Beyond Baker Street Review

It’s been a long day at Scotland Yard. Between the pouring rain, Gregson’s foul temper and a string of bloody murders, you really are at the end of your tether. The evidence is all there, spread out on the table in front of you, but you are missing… something. A new perspective maybe. Then the worst news of all comes in.

Sherlock Holmes is on the case.

 

Players: 2-4

 

Time: 20 mins

 

Ages: 13+

 

Beyond Baker Street takes us back to the London of Sherlock Holmes but for once goes… beyond… Baker Street. Yes, it’s the less sexy, less high-on-opiates side of London but why can’t we celebrate good old fashioned policing for once? The all too successful activities of Sherlock Holmes have undermined the public’s faith in Scotland Yard so its time to show that pompous sociopath that you’re not the bumbling buffoons he thinks you are. Throw those novelty deerstalkers away and grab yourself an appropriately bushy moustache, because, after all…

The Game is Afoot!

It’s often been said (probably) that Sherlock’s powers of deduction stem from his ability to see all the variables, to break down means and motives into numbers and relationships into equations. If that’s true, then prepare for an insight into his mind! Your aim in Beyond Baker Street is to put together the right set of numbered cards to correctly deduce the criminal, their motive and their opportunity. These three objectives are the three cards set out on the game’s luxurious board at the start of play. Imagine this as one of those cork boards on a police drama series, but horizontal so you don’t need to stick pins it. Each of these cards has a value and a suit telling you how much and what kind of evidence you’ll need to pin it – Ahem! – solve the case. For example, 10 footprints, or 11 hats. Such is the burden of proof.

This evidence is represented by the cards in your hand. You want to get the matching type of evidence in front of the corresponding objective so that the total value of those evidence cards is equal to the target. Equal that is! No more! The last thing we need is too much evidence! Were you not listening in basic training? Goodness! Now, the trouble is, you just don’t know what evidence you have. No, like, you really don’t know. At all.

The core of this game, like its spiritual parent Hanabi, is figuring out what you have in your hand, so that you can play it out to the board and get closer to winning (a fine aim in any co-op). You can see everything your fellow policemen are holding (so long as they don’t hold them upside down…) and as your action you can tell one of them something about their cards, either pointing out all the cards of one number or all the cards of one colour. However, all this time you spend discussing evidence is time Sherlock has to advance his investigation. Each time someone gives a clue, the wooden Sherlock meeple, or “Sherleeple” (not really), advances along his track. Should he reach zero then into Scotland Yard he’ll swan with a smug grin on his face and the solution in hand. Show off.

It’s Elementary

Depending on the difficulty of the case you select (there are 6, varying from “which chocolate smeared child ate the Easter egg” to “Steven Moffat” levels of plot twistedness) the cleverer you’ll need to be. There simply won’t be time to give each player perfect information before you start throwing down cards. You’re going to have to do some deduction.

Let’s practice. Here’s your had of cards (don’t peak). This one…

Is a six.

A SIX!

You know which one you’re going for? Ok!

Perfect! You correctly deduced that I am an idiot and terrible at giving clues! With those skills there’ll be a new number 1 detective in town soon!

This really is an excellent system. It was an excellent system for Hanabi too, it forces players to co-operate in a way that few other co-ops do. But it works even better here because it’s an investigation. You are the police gathered around the evidence table trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s the suggestions and insight of the other players that helps you solve your part of it. But there simply won’t be time to lead each other by the hand, you need to make your own deductive leaps, and figure out how to give others the opportunity to make leaps of their own. Like the best cop stories, over multiple games your group learns how to work together, you develop a language, a way of investigating, that transcends the simple messages you send. And this only gets more interesting the more players you have.

But inevitably you are going to fail at some point and here the game is a little bit less satisfying. It’s not just that you lose, it’s how you lose. The Sherlock meeple advances relentlessly on the track. You can see how far away from losing you are at all times and there is no real way of pushing him back. Ok, you can push him back precisely twice during the game, which is sort of the same has having two extra spaces on the track. It’s an action called confirming a lead and he’s so shocked you managed to confirm anything he falls back a space. The issue with the system is you end up in hopeless situations (like the pic above) without officially reaching an end state. It feels like Sherlock is sending you selfies from outside the culprit’s house, but you are still going to have to sit around and write up the report.

Compare this to Hanabi, where you can gain more clues by discarding cards. This is easy enough to begin with but if you ever discard all the cards of a particular value and colour, you know you’ve lost. This means there’s always the chance of chucking the right card and getting that one clue you needed to solve the game. The hope never completely dies and both losing and winning can be tense exciting affairs.

Once you eliminate the impossible…

But the thing owners of Hanabi (and everyone else) really want to know is what makes Beyond Baker Street unique? The answer is the role cards. Taking characters from across the Sherlock Holmes stories, the role cards offer players unique powers or restrictions during the game. Lady Hilda Hope, for example, can give two clues for a single move of the Sherlock, while Inspector Lestrade can eliminate cards to the impossible for free (this is a good thing). On the other hand, Inspector Jones has a foot phobia and cannot give clues to people about footprints. These are interesting powers and change how you and everyone else you’re playing with approaches the game. You want particular players focussing on particular aspects and that directly affects how you give out clues and that. Is. Great!

These are two extremes of the power curve though. In the middle, the roles are slightly less compelling. Irene Adler, for example, can move Sherlock back one space on the track, once during the game. Meh? Others are merely very situational. One-shot powers in general have less of an effect on the game by the nature of their one-shotedness. The interest comes from figuring out when to use them, rather than having a persistent affect on the gameplay itself. But that’s what happens when you have a range of roles varying from actively negative to extremely beneficial. Some powers just won’t have such a big effect on the game.

On the one hand, Beyond Baker Street sits firmly in the shadow of Hanabi. It’s impossible to discuss it without comparing them and mechanically at least they are undeniably similar. That’s not a bad thing: the core mechanic of holding cards the other way round to force co-operation is a brilliant mechanism, and it’s fantastic to see it being used elsewhere. So why buy Beyond Baker Street? The main answer to that is the theme. Hanabi, for all its originality, is about launching fireworks and, frankly, a group of firework operators who can’t read their own instructions need firing! On the other hand, a group of investigators working out how to solve a crime makes perfect sense. Beyond Baker Street is a wonderful example of how to make a mechanic work within a new theme.

If you’ve never heard of Hanabi then, firstly, sorry for mentioning it so much, and secondly you owe it to yourself to try one of the two games! Hanabi is cheaper, but Beyond Baker Street is the swisher product and has some flavour to it, especially if you like the Sherlock Holmes setting. If you played Hanabi and hated the theme, Beyond Baker Street goes a long way towards solving these issues and definitely deserves some attention from you. And if you’re an ardent Hanabi fan? The roles are fun, but you’d really need to want them a lot.

 

Rating: The Truth

Our copy of Beyond Baker Street was provided for review by Esdevium Games. You can hunt down a copy at your local game store for £32.99 RRP.