Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective - Tips & Strategies

I saw this missed in the first couple of games I played with my group and then watched another group miss this on their first couple of games.

Start with the crime scene. Go there first.

Yes, duh. But you’d be surprised at how everyone immediately starts zeroing in on faint clues at the beginning of the first case and end up visiting (no spoiler, just a made-up example) the shoe-shiners first.

Don’t try to out-clever Sherlock before you’ve even seen the crime scene.

Further to another person’s tip on marking visited places, we mark places we could visit, first.

If using coins, you could show Tails for locations for potential visits, but flip to Heads for those you’ve visited.

Or use 2 different coloured or type of markers. We use the black and red infection cubes from Pandemic. You could also use a third colour/type for your standard locations that everyone always forgets from the back of the rulebook (Mycroft, the archives, the gossip columnist, and so on).

Use the London Directory liberally and check it first to find your “clue” point locations in the clue book. I didn’t understand this as well in the first game, and so it made the mystery really really hard to solve.