You’ll have to have the right strategy to win this game: carefully plan your moves and try to predict what your opponent will do to try to block potential escape routes for the criminal, or to get the detective in the bag, trapped and unable to move while his historic nemesis speeds away, snickering on the Orient Express.
THE PERFECT PLAN!
Breaking into the central bank’s impenetrable vault? It’s a walk in the park for criminal minds capable of devising the perfect plan! The goal is to steal the last token: will the plan succeed, or will the detective intervene in time?
A CAVE OF WONDERS
For those used to calculating and planning their every move, like our infallible detective and his arch nemesis, it might just be thrilling to try your luck from time to time, especially if you turn out to be a real genius at defending treasure. . . .
TICK-TOCK . . . THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS!
Here we are, at the final challenge, or rather . . . challenges. What awaits isn’t just one duel, but four! Better get moving, the clock is ticking. Tick-tock. . . .
WAIT! WHERE ARE YOU GOING? YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE PIECES BEFORE YOU CAN START PLAYING!
TURN TO THE LAST PAGE TO FIND OUT HOW.
Players can move in any direction. Each time you land on a token, you must evaluate what the token has in store for you: if it’s a loot token, you can hold on to it and roll the die again, continuing along your way. If you land on a trap token (a bomb or a banana peel), you have to sit out for a turn. When you think you’ve collected enough loot, try to get back to the starting point faster than your opponents. But be careful! You have to land on the home base with an exact roll (otherwise you have to go back the number of spaces in excess). Whoever transports the most loot to the starting point wins. Choosing a path that will get you the most tokens possible from those scattered throughout the museum is key.
Number of players: 2
Pieces: 8 skull tokens and 8 golden charm tokens
Objective: Force your opponent to take the last token
How to play: Before you play, you’ll need to place 8 skull and 8 charm tokens on the circles, thereby creating 4 rows of 4 tokens each. Roll the die to decide who goes first. The player who rolls the highest number becomes player 1. At this point, the two opponents take turns scooping up as many
TREASURE
tokens as they want (even an entire row), skull or charm tokens alike, but ONLY from a single row or column at a time (i.e., horizontally or vertically). The tokens MUST be adjacent (next to each other), without empty spaces between them (e.g., if a player takes the two central tokens of the third row, the other player can’t take, in a single move, the two remaining outer tokens of the third row). The goal is to force your opponent to take the last token on the board. The winner gets the precious Aztec emerald!
exact roll of the die, you get a big breath of air and, on your next turn, you get to double the number you roll. But watch out: the path to the finish line is dangerous! If you land on a square with Poseidon, you have to make a sacrifice in his honor—that is, sit out a turn. Be careful around the siren. If you land on her square, you’ll be entranced by her song and stop to listen to her sing for a solid two turns! The last obstacle is the end point: you have to reach the finish line with an exact number of moves, otherwise you have to go back the number of extra spaces rolled.
Number of players: 2
Pieces: 3 bandit tokens and 3 detective tokens
Objective: Be the first to place three of your tokens in an unbroken line
How to play: This time, the main challenge between the detective and the criminal involves placing your tokens on the board. Players choose what role to play, detective or criminal, and collect those tokens. Players then take turns placing one token at a time on the empty blue circles. Once all tokens are on the board, there should still be three empty blue
Number of players: 2, or 2 teams of multiple players
Pieces: 3 blue detective tokens and 1 yellow culprit token
Objective: Block the culprit or evade the detective
A CHASE ON THE
How to play: Start by choosing who will be the detective and who will be the culprit. The detective takes the 3 blue tokens, and the culprit takes the one yellow token. The culprit then places the yellow token on the orange square at the approximate center of the railway route, while the detective places the blue tokens on any other three squares. This game is based on just a few
ORIENT EXPRESS
simple rules: the culprit, with a single token, can move from square to adjacent square, one at a time in any direction, while the detective can follow the culprit by moving just one blue token at a time, from one square to any adjacent square at a time, going right, left, up, down, or diagonally. However, players cannot move toward the square they are coming from! Who will win? The detective ends the chase by blocking the culprit on a square, unable to move; the culprit, on the other hand, wins by creating a situation in which the same moves are repeated over and over: at that point, the detective has no choice but to let the culprit get away, speeding off on the Orient Express!
Each player is given one move per turn. Proceed by removing one or more tokens per turn: you’re free to choose how many tokens to remove each time, the only conditions being that you take them from the same horizontal row, that you remove at least one and that you do not skip a turn. The player who takes the last token in the bank’s safe, wins!
A CAVE of WONDERS
Number of players: 2 to 4
Pieces: 1 die, 1 piece per player; pen and paper
Objective: Be the first to get to square no. 100
How to play: Arrange the pieces in a row on the starting point. Roll the die to determine who starts the game. Whoever rolls the highest number goes first. Player 1 then rolls the die: if a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 is rolled, move as many spaces as rolled, and decide whether to roll the die again. As long as you roll a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, you can add that number to your previous “score,”
moving the corresponding number of spaces. Be careful, though: danger is always just around the corner. If, during the first roll of the die, you roll a 1, you get no points and have to sit that turn out. And here’s the thing to be careful about: if you roll a 1 during a subsequent roll of the die, all the “points” you’ve collected in your previous rolls of the die (on this turn) will be lost. (You’d better keep track of your rolls on a piece of paper.) You then have to pass the die to the next player and wait your turn to roll again. The key is knowing when you’d better stop rolling, because you know your luck won’t last forever. That way you won’t get lost, lured by the treasures in the Cave of Wonders!
TICK-TOCK
T he coun T down begins !
Number of players: 2
Pieces: 1 piece per player
Objective: Be the first to get to the flame at the end of the fuse
How to play: Start by rolling the die to determine who will start. Whoever rolls the highest number goes first. Players place their pieces on the dynamite stick, which is the starting point. Thus, the game begins: the detective’s goal is to be the first to get to the fuse to put the flame out, while the criminal’s goal is the same, making sure the bomb explodes! Players take turns rolling the die and moving their pieces according to the number they’ve rolled. However, a few duels await you along the route: after having completed them, the winner of the duel gets to roll the die and the loser has to sit that turn out.
Grab the die and let’s get started! The first player to get to squares 9 and 33 has to challenge the other player to a roll-off. The two take turns rolling the die. The first to get to a score of 20 wins. On squares 17 and 37, the rules change: you’ll still have to get to 20, but you’ll be rolling the die for your opponent. On squares 24 and 54, it all gets more complicated: you’ll roll the die to reach 20, but do so while standing on one foot. And square 59? The bomb’s about to explode, so now it’s a race to beat the clock: you have 10 seconds each to roll the die as many times as you can and add up the numbers you’ve rolled. Whoever gets the highest score can move two squares, reaching the fuse and winning the game! To win without this last challenge, you have to land exactly on the fuse. If you roll a number that takes you beyond the fuse, you have to move backwards the number of extra spaces rolled.
