There’s something about gathering friends around the table to crack a mystery together that is utterly compelling. Every tabletop option has its own twist; we’ve seen it in board games like Perspectives, and even the popular Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game and Chronicles of Crime, among many others. Going for a more “case in a box” vibe, Masters of Crime is another unique take, this time giving you the opportunity to make decisions as a group, and see how those decisions impact the story that unfolds in front of you.
The Masters of Crime series of adventures include Rapture, Vendetta, Shadows and Incognito, with a new one in Mosquito coming soon. Each box is a self-contained mystery, and my group was given the opportunity to check out Shadows from the batch, where you must break into the famous Bachmann Gallery in Amsterdam, to steal a mysterious painting. How you go about that is entirely up to you; using teamwork, you’ll solve puzzles, follow clues and try to figure out the best path; the box includes a “Heist board”, a deck of cards, clue documents, and you’ll also need to use the Internet to find information throughout.
While other Masters of Crime might be more “crime-solving”, Shadows is very much about pulling off the ultimate heist. In the story, you’ll scout out the gallery in advance, inspect building plans, hack security systems and recruit the ultimate team of thieves to help you pull it off. It’s a fun premise and one that our group definitely enjoyed, especially when seeing if our plan would ultimately come together in the end.
“It turns out that planning a heist is rather entertaining…”
The story and decisions are told through a deck of cards, which you’ll draw to represent locations and characters throughout, along with giving you more narrative beats. It’s a bit of reading and everybody needs to immerse in the experience; I took on the role of “storyteller” reading it out loud, which worked for us (especially considering my flare for the dramatic). What’s neat about Masters of Crime is how the choices you make will have a direct impact on the narrative that unfolds. Turns out that planning a heist is rather entertaining; we all had opinions on what skillsets we needed from our crew and tried our best to factor in the layout of the art gallery, where the security cameras were, escape routes, backstories and more before making our choices.
Ultimately, the choices you make result in certain cards being added to a sort of “outcome” deck to the side, and once you’re satisfied with your plan, it’s locked in and you’ll read out the cards one after the other in order to see how the heist really came together. If you made good decisions throughout your journey, you’ll earn stars, but stuff-ups (like alerting a guard for example, or not having the right team members on the heist) means you’ll get a penalty. You’ll ultimately receive a ranking at the end to see how well you did; but either way, the story is fun to carry out. At the end of the day, after spending maybe two-thirds of our time preparing, the last section of Masters of Crime: Shadows was a delightful narrative sprint to the finish line, with puzzles littered throughout that ranged from playful brainteasers to complex timed teamwork akin to awesome video game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
The playtime is listed as “2-4 hours” on the box, and we completed it in about 3 or so, so that’s about right. We could have taken some more time on discussion, so I can see how it could go for a bit longer with certain groups; either way, this is one you’ll want to block out a night for. I can’t imagine it fun to try and split it over multiple sessions based on how it plays out, so make sure you’ve blocked a whole tabletop night so you can finish it in one sitting.
For an evening of fun, the price is about right, with each Masters of Crime costing around $40-50AUD. It might seem steep for a tabletop game that’s a one-time use, but I prefer to compare it to something like an Escape Room, or even going to the movies (with some popcorn), which easily costs around the same per person. For up to 6 players, that’s maybe $8-12 each for a few hours of entertainment, which I’d say is decent value.
The components are simple and to the point, easy to understand and the gameplay flows relatively quickly. A couple of puzzles required us to hunt around online, for fake business websites, Google Maps information and more, too; while I’ve seen similar puzzles in mystery games before, this adds another interactive component, where some players can search for information while others discuss the merits of your choices. Overall, Masters of Crime makes for an entertaining mystery evening; after doing Shadows, I’m certainly keen to try the rest.
Masters of Crime is available now in all good board game stores. Thanks to VR Distribution for providing a copy for this review.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, hosting bear events and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
