Brettspiel-News.de – Review | Sherlock (season 6)

Written by Denise Janssen on 06 September 2022.

Page 1 of 2

The “Sherlock” series from “Abacus Games” has been consistently popular in many versions. With the current sixth season and some games in the “Wild West” or “Middle Ages” theme, a total of 30 cases have now been published under this banner. The trick with these games is that the toy boxes can easily be carried in your pocket and do not take up any space to play them. Perfectly suited for a short thriller in between. Let’s take a closer look at how the latest parts of the series are performing.

Abacus Spiele has provided us with a “Sherlock” for our review.
This has no bearing on our rating!

This is what the game is about

The new parts of the “Sherlock” series follow the texts of the exact rules of their ancestors. So fans of the series can jump straight into the game without studying the grammar text first. In general, a group of games (made up of 1-8 people) has to solve a case using clues that they play as cards from their hands in clockwise order.

While the first clue card is placed in the middle of the field as a fixed game setting, all players receive 3 hand cards (2 hand cards of 6 or more players), which they can share with the playing deck to a limited extent. All clue cards contain keywords or titles that players can share with the game deck to discuss potential connections between specific clue cards before playing the cards in the middle of the table. Once the cards are played, the guide is available to everyone, so the rest of the card text can be read as well.

This is important because not all evidence cards are actually relevant to the solution of the case. The task of the playgroup is to think collaboratively which clues are really useful and which are not. In addition, it is especially important to pay attention to this, since the game deck must have disposed of at least 6 cards by the end of the game, otherwise the game will be lost immediately. When all clue cards in the deck and all cards in hand have been played or discarded, the game group must analyze the available clues and discuss a theory about how the offense occurred. If they agree, a label is removed in the rulebook, allowing the questionnaire to be folded.

Based on their thoughts on the case, the questions in the questionnaire must be answered before the solution to the case can be finally read. The group gets two points for each correct answer, and one point for each card that is not relevant to the case. The resulting score serves the playgroup as a high score (eg for measuring themselves against friendly playgroups) and on the other hand as an overview of how well they solve the issue.

Tags: 1-8 characters, detective, 40-60 minutes, thriller