Silent madness

You might say “oh no, not again” if you keep reading, but stay with me! 😄 Today we are talking about a 2p cooperative no-communication trick-taking game again, but it's another one! It's quite a niche and unique combination but there were multiple such releases recently. 😮 This time the game is 🧪Jekyll & Hyde vs Scotland Yard from @mandoogames , which just shot up high on our “best purchases of SPIEL23” list.

The Vincent Durtrait art immediately draws the eyes to it as usual. It's a small box card game, but it all looks so premium due to all the top-notch illustrations. 🤩

The players play as the two personalities, 🤵Dr. Jekyll and 🧟Mr. Hyde, on the run from Scotland Yard. Your job is to reach the last space of the track by the end of the second round - but how you move is the fun part! At the end of a round you move spaces equal to the least amount of tricks won by a player.

Trick-taking is super fun in this one, as the Scotland Yard has its own deck, and acts like a dummy player. It's not completely random though, because players both give it 4 cards at the beginning to create its deck.

As you play you want to balance the two personalities (aka. who wins tricks), as moving too slow or too fast can be bad. Letting the Scotland Yard win certain tricks is also essential, and here's why: The 8-value cards give you additional movement, and 1s, 2s and 3s move the Scotland Yard pawn, if they're in player's won tricks. If you overshoot the last space of the track, you also move the Yard’s pawn. If the Yard catches up with you, you lose! 👮

Another twist in the game is how the strength of card colors changes each round. There are 3 different card colors, whichever shows up first will be the weakest. This allows for more control in winning and losing tricks.

A cool mechanic are the colorless Potion cards. 🧪 When paired with a color, a chemical reaction occurs, triggering an effect: stealing a trick from the Yard, reordering strength tokens or exchanging a card with the Yard. These effects give more agency to players, but could be detrimental too.

We really enjoyed Sail so far, but we love Jekyll & Hyde perhaps even more now! This game is amazing! 🥰