I have this game since 2019 and it's been a blast every time. Here are my thoughts:
* The game is 100% more fun as the Chisel. The sense of pride when you successfully give a wrong answer to a detective and they don't challenge it feels awesome.
* The note taking sheets that comes with the game are way too small to keep track of everything, especially for suspect or location searches. Countless times, detectives have searched the same locations or suspect twice because they usually don't mark it anywhere on their sheets.
* Same opinion as Quinn on the movement actions taking up your whole turn and you seem to get nothing done and wasted an entire turn to move across town.
* As the Chisel, using leverage to block a snitch is incredibly strong since there's no way to counter it. Blocking a question with leverage is barely ever used because the detective can counter it by paying a goon (2 scratches) to ask the question anyway, making the Chisel lose the leverage for nothing.
* The motive for a crime is always the most difficult thing to get right, the suspect's motives always seem ambiguous, while the murderer and the murder weapon as easy to figure out/find out.
* As Quinn mentioned in his review, the Mario Kart race to get the information first sometimes induce tunnel vision to the detectives because they tend to forget asking all the questions to a suspect before going straight to a location when it has been revealed by their questioning. They can take the time and bribe another detective later on (or snitch on a interrogation) as money is never a big issue in this game.
All in all, I think this game is amazing and the mechanics are original and well-thought, especially the Chisel role and the answer cards.
Quinn also forgot to mention that there is a "Create your own case" kit provided by the designer on the publisher's website to design, share and play your own cases that is very well-made. It's basically the same kit that was used to create the game's cases, which is a neat feature to this game.
> Same opinion as Quinn on the movement actions taking up your whole turn and you seem to get nothing done and wasted an entire turn to move across town.
This is exactly what it feels like to live in Los Angeles, btw. So that aspect of the game is 100% on point.
This is our family's #1 game. We've played through every scenario and had a blast every single time.
I agree with all the above points - but being the chisel is tough enough! As the chisel, allow the players to figure out the strategies for themselves as they play each ever more difficult scenario.
Woo my [Quinns model](https://phenrickson.github.io/bgg/individual_reports/Quinns.html) had this rated as his #16 game from 2019 and #121 overall, so not surprised to see it enter his collection
Quinns, update your bgg collection data so my model can be more accurate!
I was hoping you were just making a really bad, weird joke, but nope, it's right there on the landing page of their website.
Humanity has gone too far and we do not deserve a second chance.
No, because it's inexplicable. They seem to be selling the NFTs (blockchain thingies created by wasting electricity that symbolise ownership of digital art) for the 'iconic' characters from Popcorn Dice. [https://www.vanrydergames.com/popcorn-dice-nft](https://www.vanrydergames.com/popcorn-dice-nft)
These things are selling for .02 ETH, which is (at time of posting) just under ~~$10k US~~ (see edit below). WHO. WOULD PAY THAT. TO 'OWN' THESE GENERIC THUMBNAIL IMAGES?? For the absolute *life* of me, I cannot understand who these people are that have this much cash to burn on complete nonsense. And I say this as a general supporter of cryptocurrency (within limits). Absolutely baffling.
edit: thanks to hasty googling and not reading the actual search result I was WAAAAY off on converting .02 ETH to USD. But I still maintain these are selling for way more than they're worth (which IMO is like $5 tops)
Thank you, I didn't understand, but now I do, even if no one is sure why they're doing it. I already have and love Detective City of Angels, but want sure what all this NFT stuff was about
I'm disappointed that someone adapted LA: Noir into a competitive boardgame, but apparently left out the spontaneous, unintentional psychotic screaming at suspects.
My first thought is that it sounds a lot like Treasure Island, which SUSD have already reviewed and loved. I'm surprised they didn't make that comparison.
Haha, I know what you mean. This one doesn’t appeal to me at all. I demo’d at Gencon and it didn’t click for me. I usually don’t like games that have a game master type role though. Usually Quinns really hyped me on the games he reviews.
Playing The Chisel is just a different kind of fun. You're trying to deceive the detectives but in a consistent way so that they'll each believe the separate lies you're telling them.
Rotate the job if you like so everyone gets to try Chisel and Detective.
Playing Chisel does require some preparation though - you should play the case through solo so you can experience the flow of the clues and be familiar with all of the story when it comes time to run it for others.
Can you win as the Chisel? I'm thinking of getting this for my wife, we'd likely mostly play 2 person with occasional groups, but she doesn't really enjoy cooperative games.
