Letters from Whitechapel - Tips & Strategies

In case you find a chance/time to do some back-and-forth to throw off constables, it might come extremely handy to conceal your hideout or to buy chance to escape by using misinformation. When you come to a junction, just go once or twice to wrong direction (one or two different direction) before heading towards your hideout, simple trick that get constables confused. If you time it perfectly you hit your hideout before they figure out which is the right direction.

Second trick is when you have decent distance to constables and one of them finds your track, use alley crossing to skip through a block as seemingly in panic to escape the situation. This almost certainly get constables in bloodhound mode. They start conversing on location where you’re not even near of and all inconvenient road blocks are gone, also same applies to snoopy constables around your hideout.

If you are playing against Jack the Ripper as the detectives, remember that you don’t have to arrest him to defeat him. Jack needs to return to his hideout every night. Instead of investing their time in hunting Jack down himself, the detectives can try to cordon off the hideout. Jack cannot enter his hideout through using special movement like the coach or alley, and Jack cannot move through detectives normally without the coach. With these handicaps, if you have a good idea of where the hideout is, you can surround it and provide an effective roadblock. If you can stall Jack long enough to prevent him from entering his hideout, the game is yours.

So, if your game group is like mine, you have a many different personalities present. Letters From Whitechapel, and other co-op games, can present a challenge when it hits the table.

Specifically, aggressive players tend to control the other players actions when they play on the side of the police. While players should work together, it should ultimately be up to the player to determine where they want to move and search for hints. No one player should dictate this and make others uncomfortable…it ruins the experience for everyone but that player.

If the aggressive player suggests the game try to get them to play Jack. The solo mechanic of playing Jack will suit their personal playstyle much better.

Another downside to the game is having quiet, reserved players play the role of police. While you should never be overbearing to the point of playing the game for everyone, the opposite is true. You need to communicate your ideas to the rest of the team to be effective.

If you see one person not participating, try going out of your way to ask them what they think, where they think Jack is, etc. Elicit the response from them and get them involved. It will make their experience much better.

As a whole, even though I really enjoy this game, it is very group specific to whom is present. If I know I have an aggressive player coming over or a lot of deep thinkers I tend to leave this on the shelf and try to find something else to play.

We have found through our plays that if you can get to the Double Event on night three you should be safe for the rest of the game. I recently took 125 as my hide out. By stalling for the first two nights I made the police move the wretched tokens all closer to my hideout. I have had good success with new groups by hanging out at the scene of the crime and following the police out of the area. The central hieout spot allowed me to kill one of the central ladies as the second kill of the Double Event and the final kill to the south. Both let me to take a simple carriage double movement to my hideout.

When we play Letters from Whitechapel, we send the closest detective to the murder to quickly figure out what direction Jack is moving (follows all routes). If the Jack player is smart, he/she usually leaves a few false trails, and the first cop’s job is to figure out which trail is the “real” trail as quickly as possible. This can also give you some idea how far Jack could be down his “real” trail if you count the moves.

This strategy does remove a cop from the “real” chase, but we find the division of labor works out well. usually, more than one player ends up being first cop, so the job doesn’t fall on one person the whole game (which could get boring). Try it out, and see if it works for your team of detectives.

Happy Gaming!

For newbies playing Jack, a good tip is to make a couple quick routes from the kill and backtrack over your path. The police won’t know which one you backtracked over, and it makes narrowing down the location of your hideout just a little harder. Be careful not to end up too close to an officer and risk detection (I like to taunt them). 🙂

Currently, the Police pawns can move up to 2 crossings. After all Police pawns have moved they choose which action to take. Often however a Police pawn is so far out of position due to whatever circumstance that they are effectively useless. Try this alternative: On a Police pawns’ movement they can choose to move 0-3 crossings. If they choose to move the full three (3) crossings they completely forgo any actions for this turn. This adds a layer of choice, strategy, tactics, and overall tension that we’ve found to be even more appealing.

For those who would like to play this game but have had trouble getting it played due to the theme. You can easily reinterpret this game by making Jack a Cat burglar who must choose from a number of potential houses to burgle. Replace the damsel tokens with your Monopoly house tokens and you’re set.

Enjoy.

After playing a few times, I have noticed that there is definitely a sweet-spot for player count. Most specifically, if the game is played with more than 3 players, someone is always left out or starts falling asleep or makes excessive bathroom breaks. This is mainly because one or more players will be forced to only control one officer pawn and if that pawn is off in no man’s land due to Jack’s choice of crime scene; the game has close to zero entertainment value for many consecutive turns.

My advice is to try the game for the first time with 3 players as all 3 players will be actively engaged and Jack will have a good opportunity to hear some table talk and not just “fly blind.” To me, the game plays best with 3, but is also an excellent 2-player deduction game, if a little silent at times.

I haven’t tried this yet, but we have talked about adding a timer to this game. It seems that the detectives turn and tend to linger and drag a little. This can make a 90-120 minute game go for 3 plus hours. It would be great to maybe set a time limit on turns. This is as easy as grabbing an egg timer or an hour glass from any number of games. I think a 5-10 minute limit is enough time, without lending to AP.