As I discussed in one of my first blog posts, I recently had a birthday. I was given a some gifts of cash as people were unsure what games to get me. So I travelled to my local games shop, Inner Sanctum Collectibles in Cambridge to spend some of the cash on a couple of games from my wish list. I had a few games in mind, particularly Mice and Mystics , Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game , Carcasssonne South Seas , Letters from Whitechapel and the add-on to Blood Bowl Team Manager : Sudden Death .
Unusually for Inner Sanctum Collectibles I could only find Carcassonne South Seas and Letters from Whitechapel. My son was with me and he took a particular shine to both Takenoko and Ticket to Ride , loudly telling me “That one!” and “Choo Choo!” while reaching for the boxes, this meant I couldn’t have a really good search of the store and picked up Letters from Whitechapel.
Letters from Whitechapel is a hybrid co-operative game for 2-6 players. The reason I call it a hybrid game is the way it pitches a group of players against a single opponent. Unlike games such as Descent the players on opposing sides don’t directly influence one another. Letters from Whitechapel is set in London during 1888. One player takes on the role of Jack the Ripper attempting to kill five women over four nights. The rest of the players take on the role of some of Scotland Yard’s best and brightest trying to track down Jack.
Jack moves in secret, the person who is playing as Jack chooses one of the 199 numbered circles covering the game board (a map of the Whitchapel region of London cira 1888) to be their hideout. Each round begins with Jack stalking his prey, Jack has four turns each night before he must kill one of the women on the board. It is worth Jack waiting as he can reveal some of the police patrols that have been placed on the board by the lead investigator. These patrols mark the location each of the remaining players, Scotland Yard, will start but there are a number of decoy counters that can be put on the board. As Jack waits the women are moved by the cooperative group.
When Jack decides to strike he replaces one of the women tokens with a red counter to mark the scene of the murder. The police are revealed and replaced with their counters and any remaining decoys are removed from the board. Jack then has between 15 and 20 moves, depending on how long he waited, to return to his hideout. As I said earlier Jack moves in secret, with each of his moves recorded on a tracking sheet which is kept behind a player screen. The first thing I did after unpacking the game was to laminate two of these sheets, making sure the game will be playable for years to come.
After each of Jack’s moves it is the turn of Scotland Yard. There are always five police on the board regardless of the number of players. If you are playing with less than six people then the head of the investigation will take control of any remaining officers. The police move between crossings, the spaces between the circled numbers. Each officer can move up to two crossings a turn and has two actions they can perform after moving. The player can choose to search any adjacent circles for evidence of Jack or to execute an arrest. Searches can help reveal where Jack has been and if one of the officers finds evidence of Jack a yellow counter is placed on the board. Officers can search all adjacent spaces but their turn ends immediately if they find evidence. If a player is confident they know where Jack is they can choose to make an arrest, this too can only be done at an adjacent circle but will immediately end their turn whether they capture Jack or not. Jack has a pair of tricks up his sleeves, one is the ability to use carriages, these allow Jack to travel twice as far and cross the path of members of Scotland Yard. The other is the alleyways, these allow Jack to move across blocks of land to other numbered circles that are on that block, as if he is using alleyways and passages between buildings. These are limited however and Jack must announce when they are being used.
Unfortunately the game sat unplayed for nearly two weeks after I bought it. It even ended up going up to the games shelf before I managed to convince my wife to give the game a try. We played a couple of games with each of us taking on the role of Jack at some point. We were soon quite familiar with the mechanics and my wife told me that she really liked it. High praise indeed. So when Games night at Dan & Zoe’s rolled around I picked up Letters and we were off.
Letters from Whitechapel – Game 1
The game rules suggest that the player with the most experience of the game should be play as Jack, so I volunteered to take on this role as my wife and I guided the other players through the game. It is at this point I should note that we were not playing with the titular letters component of the game as this is an optional rule.
One of the things I had noticed about this game was just how much tension there is when you are sitting behind the game screen playing as Jack. You started to become paranoid that people are watching you, looking for tells. You kick yourself each time you look at the game board instead of the mini-map inside the screen, being certain you have just given your position away. This feeling of tension only increased with a larger number of player taking part.
Night 1 – I waited to the last possible moment before making my first kill, I had unveiled one of the fake police patrols and I had unveiled three other patrols. I was happy that my chosen victim was far enough from the police to execute a pretty clean get away and so I struck. I moved Jack in a slightly circumventive path in a bid to draw the pursuing officers off the scent with a few misleading clues. This was not the case however and as I approached my hideout Scotland Yard were close on my tail. I announced my escape but now had to deal with the fact that the Peelers were practically on my doorstep.
