Episode: 2571
Title: HPR2571: Kill Dr. Lucky
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2571/hpr2571.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 05:54:47

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This is HPR Episode 2,571 entitled Kill Dr. Lucky and is part of the series Table Top Gaming.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 19 minutes long and Karima Clean Flag.
The summer is Klaatu Reviews Abroad Game.
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Hey there everyone, this is Platyue.
You're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
Get ready for another board game review.
This time around I want to talk about clue or clue due.
Except I'm not going to talk about either of those two things.
But if you've ever, if you grew up in, certainly in America.
If you grew up in America, then you know clue.
And if you grew up elsewhere, you may or may not know.
I don't really have a good measure of how popular it is outside of America.
But you might know something called clue due or clue dough.
I'm not really sure how you're supposed to say it.
But you know the game, right?
There was a movie made out of it too, really hilarious movie.
There's a board, it's a board, and it's the layout of a mansion.
And someone has killed the host, Mr. Body.
And no one knows who's killed the host of the dinner party or whatever.
And so you have to go around to each room and you collect a clue.
And really when I say you collect a clue, you basically play Go Fish.
You sort of make this accusation.
You say I think Miss Scarlet did it in the billiard room with the candlestick.
Or I think there's actually a mechanic.
That's how we always played it as kids.
We would always just accuse people left and right.
I think the actual game rules if you read them as an adult.
It's a big risk with accusing people falsely.
And so to actually, to gather clues, you sort of, you propose something.
And there's a secret thing where you sort of each player kind of,
if they have the card that you've said that you've mentioned,
they have to show it to you, but they can't show it to anyone else.
It's pretty clunky to be honest.
Like I gotta be honest, it feels clunky.
Even if you're not looking at it from sort of like,
oh, a game design perspective or whatever, it's pretty clunky.
Because you have to make sure that you're showing people things very secretly.
So you're sharing cards.
And if anyone else sees that card, then the game mechanic has just been broken.
Because now more than one person has obtained a free clue.
Or someone has obtained a free clue.
And if you falsely accuse someone, if I recall correctly,
you're just out of the game.
You have to sit out the rest of the game.
So if you do that too soon, then you can go wash dishes because nobody else,
you're no longer in the game and you're not going to have any fun.
So it's a pretty clunky game in retrospect.
And as kids, even, I don't, I mean, it was definitely better than monopoly.
But it wasn't the greatest game ever.
And it always seemed like there needed to be something else.
And now there is.
And it's called, who killed Dr. Lucky?
Who killed Dr. Lucky is a really entertaining board game
that takes the idea of clue, or Cludo, and flips it on its head,
in which the board is quite similar to Clu, a layout of a mansion.
And you all assemble at a house at this mansion that is represented by the board.
And rather than trying to figure out who killed Dr. Lucky, your host for the evening,
you are each trying to kill Dr. Lucky.
So throughout the game, you're moving your pieces around the board
for the opportunity to be in a room alone with Dr. Lucky out of sight of any of the other players
and you attempt to murder him.
Unfortunately, Dr. Lucky, as his name suggests, is just, he has uncanny luck
and he's really difficult to kill.
So the way that this manifests itself is that you choose a player at the beginning of the game,
choose a character.
And they are, you know, strikingly similar to the Clu characters.
There's no Miss Scarlet, but maybe there's a Miss Redmond or something.
You know, everyone sort of has, it's the same motif.
It is very consciously Clu turned on its head.
So you pick a character.
They're all the same.
It doesn't really matter who you pick.
And you all start in a room on the board somewhere.
And Dr. Lucky, as I recall, starts somewhere else.
Now, nobody plays Dr. Lucky. Dr. Lucky is the game.
So you're just like, for instance, pandemic.
You're actually playing largely against a game mechanic rather than against each other.
Although you really are playing against each other because the winning condition is that
whoever kills Dr. Lucky wins.
So I guess you're not, there's nothing like pandemic.
You're not playing against a mechanic.
But that is what controls Dr. Lucky is the game.
He's automatically controlled by the game.
You are able to attempt to kill Dr. Lucky whenever your character piece,
whenever your player piece and the Dr. Lucky player piece are in the same room together.
And out of direct eye line of other players or rather player pieces
because obviously everyone's looking at the board and they can all see the player pieces.
Or yeah, the pieces.
