A Study in Emerald Board Game

This is an excellent game. The mechanics implement smoothly. It is also a good twist to the competive co-op. It merges Cthulhu and Victorian era.

Bought as a gift. The price was reasonable. He loves this game and the craftsmanship that was put into the production of this game.

One ruptured corner, but otherwise excellent

The basis for Martin Wallace's "A Study in Emerald" is the Neil Gaiman's short story of the same name. A spin on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic short story "A Study in Scarlet," Gaiman places ace detective Sherlock Holmes in a grim world where H. P. Lovecraft's horrible Cthulhu monsters rule as monarchs. The story takes place in the 1880s, 700 years after the elder gods conquered the Earth. Now, Restorationists seek to restore human dominion over the planet by assassinating the elder gods, while loyalists work to maintain their rule.The game itself really encompasses two basic ideas: Deck-building and area control. A beautiful Cthulhu-esque map of Europe shows cities with their attendant deck piles and elder gods. Player's move their agents around the board, giving them certain bonuses when in certain cities. Players take turns playing cards from their hands in order to bid on cards on the board, bid on control of cities, move their agents around the board, or gain influence cubes for bidding. Players can also attempt to assassinate or hide (protect) elder gods. This is done using a basic deck building mechanism in which the cards bid upon can later be claimed and added to your hand, and most actions can lead to each player gaining victory points.What makes this game unusual is the loyalty mechanic. At the beginning of the game each player is dealt a loyalty card, indicating if they are a loyalist or a restorationist. This is not such a big deal as in a game like, say, Battlestar Galactica, in which you do everything in your power to avoid letting anybody in on your identity. Rather, each player will engage in behavior that will tip off other player's as to their identity not long into the game. Which side you are on is important, however, as certain mechanics in the game can effect one side or the other's final score at the end. The most important consequence, however, is that the lowest scoring player's side cannot win. So if you have far and away the most victory points and someone on your team is dead last- you will not win. It behooves you to try to learn and keep track of who does what, as opportunities will present themselves to increase your team's final score, or take down the other side's. It is a very interesting mechanic that I haven't seen before, and makes for very challenging strategic considerations.There are some problems with the game. At times some of the mechanics feel a bit wonky, and some things, like the War and Revolution tracks, seem like they should carry more weight than they do. The components, cards and board are all top quality production, and yet the price that is being asked is a bit steep. I would definitely recommend that you play it before you try it. I'm still trying to wrap my head around a lot of it- the fact that I want to makes me feel like this game has generally succeeded.

I'm a big fan of complex Martin Wallace games (Age of Steam, Brass, etc) so A Study in Emerald was an automatic preorder for me. I played it five times at BoardGameGeekCon last year, after which I went absolutely crazy waiting for my own copy to arrive; this is definitely one of the top games of 2013 for me.The year is 1882 and the great old ones (essentially, aliens so strange that to look at one will drive you out of your mind) have ruled the Earth for a millennium. Players (2 through 5) take on the role of secret agents who are attempting to either overthrow the great old ones or protect them. Various secret agents are involved, many of whom may be double agents (and two of whom may be triple agents). You might see vampires, zombies, and Sherlock Holmes...A Study In Emerald takes its theme from the Neil Gaiman short story of the same name (which you can find for free online). It's a deckbuilding game combined with a board game (like A Few Acres of Snow); taking actions on the board allows you to get cards, which let you take other actions. Once you have a certain number of points (or if you are a Restorationist and go mad attempting to kill the great old ones), the game ends and teams (determined randomly at the start) are revealed; the player with the fewest number of points disqualifies his entire team and whoever's left with the most points wins. There are three cards for each team, all of which are used in the random draw, so a four-player game could be 2-2 or 3-1 and a 3-player game could be 2-1 or 3-0 (if everyone is on the same team, obviously the disqualifying rule doesn't apply). So far I think I may like this best with five, which is unusual as I normally prefer four players in a game.I find this pretty fun to teach as you get the strangest looks from people when you go on about all the strange, disparate elements that made their way into the game and somehow manage to work together. The rulebook is actually the best I've seen for a Martin Wallace game, although the wording for one rule is wrong and a few things are unclear (but are clarified on the boardgamegeek forums). Overall I thought it was a lot of fun and look forward to many more plays. The game takes around two hours and packs a lot of play into that time.This is a limited edition that is not going into general distribution (which is why Amazon itself won't be selling it - you can only get it from Treefrog, CoolStuff, and resellers); Treefrog has said that there might be a second edition published for general distribution but not before 2015.

This is an extremely subtle game. There are so many small strategies, all of which interrelate with each other, that it will take many attempts to even begin to formulate a coherent overall approach. Highly recommended in its five-player version.The theme is also very attractive, if you love either Holmes or Lovecraft. It virtually begs for a series of fiction in the world, from the viewpoint of one of the operatives. If Gaiman doesn't write sequels, someone else should!