Stats:
No. of players: 3-6
Amount of time to play: 45 min
Age requirements: 8+
Set-up time: 5 min

Scotland Yard won the Spiel des Jahres award in 1983 and has been printed several times in many languages. The latest edition includes a 2 player variant and a beginners game.

Description of Scotland Yard:

In Scotland Yard, one player is Mister X and the rest of the players are detectives. This is a hidden-information game that takes place in London. You take taxis, buses and trains around the city trying to elude the detectives as Mister X or trying to catch him as the detectives.

If you have never played the game before read my overview of the rules and review here. The rest of this post I am going to talk about the changes made in this newest edition. These changes include new rules for the normal game, a 2 player variant and a beginner game.

When starting to regular game detectives get 11 taxi tickets instead of 10 and Mister X always gets 5 black tickets. Also if there are just 2 or 3 detectives in the game you use Bobbies. Bobbies are like detectives but they don’t use tickets and are moved collectively by all the detectives. The biggest change is that detectives and Bobbies can take their moves in any order. Before turns were played in clockwise order.

The two player game is similar to the regular 3 to six player game. Except one player has 2 detectives and 2 Bobbies. The detectives combine their tickets at the start of the game and each may use any ticket from the combined pool.

The beginner game is for younger kids, only allows up to 4 detectives and is shorter. Mister X wins if he avoids the detectives for 13 rounds. The detectives win if they capture Mister X before the 13 rounds are up. You also see Mister X’s last location in the beginner game except for rounds 3, 8 and 13. Mister X gets one black ticket and one double-move ticket to start the game. The detectives may move in any order and don’t require tickets to move. No one may travel by underground and the start positions are set and not random.

A Quick Review of Scotland Yard:

The latest reprint of Scotland Yard is fun and offers some new ways to play the game. The beginner game is especially good if you have young kids.

The changes to the base game play fine. They are not too different and if you don’t like them you can always download an older version of the rules and use them.

If you don’t have a version of this game you should pick up this edition. If you already own the game you can just download the updated rules.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 2 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6