Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Thames Murders and Other Cases

Ten Fully Revised Cases for Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Important note: The ten cases in The Thames Murders and Other Cases are the same ten cases released in the Ystari version of the game Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, now fully revised and retranslated. The solutions and contents of some cases have changed.

The gaslit streets of Victorian London. Horse-drawn broughams, hansoms, and dog-carts rattle over the cobblestone streets, pulling their passengers through the pea-soup fog. On every street corner, you pass booksellers, clubs, prisons, music halls, doctors, tea houses, and steamship companies. Yet in the shadows and dark alleys of this great city, horrible and cunning crimes are committed daily, confounding the policemen of Scotland Yard. Still, even the most ingenious crime is only a puzzle for the world’s only consulting detective—Sherlock Holmes!

Ten fully revised cases for the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective line from Space Cowboys will soon be available with the newest standalone box, The Thames Murders and Other Cases. Like the previously released Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures, The Thames Murders and Other Cases offers ten thrilling cases, each one drawing you into the mystery surrounding a deadly crime in the world of Sherlock Holmes. Whether you’re playing alone or with up to eight players, you’ll need everyone’s wits to solve the case.

Join the Baker Street Irregulars
Like previous adventures in the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective line, every case in The Thames Murders and Other Cases draws you into a perplexing mystery on the streets of Victorian London. Each case begins the same way—with an introduction read aloud, relaying the facts of the case.

From that starting point, the city of London opens up before you. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective offers a drastic departure from every other board game—even other cooperative games. You and your friends are not confined by taking turns, one after another. You aren’t even limited in where you can go. The entire city of London is yours to investigate and explore, spread out on a physical map for you to pore over.

Beginning your investigation is simply a matter of deciding where you want to go on the map. Perhaps you and your fellow investigators decide to visit the scene of the crime and search the area for clues. Every location on the map corresponds to a simple set of coordinates—by looking up those coordinates in your case book, you’ll be able to read what you find at the scene of the crime. The passages within this case book give you the chance to notice suspicious objects and read your interviews with suspects… but you won’t find your way too far without consulting some of the other resources at your disposal.

Alongside your map and your case book, you have some other pertinent items, starting with your London Directory. Within this short booklet, you’ll find the addresses of countless people within London. Perhaps you learn that a certain Leticia Garcia may have been implicated in your latest case. By looking her up in the London Directory, you can find her address, allowing you to turn to her section in the case book and continue your investigation!

And of course, you wouldn’t be fully equipped for your job without a detective’s most overlooked tool: the daily issue of The Times newspaper, available for you to peruse and scan for any relevant information. Even though the clues in The Times may not be plainly laid out for you, there’s still plenty of information that may prove crucial to interpreting a clue and deciding on your next step—if you can find it mixed in among articles, obituaries, and advertisements.

The clues are all before you, and ten unique cases await in The Thames Murders and Other Cases. From the curious case of The Munitions Magnate, to The Pilfered Paintings, to The Mummy’s Curse, every case offers a new challenge for your deductive skills. It’s up to you and your friends to conduct your own investigations, visiting the witnesses, the suspects, and the scene of the crime in order to piece together the narrative behind each crime.

Do you have the cunning and the deductive prowess to solve your way through ten more cases for Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective? Even if you’ve played these cases before, some of our new tweaks and changes may surprise you.

It is the close of the nineteenth century. As pea soup fogs blanket London, mysterious figures meet in dark alleys, disreputable restaurants, and opium dens. Robberies, murders, forgeries, arson—every crime imaginable can be found in Victorian London, and though few have the skill to follow these invisible threads, they all trace inexorably back to one man: Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime. Yet Scotland Yard and the people of London are not helpless in this master criminal’s clutches. The people have their champion, the world’s only consulting detective: Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a cooperative game of observation, logic, and the science of deduction for one to eight players. You and your fellow players take on the roles of members of the Baker Street Irregulars, Holmes’s cadre of young agents, whom he employs to gather information in his cases. Armed with the facts of the case, the London Directory, a map of Victorian London, the daily issue of The Times, and your own wits, you must unravel ten devilishly complex cases, each with a unique casebook. If your mind is sharp and your logic unflawed, you may even outshine the great detective himself!

