It’s the night before the game Clue happens, and you and a few of your friends are gathered at the house of Dr. Lucky, the famous philanthropist. The thing is, you really can’t stand that crazy old man, and if you are given the chance you’d love to kill him. Sound like a macabre start to a game? It is. But the Killing Doctor Lucky game is hilarious to play, and is a great bit of gameschooling.
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How to play the Kill Doctor Lucky game
Every player starts off in the same room. On your turn, you can move 1 space and investigate (draw a card), or play any number of movement cards to move your pawn or Doctor Lucky to a different room.
At the end of your turn, Doctor Lucky moves to a new room in his house.
If you manage to get yourself alone in a room with Doctor Lucky you can try to kill him. But you have to be alone in a room with him AND no one can see into the room you’re in, and the house has all of these open doors, half walls, and a whole slew of ways other people can see you. So annoying.
Let’s say you’ve managed to fulfill all of the requirements and you try to kill Doctor Lucky, you can just go with the finger poke of doom, OR use one of any number of weapons randomly in the house.
You might cut off blood flow to his head with the tight hat. Stab him with the cavalry saber from the Civil War, or even shoot him with the canon.
Doctor Lucky isn’t called Doctor Lucky for nothing, the old man has more luck than he has any business having. After you’ve made your attempt, the other players get to try and stop you. Doctor Lucky might suddenly bend down to pick up a piece of lint, or randomly dodge and weave around the room. There is any number of ways he could get away.
If no one distracts Doctor Lucky or you, you successfully kill the old man, and now would be a great time to launch into the game of Clue to solve the great mystery of who killed Doctor Lucky, or play Mysterium and let Doctor Lucky’s ghost communicate with you…. There is any number of ways you could do this.
Strategy for Doctor Lucky
This is a good introduction to light strategy. There are many elements of the game that are highly deterministic. Doctor Lucky always walks the same way through his house. You control how much you move and where. You can also control when you get extra turns (when Doctor Lucky moves into your room, it instantly becomes your turn, you know just in case he’s all alone and no one is in line of sight).
The big thing you want to manage in your resources is the failure cards. They are the only limited resource, everything else gets shuffled back into the draw deck. You have to manage the desire to force others to spend their failure cards so they don’t ruin your attempt, but at the same time, you don’t want to hold on to them too long, because what if the other player doesn’t have a card and that lets your opponent win the game?
Final call on Killing Doctor Lucky
It’s just enough strategy to get you thinking, but not so much that non-strategy game players get the deer in the headlights look. We like to play this with large groups because unlike most board games it doesn’t have a limit on the number of people (though I will say if you get more than 10 people the game takes a long time).
Huh, the official game has a max of 8, which I have to say is probably a good call. The sweet spot seems to be 6 players.
You might have noticed my version looks different from the version for sale now. That’s because I bought our copy more than 10 years ago back when the company making it went with the theory of “make the games cheaply, and let the buyer provide the dice and pawns.” This is back before the current trend of amazing artwork and pawns in board games. Back then Killing Doctor Lucky was $8, now it’s a fancy board game with amazing artwork and pawns. Now it’s a full-price board game, which is amusing to me.
My idea of the most amusing game night ever
- Saving Doctor Lucky– I don’t have a review of this, but you’re on the Titanic and figure if you’re going to die anyway, why not save the crazy old man and be known as the “guy who saved the famous philanthropist Doctor Lucky”
- Doctor Lucky’s Mansion is Haunted-warning I haven’t played this version, but it’s a twist on the Doctor Lucky formula
- Kill Doctor Lucky– get rid of the annoying old man
- Mysterium– call in the psychic to help you figure out who did it
- Clue– catch the killer
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