Deception: Murder in Hong Kong | Board Game Masterpieces (Review/How To play)

[Music] poor undercover agent tit whistle he was only 23 years away from retirement which is loads wait a minute no one knew about his assignment but those in the department which means the killer's one of us has hello i'm adam from no rolls bard and welcome to board game masterpieces where we hand select a game that we believe is an absolute essential purchase for any board gamer we give it the works a brief rundown of its history a deep dive review and a how to play all wrapped up in a carpet and dumped into the thames this time around we're talking about deception murder in hong kong possibly the best social deduction party game your money can buy now for anyone who's unsure what a social deduction game is check out laurie's excellent explained video on the subject bing but in brief social deduction games or hidden role games see an informed minority of evil players competing against an uninformed majority of good players informed in this case usually meaning the evil players know who each other are the good players have no idea who anyone is some gamers really don't like these games because they often require lying some people find stressful and they're often quite aggressive because of all human emotions outraged aggression is a lot easier to fake than say innocent surprise me some of the most recognizable games in this field resistance secret hitler werewolf saboteur games i like to be clear have a very behavioral basis for their deduction process less data driven more people inferring guilt from actions or demeanor it's woollier more prone to stubborn hunches which you know could be fun for players who enjoy more aggressive performative play wheeling around on someone and shouting that's exactly what an evil player would say except that in these games it's almost the only thing people use to back up their arguments which means the game descends into that is one evil that is what an evil player would say that is what an evil player would say because as a culture we have learned assumptions based on pop culture cop shows video games like l.a noire right down to sitcoms in which human behavior becomes exaggerated for comedic effect these things teach us that liars act in very certain ways hesitation stuttering over words lack of eye contact being quiet only problem is in real life humans don't fit into easy categories and i've seen a whole bunch of social deduction games where players on the good team have a miserable time because they think about what they're saying they have a stutter they find eye contact uncomfortable or maybe they're just a bit quiet and people use that to frame them for being guilty thank heavens then for deception for my money the most inclusive social deduction game ever made a game actually feels like it cares about its players to the point where more than any other social deduction game i can recommend this not just to people who like shouting jacques at each other but also to people who don't appreciate the negative stress that always comes coupled with social deduction games like the bad cop to their good cop we're gonna do a good cat backup okay it's the oldest game in the book for a reason so the game was originally designed by toby ho under the name cs files published in 2014 by jolly thinkers in hong kong it was revamped by gray fox games in 2015 adapted to the western market with updated production value and a name change to give a bit more evocative flair but still pay homage to the game's birthplace it's now called deception murder in hong kong so how do you play it each player has cards in front of them laid out for everyone to see four blue potential murder weapons four red potential clues left behind at the crime scene who lives behind a calendar i guess calendar man does yeah we're looking for calendar man all these players are dealt cards which they will secretly look at which will tell them if they're a good investigator or one of those no-good murderers who use one of the weapons in front of them to do the killing and left one of their clues behind my god a murderer who's also a flat foot there's no chance in hell they'll be caught unless there's one more role we've got to talk about which is that of a good old-fashioned nerd what oh forensic scientist see the nerd is also on the good team and knows who the merger is and what cards they've chosen but instead of you know just telling everyone who the murderer is they're going to spend the game essentially presenting an autopsy analysis of the crime scene using various clue tiles to give everyone a bunch of seemingly disconnected information about the crime they'll have to sift through that to nab the culprit interesting now to be clear you know the name of the murderer the murderer's personality was greedy okay it's just this would go a lot quicker if you just told us the name yes the victim was thin tell us the name the victim's clothes were neat tell us the name happened on a weekend is is this because we forgot your birthday who can say that's another bit of detective work for you at the start of the game everyone who isn't the forensic scientist will close their eyes then the murderer will open their eyes make eye contact with the scientists and point to the murder weapon and clue cards they've chosen from their own collection so the forensic scientist knows the murder weapon was ice skates and the clue left behind was a cigar this is known i now know this the scientist then takes the cause of death tile the most appropriate one of these location tiles this one will do and then four random clue tiles from the top of a shuffled deck this will create a set of six clue tiles and then without speaking and knowing that ice skates and cigar are the right answer i'm gonna pop one bullet on each tile this is gonna give the investigators the hopefully most useful information which should hopefully as well lead them to guessing ice skates and cigar