Contents
Beyond Baker Street: Rules of the Game
Welcome to the world of Beyond Baker Street, a fantastic game of deduction and strategy. I’m here to guide you through the rules and give you all the information you need to start playing. Let’s dive in!
The Objective
In Beyond Baker Street, your ultimate goal is to solve the case before the clock runs out. You will work together with your fellow players to gather clues, analyze evidence, and deduce the identity of the suspect. Remember, time is of the essence, so use your detective skills wisely!
Setting Up
First, lay out the game board in the center of the playing area. This is where you’ll keep track of the different suspects, witnesses, and investigation cards. Each player should then choose a detective to play as and take their corresponding detective token.
Next, shuffle the suspect deck and place it face down. Draw a number of suspect cards equal to the number of players and arrange them face-up. These suspects will be your potential culprits. Shuffle the evidence deck and deal each player a hand of investigation cards. These cards will provide valuable clues to help you solve the case.
Gameplay
The game is played in turns, with each player taking on the role of the lead investigator. On your turn, you have three main actions:
1. Investigating
Choose one of the face-up suspect cards and place it in the center of the board. This suspect is now being investigated. You can play one or more investigation cards from your hand to gather evidence about the suspect’s traits. Think carefully and use deduction to determine which clues will be most helpful.
2. Suggesting
Once you feel confident in your deductions, you may make a suggestion to your fellow players about the suspect’s identity. Share your reasoning with the group and propose a suspect from the face-up cards on the board. Your teammates will respond with “Yes” or “No” to indicate if your suggestion is correct.
3. Passing
After taking your investigative and suggesting actions, you have the option to pass the lead investigator role to another player. This can be helpful if you need more time to gather clues or if another player has valuable information to share.
Winning the Game
The game continues until one of two conditions is met:
- All investigation cards have been played and all suspects have been interrogated.
- Time runs out on the game clock.
If you correctly determine the identity of the suspect before the game ends, you win! However, if the game ends before you solve the case or if you make an incorrect accusation, the villain escapes and you lose.
So, sharpen your detective skills, work together, and solve the case in Beyond Baker Street. Good luck, and may your deductive reasoning lead to victory!
- 6 Case Files Cards
- 8 Opportunity Cards
- 8 Motive Cards
- 12 Suspect Cards
- 24 Evidence Cards
- 21 Character Cards
- 4 Reference Cards
- 1 Investigation Board
- 3 Confirm Markers
- 1 Investigation Marker
- 1 Holmes Marker
- Rule Book
Unleash Your Inner Detective
Welcome to Beyond Baker Street, where I need your help to solve a perplexing case before the brilliant Sherlock Holmes. Together, we’ll need to uncover the Suspect, their Motive, and the Opportunity that led them to commit the crime.
We’ll emerge victorious if we can:
- Score exactly 20 on the Investigation track
- Identify the Suspect, Motive, and Opportunity Leads before time runs out, and we surrender to defeat.
Guess what? You’re all going to lose the game, and guess who’s going to win? Sherlock, of course! That is, if any of the following things happen:
1. If the Holmes marker hits 0, it’s game over for you.
2. If the Investigation track goes over 20, consider yourselves defeated.
3. If the very last card in any Lead category is tossed to the Impossible for any reason, sorry, but you lose.
4. If you guys manage to solve the third Lead before the Investigation track reaches 20, you’re out for the count.
Now that we have all that out of the way, let’s talk about how to set things up.
When it comes to playing the game, here are the steps you need to follow:
- First, choose the Case File card you want to try to solve. Remember, the higher the number, the more challenging the case. If it’s your first game, start with Case File 1.
- Next, take a look at the Holmes rating on the Case File card and move the Holmes marker to that spot on the Holmes track. For Case File 1, put it on space 15.
- Now, it’s time to prepare the Lead piles. These piles are made up of Suspect, Motive, and Opportunity cards. Shuffle each pile separately and place 3 cards from each type face down in the 3 Lead sections on the board. Then, flip over the top card from each pile so they’re faceup.
- Don’t forget to place the 3 Confirm markers on the Case File card.
- Finally, put the Investigation marker on the first space of the Investigation track on the left side of the board.
First things first, let’s get set up to play the game. Here’s what you need to do:
Step 1: Shuffle the Character cards and give one to each player. Or, if you want to make things interesting, players can choose their Character cards to either help some players or hinder others. (But for the first game, we’ll skip this step and play without Character cards.)
