Lady Alice Board Game First Impressions

Lady Alice gives you a deduction game in the Sherlock Holmes universe.

Yes, another one.

In Lady Alice – a game of intrigue, flair, bluffing, and mischief – the players are the Baker Street Kids, children under the tutelage of Sherlock Holmes who must deduce the culprit behind the kidnapping of Henry Morton Stanley as well as the time and place the kidnapping occurred and which object was stolen at the same time.

To get the deduction ball rolling in Lady Alice, each player is given one random card from the individual piles: Culprit, Time, Location, Item. We played a 4-player game so you get one bit each and a 3 or 5-player game plays a bit differently.

The main board has all of these things laid out…

A Turn

On your turn, you make a guess as to which are the correct 4 ‘things’ in each category. To do this you use a book which is a great idea if not a little difficult to use!

Having the pages flip around in 4 different sections is great to easily convey to the group what you have picked, But it’s quite flimsy and if you hold it in the wrong place just for a second, it can slam shut undoing your deductive work.

Then, each player, including the guesser, puts a right or wrong card in an envelope. The card will poke its Green or Red face out a hole to show how many were right and how many were wrong. As they are shuffled, you won’t know which ones are right or wrong, just how many.

Having the cards in envelopes is a great way to easily convey to the group how many are right or wrong. But as they’re secret and need shuffling the cards can easily jump out of them which means people would need to vote again. It didn’t actually happen, but it nearly did a few times.

If all 4 items are wrong, you cover up their spaces on the board. Unlike games like P.I., this is the only memory prompting you to get apart from your own card. Everything else needs to stay in your head.

Actions

Then you go around the table either…

Pass – When 3 players pass in a row, the round ends.

Place a deduction counter on a clue – Each player has 9 tokens, three each of 0,1 and 2 points. You place one face down on a clue and turn up any others already on that clue. This is where you start to bluff by placing your 0’s hoping people think you know something. This is the system used in Council of Verona and I really like it.

Make an Accusation – Use the book to make a guess with all players voting using the cards again. If they’re right, the game ends.

Everyone gets points from the tokens they have placed in the correct positions on the board, and most points win. You don’t get anything for being the one who gets it right, you just use it to time the end game in your favour.

Lady Alice Summary

With this game mixing two games I like, Council of Verona and P.I., it did go down well for me. I would need pen and paper next time due to me messing up two suspects’ names…

Ah well, I’ll do better next time.

Jesta ThaRogue