So if you are, for instance, let's just say that you are in the Lancaster room
up in the right corner of the board game.
You and Dr. Lucky are there.
Now, if there's a player in the armory right next to that room,
then that player can see through the door and would see you attempt the murder of Dr. Lucky
while you're in the Lancaster room.
So you couldn't do it then.
You have to wait for that player to either move on or for you to move on
and for Dr. Lucky to move on as well.
There are other rooms with staggered doors.
So maybe the person just adjacent to you would see you.
But if there are two rooms over, they can't.
They don't have a direct line of sight into your room.
And so that's legal.
There are other rooms where the line of sight progresses through,
you know, two or three different rooms.
So very difficult to kill Dr. Lucky in that room.
But it's a really clever mechanic because the opportunity to get to Dr. Lucky
becomes a real thing.
I mean, you're chasing this guy across this board,
but he's moving away from you at a steady pace.
So then you start calculating, okay, well, I need to be,
I need to get to the library.
Three, you know, two turns before he gets there.
Because I know that then my friend will go and then Dr. Lucky will go
and then my other friend will go and then Dr. Lucky will go.
And then it'll be my turn.
He'll have arrived in the library.
And ideally, no one else will be adjacent to me and I can try to kill him.
Of course, other players may try to thwart you and position themselves
so that they're in the armory next to the library,
such that when he arrives in the library,
you are thereby not able to kill him.
You have to attack from a lot of different angles, literally.
So that's just the movement.
And that's governed by a standard mechanic of,
if this is how many moves you have per turn.
Not a lot of variation in that.
Other than, like I say, depending on how many players you have,
there may be inconvenient moments where people just kind of pop up into your room
or in an adjacent room and thwart all of your plans.
In addition to movement, though, you get some number of cards.
When you first start the game, you get, I think,
it's five cards in your hand automatically.
And that's a good place to start.
But it's a resource that you're going to use up in ways that I will describe in a moment.
So you will need to replenish your card hand at some point.
The only way that you can get cards is if you are in a room out of sight of anybody.
So if Mr. Lucky can see you through a doorway or whatever,
or if he's in the room, you cannot draw a card.
If someone else is either in the room with you or can see you through a doorway,
you cannot draw a card.
If you are in a room completely out of sight of other people,
you are able to draw a card.
So cards are precious.
And that's an important concept because they get used for two different things,
two separate mechanics.
So first of all, let's talk about killing murder.
When you start the game, you have a basic strength of one.
So if you're in a room alone with Dr. Lucky, you can try to kill him.
And your base strength is one point of damage, I guess.
So you could try to kill him with one, but more often, I think.
Actually, I don't really know. Maybe you need a card.
But more often, you're going to play a card.
And one of the cards, for instance, here is it's a weapon card.
It says so on the top.
And it says it's a crape pan.
So you're going to bang him over the head with a crape pan.
On the card, it states that it is worth two points.
And under that, it says that it is worth four points in the kitchen.
So you've got your one strength.
You can play this weapon card.
If you're in the kitchen, that's an extra four.
So now you're attacking Dr. Lucky with five points of damage.
Let's call it.
Now remember, you can only attack Dr. Lucky if you're out of
the eye line of all the other player pieces.
So the very opportunity to attack him is only there.
If you're alone in the room with Dr. Lucky with no other player present
and no other player in a room that they can with a line of sight
into your current location.
Okay, so now that you're trying to kill him,
the other players are going to kind of play on his behalf.
So they need to boost his luck to outweigh the damage
that you have just attempted to deal Dr. Lucky.
And the way that they do that is that they play cards against your card.
This is a little bit of a clunky mechanic, at least in the addition.
I shouldn't say mechanic.
The mechanic is fine.
The design is a little bit clunky in the addition that I have.
And that's, it's simply because there's a lot going on on the cards
that you have in your hand.
So each card has their, the damage points in a Roman, not a Roman numo,
an Arabic number.
And then to represent the luck points that that card,
that same card grants Dr. Lucky,
it has some number of cloverleafs.
And I think the really, really confusing thing about that is that
most of the time the number and the cloverleafs are the same.
So for instance, here's a weapon card that deals two damage
and grants two cloverleaf points of luck to Dr. Lucky.
So you kind of assume that the number and the cloverleafs are always the same.
Until finally you come across a rare, rare card that either grants no luck
or that grants less luck than damage.
