Still in the Dark...

On Thursday night I found myself at Chris' house, breaking the journey on an early start in London the next day. As we're both grown-ups we spent at least 8 or 9 minutes catching up before breaking out a nice two-player, Mr Jack.

This Jack-the-Ripper themed filler (filler in the sense of duration rather than frippery) was a big hit with us at StabCon as the ease of learning/substantial depth/clandestine nature combination seemed to stack up into a hit, a palpable hit. The game is usually fairly short and as I was yawning already (it was 10pm) we agreed to a couple of games, so each of us could have a turn being Mr Jack, and a turn catching him. Thematically that's about as chillingly hedonistic as you can get.

I was Mr Jack first and I was stumped from the first turn, when - Chris having taken one of the four available cards - I was left with two that it made sense to take together, and the third being (unbeknownst to Chris) Mr Jack - in his day job as Dr Watson. I'm not sure why I couldn't see a way out of this initial predicament, but I never recovered my sense of evil cunning, and Chris closed in for a third round arrest.

Swapping roles for the second game I felt the tension lift slightly - it's still a game that requires a lot of concentration, but it feels marginally less stressful as the detective. However, having made 99% certain that I knew who Mr Jack was (or Ms, in this case, as Mr Jack was spending his days in drag as Ms Stealthy) I paranoically hung back, obsessing over that 1%, and made the novice policeman's mistake of leaving your prime suspect over an open manhole at night-time. Sure enough, Mr Jack - or whatever her name was - made his escape, and Chris picked up another win.

After my 4-game salvo at StabCon I was disappointed to be twice turned over, but I was reminded what a brilliant two-player this is - like chess, as Chris' friend James pointed out, it has few rules but immense depth in terms of the possibilities (for error!) in each round.

I wonder if we could come up with a four-player variant...