We have already lived the experience of “the assassin”: there are those who used trump cards, those who then plundered far and wide Lupus in Tabula and any variations. What if I told you that the definitive version exists, the one you can no longer do without, designed in every way to give an experience of a completely different level? What if I also told you that there is a lot of master that manages the game, and a series of mechanics that will make you doubt even your best friend? Let’s find out Blood on the Clocktower.
Blood on the Clocktower it’s a board game Of social deduction created by Steven Medway and published by The Pandemonium Institute. The package, which emulates a large book, contains inside 4 different modules, as well as many packets with roles and various rules. The game is in English, but it’s not difficult to understand, and once you get into the swing of things you won’t need the texts that much.
The players will split between positive and negative roles: as in the best Lupus in Tabula, the objective of the good players will be to send the bad ones to the stake, while the latter will have to eliminate the players one after the other. However, where many stop, Blood on the Clocktower innovates by inserting various rules that are different from the usual.
The bad players will consist of a boss and gods minion: the first will have a disruptive power, not always linked to simple killing, while the minions will have different mechanics depending on which class they are part of. That’s right, here every character is unique, there are no common citizens or minions, and this is also reflected in good players, who will have various different abilities depending on which character they get. Among the good guys, however, we will also find the Outsiders, players who will have the task of sending the bad guys to the stake, but who will have negative powers.
This dynamic entails a constant alert, considering that anyone could bluff at any time. Understanding which roles are in play will not only lead to an awareness capable of giving additional depth to the game, but will allow you to bring to the table plays worthy of the best mastermind in history. All of this within 3 different sets: one dedicated to the classics of the genre, one to fairies and witches, and one to monsters.
To give some examples, among the bad guys we will find a boss capable of killing himself by making one of the minions the boss, or minions who will be able to disguise themselves as good in the various skill tests of the other players, or who will be able to see the board (which we will tell you about soon). Among the good ones, however, we will have players capable of receiving partial information, or even capable of killing another citizen if named.
Nominations!
During the game, when it is night, the bad guys will be able to do their thing and the good guys will be able to activate their abilities. But when it’s daytime, the good and bad players will be on the same page, ready to argue. This is where the magic happens: unlike the information you receive in other games of the genre, in this case there are many more and capable of fitting into each other, or even sometimes contradict themselves. We have described the Outsiders to you: among these we have the drunk, a player who thinks he has a role but who receives wrong information from the Master. The choice here will be at the discretion of the Master himself, perhaps giving conflicting information or adding a little spice to the game.
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All this obviously in the basic set: as you go up, in fact, you can have much more complex roles, and if you end up playing many (and we speak of almost 20 as the maximum) you will be able to access the fourth expansion, which includes travellers And NPCs. In the first case, they will be players who will be able to negotiate for the good guys or the bad guys depending on their will, enter the game whenever they want and leave it just as well. The latter will instead be present in the game and will allow you to perform additional actions during the game.
In the nomination phase, players will be able to nominate another player once: here we will then move on to voting, and at the end of the various nominations and voting, whoever receives the most votes will go to the stake (and I’m already telling you that among the bad guys there is a boss who even when he dies, stays alive by pretending not to play and kills the night, i.e. the Undead).
Let’s talk about ghosts now: over the course of the game, one by one, players will begin to die. For this reason, however, while alive players will be able to vote for the stake as many times as they want, as ghosts they will only be able to do it once. Obviously they will have to stay in the game, close their eyes when necessary and do everything else. This consequently means that all players are present in the game even after they have been killed, a dynamic that increases overall involvement.
In terms of setting, inside the kit you will have everything you need to play: laminated cards with the roles for each player, rules, tokens, markers and much more, all divided into well-kept boxes and placed inside a larger box which, if opened and joined with clothespins (also inside), will become the master’s grimoire, where you can put the various roles and the various reports that you need to write down (and that the Spy, as we were saying, will be able to see).
The more advanced sets finally expand the mechanics: that’s it minions arrive capable of making you drunk or poisoned for a turn, or bosses who, choosing the victim, poison him on the first turn (and therefore his role becomes incorrect, receiving false information) and dies on the next. All this is not limited only to the roles present in the box (which trust me, there are MANY): on the site it is possible to find other sets made by other players, who perhaps use homebrew roles and already existing roles, creating ever new settings.
In short, it is a complete experience, the ultimate in the genre, sold to a price around €150not a cheap figure but what a one time spent, will give you hours and hours of fun. It is a title that truly revolutionizes the genre with rules capable of raising the level of analysis and deduction to a completely different standard, and which once tried will never allow you to go back.
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