Mr. Jack is one of my favorite games. It's a tense, quick, and simple deduction game, so it gets an awful lot of play around here. So when I had the opportunity to purchase one of the few original copies of the extension available in the US, I jumped at the chance.

From a components standpoint, you don't get a whole lot with the game: a few new cards and tokens, basically. It all fits in seamlessly with the basic game, but it's easy to feel like you aren't getting much for the money. I'm not one to complain about a lack of material value in my games, although I was a little bit frustrated that one of the character cards (Inspector Abberline) didn't have a name printed on it. It's not as though they missed a word among reams of text; they forgot the only words on the card.

Of course, games like Mr. Jack are valuable for their gameplay, not the cost of components, so the extension's value is best considered in terms of what it adds to the game.

What exactly does it add? New characters and some slight rules changes. The new characters sound interesting to begin with: There's John Pizer, the butcher who works like Sgt. Goodley in reverse, pushing characters away from him. There's Madam, the lady of the evening who can travel quickly but can't use the sewers. There's the Spring-Heeled Man, who can jump symmetrically over obstacles and characters. There's Joseph Lane, the anarchist who can build impassable barricades between two street hexes. And there's Inspector Abberline, who prevents other characters from moving when he's nearby.

The problem with these characters is that they don't really add much to the basic game. Some are obviously just tweaks to existing characters: the butcher, as I've said, is the opposite of Goodley, and Madam only has one more movement point than Stealthy. Likewise, the Spring-Heeled Man's abilities can often be functionally replicated by Stealthy. The two that are most different, Lane and Abberline, are ultimately more of an annoyance than anything. They do change the dynamic of the game somewhat, but frankly I didn't feel like there was anything wrong with it in the first place, and I certainly don't feel like it's any better now.

The best of the extension's additions is the random setup. One of Mr. Jack's few flaws was the programmed setup procedure, which lead to somewhat scripted opening turns. The extension provides rules for selecting and placing characters. Basically, there is a stable of four characters that are always used (those that provide the necessary function: Holmes, Bert, Smith and Lestrade), and the players are able to draft two characters each from a hand of cards. Then they take turns placing the characters until the board is set up.

This undeniably provides more variety in the game, and it's definitely the good kind. Still, other than drafting the characters, there's no reason the placement rules can't be used without purchasing the extension at all, and they're certainly not worth the price by themselves.

I'm not the kind of person who complains about games costing too much for what they give. I understand that the design, not the components, provide the value, and I'm perfectly willing to pay extra for an add-on that makes the game significantly better. Unfortunately, the Mr. Jack extension doesn't make the game significantly better. The new characters are simply too unpolished. The game is not significantly worse, either, but for the price, I would expect something more substantive than the status quo.