so in this case under cause of death maybe severe injury if you just got bunked on the head with them but there's a big blade and ice skate would cut someone right that's a shared assumption so let's go with loss of blood now location's a little tricky obviously ice rink is not here but let's go for park there are ice rinks in parks we've all seen home alone 2 lost in new york victims build this is not useful some bad luck here let's go with fit i guess because maybe the victim was the ice skater maybe that will help day of crime that is super useful winter boom bosh easy oh wait now hang on a second we've covered the murder weapon but we barely touched the actual clue let's see noticed by bystander uh smell i suppose smell of cigars and finally motive of crime oh beans uh let's go with money cause cigar people are money people right oh god why don't i just tell them who the murderer is no that's that's not the forensic scientist code so now the forensic scientist is done at least for the first round and it's up to everyone else to put together loss of blood park fit winter smell and money to work out which amongst them is a secret roman and it feels like real honest to god detective work piecing together fragments of information stitching them together to create a narrative because ultimately that's what the forensic scientist is doing trying to tell you the story of a terrible murder with fragmented near conceptual information and you have to suss out potential red herrings eliminate the impossible until all that's left is the bastard and maybe the forensic scientist will sit back and try because everyone says loss of blood in winter definitely ice skates or maybe they'll recall in horror as your team of bread brain cretins looks at all the cards and says park and blood loss definitely mark with the trowel what smells a park smells look one of his clues is a jacket and it's winter it's probably a really expensive jacket guys hang him hang mark as an example to murderers everywhere because of course four out of six of these tiles are luck of the draw some of them are going to be super useful and some of them are going to mean absolutely nothing you just pick something because you had to and oh god some of the players maybe even the murderer are using this data to build an entire case around the wrong guys stop it you monsters after some discussion amongst the players and this is crucial everyone then gets to make a 30-second presentation to the group 30 seconds of speaking about well this is what i think the forensic scientist means these are the reasons why i think i'm in the clear here's who my prime suspects are and why hello thank you for coming to my ted talk uh this is entitled be your own best friend by hanging mark this 30 seconds is by the rules of the game printed clear as day in the rule book uninterrupted remember this when we come to talking about why the game is good remember this after everyone's done their presentation we move on to round two where the forensic scientist is going to take just one more of these clue tiles and use it to replace the least useful tile on the board sort of like parents choosing to have another child because their current youngest has gotten into kid rock like it's not the end of the world it's just let's expand our options here now i can't get rid of the cause of death or location tile but this sucks because in the grand scheme of things victims build yes is definitely the least useful but people are hung up on a [ __ ] jacket for some reason so if i removed winter that might tell them they're wrong but i can't remove winter because of ice skates so i'm just gonna replace victims build here with weather let's go with cold and just hope that some lone maverick says oh yeah winter cold it might be ice skates god the chief's gonna have my ass then the second round happens everyone gets to make their 30-second presentations again now at any point during the game an investigator can try and win the game for their good team by making an official accusation see all players other than the forensic scientists have this tiny badge this is their tiny police badge which authorizes them to solve tiny crimes the player then says i want to solve the crime and says who they think did it so i'm gonna say it was you with the ice skates and the antique if they're bang on hooray the crime is solved the murderer's in the slammer then down to the [ __ ] and hoops for a swift half of nukey brown but if any part of that is wrong hell if they got the right person but just one of the cards they picked is wrong the forensic scientist just says no that player loses their badge their gun their shoes and 360 dollars cash okay it's just their badge but still you made a mistake you are off the force no [ __ ] pension players who cash in their badges on a failed guess aren't out of the game they can still talk make presentations each round but they don't get to try and solve the crime again which means in the first round maybe if one pairing of weapon and clue just immediately pings out to everyone as obvious someone can take one for the team guess super early and at least eliminate that option so you don't spend the entire rest of the game twisting facts to suit theories because that is a surefire way of pissing off sherlock holmes so much he deads your ass with a riding crop after everyone's made a presentation in round two for the last time the scientist takes a clue tile from top of the stack replaces again the least useful clue and round three begins by the end of the last person's presentation round three if the murderer has not been caught they win so those are the base rules of deception murder in hong kong and already there's a lot in there that makes the game way less stressful than other social deduction games it's not unstressful because by design social deduction games have to carry a bit of stress their games are bluff paranoia taking risks it's an integral part of the experience but unlike