Mystery Rummy: Murders in the Rue Morgue

Plays: 2Px2.

The Game

I am a fan of the Mystery Rummy series. I have in my collection Jack the Ripper (my favourite), Jekyll and Hyde, Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld and Bonnie and Clyde. I have played Wyatt Earp before, but didn't particularly fancy it, so I didn't buy a copy. Murders in the Rue Morgue is rated lower than its siblings, and has been out-of-print for long periods. I recently discovered that Jeff stocks it (Boardgamecafe.net), and I couldn't resist getting a copy to see what it's like.

Murders in the Rue Morgue is based on a detective story by Edgar Allen Poe. A word of warning - major spoiler ahead if you have not read the story before. Like the rest of the series, the game has many rummy-like mechanisms. At the start of a hand, you are dealt a hand of cards, and your goal is to play them all - to go out. Whenever one player goes out, everyone scores points based on cards played, and also loses points for cards still in hand (except for the person who went out, of course). You usually play a few hands, until someone reaches 100pts. The game ends then, and highest scorer wins. On a player turn, you must draw one card, either from the draw deck or the discard pile. Then you may play cards from your hand. At the end of your turn, you must discard one card. Regular cards, called evidence cards, must be played in melds of at least 3 cards. If there is already a meld in play, you may layoff, i.e. play single evidence cards matching the meld. The other type of card is the gavel cards. You may play only one gavel card per turn. Usually they have some special power. Some can only be played under certain conditions.

This summarises the common features across the series. Each game also has some unique aspects.

In Murders in the Rue Morgue, some evidence cards have diamond icons in the lower left corner. This means they have a combo colour. E.g. dark blue and light blue are a combo pair. If you manage to play both melds, you score a 10pt bonus.

A 2-player game in progress.

This orangutan card is the most unique aspect of the game. At the start of a hand, everyone secretly picks a card to put under this orangutan card. This is called feeding the orangutan. During play, whenever you play a meld, you must feed the orangutan again. You feed it either the top card of the discard pile, or the top card of the draw deck. You get to see the top card of the draw deck before you decide which card to feed to the orangutan. If you are the one to go out, you get to claim all cards under the orangutan, and they may score you even more points. Cards that can be played will score (e.g. cards which have a meld in play), and those which can't are simply discarded.

Brilliant Deduction cards (one the right) can only be played when melds of both their colours are already in play. So it is not easy to play them. Each is worth 7pts, which is tempting, but is also a stiff penalty if you are stuck with it. It is a gavel card (icon in top left corner). You may only play one gavel card per turn.

The Play

The rules are straight-forward and the game is easy to learn. It plays smoothly. There is some luck. When I played with my wife Michelle, she had pretty bad luck and I was rather lucky, and our game was quite lopsided. The orangutan mechanism seems to make the winner win more. This feels counterintuitive to me. Shouldn't a game have a catch-up mechanism for the trailing player instead? Maybe there's something I'm not getting yet. Maybe the orangutan is meant to be something the trailing player can use to catch up.

The Thoughts

I am probably approaching Murders in the Rue Morgue with preconceived notions. My experience with it seems to confirm that it is indeed not as strong as the other titles in the series. In Jack the Ripper, the shutout mechanism (achieving something difficult which makes your opponent score nothing) is playing the Ripper Escape card after all five Victim cards are in play. This is quite exciting as players need to manoeuvre around it, beware of it, and sometimes shoot for it. In Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld, the shutout mechanism is collecting all eight Al Capone cards. Also hard to achieve, but a little easier if playing partnership rules. Murders in the Rue Morgue has a shutout rule too, but it feels somewhat easier. You need to play both melds of a combo and also play their corresponding Brilliant Deduction card. So far I still don't quite appreciate the orangutan mechanism. I will need to play more and experiment more. In Jekyll and Hyde, the unique mechanism is many cards can only be played specifically when Dr Jekyll is active or when Mr Hyde is active.