Step 2: Return any unused Case File, Lead, and Character cards back to the box.
Step 3: Give each player a Reference card. Then, shuffle the Evidence cards and deal them to each player based on the number of players. Here’s how many cards each player should get:
| 2-player game | 6 |
| 3-player game | 4 |
| 4-player game | 3 |
Remember, you shouldn’t be able to see the cards in each other’s hands. It’s all part of the mystery!
Step 4: Finally, take the remaining Evidence cards and place them facedown on the designated area of the board. This will be your Evidence draw deck.
6 The player who has the lowest numbered character card (the one closest to 1) gets to start the game. After that, the game continues in a clockwise direction.
The first game: If you don’t have any character cards, the start player will be the one who last read a story about Sherlock Holmes.
Icons as Clues
Track: There’s this fascinating thing called a track. It’s like a set of footprints or marks left behind by someone. These tracks can tell us a lot about a person, like who they are or where they might be. They’re like clues that detectives use to solve mysteries.
Me: So, there are these people called witnesses who can give information to support what someone thinks. They can be family members, friends, neighbors, or even just people passing by. It’s like they help to confirm what someone believes.
Clue: I love it when I find small clues at the crime scene. It’s like discovering pieces of a puzzle that will lead me to the truth. And you know what’s even better? Following up on those clues and using them to crack the case!
Document: I have a lot of stuff to sift through during this investigation – newspapers, legal documents, maps, deeds, telegrams, and photography.
Game Play
In Beyond Baker Street, we all hold our cards facing out so that everyone can see them except ourselves.
When it’s my turn, I have to choose one of the following actions – I’m not allowed to pass. After my turn, the next player takes their action, and so on, until the game ends.
Assist
Investigate
Confirm
Eliminate
Pursue
Note: Whenever I play a card, whether it’s through the Investigate or Eliminate action, I have to draw a new card from the Evidence draw deck.
Hey there! I have some important information for you! If, by any chance, the Evidence draw deck runs out, don’t fret! It’s not the end of the world. But it does mean that you now have all the necessary information to solve the crime before Sherlock. Pretty cool, right?
Once you’ve taken care of your action, it’s time to check if any end game conditions have popped up. Don’t worry, it’s just a quick check.
If it turns out that the game hasn’t ended yet, then it’s time to pass the baton to the player on your left. The game keeps on going until it comes to a victorious or defeat-filled end. So, hang in there!
Assist
Time to be a hero and lend a helping hand! Choose another player and give them some inside info about their Evidence cards. But here’s the catch: you can only tell them the number of cards they have with a specific Evidence number or Icon. Cool, right?
Now, here’s the deal: you have to tell them about all the cards they have that match that number or icon. But hey, you can’t rain on their parade by telling them they’ve got zilch, okay? We want to keep things interesting!
Just a little heads up: every time someone does the Assist action, our buddy Holmes moves up one space on the Holmes track. Keep this in mind, my friend!
Let’s Investigate
Hey there! I’ve got a cool task for you. Check out the unconfirmed Leads and pick one that catches your eye. Next, grab an Evidence Card from your hand and place it below the chosen Lead. Remember, the trick is to match the icon on the Lead with the one on your Evidence Card. Oh, and you’ll also need to reach the Lead’s value. Exciting, right?
When I play my card, I can draw a new card from the Evidence draw deck.
If I choose to Investigate with an Evidence card, there are a few things that can happen:
- If the Evidence icon on a card matches and the total number of Evidence cards goes beyond the value of the Lead card, things get interesting. Let’s say I have an Evidence card with a value of 3. If I play it to a Lead card with a value of 4, the total number of Evidence cards will exceed the Lead’s value. This means the Lead becomes a Dead Lead. What happens then? Well, the Lead card is moved to the Impossible pile, where it is counted as one of the cards currently in the Impossible. But that’s not all. We also reveal the next Lead card from the pile and shuffle all the Evidence cards that were played to that Lead back into the Evidence deck. If there are no more cards left in the Evidence deck, we create a brand new one from the shuffled cards.
