Review Details

Mr. Jack in New York

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on December 20, 2009):

Prior to playing Mr. Jack in New York, I had only played the original Mr. Jack game once or twice. So I had a basic understanding of the rules and how the game played but not really so much to do with the strategy.

However, if you have already played enough board games to handle middle-weight strategy games, then you should have no problem with this at all. In fact, in my first game, I managed to win by escaping as Jack!

There is a lot of thinking involved in this game as the four characters that you can use each turn provides a nearly unlimited amount of choices. As well, you often have to consider the next round of available options as well. As a two player game, this isn't too bad, it's just like Chess. There is a lot of downtime and thinking but you'll often be thinking during that downtime as well.

The game is great fun, as you advance on the learning curve with your main opponent, you will be trying out different approaches and strategies. This, along with the fact that Jack can be a different character every time means that you'll never play the exact same game twice. However, this game can be hard to introduce to new players as you'll often have lots of experience over them, leading to skewed games. But if you are a good teacher and go a bit easy on them while teaching them some basic strategies, it should be no problem.

Mr. Jack in New York feels quite different than the original Mr. Jack. The abilities are different, but the biggest change is the dynamic board where you can add more and more tiles. It's interesting as the board can feel both too big and too small at times, due to its volatile nature. Unlike the original Mr. Jack, the character tokens don't actually move as much around as you will most likely focus on tile placement and controlling options through the board itself. In other words, it's more of an environmental game as opposed to a positional one. However, there are still positional play involved with the informant and in capturing the exposed Jack.

Overall, I enjoy Mr. Jack in New York a lot. In terms of recommending the original or this one, I would say that it would not hurt to have both in your collection as they play a bit differently and are both enjoyable.