The style of Mystery of the Abbey astounds from the moment that you look at the box, with its beautiful full-color artwork of a group of monks standing around an abbey. Opening up the box just adds to that amazement. The graphic design is by Cyrille Daujean, who also did the design for DoW's Fist of Dragonstones and is truly a master at putting together artwork in an evocative, beautiful manner.

Here's what all comes in the box:

• 1 Board
• 6 Monk Miniatures
• 6 Deduction Notebooks
• 1 Pad of 50 Suspect Sheets
• 90 Cards
• 3 Wooden Monk Dice
• 1 Mass Bell
• 1 Rules Booklet
• 1 Days of Wonder Web Card

The board depicts the Templar's Abbey. It's printed in four-color, and makes full use of those colors to produce an absolutely stunning backdrop for the game. The map is roughly square, printed in four sections. All of the rooms are labelled with their Latin names (a very unique answer for how to produce an international map), and overall the map gives a great feeling for a setting. There are also places on the map for the five different decks of cards in the game.

The miniatures, each of which represents one of the players, are cast from "stone resin", whatever that means exactly. They're kind of plasticky, but much more substantial, and amazingly detailed. Like the map, the figures fit into my "absolutely gorgeous" classification.

The deduction notebooks are mainly intended as "shields" so that each player can hide his own suspect sheet. I personally would have preferred cardstock, rather than glossy paper, but they do the job. Full advantage has been taken of the notebooks to print all the rules that players might need to know, centering on the "powers" of each room (though the fact that the cells and confessionals are one-player-at-a-time locations is notably missing, and that caused us to incorrectly stack up in the confessionals in the first game). The deduction noteboks also includes the English names of the various locales and the various characteristics which can be possessed by the monks. Helpfully, the same information is printed on both the inside and outside cover, so you have access to it if your notebook is open or not. As with almost everything is this game, the notebooks are printed in four colors, though for the most part they're sepia-toned. As a brief aside, it would have been nice if these notebooks were color-coded with the 6 monk colors, so you could quickly see who's who (something that a player commented on in each of the two playtests I ran).

Each player gets a suspect sheet from the pad of fifty. They're printed in full color, and are absolutely gorgeous. My wife's first question was, "We're supposed to write on these!?" Each one lists the 24 monkly suspects, along with all their characteristics: order, title, hoodage, beardage, and weight. There's also a handy checkbox so you can mark off suspects you've eliminated. Though gorgeous, I feel like the suspect cards are somewhat style over substance, but we'll get back to that down in "Game Design" ...

The cards are all printed on nice card stock, with rounded corners. They're four-color on the front and black-and-white on the back. (Days of Wonder tends to go for gray scale backs on their cards, which I thought fit right into this particular game, because there is so much color everywhere else.) There are six categories of cards: mass, suspects, events, crypta cards, scriptorium cards, and bibilothecha cards.They're all good looking, and the suspect cards make very good use of icons (matching the suspect sheeds) which makes it easier to play the game.

The dice are simple wood dice, printed with a monk on each side, in six different colors. They're the same colors of the six resin figures, and thus of the six players. Two are used for the confessionals, and one for whenever a random monk must be rolled (most frequently due to a scriptorium card).

The bell originally seemed a bit silly, but actually worked quite nice in the game. It's a marker that's used to measure how long until the next mass, and when the next mass occurs it's rung. One of our players commented that he thought the bell had a very nice ring, and said that he's usually sensitive to that sort of thing.

The rules booklet is 8 pages long, printed in full-color. It's quite clear and made it easy to play the game after one read through. The only thing missing was a listing of the various cards, with additional rules for the ones most likely to cause question.

Finally we come to the web card. This gives access to Days of Wonders' online versions of their games. From what I understand there won't be a version of Mystery of the Abbey (which makes sense because you can't control out-of-bandwidth communication which could destroy the game), but they've got other stuff which is well worth playing, and so this is nonethless a value add. It also points toward Days of Wonders' commitment to online support which I find very admirable. For example, you can get PDFs of the rule book and suspect sheet from their web site.

Overall, Mystery of the Abbey is quite literally one of the most beautiful board games I've ever seen, with superb artwork supported by excellent graphic design work, and thus I give it a superior rating of "5" out of "5" for Style.

A game of Mystery of the Abbey opens with a murder. Poor Brother Adelmo is killed and there are twenty-four suspects, each represented by a card. The cards are shuffled, and one of the suspects is placed under the board. Then, either 5 or 3 cards (depending on the number of players) are placed in a suspect pile, to increase uncertainty at the start of the game. Finally the remaining suspects are distributed equally to all the players. In a 3-player game, each player gets 6 suspects; in a 4-player game 5 suspects; in a 5-player game 4 suspects; and in a 6-player game 3 suspects.

