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BOARD GAME REVIEW
Kill Doctor Lucky (Director’s Cut)

You and others been invited to the mansion of Doctor J. Robert Lucky, who you’ve hated – for your own reasons – for as long as you can remember. This is your chance to kill him! What you hadn’t expected was that all of the other guests want to kill him, too. But he’s not called Lucky without good reason, and it will take some planning and some luck of your own to do away with the doctor.

Cheapass Games was founded in order to provide game players with very affordable games by foregoing common game pieces and colour in their card-based products. Supplied with the Kill Doctor Lucky kit is an 8-piece game board, a deck of 96 cards, and a rule book. In order to keep track of themselves and others, the players must each get an identifiable piece (“pawn”) plus one more Master Pawn to represent Doctor Lucky. (Note: While this review is based on the 2002 Director’s Cut of the game, the newer releases since Titanic Games bought the rights in 2006 are in colour and come complete with pieces.)

To begin the game, the mansion is put together from the 8 game board pieces, which creates an overview of the building, hallways and rooms separated by walls and doors, with rooms named and numbered. Everyone starts in room 0, the Drawing Room, while the good doctor is placed randomly: flipping deck cards over until a room card is flipped, which will be his starting place. The deck is shuffled and six cards are dealt to each player. There are various cards in the deck, explained shortly.

The doctor is moved between each player’s turn. He always travels up the numbered sequence of rooms, whereas the players can go in any direction on their turn. He skips over unnumbered/unmarked hallways in his movement, though players must count hallways in their own limited movements. And while each player wishes to kill the doctor, such a deed can only be attempted in a room where no other player has line of sight from anywhere else in the mansion. Where the doctor will go next is obvious to everyone, and everyone wants to get him alone in a room where no one will be able to see them, which is where careful planning of how to use your cards to your best advantage comes into play.

From the starting player, each will have his/her turn, during which several things can be done; some as well as others, and some exclusively. You can move one space, play cards, draw another card from the deck, and/or make a murder attempt. Cards in the deck include Room cards (which allow you to move yourself or the doctor to the indicated room), Move cards (which allow you to move the indicated number of spaces as well as your one free space), Weapon cards (which increase your attack value during a murder attempt, some of which are more deadly in certain rooms), and Failure cards (which are cumulative amongst opposing players, and help prevent murder attempts by other players from being successful).

Thus the game becomes more complex: while the doctor normally moves in a simple pattern, numerous cards can be played in order to set yourself up for a sweet coup de grace: lying in wait for the doctor in a room no one else can get to (or at least see) in time, or perhaps sending the doctor to the room number one down from your own, so he will walk in and trigger your chance at murder most foul. And therein lies another twist. While the turns initially go from one player to the next as per usual, if the doctor moves into a room where a player currently sits, it becomes that player’s turn once again. Planning your moves and card play far enough in advance can sometimes set yourself up for a series of turns in a row while the other players are denied their turns again and again. Therefore, equal opportunity, and chances at the killing blow, can readily go right out the window. Which is exactly as it should be: use every edge (or blunt object) to your advantage in your murderous pursuit!

Which brings us to the attacks themselves. Even if you do not hold a Weapon card in your hand, you can make a murder attempt on the doctor. It is a weak attack, however, and the merest of Failure cards played by any opponent will have Doctor Lucky walk past you to the next room, oblivious to what so nearly befell him. As mentioned, Weapons cards increase your attack’s power, thereby forcing your opponents to play more potent Failure cards to undo your dirty work. However, even while preventing your attack from being successful, opposing players must weigh their card playing options carefully. On the one hand, they of course wish for your attack to fail, so will play Failure cards toward that end. But Failure cards are played by your opponents, and the Failure total is accumulated, in sequence. So each player will play a Failure card to contribute to your not succeeding, but may play a lower powered Failure card in order to force other players to pitch in and help out, lest the attacking player win.

The catch is that the Failure cards must at least total the value of the attack, or the attack is successful, the doctor has been killed, and the game ends. So which Failure cards you play, if any, becomes a balancing act: you may wish to pitch in to thwart the attack, yet you want your opponents to use more of their Failure cards than you do in order that your own later attacks have a better chance at success. But the buck may be passed too far down the line, and the final opposing player may not have enough Failure points to stop the attack from succeeding.

Further adding to this dynamic is the fact that while most cards are discarded into one pile for re-shuffling and re-use as the game goes on, the Failure cards are discarded permanently after one use. Thus, even more plotting is required: a limited number of Failure cards assures the doctor will be successfully murdered by someone somewhere. When is it best to play a Failure card, and when best not to?

And it’s the flavour text on those Failure cards that create a lot of the enjoyment of the game. Players are encouraged to read the flavour text as they play their Failure cards, to let the would-be murderer know exactly how they were undone. Some are lacklustre, though it’s the offbeat ones that are most memorable:

“You suddenly find yourself unable to recall whether a straight beats a flush.”
“You are frozen in place by the garish melody of a passing ice cream truck.”
“The Doctor wheels around and accidentally hits you in the head with a shovel.”
“A wizened kung fu master intervenes on the Doctor’s behalf, then vanishes.”

… or one friend’s particular favourite:
“You forget.”

PROS

Kill Doctor Lucky is a game quickly set up and learned, even for younger players. Though there is a definite degree of luck involved – as in any game where cards are shuffled and drawn – but luck alone won’t often win the game; success will be found more from planning and using the cards you have to your best advantage. And in typical Cheapass Games fashion, the game is extremely portable, entirely contained within one of their standard cardboard boxes measuring less than 10×7x1” in size. There’s even plenty of space left inside for generic pawns.

CONS

While the game does have dynamics making it more fun and complex than it could have been, I find a crowd will only want to play it once or twice in one sitting, which I chalk it up in part to the fact that the simpler aspects of the game get a bit stale when replayed too frequently. Even the flavour text, one of the nicer touches of the game, get a bit tired when you’ve heard them more than once in the last hour or so. Their freshness is part of their appeal, and rehashing them more than once every couple of weeks, or so, starts to lose part of the fun.

CONCLUSION

All told, Kill Doctor Lucky is suggested on gaming nights and grabbed when babysitting the niece and nephew more often than any of the small number of Cheapass Games we have. A hands-down favourite. It’s very portable, it’s quickly and easily set up and understood, and its dynamics tend to offer more variation than the others we’ve tried out, which are fun, but simply aren’t Kill Doctor Lucky.

Even if you only play it once in a while, it’s a fun game that is well worth the Cheapass price.

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