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Alec Chapman
United Kingdom
South London
3m3.posterous.com - a "lovely bunch of wafflers"
The 10:100 system is not a personal attack on you!
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Couples game alert!
Mr Jack is all about finding the eponymous murderer using deduction and elimination.
There are no black and white sides in Mr Jack. Each character can be moved and used by either player, so long as the card deal is even, and it is through skillful use of the special powers available to you that you can improve your chances of victory.
Gameplay is pretty simple. Each round (to a maximum of 8) gives each player two moves. They start by selecting a character from the four available at the start of the round, bearing in mind that all eight characters will come out before reshuffling at the end of even rounds. The order of selection is Investigator, Jack, Jack, Investigator in odd numbered rounds, and the opposite in the even numbered. As you select a character you move them and either choose to, or are forced to, use their special ability - anything from moving police roadblocks to switching off lamps.
Lamps are the crucial element here. Every turn Jack must admit whether he has been "witnessed" or not. If he is next to a lit street lamp, another character or in the path of Dr Watson's torch light, he is witnessed, if he isn't he is not. It seems that for every turn, Jack wants to keep the number of suspects as high as possible, to maximise his chances of going undetected. The investigator wants to eliminate roughly half of the suspects every turn - if he does this perfectly he'll know who Jack is by turn 4 - 8 suspects to 4 to 2 and 1). This will not happen often and the investigator must still land a character on top of the disguised Mr Jack to win.
It's strictly two player with asymmetric goals and information. Mr Jack knows who he is, the investigator doesn't. The investigator can gain alibi cards that eliminate suspects without the Mr Jack player knowing, so the potential for mind games can be great.
I also love how the game is not just a question of finding Mr Jack. Not at all. The investigator has to be wary of him escaping the area altogether as well as reducing the number of suspects; if Mr Jack survives until morning he wins, but is it better to play for this situation or to try and hedge your bets, setting up for an escape attempt under cover of night?
The theme may be of questionable taste (but no more so than Fury Of Dracula or any game where someone is "evil") and the actual mechanics pretty much pure abstract gaming, but these help make the game easy to learn and the goals simple to remember.
The other thing that is great about this game is that with a short running time of around 30 minutes and with the Extension improving variety there is real longevity and replayability here.
I look forward to losing this one 100 times...
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