London After Midnight 2: Sherlock in Hell
London After Midnight 2: Sherlock in Hell Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 30 character cards: each one with a special skill.
- 6 faction cards: 3 for "heroes" and 3 for "monsters".
Setup
Each player receives a randomly dealt faction card that shall be kept face down during play; remember to discard any remaining faction cards. Before the game starts, players must check their Faction, being sure to keep it secret until the end of the game. Shuffle the character cards to form a deck, flip the top one to start a discard pile, then have each player draw a card to begin! The last player to have read a Sherlock Holmes tale goes first – the youngest of those if there's a tie - then play continues clockwise.
How to Play
Players have two options on their turn: either play a card from your hand to the table, or draw a card from the top of the characters card deck.
Players may only have a maximum of three cards in hand. They must draw a character card if they have none in hand or play a card if they have already three. There is, however, no limit to the amount of cards in play on the table.
When you play a card from your hand, you place it in the area in front of you, which is called your neighborhood. You may not play cards from your hand to another neighborhood.
When you play a card, read the Special Skill text. Some Skills are prefaced with the words "you can", meaning that this is an optional action. All others Skills are mandatory, even if they have a negative effect on you. Each card can only be played once. Also pay attention to the black or white icon(s) in the upper-right corner of the card; these will affect your final score!
End of Game
When the last character card is drawn, the game ends immediately.
All players reveal their faction cards.
If the word "Heroes!" is printed on it, you are a hero. If the word "Monsters!" is printed on it, you are, obviously, a monster.
Victory
Check all cards in your neighborhood, totalling up the black and white icons on your cards. Heroes score one point for each white icon but lose one point for each black icon. Monsters score one point for each black icon and lose one point for each white icon. Remember, some character cards have more than one icon on them!
Your faction card also shows the names of two in-game characters; if you have one or both characters in your neighborhood, you score a single bonus point.
Whoever has the most points is declared the winner. In the case of a tie, the winner is the highest scorer who was last to play.
Woman in Black
There is a third faction in the game, the "neutral side". The neutral side has no faction card of its own, so none of the players will belong to it.
In Sherlock in Hell the only representatives of this faction are the Woman in Black cards. Those cards have no Special Skills but, at the end of the game, each one will score one point whether you are a monster or a hero.
A Woman in Black is immune to any Special Skill that targets a "hero" or a "monster" but not to Special Skills that targets just a "card".
Short Games
Once all the players know every card of Sherlock in Hell by heart, the game becomes much faster and brutal. Also, you have to remember that the more people play, the shorter each game will be. If you want a longer playing time, it's as easy as playing three or four games, keeping track of the points at the end of each game. The player with the most points at the end of the last game will be the winner!
London After Midnight
Sherlock in Hell can be played separately or as an expansion of the original London after midnight. If you decide to put together both games, the number of players goes up to 10.
The Special Skill of Sherlock Holmes can put both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the table, something that was impossible before. If this happens you have to decide to either discard both cards or assume that a rift in the space-time continuum allows both characters to exist at the same time.
Also, you will discover very soon that both Satan and Queen Victoria are powerful but very, very fragile. Don't change it! It's a deliberate decision!!