Night 2 – On each subsequent night the head of the investigation, the player taking the leading role for the police, places the new patrol tokens at the location of the police at the end of the last night. Two of these could be replaced with fake patrols allowing the lead officer to place a player at a different location. Making it just a bit harder for Jack to know for certain where the police actually are. I again waited and quickly had a victim selected who was far enough away to draw the other players away from my hideout and who’s nearest patrol marker had proved to be a fake. I struck and the hunt was on again. I once more tried to lead the other players on a bit of a goose chase but due to their distance from the crime scene most players chose to move across the board and not head towards the crime scene directly. It was like a drag net and I had got myself cornered. At one point someone searched the circle I was on, luckily I only had to confirm there was evidence Jack had been there. However there was some discussion and counting and they were soon certain I was at the circle that had just been searched. I had saved my carriages and alley moves and was able to use them to get of this jam. It wasn’t enough however, all I had done was delay the inevitable and even though I was within two moves of my hideout I was captured.
Letters from Whitechapel – Game 2
Dan made no secret of his desire to play as Jack and we quickly reset the board and went over a few of the final rules for playing as Jack with him (You cannot use a special move to get to your hideout, every five clues found allows you a red herring/false clue token etc). Everything was ready.
Night 1 – Initially Dan followed my lead and allowed himself the maximum waiting time before his first strike. When he finally did strike it was at a more central victim than I expected. For some reason at this point in the game both the women in the group had become fixated on circle 56, deciding that was Jack’s hideout with no real reasoning. Dan played a good deceptive first series of movements, seemingly having gone nowhere. Once we did begin to find clues it did seem like he was heading towards 56. I soon had a good bead on him and pursued him towards the top of the board. Dan then played some of his special movements in a row and I lost the trail but had myself convinced of the general area his hideout was in. Jack escaped and we prepared for the second night.
Night 2 – Certain of the general destination Jack would be heading I was glad to see that my starting position was my ending position at the end of the previous night. As both the ladies moved towards the scene of the second murder I hung around my starting spot. As the clues started to be found it seemed Jack was not heading the right direction for my perceived hideout at all. I convinced myself this was a ploy and still held my ground but slowly I drifted away towards the mounting number of clue tokens. I made a few searches and found Dan had doubled back and was quite near my location. It was too late, once again Jack had escaped but I had confirmation that my hunch was indeed correct.
Night 3 – This round is entitled “The Double Event”, Jack must make two kills. In reality this means Jack picks to victims and marks them both as crime scenes. He then marks them down on his sheet in a chosen order, the second of these being his starting point for the night. What this does mean is that the other players must either split their resources and try and cover two possible routes or converge on one and hope it is the correct location. Dan decided to kill a lot earlier than I expected and his chosen victims were not that far apart. We managed to find a few clues, I even attempted a few arrests but Jack once again slipped away. It was at this point that we, the pursuing players, began to discuss Jack’s possible location. Still being certain of the general vicinity of the hideout and recalling the position of the earlier clues I pointed to one of the circled numbers and announced that I was certain this was Jack’s hideout.
Night 4 – Jack’s final murder took place very close to my suspected hideout location. After his second move Dan announced he had escaped and in doing so won the game. Unfortunately our positioning at the end of the third night had meant victory was certain, there was no way we could move our pieces into a position to stop Jack. Dan had played the tactical long game and in doing so he had defeated us. Dan did reveal that I had been correct in my deduction at the end of night three and I had indeed put my finger on his hideout.
To round out the evening we played Seasons , it was nice to actually be able to read the text on the cards this time. I managed to get myself a second place thanks to some high value cards in my second and third year hands. All in all it was just another game I couldn’t win.
Before I wrap up the blog for this week there are a few websites and people I want to direct your attention towards. Firstly is The League of Nonsensical Gamers a great board game news and review website. They happen to have a Letters from Whitechapel review on their front page at the moment. It does a much netter job of explaining the game than I did.
Also worth a look is The Bearfeet Gamer a great blog that, like mine, is just getting started.
For those of you on twitter here are some suggestions of people who are worth following. @Board_Crossing @MofBG @64ozGames @LeagueNonsense @snicholson and finally the wonderful @boardgamehour & @boardGamersAsk
Chris Loses At! 