If you love a good detective game, you’ll love Watson & Holmes! We played this game twice before reviewing it. The first time it was just the two of us, and it played quite well, but we felt it may play better with more. So, the second time we invited our friend Chris over to play again, and discovered that it’s more fun sleuthing around with more people. As you can deduce from the name, Watson & Holmes is set in the world of Sherlock Holmes. Each player is a detective, and we are working from the diaries of Dr. Watson to try and figure out who committed the crime, where they did it, and how? The player who figures it out first wins! This game is well crafted; it has beautiful components, and the cards and case booklets are nice. There are only 13 cases in the game set, so once you’ve solved all 13, you may want to set this game aside for a while so you can come back to it with a fresh perspective. We’re hoping Asmodee comes up with an expansion with more cases… We enjoyed it so much, and have already played five of them! How’s it Played? Each case has a booklet which explains the particulars of the crime, and what you need to do to solve the case. Inside is the solution, so make sure no one pages through and peeks until the very end. Each case also has location cards with different clues that are used during play to figure out the solution. What’s convenient is each case has an envelope to store them, so that no one can see any clues before playing. The first thing we did is put all the case cards in their respective envelopes. It also suggests placing them in the envelope so you don’t see the card backs, which have the clues. Once you choose the case you want to solve, take the case cards and place them face down on the table in the order that the booklet states. You also place the Carriage Stop, Watson, and Holmes cards face down, which are available for any game. Next to the game area you have tokens to place on the side – Carriage, Police, Call Off, and Lock Pick. These are used during the game. Each player chooses a pawn and token, receives 10 carriage tokens and a police token, plus pen and paper (not included) to scribble their notes, then given a face-down character card describing their unique ability; their own identity is kept secret unless they decide to use their ability. You’re now ready to play! Have someone read the case booklet aloud. Or, what we thought was super cool: Scan the QR code for the case, and the booklet will serve as the narrator! We like that because it’s difficult for the person reading the card to take their own notes at the same time. There are two phases to each round:
Game play continues until someone solves the mystery. If nobody successfully solves it, everyone loses! (Darn!) Timing of the Game It took the two of us around 45-minutes to play, and the same amount of time with three, because the clues were revealed at roughly the same rate. We played it twice in a row both times because we really enjoyed it! Fast Facts:
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