This clearly kicks off a Clue-like game of deductions where players are working toward figuring out which 23 suspect cards are in play.

Each suspect, it should be noted, is detailed by a number of different characteristics. They are: Order (Templar, Franciscan, or Benedictine); Title (Father, Brother, or Novice); Hood (Hooded or Unhooded); Facial Hair (Bearded or Clean-shaven); and Girth (Fat or Thin). Clever players will be able to analyze these characteristics in order to help narrow down who the culprit is, by figuring out what cards other players are holding or have seen.

Setup also requires each player to choose a monk: red, blue, black, green, white, or yellow. Each monk has a Cellula (cell) that's their own, and so this choice has some relation to the gameboard. In one of the playtest games of Mystery of the Abbey I played, I discovered that this choice of a very concrete character ("red monk") and the overall physicality of the setting seemed to encourage role-playing as an adjunct to the strategic play. We had a lot of fun with that aspect, and it can really add to the game. Players all start out in the Ecclesia (chapel); a first player is selected and play then goes player-by-player with each player's turn order being as follows:

1. Move Pawn
2. Encounter
3. Action

Move Pawn: The player moves either 1 or 2 rooms each turn (his choice). He can't end up back where he started. A couple of rooms (the confessoriums and the cellulas) can't be entered if someone is already there.

Encounter: If a player ends his turn in a room with 1 or more other players, he must choose to ask one of them a question. This question can be fairly open ended (which is one of the joys of the game, but also could be served by just a little tightening, as I mention in "Game Design", below), but the answer can never be a suspect's name. Here's the sample questions listed in the rules book:

"How many bearded monks do you have in your hand?"
"Do you have the 'Father Sergio' card?"
"How many Benedictines have you crossed out from your suspects' list?"
"Have you eliminated 'Father Bruno' from your list of suspects?"
"Are you going to Chapter Hall?"

If you're trying to play the game at a highly strategic level, asking questions is an art. You're trying to get information from another player without revealing what you've learned to all the other players at the table. In the examples above, the 'Father Sergio' and 'Father Bruno' questions are both gimmes, in that every player at the table will learn the answer. However, considerably more cleverness is possible.

For example, there are two thin Templar brothers, Brother Harold and Brother Malachi. If you had Brother Harold in your hand, you could ask another player "How many Thin Templar Brothers are you holding?" If he said, "1", you'd know he must have Brother Malachi, and thus be able to cross him off your list. Other players might be able to surmise what you were doing, but they couldn't be certain, especially if you ask misleading questions sometimes. The best they could really assume is that one of Harold and Malachi isn't a suspect because your opponent said he was holding one of those cards.

In another example, say that an opponent had just stolen the "Father Matthew" card from you in some way. Matthew is a hooded, clean-shaven, fat Templar father. If you trusted your opponent's memory you could ask "How many suspects have you eliminated who hold the same Title as the card you just took from me." Your opponent woefully tells you 6, which is how many Fathers there are in the game, and you thus realize that none are suspects, and your other opponents don't know any better as a result.

After you ask your question, your opponent may decided to answer it or to take a Vow of Silence. If he takes the Vow, nothing happens. if he answers, however, he then gets to ask you a question, which you have to answer (no vows of silence after you've already been blabbing questions).

The rules clearly note that all monks have taken a Vow of Honesty, so no lying is allowed.

Action: After completing an Encounter, if appropriate, the player gets to take an Action based on the room he's ended his turn in. Some rooms just exist to be traveled through (the Cloisters, the Yard, the hallways before the Cells), but most others have some special power. They are:

• Cellula (Cell) - Take a suspect card from the cell's owner. If caught here by the owner, return the card and go to Penance (lose a turn in the Chapel).
• Confessorium (Confessional) - Take a suspect card from the last visitor (marked by a monk die). Switch the die to your color.
• Crypta (Crypt) - Take a Crypta card which gives you an additional turn at a later point.
• Capitulum (Chapter Hall) - Make a Revelation or an Accusation.
• Bibliotheca (Library) - Take a Library card, but you may only enter this room if you have the least suspect cards.
• Scriptorium - Take a Scriptorium card.
• Parlatorium (Parlar) - Draw a card from the suspect draw pile (these were the 3-5 extra suspect cards that were set aside to increase suspense). Or, if all the cards are gone, ask another player to reveal a card based on 1 or 2 characteristics (e.g., "show me a Franciscan father").