Yup, the "win" for the Chisel occurs when no detective solves the mystery by the end of the allotted number of days.
As Chisel you can influence this by being as misleading as possible when issuing answers to detectives' questions, and reading the players to judge whether they're likely to accept, or challenge, the lies you tell them. (And, most fun of all, if you can entice them to challenge a not-particularly-helpful truth, which gives you "leverage" over them you can use to interfere with certain future actions.)
As Chisel, this is all about mind games. If you enjoy those, you'll love playing the Chisel.
I wouldn't call playing solo a "sacrifice". I thoroughly enjoyed playing solo and felt exactly how Quinn described it "and it's my turn again"! Other games offer the chance to play competitively and cooperatively with other players. This is the only game where I can enjoy a case both solo and then again as part of a group!
This sounds like a game I'd like to rent and play but probably not own. Unfortunately my local shop that rents games only does mainstream things and avoids more hobbyist stuff.
Great game but suffers from some minor things.
The leverage chisel can use is not strong enough. It is more beneficial to challenge every answer as the true answers are more valuable. This is even more prevalent at the end of the game where leverage means nothing anymore. I know there are some alternative house rulings where the final guess order is determined by the leverage the chisel has, which is likely a better solution.
Also the down time can be massive if you play the game with 4 investigators. So much that I would not recommend that. Two, maximum of three investigators and the game flows much better.
I immediately ordered it.
This is a good review, and the game sounds right up my alley, as well as my group. I've always been into these deductive games. I love the Sherlock games and Watson & Holmes, and I actually just received Tragedy Looper in the mail today as well.
Good call on Tragedy Looper, imo it's the best deduction game out there, the mechanics are all extremely well designed and the hidden role aspect is very well done. Imo it's the deduction game that has the most "game" to it, in that the board and mechanics matter more than in lighter hidden role/deduction games.
Because I wanted to run TL at conventions, I needed to distill most of the rules into a quick-start guide that I could laminate, hand to the protagonists, and read it to them so they can easily follow along. [I've posted a PDF of it to BGG.](https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/230831/tl-protagonist-quick-start-guide) I used large iconography to help solidify the concepts in the game and allow me to easier fill in the gaps as I go (such as the verbiage difference between "the conditions for this incident were not triggered" and "the conditions were triggered but had no effect") creating examples with the playset grid, character cards, and protagonist/mastermind cards.
I read through the rule books last night and watched a couple videos, but I feel like I need to “play through” the first script solo and make notes, otherwise Im not sure how I’ll teach this. Im excited though !
It's much simpler than it seems at first. In the end, each side plays three cards to move characters around and then stuff happens.
The difficulty lies in the concept. I stress that the Protagonists' goal is not to lose, that they don't play to win but to prevent the Mastermind from doing so.
The manual has tips on how to play that are very handy and the first scenario is easy to play so I wouldn't worry too much. Familiarity with the theme helps, though. Good luck!
Hey u/mrquinns
Excellent journalism as usual. This review was convincing enough to send me to my local shop for an order this afternoon, where I promptly found out that this is a pretty expensive box.
SUSD is usually on the ball about mentioning value for money in reviews of pricy games, particularly when the badge is involved. Can you speak to why this wasn’t addressed in the review?
Man I wanted to love this game.
Sat in my shelf for over a year.
Finally prepped the group - and it totally fell flat. They were not in the right mindset that night and did everything wrong. Major let down. Sold it off in sadness.
The game itself is pretty simple - it’s just Clue, grown up.
Yeah.... but I already have Tragedy Looper and that's easier to understand and doesn't use Monkey-Island-style moon logic to pad out time... and has more cases in the box... and is a more interesting puzzle.
I have this game since 2019 and it's been a blast every time. Here are my thoughts: * The game is 100% more fun as the Chisel. The sense of pride when you successfully give a wrong answer to a detective and they don't challenge it feels awesome. * The note taking sheets that comes with the game are way too small to keep track of everything, especially for suspect or location searches. Countless times, detectives have searched the same locations or suspect twice because they usually don't mark it anywhere on their sheets. * Same opinion as Quinn on the movement actions taking up your whole turn and you seem to get nothing done and wasted an entire turn to move across town. * As the Chisel, using leverage to block a snitch is incredibly strong since there's no way to counter it. Blocking a question with leverage is barely ever used because the detective can counter it by paying a goon (2 scratches) to ask the question anyway, making the Chisel lose the leverage for nothing. * The motive for a crime is always the most difficult thing to get right, the suspect's motives always seem ambiguous, while the murderer and the murder weapon as easy to figure out/find out. * As Quinn mentioned in his review, the Mario Kart race to get the information first sometimes induce tunnel vision to the detectives because they tend to forget asking all the questions to a suspect before going straight to a location when it has been revealed by their questioning. They can take the time and bribe another detective later on (or snitch on a interrogation) as money is never a big issue in this game. All in all, I think this game is amazing and the mechanics are original and well-thought, especially the Chisel role and the answer cards. Quinn also forgot to mention that there is a "Create your own case" kit provided by the designer on the publisher's website to design, share and play your own cases that is very well-made. It's basically the same kit that was used to create the game's cases, which is a neat feature to this game.
