You don't mind losing to the game, but losing continually to whoever has the role of Mr X makes it way less enjoyable.
I'd read a lot of good things about this game on BGG but, ultimately, it's not for me. While I'd still recommend it this ones destined for eBay.
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