Tag: Deduction

In Deduction games, players rely on their logic and reasoning skills to attempt to find the correct solution to a problem.

Mind MGMT

| T3d-1978
Mind MGMT

Mind MGMT

Working from the shadows, Mind MGMT once used its psychically-powered agents to put a stop to global crises. However, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Mind MGMT is now rotting from the inside. To tighten its iron grip on the world stage, Mind MGMT deploys covert operatives around the world to recruit other psychically-attuned individuals to their side. How can this enigmatic organization, hell bent on global domination, be defeated?

Thankfully, a few renegade agents have figured out that Mind MGMT has been compromised and have defected, turning their backs on the syndicate. They now use their own psychic abilities to prevent Mind MGMT from achieving its nefarious goals.

In Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.”, one player controls Mind MGMT and must scour the city for new recruits. They move around on a secret map, trying to visit locations that match one of their three randomly drawn feature cards. They can also use their four Immortals to protect locations from being exposed.

All other players control the rogue agents who must try to stop Mind MGMT before it’s too late! They ask questions to the Recruiter and deduce their whereabouts from the answers they receive. Rogue agents can use dry-erase “mental notes” to track all the information they’re given.

Mind MGMT wins by either collecting twelve recruits or surviving sixteen turns. The rogue agents can win only by capturing Mind MGMT, which they do when they believe they’re on the same block as Mind MGMT.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Grid Movement
  • Hidden Movement
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Guild Master

| T3d-1978
Guild Master

Guild Master

Guild Master is a fantasy tabletop game for 2-4 players. Players manage an adventuring guild, competing with each other to become the most famous guild as an escalating series of events threaten the land. In each of the nine rounds, players simultaneously and secretly program orders to send teams of adventurers out to do the following:

  • Recruit more adventurers.
  • Attempt increasingly difficult contracts to gain money, fame and other rewards.
  • Hire builders to upgrade their guild to increase their capacity to do all of that more.

All players then sequentially resolve their planned orders, starting with each players’ 1st order, then 2nd order and so on, and in the order they appear on the board (builders, then adventurers A-F then contracts 1-6).

Players plan and program orders carefully around other players’ likely moves, various strategies, risks, and rewards. They manage their guilds’ growth and optimize combinations between their adventurer abilities and contract rewards to achieve their goals. As the game advances, guilds become more powerful and must rise to meet an increasing number of game state changing threats. Recruiting increasingly powerful adventurers and upgrading your guild capacity are both key to victory. There are various ways to exert control over the board, your dice rolls, and your chances to get what you want.

Most orders are resolved by paying coin or rolling dice based on your adventurers’ skills. Sometimes players resolve these orders alone, and sometimes cooperating with, or in conflict with, other guild’s adventuring teams attempting the same thing at the same time. When players’ orders overlap, coins and negotiated prisoners’ dilemma cooperate/conflict skill checks resolve the contest. Negotiation over shared goals, contract bonuses and reward splits is encouraged and rewarding, but not absolutely required to win.

Everything you do earns you fame (victory points) and other rewards. At the end of nine rounds, any remaining coins are converted to fame at a rate of 5 coins = 1 fame. Then any special prestige upgrade fame is added. The most famous guild is then declared the winner.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Deck Building
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

Dead of Winter

| T3d-1978
Dead of Winter

Dead of Winter

“Crossroads” is a game series from Plaid Hat Games that tests a group of survivors’ ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, the first title in this series, puts 2-5 players in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world in which most of humanity is either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters. Each player leads a faction of survivors, with dozens of different characters in the game.

Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition, but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective, which could relate to a psychological tick that’s fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group’s goal, but don’t get walked all over by a loudmouth who’s looking out only for their own interests!

Dead of Winter is an experience that can be accomplished only through the medium of tabletop games, a story-centric game about surviving through a harsh winter in an apocalyptic world. The survivors are all dealing with their own psychological imperatives, but must still find a way to work together to fight off outside threats, resolve crises, find food and supplies, and keep the colony’s morale up.

Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily-thematic, wildly-varying decisions that often have them deciding between what’s best for the colony and what’s best for themselves. The rulebook also includes a fully co-operative variant in which all players work toward the group objective with no personal goals.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Bluffing
  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Push Your Luck
  • Storytelling
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.01

Cult of the Deep

| T3d-1978
Cult of the Deep

Cult of the Deep

You are a cultist, trying to establish your faction’s rise to power. Fight over rituals and mythical monsters as you seek victory and control of the cult.

Roles

 

Each player is given a role that will remain hidden throughout the game, except the High Priest. This role will determine your win condition:

  • High Priest – Root out corruption in the cult. Kill all Cabalists, the Heretic, and survive.
  • Cabalists – Seek to take control of the cult. Kill the High Priest.
  • Faithful – Protect the High Priest from threats to their power. Kill all Cabalists, the Heretic, and the High Priest must survive.
  • Heretic – Burn the whole cult to the ground. Kill the entire cult, yourself included if necessary.

Extra abilities

 

Each player will also be given a:

  • Character card that determines their starting health, special ability, and a power symbol that provides an additional way to gain life from the dice.
  • Secret sigil card, which gives each cultist a once per game power, will also be given to each player.

Mechanics

 

A player will take a turn by first rolling their dice up to 3 times. They then decide where to commit their dice: to rituals to gain altar effects to temporarily empower themselves, finish a ritual in order to gain its powerful effects permanently, stab other cultists, gain life, or give life to other cultists.

If a player is killed, they are not eliminated. Instead, they become a wraith. They will roll dice on their turn still, just less. They cannot commit dice like normal but instead haunt the dice of enemies and allies by giving, replacing, or discarding dice.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Bribery
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hidden Roles
  • Push Your Luck
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.67

Blood on the Clocktower

| T3d-1978
Blood on the Clocktower

Blood on the Clocktower

In the quiet village of Ravenswood Bluff, ‌a demon walks amongst you…

During a hellish thunderstorm, on the stroke of midnight, there echoes a bone-chilling scream. The townsfolk rush to investigate and find the town storyteller murdered, their body impaled on the hands of the clocktower, blood dripping onto the cobblestones below. A Demon is on the loose, murdering by night and disguised in human form by day. Some have scraps of information. Others have abilities that fight the evil or protect the innocent. But the Demon and its evil minions are spreading lies to confuse and breed suspicion. Will the good townsfolk put the puzzle together in time to execute the true demon and save themselves? Or will evil overrun this once peaceful village?

Blood on the Clocktower is a bluffing game enjoyed by 5 to 20 players on opposing teams of Good and Evil, overseen by a Storyteller player who conducts the action and makes crucial decisions. The goal of the game is to successfully deduce and execute the demons before they outnumber the townfolk.

During a ‘day’ phase players socialize openly and whisper privately to trade knowledge or spread lies, culminating in a player’s execution if a majority suspects them of being Evil. Of a ‘night’ time, players close their eyes and are woken one at a time by the Storyteller to gather information, spread mischief, or kill.

The Storyteller uses the game’s intricate playing pieces to guide each game, leaving others free to play without a table or board. Players stay in the thick of the action to the very end even if their characters are killed, haunting Ravenswood Bluff as ghosts trying to win from beyond the grave.

If you arrive late to a game, you can enter after it’s started as a powerful Traveller character with unusual talents and questionable allegiances. Each character comes with their own special ability and no two players in a game are ever the same character.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Hidden Roles
  • Negotiation
  • Party Game
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 6 – 20 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.04

Whitehall Mystery

| T3d-1978
Whitehall Mystery

Whitehall Mystery

October 1888: During the construction of the Metropolitan Police headquarters near Whitehall, which would later be known as Scotland Yard, the remains of a body were found. In September, a severed arm had already been discovered in the muddy shore of the River Thames.

