Murder at 40,000 Feet

Due to my lack of small games that travel well, the much maligned Murdero made the trek with me to Eastern Europe. I figured that it would work well on a plane since the cards you are laying down and the draw and discard piles should be able to easily fit on one of the awful flip down tables that they have on planes. I was correct on those accounts, it fit well. While flying over Rejkavik Jesse and I engaged in a game of this murder mystery rummy treat. On the bright side I was finally able to play it as a two player game, which I had not done though I sort of felt that it would be best between two players. It definitely does work better. It is easier to “solve a crime” and close out a set, but the major issues remain. The standout one being the games glaring lack of fun, regardless of the number of players. Really, the only reason that I brought it was because I did not have all that many options. Jesse had never played before but that did not stop him defeating me 128-56.

The best traveling game out there still seems to be a deck of cards. We had numerous good games of Rummy 500 in airports and on trains that made us quickly forget about Murdero.

Murdero, I Wrote

I had not played Murdero since the initial play (which you can read about here) and decided to pull it out for a quick session last night. After the first game I had some mixed feelings but thought it had potential as a two player game and I was eager to try it out with that format, but last night we wound up having three instead. After playing through it again I can safely say that Murdero is not a particularly good game. It has several weaknesses, the most glaring of which is that it is just not that much fun. More often than not I felt as if I was just crossing my fingers and drawing a card or two each turn. The game leaves little room for strategy or decision making which are two things that I know that I am into, and I imagine most other gamers are as well.

I do feel that we got as much fun out of it as could be reasonably expected, maybe even more than should be expected. Mike, Katie, and myself are fun and we know how to play games. We laughed at all of the ridiculous, formulaic quotes that are on the cards (We even made up some of our own like “Rebecca Lane never killed people. Until she did.”), imagined ourselves piecing together the crimes, etc. We did all of it and more that could be expected to make the game fun and it just wasn’t there. Murdero is really just about card farming and a whole bunch of luck, neither of which are really stand out elements in a game.

One of the aspects of this game that really became apparent to me on a second play is just how useless the majority of the Action cards are. A handful of them have value (Overtime is exceptionally good, Sabotage is useful, and Real Estate is almost too good) but most of them are total garbage. The Alibi’s are almost pointless since it is so hard to complete a set anyway (especially with four players), by the end of the game we were laughing each turn when The Don’s Alibi was discarded for a second draw. I think it happened in literally every game that we played, which to me says that the card is sort of irrelevant. Each of the action cards has a use, but they are often so circumstantial to render it almost pointless to hold onto. When faced with the option of holding it or discarding for a second card in a turn the choice is really a no brainer. Take the card.

Murdero definitely worked better, in a mechanical sense, with three players than with four, so it is also a decent assumption that two players would improve it further. But maybe not. I could envision a two player game just to be a constant drawing of cards until someone closes out a set, which does not sound like much fun. This is the only rummy style mystery card game that I’ve played so I am not really sure how it fits into the genre. Despite the play of Murdero I would be willing to give others a play and see how they are.

Murdero

There is a great comic book store near my mother's house that also has an excellent selection of games. A lot of them I have never heard of, so whenever I am visiting I always try to pick up something new. I was up there over the weekend and I decided to pick up Murdero, a rummy based mystery card game. Murdero takes places in (what I presume to be) 1940's era Hollywood and players play the role of detectives trying to solve a murder in one of three areas; movies, politics, and the mafia. It is for 2-4 players and plays as a rummy style game, with runs representing the progress of the case. A hand ends when one player has all five steps in their Case. Score and repeat.

First off, I do not understand the name of the game at all. Why isn't it just called Murder? What's this Murdero thing? Why is there an O at the end of it? The weirdness of the name is easy to get past since the cards themselves look so nice. The cards all feature photographs that appear to be from the era (note: we had a discussion while playing about the authenticity of the photos. We all agreed that they don't look quite right, but we also thought that the game probably did not have the budget to stage all of the photo ops. Afterwards I checked the rules and it indicates that the pictures are from 2007.) The cards are a little on the thin side so I'm not sure how they will handle repeated shuffling, but they are fine. Each card also had a quote that adds some flavor to the picture. I like it. My favorite card is Louis Petrovsky, an unfortunate victim of the world of organized crime. Everything comes in a tidy little box, making it great for traveling.



The rules are really simple and honestly take moments to grasp. The winner is the first to a hundred points and that should take about 6 hands or so to reach. It plays fast, but the game has huge issues with the balance and distribution of cards. The biggest issue seems to be that the deck only has 60 cards in it. In a four player game that is about 15 cards a player, making it really hard to solve a case since there are only three cards that are murder weapons, which is the final card needed to solve the case. Additionally, there are several ways for another player to remove a card and take it out of play. It just doesn't add up. In the majority of the games that we played the case file (the draw deck) ran out before anyone solved a case. It happened with enough regularity to make me think that it is a fairly common occurrence, yet the rules do not address what to do when this happens, which sort of left us scratching our heads and making up some rules on the fly. The tricky part is that each turn a player has the option of picking from the case file or the discard pile, so once the case file is dead, does the game end or can players keep drawing discards? I have some doubts about the playtesting for Murdero, there just seems to be some fundamental flaws in it as a four player game. Perhaps I was just under the impression that most hands would end with a completed case, and this assumption was wrong. I don't know.

There are also Action Cards that mix up a lot of the rules and add a random and strategic element to the game. Like a lot of rummy games, card farming is at a premium, which makes a card like Overtime (draw three cards from the case file) really good. A card like The Don's Alibi (a player can't win by closing out the mafia case) is not that useful since most hands are not ending with a completed case anyway. Shakedown, look at another player's hand and take one card, might be the most powerful of them all.

Despite the issues and strange name, Murdero is a fun game with a lot of personality. We all liked playing it. It is probably better off as a two or three player game, which I am looking forward to trying.