Playing a new game

So I recently (if December is still considered recent) got some new board games. Carissa says I/we got a lot of board games—perhaps too many. I say differently, because you can never have too many board games (just like you can never have too many books). One of my new games is called Letters from Whitechapel and it is a game that I recently tried out with Carissa.

Letters from Whitechapel (LfW from now on) is a game set in old-timey London in which one person gets to be Jack the Ripper and one person (or multiple people if you have friends) gets to play as the police. It's got a massive board that looks like a city map and on every street are spaces  for movement. The goal for Jack is to murder his victims and make it back home for tea, and the police try to catch him or find out where his hideout is.

The trick is that Jack isn't moving on the board. The player tracks his movements secretly (all the spaces are numbered). The police can't see him, but they can search for clues to find out if he has visited a space or not. And because Jack leaves a body, they know where he started from. If Jack is ever surrounded, he instantly loses.

So Carissa and I start out our first game and she immediately regrets her decision to play the police. When you start out you really just have your own little police meeples on a board and you randomly start moving around and making guesses (it can be really time-consuming if you track your moves, which Carissa does).

Before I go on, I should explain one rule. When police look for Jack, they choose a space near their person and they can either search for clues to see if Jack has been there or they can make an arrest and if Jack is there he loses. You can only do one.

So back to the game, I start by moving Jack. Carissa randomly makes one move and arrests me. On the first turn. Game over. Done. End. Finished.

So that went by pretty quick.

The second game lasted much longer and was way more fun. It took a long time, but the police ended up winning the game at the very end by surrounding my (Jack's) hideout so I couldn't go home.

In summary, I bought a game and it was pretty fun. It works really well as a two player game, but definitely know that you are getting into a long and in-depth game. I would compare it to a very elaborate version of the game Mastermind.