dmNorthTV and Guests play board games!! Saturday nights, we get together with friends and try and play a stream friendly board game. It is usually a fun get together with great people. A time to enjoy to social aspect of gaming that we are lacking right now.
Here, you will find our short and sweet review on the board game we have played from each of the players. We stream the gameplay on the dmNorthTV Twitch channel every Saturday. Come hangout and say “Hi” if you get a chance.
Saturday, we played through Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. We were playing the first case in the Jack the Ripper and West End Adventures cases. Consulting Detective is a 1 to 8 player game, from Space Cowboys, that puts you on the case of a murder mystery. In this game, you will be following leads to figure out who committed the crime and why they did the deed. At the end of the game, you will need to answer a series of questions and score points based on correct answers. Can you solve the case and how do you measure up to the great Sherlock Holmes himself?
Boardgamegeek describes Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective as:
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures is a standalone expansion to Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective with updated graphics that features ten more cases to be solved in Sherlock Holmes’ Victorian-era London, England. A “London Directory”, map, and newspaper archives are included with the cases.
Included are six independent “West End Adventures” cases (redesigned and updated from the 1995 expansion), and a series of four new cases based on the Jack the Ripper murders.
We were joined by RonathanPxPx to see if we can solve the crime. You can take a look at our gameplay video on our Twitch channel, or scroll on down to see what we thought of the game.
Final Thoughts About . . . Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective
Here, we will give you some basic thoughts about the game we played. This is by no means meant to be an in-depth review of the game, as there are already lots of those out there. This is just a “what did we think of it and would it be a good board game night game” type thing. If you want to see something more in-depth, please let us know in the comments below.
Rating System
- 5 Meeples: Fantastic Game, A must-play game!
- 4 Meeples: Great Game, minor flaws.
- 3 Meeples: Good Game, some weaknesses.
- 2 Meeples: OK Game, needs work.
- 1 Meeple: Awful Game. Do not play this unless you want to punish yourself.
jourdo
I have been wanting to play this game since I first heard about it from a Shut Up & Sit Down review. For whatever reason, I never picked up a copy… but Facebook Marketplace allowed me to correct that. This is unlike any game I have played before. You are given some very basic information with regards to the case to start with. From there you need to follow leads until you are confident enough to measure yourself up against the great Sherlock Holmes.
You are in complete control as to how this game goes. You can play for as long as you want, and visit any location listed on the map (Hint: not all of them are useful). Is that person important to talk to? Who knows??? When you feel you are ready, you will be required to answer a series of questions about the case. You will score points based on your answers and see how close you come to Sherlock.
Long story short, this was an excellent game. Despite the fact that I felt like an idiot when listening to Sherlock’s summary of the case, I still had a great time. This being our first case, I have a better idea of how to play the next one. Needless to say, it is not like the picture to the right (which is what I felt like). It played excellent online, and Space Cowboys have made much of the material needed to play on their website. While you could easily play this solo, I think the enjoyment comes with sharing this experience with a group. I highly recommend this game night experience to anyone who likes having a great time with your friends or family. I cannot wait to take a stab at the next case.
SuperK
I have never played a detective game before, so I knew probably going into this I would be bad (and I was lol). It was a fun game and it helps to fine tune your detective skills. If we played another case, I think we would know what to do better. I read through the case 1 materials but you need to re read/analyze materials in detail as it would have helped a lot. Maybe with 4-5 players might have been good but beyond that might get a bit to much “voices”? Also, take detail notes! We found ourselves circling around but if we had better notes, it would have helped. Write down anything you think would be relevant. Good game and would definitely recommend, just get your detective thinking cap out and think outside the box.
RonathanPxPx
I had always heard good things about this game, so will it live up to the hype and its rave reviews? We shall see. In this game you are not assuming the role of Sherlock. Instead you are competing against him to see if you can solve the case faster and better than him. At first this game looks daunting (lots of reading & information) and seems like it would be boring, (since there are no decks or dice and more reading) however it makes up for that with great story telling. You can play with up to 8 players cooperatively in a “choose your own” adventure detective game in which you have to decide where to head to next and follow up on what leads. Now you have a limited number of moves or leads to follow. In our case we had 15 leads we could chase down and if you go over that number you get a point deduction when you do your final score at the end. So when you are done with your leads you can go on to the solution and answer several questions to determine who the suspect is most likely. Now our job was to track down who murdered this prostitute named “Polly” and boy did we straight up take all the information as gospel and honed in on these 2 suspects who were left handed. Turns out in the end we were WRONG. The killer was actually right handed because we were so sure this arrogant doctor was right who examined the body but was wrong because they did not factor the crime scene placement in their report we hunted down for one of our leads. We may have botched that part up but on the plus side we were able to determine that this crime fit the pattern of another crime and ruled out another possible crime link out as well.
In conclusion, if you enjoy mystery, escape rooms, or choose your adventure games then this one’s for you. It is definitely best played in a group of at least 3 and does require a lot of reading but the fun is in the thrill of the chase. 4 Meeples, looking forward to kicking Sherlock Holmes’s ass next time.
If you are interested in getting a copy of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective for yourself, please check out one of the best online board game stores in Canada… Board Game Bliss. Clicking through that referral link helps the site out and we thank you for that.
Anyone is welcome to play board games with us. If you have a game you would like to see streams, please let us know. The only limitation (beyond actually owning the game) is that they must be stream friendly as we are playing it remotely. Contact us on any of the Socials or leave a comment below.
Thanks for reading!
dmNorthTV
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