The rulebook recommends partnership play, i.e. playing with four players. Perhaps the game works better with four players. I have only played 2-player games. I have played Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld with both two and four players, and the four player game is indeed more fun.

boardgaming in photos: TTR Switzerland, Mystery Rummy: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld, Brass

19 Apr 2015. The Switzerland map is my favourite version of Ticket To Ride. It's for 2 or 3 players only. In this version you can draw many tickets, and it is entirely possible to complete all of those you keep. This is what makes the game exciting. It is feasible to gamble and hope to draw tickets which you have already completed, or which can be completed without too much additional risk. This is a game where you often reach for the ticket deck and say in your heart, "Yes I feel lucky today!". Another thing which makes the game exciting is the area around Zurich. It is often congested and you can easily get blocked or be forced to reroute.

Michelle's tickets. Completing 11 tickets is not unusual in TTR Switzerland. I stick some cards under others so that I can cover the score circles which I should ignore when totaling her points.

The country-as-destination concept is one of the special features in TTR Switzerland. In this ticket card above, one of your destinations must be in France. The other one can be in either one of the three other neighbouring countries. There are multiple routes which lead into each one of Switzerland's neighbouring countries, so you are rarely blocked off completely. In this card above, you only score one of the three point values, depending on which country you manage to reach. Naturally you will go for the highest number you can achieve.

This is Mystery Rummy: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld. The children saw Michelle and I play, and requested to join. So I taught them how to play. We played the partnership rules, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was more fun than the 2P game. In the partnership game, it is easier to collect all cards of a colour (which gives you bonus points), because there are two players working together in each team. Also the draw deck gets exhausted more frequently, which means towards the late game you know most cards are out, and the question is whose hands they are in.

The children are new to rummy games, and do some things completely beyond our expectations. Once Chen Rui (8) picked up a card which Shee Yun (10) had discarded. Michelle and I automatically assumed she had now collected the third card of a colour, so she could play a meld. To our surprise, she didn't play any meld. She was planning to collect that colour one by one! I was on the other team, and I was the next player. I had two cards of that colour in my hand. I played an Agent Meeting card to rob both of her cards of that colour, so that I would have enough for a meld, and I could play it. I felt a little bad for having taken advantage of her inexperience.

24 Apr 2015. Brass by Martin Wallace. One of his best works. It had been quite a while and I was definitely a little rusty. It was my first time playing this as a 4-player game, and I think 4P is the best player count. I built my first factory, a cotton factory, in Blackburn. That was not a good idea. I made a mistake and thought I could build a canal to Preston, then build a port there, and then sell cotton using both cotton factory and port. I didn't realise there was no canal connection between Blackburn and Preston. Oops indeed. Eventually I had to build two canals to get to Liverpool, to build my port there. Allen (red) was rather rusty too. He built his first cotton factory in Bolton, but there was no canal connection to Blackburn or to Wigan. He too had to build two canals to reach Warrington & Runcorn, where he could build then a port. We were both the chemistry dog internet meme - I have no idea what I'm doing, not much better than Leaf (purple), who was new to the game. Jeff (yellow) was the only one who had an idea of what he was doing.

Jeff's (yellow) first cotton factory was built in Colne, just next to Yorkshire at the north eastern corner, which had a port. So he could start selling cotton earlier than the rest of us. Leaf (purple) had started with a coal mine in Oldham, which was not exactly a good idea, since coal wasn't in high demand yet. Allen joked that this was the famous Oldham Opening, but I bet at the time he wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad move either. We were just fooling around pretending to be experts and imagining there were famous standard moves like in chess.

We were now in the second half, the railroad era. Canals were now replaced with railroads. In the southeast Jeff (yellow) had built quite a few coal mines, which did good business and gave him a solid income. He had timed the construction of a few coal mines and iron mines very well, when the market (those two rows of black coal and orange icon cubes) was depleted. He could sell his newly mined coal and iron to earn some quick cash, and he was able to flip his mine tiles quickly to turn them into money-making businesses. All these happened in the first few rounds of the second half, and I knew then that the rest of us would not be able to catch up. We should have worked together to stop him, but we had enough trouble managing our own businesses.

In Brass, scoring is only done twice. We were in the second half, so these are scores from the first half. The hat markers are the score markers. Scores from the first half are about one fifth to one fourth of the total scores, so they are not a good indicator of how well the players are doing. The income levels, i.e. the round discs, are good indicators. Jeff (yellow) was now far ahead of us, and was making more money than us every round. Strong cashflow is very important in this game.

Bonnie and Clyde

I bought Bonnie and Clyde on a recent business trip to Singapore, at Paradigm Infinitium, Midpoint Plaza, Orchard Road. Chee Seng was the one who recommended this shop. I remember I have been to Paradigm Infinitium before, but the surroundings did not seem familiar. Maybe they used to be at another location, or this is a different branch. They have a very good selection, but prices are a bit steep. Well, I guess if you are Singaporean or earning Singapore Dollars they are OK, but for a Malaysian the prices are steep. Yet, I couldn't resist buying this, because I am a fan of the mystery rummy games designed by Mike Fitzgerald.

Bonnie and Clyde, like the other mystery rummy games, and like gin rummy, have you making melds (playing 3 of a kind), making layoffs (playing cards after existing melds), and try to "go out" by playing all the cards in your hand. Like all other mystery rummy games, it has the concept of gavel cards - cards with special powers but you can only play one during a turn, which means that they are handy, but they also make it hard for you to go out quickly. This time there is only type of gavel card - Ted Hinton, the sheriff, but you can use it in 3 different ways - draw two cards from the draw deck, pick any one card from the discard deck, or peep at one of the 10 location cards.

Location cards are the unique element in Bonnie and Clyde compared to other mystery rummy games. This game has a board, depicting 10 locations where events in the criminal life of Bonnie and Clyde took place. At the start of the game, the Bonnie card, the Clyde card, and 8 other regular cards are shuffled and placed face-down at these 10 locations. During the game, the players try to peek and pick up cards from these locations, in particular they will try to catch Bonnie and Clyde, the capture of each awarding you 10pts. There is a car marker which starts at location 1. When melds are played, it advances. When layoffs are played, you can choose to move it forward or backward. The location of the car and when you play melds or layoffs is very important, because you can only capture Bonnie or Clyde when you play a meld or layoff for the location where the car is located. I guess that translates to you, being a police officer, being at the right place at the right time. Also if the cards you play match the car position, you score double (4pts per card, as opposed to 2pts). The car position is also important because the player who goes out also scores a bonus based on it.

Like all other mystery rummy games, there is a shut out condition. If you capture both Bonnie and Clyde, and you are the one to go out, then you shut out all your opponents. They don't score.

Game components.

The car, the Ted Hinton (sheriff) card, the Clyde card and the Bonnie card.

Game set up and ready to go.

Game in progress.

So far I have only played 2-player games (the game supports 2-4). I quite like the game. It is quite simple. I'd say roughly the complexity of Mystery Rummy: Jekyll and Hyde. There is a tendency to hold back your cards and wait for the right moment to play them to score big, but that can be a risky thing to do, because your opponent may be doing the same, and may suddenly go out before you can play any of your cards. I find the manipulation of the car position interesting, also the bluffing of where Bonnie and Clyde are. I find that I rarely use Ted Hinton cards to peek at cards. I often use it to draw more cards, and occasionally to pick discarded cards, but almost never for peeking. Maybe there are some tactics that I have not yet explored.

Among the mystery rummy games that I have played, I'd rank them in this order: Jack the Ripper, then Jekyll and Hyde and Bonnie and Clyde, then Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld, and finally Wyatt Earp (not officially part of the series, but is similar). Al Capone is just OK for me. Maybe I was traumatised and thus biased by that 11-1 losing streak that I once had when playing with Michelle. I only played Wyatt Earp once, a long time ago, and don't remember much about it, other than that I didn't really enjoy it. In complexity, I'd rank them Jack the Ripper, then Wyatt Earp, then Al Capone, then Jekyll and Hyde and Bonnie and Clyde.