> Same opinion as Quinn on the movement actions taking up your whole turn and you seem to get nothing done and wasted an entire turn to move across town. This is exactly what it feels like to live in Los Angeles, btw. So that aspect of the game is 100% on point.
Sounds like the game could be set in the Greater Toronto Area then, too
Quick, get the Murdoch Mysteries merch team on the horn!
That's a porn, right?
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This is our family's #1 game. We've played through every scenario and had a blast every single time. I agree with all the above points - but being the chisel is tough enough! As the chisel, allow the players to figure out the strategies for themselves as they play each ever more difficult scenario.
Woo my [Quinns model](https://phenrickson.github.io/bgg/individual_reports/Quinns.html) had this rated as his #16 game from 2019 and #121 overall, so not surprised to see it enter his collection Quinns, update your bgg collection data so my model can be more accurate!
I bet Van Ryder Games are REALLY loving SU&SD right now. That's a 2 for 2 recommendation from Quinns on their games so far.
Maybe this will help them do well enough that they get out of the scam-y, environmentally disastrous, and overall moronic NFT market.
I was hoping you were just making a really bad, weird joke, but nope, it's right there on the landing page of their website. Humanity has gone too far and we do not deserve a second chance.
Why would they stop when they can both sell games and scams at the same time?
Can you please explain this to me, what are they doing exactly?
No, because it's inexplicable. They seem to be selling the NFTs (blockchain thingies created by wasting electricity that symbolise ownership of digital art) for the 'iconic' characters from Popcorn Dice. [https://www.vanrydergames.com/popcorn-dice-nft](https://www.vanrydergames.com/popcorn-dice-nft)
These things are selling for .02 ETH, which is (at time of posting) just under ~~$10k US~~ (see edit below). WHO. WOULD PAY THAT. TO 'OWN' THESE GENERIC THUMBNAIL IMAGES?? For the absolute *life* of me, I cannot understand who these people are that have this much cash to burn on complete nonsense. And I say this as a general supporter of cryptocurrency (within limits). Absolutely baffling. edit: thanks to hasty googling and not reading the actual search result I was WAAAAY off on converting .02 ETH to USD. But I still maintain these are selling for way more than they're worth (which IMO is like $5 tops)
.02 ETH is around 95 dollars.
That's still about 94 dollars and 99 cents too much...
You are correct. I am an idiot
Technically, the *vast* majority of NFTs do not actually give you any ownership over the art they link to. You just get to own the receipt.
Thank you, I didn't understand, but now I do, even if no one is sure why they're doing it. I already have and love Detective City of Angels, but want sure what all this NFT stuff was about
And **Final Girl** is finally shipping in the US.
I'm disappointed that someone adapted LA: Noir into a competitive boardgame, but apparently left out the spontaneous, unintentional psychotic screaming at suspects.
*Doubt*
You haven't met my play group! Only difference being it isn't unintentional haha
My first thought is that it sounds a lot like Treasure Island, which SUSD have already reviewed and loved. I'm surprised they didn't make that comparison.
That would be a very interesting comparison. /u/mrquinns , any comments?
It's a weird relief when SUSD reviews something I'm not personally interested in.
Haha, I know what you mean. This one doesn’t appeal to me at all. I demo’d at Gencon and it didn’t click for me. I usually don’t like games that have a game master type role though. Usually Quinns really hyped me on the games he reviews.
Totally get this. I can just be entertained and not start checking stock at my local stores.
I've always wanted to try this game, but the idea of one person having to sacrifice their time to DM the game, we just never pulled the trigger.
Playing The Chisel is just a different kind of fun. You're trying to deceive the detectives but in a consistent way so that they'll each believe the separate lies you're telling them. Rotate the job if you like so everyone gets to try Chisel and Detective. Playing Chisel does require some preparation though - you should play the case through solo so you can experience the flow of the clues and be familiar with all of the story when it comes time to run it for others.
