MrJack

This is a excellent game that can be enjoyed time and again – and by casual players. It’s fun, though at times it may exasperate ~ no matter whether you’re the elusive Jack, or the sleuth.

But also, it sometimes gets your heart racing a bit (truly), especially if you’re Jack, trying to avoid the detective’s clutches.

The board and the character cards are very nicely designed and of good quality: a pleasure to handle.

One of the two players takes on the role of the infamous Jack the Ripper, as he makes his way around London’s grim and grimy East-End (before the money and the moguls moved in, of course). But crafty Jack’s masquerading as someone else. He’s pretending to be one of the other characters who are out and about at night-time, walking the dimly lit streets.

Understandably, his goal is either to flee from the district as soon as possible, or to avoid being accused, right up to the very end of the chase.

The other player is an investigator who tries to work out just who it is that Jack’s pretending to be: and to correctly accuse them. The Jack-player knows who it is, of course, but the searcher doesn’t.

The player who’s doing the detecting can make only one accusation during the game (which takes up to a maximum of eight turns) so needs to be very attentive to the information that Jack’s forced to reveal. Indeed, intuition, logic, and cold-blooded cunning will be needed both by Jack and by the sleuth: the latter needing to employ a little patience.

During each turn, the players move four (two each) of the eight characters, and apply the actions that each character is able to undertake. Importantly, also, they both will be trying to place characters either in the dark and invisible, or in view of others. Anyone who’s near a gas-light can be seen, as can anybody standing next to someone else.

It matters if they can be seen or not.

At the end of each turn, Jack must declare whether the character he’s ‘hiding behind’ is visible or not: alone, and away from a street light, and not in the beam of Dr Watson’s lamp. If he says ‘I’m invisible’, those who can be seen must be innocent, logic demands. So the person who’s trying to track down the terrible culprit can rule them out.

As the turns progress, the investigator tries to eliminate suspects, based solely on the feedback each time – visible or not visible. Jack, meanwhile, tries to avoid detection, or if possible to escape whilst invisible, by running down one of Whitechapel’s side streets.

So that’s it (in brief). Each turn, the two players move the characters around, trying to place them in spots where they can be of greatest advantage either to the goal of the investigator, or of Jack.

This’ll mean making decision after decision, like …
► choosing whether to move characters near to gas-lamps: or whether to move gas-lamps, even
► moving characters to sidle up close to somebody else: or keeping them apart, in splendid isolation
► taking the opportunity to move manhole covers, or road blocks: but where to ?

Good fun !

• takes very little time to set up
• the character cards appear randomly: every game’s different
• players take turns in first choice of cards: a clever little technique’s used
• it might take a game or two to get used to ‘how can I do it’

Here’s another really good game for two, again with a twist of evil. Jekyll vs. Hyde is a card game which makes as much demand on the two players, but can bring them just as much satisfaction.

What ~ another?
Yes, this time with cartloads of crim’s, but none of them acting in quite so evil a fashion as either Jack or the horrid Mr Hyde – it’s Caper.
Another good game for casuals – and a fun game.