Annotated Games: 10 players

This game was played during the game testing of Mingle & Murder. The strategies applied were fairly straight-forward:

• Guests: Steal primarily from rooms. Steal from players if a room of interest has been visited more than 4 times or if the player has 2 items of interest.
• Inspector/Doctor: Avoid each others' rooms as the Murderer can be expected to avoid them.
• Murderer: Play only 1 Murder card per round. Avoid Inspector's and Doctor's rooms. Prioritize crowded rooms.

The cards drawn are colored red for Murder cards, green for Catch cards and blue for Save cards. lightgray indicates that a room card was drawn.

Setup

The players were given the following objectives:

1. Aunt Agatha: Murderer
2. Inspector Speckle: Find the Murderer
3. Doctor Douglas: Save the Guests
4. Sir Bertram Butterscotch: Cellar, Living room, Trophy room
5. Lady Sophie Sapphire: Library, Living room, Bedroom
6. Chambermaid Cherry Crimson: Dining room, Kitchen, Cellar
7. Gardener Graham Grassleave: Garden, Library, Kitchen
8. Valet Valerian Violet: 3 different rooms
9. Colonel Clemens Clementine: Stable, Dining Room, Garden
10. Reverend Roderick Rum: Stable, Bedroom, Trophy room

Round 1

Inspector Speckle tries the strategy to delay his card placement to make the Murderer nervous. However, it only leads to his third catch card never being placed. Of the two that do get placed, one is drawn by Speckle himself while the other is left undrawn. Not a good start for the investigation.

The Murderer does not have luck either. She manages to place her murder card in the Garden, where neither Speckle, nor Douglas visit, but it is left undrawn and renders half a point to Doctor Douglas.

Round 2

The first Guest has been murdered as Lady Sophie Sapphire is found dead in the Living room (although the players do not yet know in which of the three rooms she visited that she drew the murder card). Besides, the Living room, the Lady also visited the Library and the Bedroom - also visited by Aunt Agatha, Sir Bertram Butterscotch, Gardener Graham Grassleave and Reverend Roderick Rum. One of those four is thus the Murderer!

Meanwhile, Inspector Speckle fumbles in the dark as his catch card this round only reached himself, the victim and Reverend Roderick Rum, who hasn't managed to steal anything yet. The Gardener, the Valet and the Colonel have all found 2 Room cards each so the Murderer is in a hurry to murder her second victim.

Round 3

The Murderer has struck a second time and the game is over. Sir Bertram Butterscotch followed her sister after an unfortunate visit to the Cellar. However, the winner is yet to be determined and it's an open affair. The reason is that the last round saw some tense gameplay. Inspector Speckle started to get too close to the Murderer, who found it difficult to leave her cards and eventually did so in rooms that further narrowed down the possible murderers.

With Butterscotch murdered, one of the suspects from the first murder is (literally) eliminated. Since he only visited the Cellar and the Trophy room (and picked from Valet Valerian Violet, but he was never suspected), Gardener Graham Grassleave is also eliminated. This leaves only Aunt Agatha and Reverend Roderick Rum on the suspects list and the victims are fortunate to guess on Aunt Agatha. The game ends with a revenge for the murdered players!

Note that no other player turned out to be eligible for victory. The Gardener got close by finding a third room card but was caught by the Inspector and had to return it. Perhaps Aunt Agatha should have been more cold-blooded?

P&P (PDF, A4)	P&P (PDF, US Letter)

Annotated games

• 6 players
• 8 players
• 10 players

If you like those game mechanisms, I can also recommend: