Thursday, May 3, 2018

Murderer’s Row - Tiny but tons of replay value

Murderer’s Row is a Print-and-Play solitaire game that hits a lot of sweet spots for me. 

One of my sins as a PnP solitaire player is that I usually don’t set aside time to play solitaire games. I just play them when I find I have a few minutes so I play a lot more games that are just cards or tiles that I can just shuffle and go and be done in five minutes.  

Murderer’s Row fits that bill ridiculously well.

The game consists of eighteen cards, each one showing a person/profession and a special power. Most of the special powers are about killing other cards but some of them involve moving cards or resetting them.

Shuffle the deck and deal out ten cards in a row. Then, using their powers, you have to kill everyone until there’s only one card left. Last man standing. (And it is theoretically possible to actually have _no_ cards left) And, every time you use a power, you flip that card over to indicate that it’s exhausted.

Between what cards come out and the order they come out, there is a lot of variability in the game. And, yes, the position of the cards is a big deal since the powers are very specific. For instance, the Swordsman can only kill an active card that is beside it.

My absolute least favorite type of card is the couple that kill a random card. After I get my random setup, I want to be able to solve the layout and killing a random card doesn’t fit into making real plans.

I have gotten an obnoxious amount of play out of Murderer’s Row. I made the half-size, simple art deck, which is small enough that I can play it just about anywhere. I could probably play it in my hand, fanning the cards. And I’ll probably will make the Birds on a Wire so I have a copy for my bag and a larger copy for around the house.

Murderer’s Row isn’t a deep or heavy game. But it does give me a seemingly endless series of little puzzles to spend a couple minutes solving. Between ease of crafting and play, it’s a game that I definitely recommend for PnP.

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