So here's a weapon called the Duck Decoy.
It's a wooden duck that you bash them over the head with, I guess.
It deals two damage, but only one point of luck.
And here's another weapon, a monkey hand, deals two damage,
but no points of luck.
And so that sort of establishes and confirms that the cloverleafs
and the damage points are indeed different values.
But you wouldn't know it just by kind of looking through maybe 50, 60, 70% of the cards.
So that's a little bit of a clunky design.
But anyway, so you've just, you've tried to kill Dr. Lucky with a frying pan,
a crate pan specifically in the kitchen, plus your one strength.
So you're dealing five damage.
So now the other players need to chip in and collectively counter your attack
with at least five points of luck, and possibly six.
I'd have to look it up if I forget who wins a tie.
But let's just assume five.
So one player might give up their weapon card,
which they'd really wanted to use to kill Dr. Lucky in the sitting room for four points of damage.
But they're in a pinch, and so they have to sacrifice this card for two cloverleaves.
And then another player may be sacrifices their movement card,
which would have given them a free move to the white room,
which maybe would have been perfect for their plans, but they're in a pinch.
They have to give it up for two cloverleaves.
And then another person has to give up their duck decoy for one cloverleaf,
and that's five that counters your attack of five, I guess, and Dr. Lucky escapes.
His luck has outweighed your attempt.
Now, and yet another interesting mechanic here is...
So first of all, let's talk about that.
So the players have to have to sort of bid against your bid to kill Dr. Lucky.
And I think this is brilliant, because especially if you have lots of players,
nobody wants to give up their card, right?
I mean, why would you? You would not want to do that.
You would look at your card, and you'd think, oh man, this frying pan, or this duck,
or whatever, is going to be worth... yeah, this duck is going to be worth five
if I try to kill him in the trophy room.
Plus my one strength, that's an attack of six.
Like, that's perfect, that's great. I don't want to give this up.
But if nobody else gives up a cloverleaf, then they have to, because they don't want you to win.
It's really, really painful, and it pits the players against not only you,
the would be killer in that moment, but each other.
Because everyone's going to try to wait everyone else out to see how many cloverleafs people are going to bid.
And then if you don't bid enough, then someone's just won the game.
So it is, it's like an excruciating experience trying to, trying to guess,
is the guy, am I right? Gonna bid two cloverleafs to help us out?
Or does he not even have two cloverleafs to bid with?
I mean, like, what, what can we do?
So if you're the last person in the cycle, obviously, you're really, you're really in trouble.
But that, I think that's a brilliant mechanic because it becomes this mini-game within the game of, of, okay,
now we're all gonna, we're gonna gamble on how many cloverleafs we actually need to contribute until we have enough to beat this person out.
Now, if it always stayed within that realm of five and six cloverleafs or damage points that you have to outweigh, that's fairly predictable.
So it's a really cool little side mechanic here on top of everything else.
That once you, if you attempt to kill Dr. Lucky and fail, you keep, whatever, you keep a card from, from the interaction as a face-down card.
And this becomes a, I think they call it a reason card or something like a grudge card, whatever.
And, and that becomes extra strength for your next attack.
That becomes one more point of damage for your next attempt.
So the next time you try to kill Dr. Lucky, you might play another weapon card of some sort.
So here's the bad cream weapon card, which is worth four in the sitting room.
So let's say you do, you go for it in the sitting room, why wouldn't you?
So you try to kill him with, with this bad cream in the sitting room for four damage plus your one innate strength.
So that's five damage.
And then this, this grudge that you have because you failed killed, so to kill him with your crate pan.
So that's six damage.
Now you've just, you've got six. And of course, if you fail that one, now you've got another grudge card.
And next time you go, you'll have that much more strength.
And so people just collect grudge cards, obviously, for every attempt that they, that they fail.
And, and they become stronger and stronger and stronger and more difficult to foil in the end.
It's, it's a game full of really, really clever, really clever mechanics, I think.
Lots of, of just sort of subtly brilliant ways of, of hitting players against either each other,
or this make believe auto, auto piece that keeps moving around the board, foiling all of your plans.
It's, it's, I think it's just, it's really, really strong.
And it has lots of little incentives, you know, like, hey, you should try to kill Dr. Lucky often,
because if you do, then you get more strength, but you're also spending cards.