The Facts of the Case

At the beginning of a game of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you and your compatriots lay the map of London at the center of the table. Here, you’ll see Holmes’s London divided into five districts, each with dozens of locations representing the homes, parks, police stations, theaters, banks, museums, and countless other buildings that make up the city. In the course of your investigations, you will visit these places to gather clues—calling on Scotland Yard for the official reports, going closely over the scene of the crime, and visiting the assortment of ambassadors, innkeepers, waiters, gunsmiths, doctors, tobacconists, and others who may have information on your case.

You also have at your disposal a copy of the London Directory and the daily issue of The Times. The London Directory offers a list of London’s inhabitants and where they can be found, as well as lists of various categories, such as barristers, booksellers, hospitals, churches, or music halls that you can reference to narrow your possible targets. While the London Directory offers highly organized, but limited information, The Times has an assortment of specific information on a variety of subjects—if only you can suss out what parts of the paper actually pertain to your case. Do the results of a riflemen competition have any bearing on the murder of a munitions magnate? Does a fatal explosion in St. Petersburg or the arrival of a young Egyptian dancer have any connection to your current case? You must determine what is useful from the official news and learn the rest on the streets of London!

Your final asset in these cases is a list of your allies: those you can reliably go to for useful information. Porky Shinwell and Fred Porlock have valuable insight into the workings of London’s underworld, while Henry Ellis and Quintin Hogg are journalists who may well know a few more tidbits about information printed in the official news. Sir Jasper Meeks is the Head Coroner at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and he would certainly have autopsied any corpse discovered in an investigation, while others can offer clarity to the nuances of law, give you access to archived documents, or keep you up to date on London gossip. You may even turn to Sherlock Holmes himself for a bit of advice.

Follow the Leads
Once you’ve read through the initial facts of the case as presented to Holmes and Watson at 221B Baker Street, your investigation begins! Each turn, one player is the lead investigator, and after the group discusses their best options, that player decides where you will go in London to follow up on your initial leads. For instance, at the start of the case you may choose to head immediately to the scene of the crime, or you may visit the Head Coroner at St. Bart’s to find out more about the body of the deceased.

Every location in London has an address that can be found in the London Directory. Perhaps you wish to go to Simpson’s Restaurant to check a suspect’s alibi—simply look up the address in the Directory. Once you've found it, you’ll turn to the corresponding section in the casebook of your current investigation. The text you read determines what you find there, what observations you make, and the questions you ask. Once you’ve received this new influx of information, the next player becomes the lead investigator, and you and your friends begin making deductions and exploring new possibilities.

Ultimately, your goal is to explain the mysteries of the case to the satisfaction of all involved. At the end of the casebook are two sets of questions. The first group of questions pertains directly to the case, such as the culprit’s identity, motive, and the truth behind any loose ends. The second set of questions regards items that are only incidentally related to the case, but successfully answering these questions can further illuminate events and increase your final score. After you and your fellow investigators have decided on your answers to these questions, you may proceed to the solution, wherein Holmes discourses and explains the case in full, allowing you to see which aspects you correctly deduced and where you went wrong. Although it’s certainly difficult, you may even be able to solve the case by following fewer leads than Sherlock Holmes himself!

Crime Is Common. Logic Is Rare.
Enter the streets of Victorian London in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, a game that will test your logic and reasoning to their fullest extent. Can you oppose the crimes orchestrated behind the scenes by Professor Moriarty? Follow your leads, exercise your logic, and solve ten of the most difficult cases to ever enter 221B Baker Street. The game is afoot!

• A new standalone box for Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
• Cooperate with your friends to solve each case in a shared deductive experience
• An utterly unique game structure draws you into the world of Sherlock Holmes
• Contains ten cases, fully revised and retranslated from the Ystari version

Contents:
* Rules
* 1 map of London
* 10 casebooks
* 10 newspapers
* 1 London directory

1–8 Players
60–120 Min
Age: 10+

viivakoodi 9782370990075