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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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I must apologize for the audio podcasts absence over May, I have been feeling a little under the weather of late and it has kept me away from the microphone. I hope to have a new episode out by late June or early July. In the meantime I'll write about one of the many games I've played recently, if you get time I have also produced a video review on a neat little card game called Biblios.
The game I have decided to write about today is Letters from Whitechapel. Letters from Whitechapel is a 2-6 player deduction game based on one of the worlds greatest unsolved mysteries; Jack the Ripper. Letters from Whitechapel takes a more historical approach to the theme than the other Jack the Ripper themed deduction game Mr. Jack. Letters from Whitechapel also has the murders taking place throughout the game, Mr. Jack is more or less solely about discovering the Identity of Jack and the chase to arrest him. This historical approach may be a turn off for some.
During a game of Letters from Whitechapel one player will take on the role of Jack the Ripper, his goal is to commit murders on each of 4 nights and return to his hideout without being apprehended by the investigators. The investigators will be the remaining players who are attempting to find and arrest Jack the Ripper.
The board depicts London's Whitechapel district and a lot of the locations are marked with numbers, Jack at the start of the game will pick a hideout by writing down one of these numbers on a supplied sheet of paper, his goal as I mentioned will be to return to that location each night. Jack starts the game by placing 8 tokens face down on the board that will indicate where his targets will eventually be placed, not all of these tokens will indicate real targets though, some are fake. The investigators then place 7 police tokens face down on the board, these are the locations where the police pawns will be placed, again some of these police tokens are fake. The idea of this is that the investigators won't have all the information they need as to where Jack's potential targets are. Jack also won't have all the information as to where the investigators will actually be. The next phase will reveal the 5 real targets to the investigators and the real target tokens are replaced by the target pawns. Jack then has the choice of killing one of the targets or waiting. If he waits he can reveal one police token to see if it is real or not, this gives Jack more information as to where the police will be located. Although by waiting, the police get to move the target pawns around the board, perhaps closer to police tokens. This process is repeated until Jack decides to Kill a target pawn. When Jack commits a murder he then replaces one target pawn with a crime scene token and the police pawns are placed in their spaces. The investigators know that Jack will be close to crime scene at this point and will flock to that area. As Jack moves around the board he notes each space down on the sheet of paper that he moved through. The investigators can move and ask for clues on their turn, they do this by asking if Jack has been to a space adjacent to their police pawn. If Jack has been there this night he marks that space on the board with a clue token. This is how the investigators will pick up Jack's trail and try to figure out in which direction his hideout is located. The investigators can trap Jack from getting to his hideout if they discover where it is, they can also make an arrest on a space if they know that it is Jack's current location. If Jack gets back to his hideout from the crime scene the turn ends and a new one begins, If he makes it back to his hideout after all of the 4 nights Jack wins, If not the Investigators win the game immediately.
Letters from Whitechapel I'm sure will be one of my favorite games of the entire year. I have a few video reviews being worked on currently but would like to review this one at some point. As much as I love this game I have encountered a number of things that I didn't like about it. I wanted to discuss those things as some of them I have not seen mentioned by others.
 The police and target tokens are tiny, fiddly little things. They can easily become camouflaged on the board. I think every time I've had to pick them up from the board I've said out loud "there is one more somewhere, where is it?". I'm in the process of making my own wooden tokens to replace these card tokens.
 The players aids supplied are colour coded to each of the players pawns, this is to keep track of which player is in control of which police pawn. The players aids themselves in my opinion are pretty much useless. They provide a minimal amount of information, we have the rulebook open at all times just to keep the game flowing. Not to refer to rules necessarily, but just to make sure each phase is followed correctly as each new turn there are a few changes.
 There are 4 turns in this game, each turn one player will become the head of the investigation. That player chooses the starting location for each investigator by the placement of the police tokens. There are 5 investigators though, so one player is guaranteed to miss out on becoming the head of investigation. That just felt a bit odd to me.
 The five investigator pawns are always used. In a game with only 4 players, 2 players will have to control 2 investigators each, one player will be left with only 1. This cannot be avoided, it again just felt odd.
 The box says it has a play time of 60+ minutes, I would not sit down to play this game unless I had a time slot of 150 minutes available. There is a possibly that it will end before that time if the investigators catch Jack early. Still, to play out all 4 turns it will likley take around 2 and a half hours.
 With multiple investigators I have encountered a number of issues. Downtime, dominant investigators who tell others what to do. In one case a player got out tokens from another game and placed them all over the board, each turn as the investigators received information the investigators would remove these tokens from the board. This sounds like a good idea, but it totally killed tense atmosphere the game can create.
With all that said why is it that Letters from Whitechapel might be my favorite game of 2011? Well let's do some deductions shall we, Issue numbers 3,4, 5 and 6 listed above are not much of an issue with only 2 players. Downtime is reduced, the player playing the investigator will always be the head of investigation, the investigator plays all 5 investigators and the play time will be slightly less, probably closer to 105 -120 minutes.
So as it stands, as a 2 player game my only real dislikes about Letters from Whitechapel are the players aids and the target/ police tokens. It is a truly tense deduction game where the theme has been incorporated into the gameplay very nicely. Several times when I've been Jack and my opponent is making deductions he'll say something like "you are on 48 aren't you?" I can never help but completely give my current location away as I have no control over a grin that goes from ear to ear. Even if he knows where I am now, unless he has the opportunity to make an arrest on that spot I can usually make an escape from there next turn, although probably with an investigator not far behind me. The artwork is fantastic and overall the game just creates a very tense atmosphere for both sides that I find myself wanting to come back too. The gruesome details of the Jack the Ripper murders have been left out of this game, the murders when they occur here are essentially just part of a set up phase, the meat of the game doesn't begin until after a "murder" has been committed. I can imagine some might still have an problem with the theme though. Anyway, that's some of my thoughts on Letters from Whitechapel, I'll try and get a full review done at some point over the next few months. If you are a fan of deduction games I would recommend having a closer look at Letters from Whitechapel.
From: www.castellireviews.com
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. I just wanted to clarify some points though. 
, I certainly am aware it is possible to have an enjoyable experience with Letters from Whitechapel.
As I said, I'm really digging this game at the moment. I hope whatever shortcomings you feel the game has is not enough to deter you from your enjoyment of the game. Hope you feel better soon, looking forward to your next video(s)...!!!
