1685: Murder on the Mystery Express

Today’s afternoon and evening was spent playing board games, beginning with a go at Lords of Waterdeep with both components of the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion — an essential addition for anyone who likes the base game — then following up with some Love Letter, Boss Monster and finally a Days of Wonder game I’ve had on my shelf for nearly 5 years now and never played a complete game of: Mystery Express.

Mystery Express is a “whodunnit” game with unsubtle Murder on the Orient Express influences. Thematically, you’re attempting to solve a murder on the train before it arrives in Istanbul; mechanically, you’re using various means of acquiring and sharing information to make deductions about the perpetrator, their motive, their modus operandi, the location of the crime and the time it took place.

Each turn in the game represents a leg of the journey from Paris to Istanbul, and permits players a certain number of in-game hours to perform various actions, represented by the different carriages of the train. In one car, you all pass cards around the table in a big circle; in another, you ask everyone to publicly reveal a card of a particular type; in another still, you’re able to gamble on a 50/50 chance — your opponent hiding a little miniature bag in one of their hands — in order to outright take one of their cards.

The cards each include the pieces of information necessary to solve the crime, with the exception of the time. The twist is that there are two copies of each card, so rather than just attempting to figure out which one is completely absent, you’re attempting to figure out which one there’s only one of. This can be extremely tricky due to the fact that cards get passed around the table throughout each turn, so the only means of reliably guaranteeing that something is definitely not relevant to the crime is seeing two copies of it on the same turn. There is, however, an interesting discard mechanic in place to prevent a player simply showing you the same card over and over again — or indeed you passing a card you just took from a player back to them — but this has the intriguing side-effect of meaning that information becomes more and more scarce as each round progresses.

The time of the crime, meanwhile, is represented by 24 cards, each of which have an analogue clock printed on them. There are three of each of the eight possible times in the deck, and one of them is hidden under the board as the truth, meaning in this case you’re looking for the one time there are two, not three copies of. And, unlike the other types of card, you only get three chances to look at these throughout the game: the first time, one player gets to flip over one card at a time at a rate of their choosing; the second time, another player deals out the whole deck to everyone, then tells them when to pass their part of the deck around at the rate of their choosing; the third and final time, a player reveals the cards one at a time into three stacks at a rate of their choosing. If, as happened tonight, the player in control of the time cards is lucky enough to be absolutely sure of the right time early in the game, they can then whip through the subsequent time phases extremely quickly, thereby giving themselves an advantage while putting those who are still trying to work it out at something of a disadvantage.

I enjoyed the game overall. The instructions are a little overwhelming initially — as is the iconography on the board — but after a little while it all becomes second nature, particularly as each player has a handy reference guide to help them out. I like deduction games a lot — another Days of Wonder favourite is the excellent Mystery of the Abbey — and this provides enough twists on the usual formula to keep things interesting.

Mostly, though, I’m just glad I finally got to play a game of it to completion. Turns out it’s pretty good; hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to play it again at some point in the near future.