games like say spyfall or fake artist goes to new york where the evil player is wracked with uncertainty at the start of the game because they literally know nothing or games like resistance and werewolf where the data you're using is pretty much impossible to verify beyond take my word for it or people swearing on the lives of loved ones which by the way is [ __ ] cheating stop doing that you sociopaths unlike those games deception arms both sides with a bunch of information they can use it's conceptual information open to interpretation twisting logic subjectivity and preconceptions into a sometimes tangled mess of pitfalls dead ends and hunches gone awry but it's something good players have information they can use to isolate players for scrutiny beyond just you seem shifty or you're always evil i mean the tile says winter and i have a jacket it's not a personal attack on me it's a logical one and that's so much more palatable when the stakes raise and raise later in the game you're all telling stories of grisly murders saying things like pitch of the scene a man jogging through the park on a misty morning wearing just the most expensive jacket you ever did see but little did he know he was jogging into his grave and one of you is just conjuring absurd stories out of thin air because this game is kind to the evil player because they get to choose their weapons and clues a really clever evil player will look around the table see who's got similar clues and weapons to them who else has weapons that would kill through blood loss and right there they have inbuilt camouflage and the tools needed for the best kind of bluff and evil player can make in a social deduction game which is just playing the game well making logical points engaging meaningfully in the discussion and supporting other players who don't fit the clues the forensic scientist is giving out that is so kind and that's before you get to the fact that every round every player is guaranteed an opportunity to speak uninterrupted that is a gift from the heavens and i do not understand why it isn't a bedrock rule of social deduction games i mean i guess you could just ask your playing group to be quiet when other people talk but have you ever met your friends they're wankers the fact that even the quietest person in your group will get 30 seconds where everyone around the table just has to shut up and listen to them is such a blessing not just socially but also in the game because people who take the time to collect their thoughts before speaking often make really good points the number of times i've seen this game twist on a dime because of a quieter player who just happens to say well i mean winter could mean ice skates as well right and that's just a base set of rules you can use beyond forensic scientist investigator and merger with a high enough play count you can add the accomplice who's on the evil team knows who the murderer is as well as the weapon and clue and is working to make sure they don't get accused by any means necessary or the witness who knows which two players the accomplice and murderer are but don't know who's the murderer and who's the accomplice and they also don't know the weapon or clue they just know that this general area of the table is dodged and have to try and throw suspicion on those two players but they have to do it super subtly because if the murderer is successfully arrested if they can identify the witness the evil team win the game instead that is such an amazing level of mental bluff and social strategy the expansion to the game undercover allies adds the protective detail who starts the game knowing who just the witness is and can draw the evil team suspicion away from them the lab technician who can secretly test just one weapon or clue card around the table to see if the murderer used it or the inside man an evil player who can secretly have one player's badge token removed between the first round and the second hobbling the player who might be closest to making a successful accusation sure blood on the clock towers complexity heart stopping twists and turns might give individual players a social deduction experience that feels longer and more substantial but deception is a game i will bring to every party securing the knowledge it's the best chance of everyone having a good time it's smart layered in terms of bluff mercurial and just look at all of these weapons and clues talk about bloody replayability pun definitely intended it's also cheap it's 30 pounds and if that's not cheap to you then fair enough but the sheer number of games i've played of deception like it takes 20 to 30 minutes i played it so much more than 50 bucks cosmic encounter taking that into account it's a pretty insane price point and if you've got access to five or more players deception murder in hong kong is as close to a compulsory purchase as i feel comfortable sharing and for what for a little bit of money and that's our video hope you enjoyed this episode of board game masterpieces if you did please give it a thumbs up share it around all helps make sure you subscribe to no roles bard as well for more great videos about board gaming including some playthroughs of deception murder in hong kong where you can see first hand just how fun this game is bye bye everybody get on board [Music] you

Channel: No Rolls Barred

Views: 28,954

Keywords: board games, board games 2020, board games review, board game, tabletop, tabletop games, top 10 board games, games, best board games, game, boardgamegeek, board game geek, top ten board games, find board games, game news, most popular board games, best games, hottest board games, best board games 2020, hottest board games 2020, top board games 2020, popular board games, boardgames, no rolls barred, deception murder in hong kong review, deception game review, adam blampied

Id: h9kG6JFZ7hI

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021

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