There is another murderer roaming the streets of London in Whitehall, amusing himself by spreading the pieces of a poor woman around Whitehall, like some kind of macabre treasure hunt. The identity of this monster and his unfortunate victim are a mystery, the Whitehall Mystery.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Hidden Movement
  • Memory
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.11

Vigilante

| T3d-1978
Vigilante

Vigilante

In Vigilante, you lead a team of heroes to fight back a swarm of villains running free in the city. Vigilante brings social deduction, action management, and tableau-building into a unique combination that leaves you with many different paths to take to accomplish your goals, new strategies and synergies between heroes, and a lot of tension!

There are a variety of scenarios (game modes) depending on player preferences. The game plays in rounds, where players have 4 actions to either fight (and imprison) villains, recruit new heroes, search for equipment and other helpful cards, or heal. Afterwards, players secretly roll their dice and contribute one of them, which sometimes will help the group but usually hinders them.

In Brought to Justice, each player gets a secret role. ‘Good’ players represent the majority and must imprison 7 villains per good player before the end of the game (i.e. if there are 2 Good players, they need a combined total of 14). ‘Evil’ players are trying to foil their plans, and Neutral players have independent missions which generally throw a little chaos into the mix.

Shifting Allegiances takes Brought to Justice and creates even more uncertainty by only guaranteeing one ‘Good’ player, while the rest of the mix could be any combination of ‘Good’, ‘Evil’, or ‘Neutral’ players. Even though there’s a possibility that all players are good, it will take time to gain each other’s trust, and you could end up sabotaging your own victory!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Deck Building
  • Deduction
  • Hidden Roles
  • Storytelling
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Turing Machine

| T3d-1978
Turing Machine

Turing Machine

“Codes are a puzzle. A game, just like any other game.”

– Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.

Turing Machine is a fascinating and competitive deduction game. It offers a unique experience of questioning a proto-computer that works without electricity or any sort of technology, paving the way for a new generation of deduction games.

The Goal? Find the secret code before the other players, by cleverly questioning the machine. With Turing Machine, you’ll use an analog computer with unique components made of never-before-seen perforated cards.
The game offers more than seven million problems from simple to mind-staggeringly complex combinations, making the gameplay practically endless!

Including the original competitive mode, you can combine your brain power as a team or try to beat the game itself while playing solo.

Are you ready for an intense cerebral gaming experience?

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.44

The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31

| T3d-1978
The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31

The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31

It is the start of the bleak, desolate Antarctic winter when a group of NSF researchers manning the claustrophobic, isolated U.S. Outpost 31 comes into contact with a hostile extraterrestrial lifeform. Bent on assimilating Earth’s native species, this being infiltrates the facility — creating a perfect imitation of one of the Outpost 31 crew. The staff frantically begin a sweep of the base, desperate to purge this alien infection before escaping to warn McMurdo Station that somewhere, out there in the frigid darkness, something horrible is waiting.

In the hidden identity game The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31, you will relive John Carpenter’s sci-fi cult classic in a race to discover who among the team has been infected by this heinous lifeform. Play as one of twelve characters as you lead a series of investigations through the facility using supplies and equipment to clear the building. The tension mounts and paranoia ensues as you question who you can trust in the ultimate race to save humanity!

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Hidden Roles
  • Role Playing
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.35

Suspects

| T3d-1978
Suspects

Suspects

Suspects is a range of investigation games with streamlined rules and plots centered on the psychology of the characters in the style of Agatha Christie’s novels. The first opus will feature the ingenious and fearless Claire Harper in three stories that pay tribute to the great classics of detective literature!

Claire Harper was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford in 1927. Specializing in criminal law, she is also an adventurous traveler. Every mystery is an opportunity for her to test her formidable spirit of deduction and her unfailing determination! In this first episode, follow her in her investigations that will take her from grand manor houses to shady theaters and from Scotland to…Egypt!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.82