The various Bibliotheca and Scriptorium cards tend to give you chances to see or take suspect cards, move extra, or generally affect other aspects of the game as described thus far. Each one is different, and thus they introduce chaos into the game.

"You people talk to each other, I go through their rooms."

Winning the Game: Winning the game is based upon those revelations and accusations you make in the Chapter Hall. When you make a revelation, you define one of the characteristics of the murderer (e.g., "The murderer is fat" or "the murderer is a Templar"). It's recorded to be verified at the end of the game. No one else can repeat your revelation, but others can contradict it.

An accusation can only be made after all of those extra suspect cards have entered the game, thus leaving the card under the board as the only card out-of-play. A player states who he thinks the killer is, and then if anyone has the card they reveal it. If the accusation was wrong the accuser is sent back to the Chapel for penance (lose a turn). If no one is holding the suspect card, the charge is verified by pulling the card out from under the board.

Points are awarded based on revelations and accusations:

Correct Accusation: +4
Incorrect Accusation: -2
Correct Revelation: +2
Incorrect Revelation: -1

Ties go to the correct accuser. It looks like the winner is usually the person who guesses the killer, but theoretically this won't always be the case (e.g., a person with two correct revelations could beat a player with the correct accusation but an incorrect revelation).

The game ends when an accusation is proven.

Mass: There's one other complication: mass, which rules the monks' lives. The mass cards each mark four rounds of play. At the start of the first round, the first player places the mass bell on the "1", when it's his turn again he places it on the "2", etc. After each player has taken four turns since the last mass, the mass bell is rung, and the following occurs:

1. All the monks instantly move back to the Ecclesia.
2. Each player hands suspect cards to the player to his left, the exact number based on which mass it was: at first mass (Matins) 1 card is passed; at second mass (Lauds) 2 cards are passed; etc. There are eight possible masses total, and for the last three, each player passes six cards to the player to his left.
3. An event card is read. Most of these have some affect on how the next turn works, though a couple have silly effects instead (e.g., "sing 'Morning Bells are Ringing'").
4. The next mass card is turned up and handed to the player to the right of the current first player, who becomes the new first player. He places the mass bell on "1".

The general effect of mass is to add some structure to where players can go when and also to add some randomness to the general investigation.

"You've just been drunken with the power of the mass bell."

Six-Player Coda: It's worth noting that the game plays a bit differently when there are six players. There are only three rounds of play in between masses, but in exchange each monk can move one, two, or three spaces per turn. The goal is clearly to speed up a game which otherwise might have slowed down. (A six-player game can still be a bit slow.)

Overall Mystery of the Abbey plays smoothly and is a lot of fun (I played it twice in three days, though I could have easily written a playtest review after the first game, and I think this game is going to remain on my shelf of games that I *want* to play). It has definite appeal to non-gamer (my wife joined us for our first playtest, which almost never happens; she probably would have joined us for the second playtest too, if we hadn't maxed out at six players). Though it appeals to non-gamers, it still has great levels of strategy for "serious" players.

Here's some of the best design of the game:

Multiple Levels of Strategy: The game very easily supports play at multiple levels of strategies. A casual player can simply collect cards to try and find the murderer, while more strategic players will get increasingly sophisticated with their questions. A strategic player will be advantaged over a casual player in competitive play, but in any game where most players are playing at the same level, the playing field will be very even.

Multiple Paths to Success: There really are a number of different ways to play the game, from going with the randomness of the Scriptorium to collecting suspect cards and quizzing other players ad infinitum. This allows for more dynamic gameplay as different players will be moving along different paths to success, and also increases the replayability of the game overall.

Different Dynamics Based on Number of Players: The dynamics fairly dramatically change based on the number of players, because of the different number of suspect cards in hand, and how quickly they circle the entire table. The gameplay works quite well for all the different sizes, though on the flip-side there doesn't seem to be any one player size which is ideal. The map dynamics were also changed by the number of players, as certain cellulas became irrelevent because their monk was not present in games with less than six players. All of these facts increase replayability.

Controlled Chaos: The scriptorium & library cards, as well as the mass events, do a great job of introducing a little chaos into the game, making the game more enjoyable and turning looking-forward strategy into single-round tactics, which are generally more fun for casual players. (The game also includes rules for eliminating some of these items if a more strategic game is desired.)

Cards Increase Replayability: The replayability was also dramatically increased by the number of cards in each deck. In each game only a couple of library cards were drawn out of 9 or 10, and we only turned up 4 or 5 event cards out of a similar-sized deck. We went maybe 25% or 35% of the way through the scriptorium deck.

