Gen Con Count Down T-5 and Counting part two, Beyond Baker Street

If you are  Holmes fan Beyond Baker Street might be the game you want to grab at Gen Con 2016. Beyond Baker Street is being brought to us by Z-Man Games.  Again this is a game that I’m yet to play, but that’s what this is about – games I want to play.  From What I can tell it will use one of my favorite mechanics ever, revealed hands.

In Beyond Baker Street you and your friends will work cooperatively  to solve a case before Sherlock Holmes.  The real twist to the game is that you play with your hand revealed only to other players, you can’t see them.  If you have played Bomb Squad you know what I’m talking about. that is one of my favorite mechanics of all time.

As detectives it is your job to solve three potential cases; motive, suspect and opportunity.  You solve these by using evidence cards.  The case cards determine the difficulty of the game. Each player is also given a character card that can effect the difficulty of the game.  The more pipes at the bottom of the card the better! plus some of the characters actually have negative effects.

To win the game you are given clues about your hand by the other players.  You then use those clues to deduce suite and number.  You goal is to match the number and suite of the cases that are on the board.  If there is a purple case with a value of six you need a combined total of six purple faced cards to solve that case.

There is also an evidence track, well two actually, one for Holmes and one for your team.  There are a variety of things that control the movement of this. Here are some specifics I know of

Holmes moves when you give a clue to someone about your hand and every time you discard a card to the impossible pile beyond it’s limit of “x”.

Your Team can move the evidence marker by eliminating cards to the impossible pile. This will move your evidence track “x” where  is equal to the face value of the card.

You can’t win until your your evidence marker is at 20, and until you have solved three cases.

I think that Beyond Baker Street is going to have a great deductive feel to it.  not knowing your own hand is going to make it an intensely challenging memory game!.