And we don't know when you're going to get those cards back, because there are other players on the board,
and you can only draw if no one else sees you. So you're kind of, you kind of want to keep those cards,
especially if that card happens to be really, really good for some specific room.
But if you don't spend the cards, when someone fails, then you're going to have someone win the game.
It's, it's just one of those, it's, and, and of course, the advantage to this is also, because it flips clue on its head.
There's no, there's never an occasion where a player is out.
You know, you don't, everyone's in solidly in the game until a player wins.
So you never have that situation where Alice and Bob both do something stupid,
and, and now I just have to sit out and go do dishes or something,
while the, the remnants of the, of the, of the table get to continue playing the game until one of them finally wins.
It's, it's very much a single winner at the end of the game.
That is the definite end of the game when one person wins, which I think is, is a really, a much stronger design than, than something like clue,
or half a dozen other board games.
So the game's a lot of fun. You should definitely try it if you think, I mean, if you look,
if you have clue on a bookshelf somewhere, or clue do, or whatever, on a bookshelf in your house, you should buy this.
You should get, you should get a kill doctor lucky is what it's called.
Because it's just, it's such an improvement over, over clue that you'll never, you, you will not regret it.
One word of warning, I guess, is that the game is, well, it's first of all, so a non-warning.
The game is not as violent as, you know, it may or may not sound to you.
It's, it's, I would, I don't have children, so maybe I'm wrong, but I, I feel like it's pretty children friendly.
It's, and, and maybe instead of killing him, maybe you could say another word.
I don't know how those things work, or kids do smart for that, whatever.
I don't think it's, you know, a lot of the, the things that you're trying to kill him with are very sort of silly,
and they're not, you know, I don't even think there's a gun in the thing.
It's, I could be wrong, don't, don't hold me to that, but it's, it's a pretty lighthearted sort of game.
So it's, it's a little bit more whimsical, maybe catch, catch doctor lucky.
You could try to catch him.
Anyway, so it's not super violent, actually, in spite of its name, it's, it's, it's not bad.
If your kid can handle clue, they could probably handle kill doctor lucky.
So anyway, that was a non-warning.
One warning, though, is that the game sort of advertises itself, at least that I've seen,
as a, it says it's a four-player game, but that it can be played with two players.
And that, I think, is a stretch.
I think that the two-player mechanic, at least as outlined in the official rules.
I haven't looked online if anyone's come up with a more clever way of doing the two-player game.
But I, I think with two players, it becomes very difficult because what happens is you just have to introduce new, new fake players.
So you've got, you got Dr. Lucky moving around the board as an automaton, which, I mean, that's standard.
That's in, that's in the game no matter what.
But then you've got these two extra players that you have to move around the board as automatons.
And then they also have to bid against you when you try to kill doctor lucky.
So it becomes, it becomes really complex because your man, each player, essentially, is playing two people.
I mean, the automatons, the, the, the two extra people don't, don't try to kill Dr. Lucky.
But, but they do, you do flip a card for them when someone tries to kill Dr. Lucky.
So maybe there's some points given, some clover leaf luck points.
Maybe not. Depends. That's kind of the unexpected mechanic there.
But you have to remember to move them. And it's, and everyone's moving in a different direction.
They, they move clockwise. Dr. Lucky is anti-clockwise.
And you're moving whatever direction you want.
It's, it, it becomes a lot of board management where, I mean, a game like pandemic is a lot of board management too, like a lot.
But with, with, with kill doctor lucky, the board management isn't really, it doesn't feel like it's part of the game, right?
You're, you're just, you're just constantly moving pieces because, because you don't have enough humans, you know?
And it becomes a little bit of a drag.
So I would, I would say that you really want this to be a four or more player game.
You do not want to, to do this as a two player game, actually.
But the rules, at least in the addition that I have say otherwise, it says that you can do it with two players.
It's strictly speaking, you can. The fun level goes down though, just in my opinion.
So that's it. That's kill doctor lucky. I'll put a link in the show notes.
Or you can just, you know, look at it online. It's, it's, it's out there. It's not super expensive.
And like I say, it's a big improvement over the, the usual sort of the, the obvious board games that everyone gets issued.
You know, when they get, when they move in as an adult, they, they get the monopoly in the clue.
You, you have to take that and put it on your bookshelf and let it collect dust.
Kill doctor lucky. A lot more fun.
We'll not collect dust. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next time.
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