My complaints with the game are pretty minor, and if I list more than I usually might, it's mainly because I've enjoyed the game a lot and have really been thinking about how to improve it. Here's some of my general comments:

Suspect Sheet Slightly Hard to Use: As already noted, the suspect sheet is absolutely beautiful to look at. In fact, one of our players in our second playtest game refused to use it because it was too nice. However, this also makes it a bit hard to use. The glossy paper makes it harder to use ink pens, and the colors are so vibrant and the pictures so large that your own marks can sometimes fade into the background. Lastly, there's not a lot of space to write on the sheet. There's a check box near each monk, but the strategic player will be marking lots of other info, like which cards have been seen by which players, which questions were asked about which categories, etc. I think a better suspect sheet would have been printed in grayscale shades on plain non-glossy white paper, and it would have included lots of blank space, both near individual monks, and also near all the categories, to provide room for players to write if they so desire.

Some Map Imperfections: The location of the cellulas on the map is somewhat troublesome. Two of them (yellow and black) were further from the core areas, and thus seemed less prone to looting; this is especially pronounced in the six-player game, where they are the only cellulas not 3 spaces from one of the major rooms (parlor & scriptorium). In the four-player game we played, the cellulas were actually not used at all, where I think they might have been if they were one space closer to the center of the board. It's possibly this might all change on a group by group, game by game basis, but in the games we played it seemed like a slightly more central location for some or all of the cellulas might have been better.

Some Player Number Dynamics Imperfect: As noted above, the game worked very well for different player numbers, but also wasn't perfected for any specific numbers. This particularly showed up in how the suspect cards went around the table. The fewer the number of players, the smaller a percentage of suspect cards had to be passed at each mass. In a three-player game, at the third mass, each player passes about 50% of his cards, while in a six-player, each player passes about 100% of his cards at that same mass. This means that the amount of strategy you could use in card passing was reduced as the number of players increased (because if you were passing a smaller percentage of your cards, you could better cloak certain cards). This would be fairly easy to fix by modifying the number of cards passed by the number of players in the game (e.g., pass 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6 cards at the appropriate masses for 3-4 players and 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3 for 5-6 player games), and it would be easy to note those variations on the mass cards themselves, which are read to remind you of the order of events for each mass.

Questions Need More Structure: If you've got a table of strategic gamers, you're going to quickly discover that you need a few more rules for how questions work. For example, can you ask a qustion that requires multiple answers ("Tell me the names of all Orders you've totally eliminated")? If someone asks you about which suspects you've eliminated, how do you answer if you've definitively eliminated some suspects and tenatively eliminated others? Can you ask questions unrelated to the game ("Do you fancy my wife")? My simple suggestions would be: questions can only have one answer; questions must be directly related to the game; and an answer can contain as little information as is required for it to be factually correct.

And finally a few interesting game design points, neither good nor bad:

End-Game Curious: I'm not quite sure how to react to the end game. Since so much information is open, and all players are gathering information at approximately the same rate, in the two games I've played a bunch of players all started running to the chapter hall at the same time to announce the murderer. Now, I'm fairly certain some of this was crowd psychology; when one person started making sounds about making an accusation, everyone had to. In fact, in the second game I played, all six players ran to the chapter hall and the first five got the answer wrong, leading the slow-poke sixth player (me) to actually win the game. This suggests that part of the issue might have been inexperience, and I'm curious to see how the end-game would play out through more games. In the end I suppose any game which keeps all the players really playing right up to the last moment is a very successful design.

Accusations Can Be Based On Irrelevent Information: You can accidently build accusations in the game based on totally irrelevent, out-of-game information. For example, the picture of Novice Andre makes him look quite dangerous, ditto Father Sergio looks mean. On the other hand Brother Fortune looks jolly and Brother Berengar looks a bit too sickly to commit a murder. Will these factors influence whether players do or do not accuse certain monks? I'd suspect yes. I was also very suspcious of Father Sergio in my second game because he'd been the murderer in the first game. I almost accused him (incorrectly) because of that subconcious fact. A problem? No, not really, but curious and amusing. (And, again, this all lends to roleplaying possibilities that I noted above).

I originally gave Mystery of the Abbey a high "4" for Substance, but that's dropped over a few games. It seems a bit hard to really get unique information during the game, and to date every game I've played has ended in a rush to accuse. It's still a fun game, and a definite step up from Clue or its brethren. It earns a high "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Bruno Faidutti calls Mystery of the Abbey an intelligent player's Clue, and that seems quite apt. It's a very good hidden information investigation game that allows for lots of strategy and aso has a strong genre background. Highly recommended if that all sounds like your type of thing.