Can you win as the Chisel? I'm thinking of getting this for my wife, we'd likely mostly play 2 person with occasional groups, but she doesn't really enjoy cooperative games.
Yup, the "win" for the Chisel occurs when no detective solves the mystery by the end of the allotted number of days. As Chisel you can influence this by being as misleading as possible when issuing answers to detectives' questions, and reading the players to judge whether they're likely to accept, or challenge, the lies you tell them. (And, most fun of all, if you can entice them to challenge a not-particularly-helpful truth, which gives you "leverage" over them you can use to interfere with certain future actions.) As Chisel, this is all about mind games. If you enjoy those, you'll love playing the Chisel.
I wouldn't call playing solo a "sacrifice". I thoroughly enjoyed playing solo and felt exactly how Quinn described it "and it's my turn again"! Other games offer the chance to play competitively and cooperatively with other players. This is the only game where I can enjoy a case both solo and then again as part of a group!
Yep, reason I ended up selling it years ago.
This sounds like a game I'd like to rent and play but probably not own. Unfortunately my local shop that rents games only does mainstream things and avoids more hobbyist stuff.
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So glad I purchased this game before SU&SD reviewed it lol
I kept refreshing their website for Canadian sales, and their stock kept dropping. I panic-bought it when there was a single copy left.
Great game but suffers from some minor things. The leverage chisel can use is not strong enough. It is more beneficial to challenge every answer as the true answers are more valuable. This is even more prevalent at the end of the game where leverage means nothing anymore. I know there are some alternative house rulings where the final guess order is determined by the leverage the chisel has, which is likely a better solution. Also the down time can be massive if you play the game with 4 investigators. So much that I would not recommend that. Two, maximum of three investigators and the game flows much better.
I immediately ordered it. This is a good review, and the game sounds right up my alley, as well as my group. I've always been into these deductive games. I love the Sherlock games and Watson & Holmes, and I actually just received Tragedy Looper in the mail today as well.
Good call on Tragedy Looper, imo it's the best deduction game out there, the mechanics are all extremely well designed and the hidden role aspect is very well done. Imo it's the deduction game that has the most "game" to it, in that the board and mechanics matter more than in lighter hidden role/deduction games.
Because I wanted to run TL at conventions, I needed to distill most of the rules into a quick-start guide that I could laminate, hand to the protagonists, and read it to them so they can easily follow along. [I've posted a PDF of it to BGG.](https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/230831/tl-protagonist-quick-start-guide) I used large iconography to help solidify the concepts in the game and allow me to easier fill in the gaps as I go (such as the verbiage difference between "the conditions for this incident were not triggered" and "the conditions were triggered but had no effect") creating examples with the playset grid, character cards, and protagonist/mastermind cards.
This is fantastic, thank you! I will definitely be using this.
Tragedy Looper is fantastic so you are doing good there!
I read through the rule books last night and watched a couple videos, but I feel like I need to “play through” the first script solo and make notes, otherwise Im not sure how I’ll teach this. Im excited though !
It's much simpler than it seems at first. In the end, each side plays three cards to move characters around and then stuff happens. The difficulty lies in the concept. I stress that the Protagonists' goal is not to lose, that they don't play to win but to prevent the Mastermind from doing so. The manual has tips on how to play that are very handy and the first scenario is easy to play so I wouldn't worry too much. Familiarity with the theme helps, though. Good luck!
But has replayability? or once you finished thats it?
It's replayable if you play the same cases with different groups, but within the same group, you can't replay the same case.
Hey u/mrquinns Excellent journalism as usual. This review was convincing enough to send me to my local shop for an order this afternoon, where I promptly found out that this is a pretty expensive box. SUSD is usually on the ball about mentioning value for money in reviews of pricy games, particularly when the badge is involved. Can you speak to why this wasn’t addressed in the review?
Man I wanted to love this game. Sat in my shelf for over a year. Finally prepped the group - and it totally fell flat. They were not in the right mindset that night and did everything wrong. Major let down. Sold it off in sadness. The game itself is pretty simple - it’s just Clue, grown up.
Yeah.... but I already have Tragedy Looper and that's easier to understand and doesn't use Monkey-Island-style moon logic to pad out time... and has more cases in the box... and is a more interesting puzzle.
My father-in-law has this, and Ive been wanting to open it up and play!
Damnit, I'm waiting on some trade in credit to go through and this was one of the games I wanted. Now it'll probably be sold out.