Mr. Jack in New York is a two-player game of deduction by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc.


Players: 2

Playing Time: 30 minutes


 Mr. Jack in New York is a standalone game that's a variant of the Mr. Jack game system, thus I've leaned heavily on my original review in this one. 


The Components

Mr. Jack in New York comes in a bookshelf box with a small set of components.

The board is a standard 4-panel affair, linen-textured in full color. Besides showing the playing field upon which the characters of Mr. Jack move, it also helpfully depicts the 8 turns of the game and shows what happens on each. This new board is a bit more plain than the original Mr. Jack board, because more of its contents are created during play.

A number of cardboard chits are included for placement on the board, including 7 metro stops, 6 gaslights, and 4 building sites (each of which has a park on the back side), 2 investigation tiles (cordons), 2 Steamers, and 1 informant. They're all linen-textured cardboard.

Meanwhile, the characters (and a turn marker) are all good-quality wooden pieces. Each is a circular disc upon which you affix stickers. The character tokens very helpfully have two stickers. There's a full-color one for the front, which is for when a character is a suspect, and a grayscale pictures for the back, which is for when the character is known innocent. This is one of the best nuances of the game. I'm also impressed with how well almost all of the sticker color patch the wood color.

The remaining bits are all cards: 8 character cards and 8 alibi cards. Each of these is actually a high-quality bit of thick cardboard rather than cardstock. The character card each show what the character can do in fairly obvious icons. 
I'm not that fond of the cartoony artwork in the game, which doesn't really fit the Jack the Ripper theming in my mind, but it's just the same as the original game. Beyond that the components are all quite high quality and easy to use. I've thus let it eke in a "5" out of "5" for Style: very well done.

The Gameplay



In Mr. Jack in New York one player takes on the role of Jack the Ripper and the other player takes the role of the investigator trying to capture him.

Setup: Like its predecessor, Mr. Jack is a very analytical strategy game, and thus there's a standard setup. The eight suspects, the informant,two investigation tiles, a few gas lamps, and a few Muni stops are all placed on the board in a specified setup.

The Jack character takes one of the alibi cards, looks at it, then sets it aside. He now knows who Jack the Ripper actually is.

Order of Play: The game is played in 8 turns, each of which contains two steps:





1. Choose & Use Characters
2. Call for Witnesses



Choose & Use Characters: The game centers around the eight characters laid out on the board. Each turn 4 of the 8 character cards are revealed, making those 4 characters available for play that turn. All the characters will be available over the course of every pair of rounds, then the character cards are reshuffled.

On odd-numbered turns the Jack player goes first, choosing and using one character, then the investigator player chooses and uses two, then the Jack player uses the last character. On even-numbered turns the opposite occurs. 
When using a character, the player must move them and/or use their special power.

Moving. Moving occurs on a hex map laid out over the board of the New York alleys. Each player moves 1-3 spaces each turn. A character can spend a movement point to move into a hex or from one open Muni stop to another. In addition, two Quayside spaces allow movement to Liberty Island for one space cost and similarly two spaces allow movement away. A character may not move through buildings, investigation tiles, or gaslights. The character who is secretly Jack may also move off the board either toward one edge or via the two Steamers.

The Informant. If you land on this special character on the board, you can look at one of the alibi cards (which lets you mark off a possible Jack the Ripper suspect if you're the investigator, or obfuscate the same if you're Jack) and then move the informant to a new location.

Special Powers. Each character also has a special power who's use is mandatory (with the exception of Monk Eastman and Francois J. Tumblety, who have optional powers). Generally powers can used before or after movement, with a few exceptions. The powers are:


• Alfred Ely Beach: Places a new metro entrance.
• Cloud Rider: Places a new building construction site. May also move through building and building construction sites for free.
• Lewis Howard Latimer: Places a new gaslight.
• Mrs Emma Grant: Turns a metro entrance, building construction site, or gaslight into a park.
• James H. Callahan: Moves an investigation tile.
• Monk Eastman: Instead of moving himself, may optionally force another character to move.
• Francis J. Tumblety: Optionally may swap the position of a character he is adjacent to with someone else.
• Edward Smith: Moves a steamer.



Call for Witnesses: After the 4 characters for the turn have been moved, the Jack player assesses whether Jack is visible or not. A character is visible if they are adjacent to a gaslight or adjacent to another character and (in either case) not in a park.

When it's declared whether Jack is visible or not, some portion of the suspects are immediately placed out of contention (because they're visible when Jack isn't, or vice-versa). The investigator player marks this by flipping the appropriate characters face-down.
 Winning the Game: The investigator player wins the game by moving another character onto Jack the Ripper and accusing him.

The Jack player wins if:




1. He moves Jack off the board (which may only be done in off to one side or via one of the two steamers--and any of those might be blocked by investigation tiles) on a turn after a turn in which Jack was not visible.
2. He lasts through the end of turn 8 without Jack getting caught.
3. The investigator makes a false accusation.





Relationships to Other Games



Mr. Jack in New York is a surprisingly abstract and analytical deduction game.

It's a sequel to Mr. Jack. The new game is different in two major ways. The most notable is that the board is much more dynamic, because 4 of the 8 characters are constantly building and changing what appears there. The dynamism is expanded upon by the two "mobile exits" for Jack: the steamers. The other difference is that the scant remaining characters have slightly different powers than those of characters from the original game.

The Game Design

I liked the original Mr. Jack quite a bit. As I said in my original review, it's a thoughtful, tactical game that does a good job of creating balanced yet asymmetrical play. It's short but deep. That all remains true in Mr. Jack in New York. I thought the original game had great color with its sort of goofy Victorian background. I feel like the new game loses part of that, but that's almost made up for by the cool way in which New York is depicted as a living, expanding entity--practically a ninth character in the game.

I've already listed the modifications that this game offers over its predecessor. What I didn't mention yet is that I think it makes for a very different game. Mr. Jack in New York isn't just Mr. Jack slightly reskinned. It strives to create a different sort of gameplay despite its core system similarities, and I think largely succeeds.

I'll offer my same concerns as the original too: pretty abstract and I wonder about its ultimate replayability. Nonetheless, I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion



If you're looking for a 2-player game that's more thoughtful--and very different--from most of the field, Mr. Jack in New York is an excellent possibility. If you've played the original Mr. Jack, you'll find that this one has differences that make for fairly different gameplay.