Our step-by-step guide to how to play Detective Club Board Game. This is a submit and judge party game mixed with a deduction one. There are communication hurdles and much of the game comes down to how you can spin things to your fellow players. There are other games that are similar to this, but none that master this mixture of components in such a meaningful way. Learning how to play Detective Club is incredibly easy and will have you figuring out clues in no time.
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HOW TO PLAY DETECTIVE CLUB – WHAT IS IT?
“Detective Club” is once again opening its doors to new members. You are also invited, but first you must prove yourself as a real detective. Analyze all the evidence, listen to the witnesses and try to find out who is lying among your group. Only the most observant and the most cunning will be able to succeed and achieve victory. Welcome to to the club!
In the game, on each round, one of the players secretly teams up with another — the Conspirator — and tries to make them guess a secret word using just two illustrated cards! Other players are detectives, who also know the word, but don’t know the identities of each other. Detectives have to find out who the conspirator is, making sure they don’t get accused by their fellow players!
HOW TO PLAY DETECTIVE CLUB – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 45 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play Detective Club the popular submit and judge deduction party game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Put Out Victory Point Tokens
To kick off how to play Detective Club setup, take the two sided victory tokens and put them in a pile near the center of the table, accessible to all players.
2. SETUP | Choose Player Colors
Everyone chooses one of the 8 colors. They then take the corresponding magnifying glass marker and the “I” and “II” player board strip. Place the strip in front of each player, this will be where cards are placed.
3. SETUP | Evidence Card Deck and Starting Hands
Shuffle the deck of evidence cards with the yellow question marks on the back and put the stack in the center of the table accessible to all players. Each player draws 6 cards to form their starting hand.
4. SETUP | Setup First Player
Randomly choose a starting player. Give them a stack of the “?” books equal to the total number of players minus 1 and the pencil. This is the last setup step of how to play Detective Club before gameplay.
5. GAMEPLAY | Step 1 | Come Up With Clue
The active player is known as the “informer”. When it is a player’s turn, they look at their hand an come up with a clue (secretly, don’t say) that will correspond to two of the cards in their hand they will play.
6. GAMEPLAY | Step 2 | Give Out Clue To All But One
After secretly coming up with the clue, the “informer” writes that down on all of the “?” notebooks except for one. They then shuffle up the books and give one to every player. This means one person does not know the clue and nobody knows who that person is. The goal will be to expose that person.
7. GAMEPLAY | Step 3 | Play Cards
Starting with the active player (“informant”) players play one card at a time that corresponds with that clue. If they do not have any good cards, they need to just do your best. If you are the one who doesn’t know the clue, you just need to do your best with what you see. This process goes around the circle twice so everyone will have played a total of two cards. Place them above the “I” and “II” symbols on your board respectively.
8. GAMEPLAY | Step 4 | Discuss
After everyone has played their cards, the “informer” announces what the clue was. Starting with the player to their left, they need to explain to everyone how their cards match the clue, proving of coarse that they knew the clue. You will need to lie or stretch as necessary.
9. GAMEPLAY | Step 5 | Vote
After all players have made their case, players now vote on who they think the liar was. The “informer” does not participate in the vote. Starting with the player to their left, players go one by one putting their magnifying glass on the board of the player they think is the liar
10. GAMEPLAY | Step 5 | Vote | Scoring
The liar is revealed and victory points are given out based on the following – (1) Each detective who placed their voting on the liar’s board gets 3 VP | (2) If there are 0 – 1 markers on the liar’s board, they get 5 VPS and the Informer gets 4 VPS | (3) If there are 2 or more player markers on the liar’s board, they and the informer get no points.
11. GAME END | 1 – 2 Loops Around The Circle
The game ends when each player has been the informer once (6 – 8 players) or twice (under 6 players). See, learning how to play Detective Club is easy.
12. WINNING | High Score Wins
Whoever has accrued the most victory points throughout the game is the final winner. If there is a tie, then all tied players share the victory.
HOW TO PLAY DETECTIVE CLUB – KEY INFORMATION
GAME VARIATIONS
Thematic Game – Before the first round, players choose a topic. As the informer, choose a word on your turn. You must make sure your word matches the overall topic chosen. Topics can be very general or specific depending on how difficult you want to make things.
No Discussion Please – To shift the focus of the game you can shift up the discussion phase of the game. In this case, everyone starts voting immediately as soon as everyone has put down two cards. This removes the whole shuck and stretch aspect of the game.
GAME CONTENTS
- 168x Evidence Cards
- 68x Victory Point Tokens
- 8x Voting Tokens
- 8x Player Markers
- 7x Notebooks
- 1x Pencil
- 1x Rulebook
HOW TO PLAY DETECTIVE CLUB – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play Detective Club party game. There are communication hurdles and much of the game comes down to how you can spin things to your fellow players. There are other games that are similar to this, but none that master this mixture of components in such a meaningful way. Learning this game is very easy and as you can probably tell, the hilarious things that come out of people’s mouths will be endless.