- If the Evidence icon on a card matches and the total number of Evidence cards equals the value of the Lead card, something exciting can happen on a future turn. Let’s say I have an Evidence card with a value of 2. I play it to a Lead card with a value of 2, and now the total number of Evidence cards matches the value of the Lead. On a future turn, any player can use the Confirm action to confirm the Lead. This opens up new possibilities and strategies for the game.
Here’s the rewritten text:
The Evidence icon doesn’t match the Lead.
If the Evidence icon is not the same as the Lead, the number of the Evidence card will be included in the total amount of Evidence needed to confirm the Lead. Just put the wrong Evidence card below the Lead card, making sure that the Evidence Number is still visible. We will not consider the extra Evidence icon.
- The Evidence icon does not match the Lead. If the Evidence icon does not match the Lead, then the Evidence card’s number will be added to the total Evidence required to confirm the Lead. Place the incorrect Evidence card beneath the Lead card so that the Evidence Number is still showing. The added Evidence icon is ignored.
Confirm
When I play Evidence cards that add up to the same value as the Lead card, I can confirm that Lead. This means I’m getting closer to solving the crime! To do this, I place a Confirm marker on the Lead card.
Once a Lead is confirmed, I turn all the Evidence cards played to that Lead face down. From now on, I can’t look at those cards anymore during the game.
By confirming a Lead, I also move the Holmes marker one space further along the Holmes track.
Note: It’s crucial to know that you can only confirm the third Lead once the Impossible has reached exactly 20 on the Investigation track. If you make this confirmation before that point, you’ll lose the game.
Get Rid of
Take one of the Evidence cards from your hand and play it onto the Impossible.
When I play this card, I can eliminate the Evidence, and its number gets added to the Investigation track. The Investigation marker moves forward by the number on the card.
Once I’ve played my card, I can draw a new one from the Evidence draw deck.
Keep Going
When you’re playing this game, there’s a move you can make called discarding. This move involves getting rid of the top card from one of the piles and placing it in a special area called the Impossible. The card you discard is called the Lead card.
Once you discard a Lead card, it becomes a Dead Lead and is put face-down in the Impossible. But it’s not just a meaningless action – the discarded card actually counts towards the number of cards currently in the Impossible.
It’s important to note that if you discard the last Lead card in a pile, something bad happens. You lose the game. So be strategic in your discarding!
Now, let’s talk about what happens to any Evidence cards in the Lead section when you discard a card. These cards could be there because they were originally Evidence, or maybe you put them there to boost the Lead value. Either way, once you discard a Lead card, those Evidence cards are shuffled back into the Evidence deck.
But what if the Evidence deck is empty? Well, in that case, the shuffled cards actually create a whole new Evidence deck. So the game keeps going, even when you run out of Evidence!
The Impossible
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” – Sherlock Holmes.
When I’m playing, it’s crucial for me to make sure that I have strong evidence. That means I need to gather enough eliminated Evidence to reach exactly 20 on the Investigation track.
But here’s the catch: the Impossible can only handle a specific number of cards, as shown on the Case File card. If I add more cards to the Impossible than the allowed amount, the Holmes marker will move closer to 0 on the Holmes track.
Every card I place in the Impossible, whether it’s eliminated Evidence or Dead Leads, counts toward the total number of cards allowed. So I need to be careful about what I add.
There are three ways for me to add cards to the Impossible:
- Eliminate action: When I play a card from my hand face-up into the Impossible, it becomes eliminated Evidence. This also makes the Investigation marker move forward by the number on that card.
When I play the game, Dead Leads, there are two ways I can use the Lead cards. First, I can discard a Lead card facedown into the Impossible section by choosing the Pursue action. This means that the value of the Lead card won’t be added to the Investigation track. Alternatively, I can play an Evidence card during the Investigate action, causing the value of the Evidence to surpass the value of the Lead card. In this case, the Lead card is also discarded facedown into the Impossible section, and its value is not added to the Investigation track.
To win the game, I need to meet certain conditions. The players achieve victory when the third and final Lead is confirmed and the Investigation marker is on space 20. On the other hand, if Sherlock’s markers reach the specific conditions, we suffer defeat. The game ends in defeat and Sherlock’s victory if the Holmes marker reaches space 0 or if the Investigation marker exceeds space 20.
- If, for any reason, the last card of the Lead Section must be discarded, it becomes impossible.
- The third and final Lead is confirmed when the Investigation marker is not on space 20.