First Impressions - Death on the Cards

A small but well made package.

Death on the Cards is a quick playing and fun card game themed around Agatha Christie's detective novels, published by Modiphius. I originally tried to pick it up around Christmas as a stocking filler for Jill, who likes this kind of murder mystery, but it was out of print at the time. Anyway, the restock finally landed so I ordered a copy, which I played with the two lads this evening.

Physically, the box is well made (with a magnetic closure) and the cards are of quality build. The insert is snug (you'd have to hack it if you wanted to sleeve the cards. There's an Art Deco theme and the illustrations are lovely.

You play the part of suspects who have become embroiled in a murder; one player will randomly become the murderer, the others are looking to reveal the killer.

Game play is simple: You have a six card hand, which comprises detectives, events and some more sneaky stuff. You also have three secrets. The aim of the game is to find out the murderer (for most players) or to escape and get away with it. In larger games, the murderer may have an accomplice (but we didn't try this out because there were just three of us playing). 

Whether you are found out or not will depend on how well you can protect your secrets. Clearly the murderer has one dark secret, but two other more amusing and gentle ones. 

You play tricks of detectives to reveal other players secrets. Typically, you will play between two or three detectives initially to get a set (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot need a set of three to get on the table). Once played, a set allows you to force the reveal of one of another player's secrets. You can add further cards in future turns to repeat the action if you want to. Some of the cards act as wild, or even allow you to use another player's set of detectives to investigate.

In most cases, you can play a card to block a secret being revealed, or the effects of an event card. Of course, this can escalate as another player can play the same kind of card to block your block and so on. 

The event cards allow you to steal secrets to replenish your own, force card swaps and more. The swap can force on further actions (for example, revealing your secrets). You can also accelerate or slow the burn through the deck, which can be useful as the final card to be revealed in the deck is 'the murderer escapes'. The murderer can also win by forcing the other players to reveal all their secrets. If you hit this position, you continue to discard and draw a card each turn, but you cannot take an action because you are a social pariah! The murderer's final secret will be 'I am the murderer', which means they have lost.

The game works well thematically, is made of quality components and was fun to play. Definitely one we'll bring back to the table, although the youngest doesn't like the idea of being the murderer.

PS A two player game will probably take less time as it will be apparent who the murderer is. 

22 February 2022