Scotland Yard (4 stars)

This is an intriguing game for 2-6 people. There is  1 Mr. X and the others are detectives.Mr. X goes around London using Buses, taxis, subway, ferry and resurfacing every so often while the detectives try to form a team and catch or block Mr. X with the limited number of transport tokens at their disposal.. What works in favor of Mr. X is that every time a detective uses a mode of transport Mr. X gains that token. Mr. X is often on the edge not knowing when the detectives will be eliminate many of the locations and come close. There are two double jumps to help Mr. X in particularly dire situations. The detectives on the other hand can, in general, never be sure which small taxi route could have helped Mr. X escape.

Unlike many games, here different players do not have symmetric roles. . As a result, it is best to play this as return games, taking turns at becoming Mr. X. A single game can easily take an hour or more, making a full round rather long (if that is how you are playing it). That is one big drawback. But the game is addictive and you can find yourself playing late.

Coordinating between the detectives is a big issue. If not done well they quickly run out of viable alternatives to move and can get stuck giving Mr. X practically a free ride. Deciding where Mr. X may be based on where he had surfaced 3 steps ago can be tough. To cheat a bit in figuring that out I have written a perl program (gradually improving; uses mysql db as backend; available on request).

A Java program is available that allows you to practise this as solitaire. Mr. X makes his moves and you act for all detectives. One person manipulating all detectives (they nevertheless have to move in order) is perhaps best lading to least conflicts. All in all, a fun game to try. You can also try to modify it to your own city. Alas, us Angelinos don't have any public transport to write home about, leave alone making a board game. I did try possibly the next best thing though. Modeled a story (in Marathi) after it.