Murder Club

What does one wear to Murder Club? I’d been invited to Wednesday Evenings Murder Club in Cannon Hill Park and it was bloody cold. I decided on a pair of leggings under joggers, top, thermal jumper, coat, hat, scarf and gloves. My thinking was: I may end up dead but at least id be warm. This was a bad idea!

Murder Club is the brain child of Greg Carslaw. Greg is a games designer who has designed games such as 404, Wizards Academy and Escape the Nightmare which are all really fun board games so I was looking forward to seeing what Murder Club would be like.

Greg had described it as “Games in the park on Wednesday evenings. Not all games need involve murder, but all murder taking place will be part of a game.

Games take place in Cannon Hill Park, meet outside the MAC at 7.30pm.”

The suggested games list included games such as Ambush, Bombers, The Push and Witness Protection Program. They were all new games to me so I was looking forward to trying some.

9 people turned up to play so we started with Witness Protection Program. Everyone was given a card with a different role on. One person gets a witness card and runs off into the park to hide from the murderer. We gave them a couple of minutes to hide and then we went to find them.

If your card was a good card then you are trying to figure out who the other good people are, once you have found 2 other good people, you find the witness and shout Testify and you win if you do it in less than 10 minutes.

If you are a murderer, you can murder people by being close to them and motioning a slash across their neck with an optional call of “lol dead!” Other cards may get you to help the murderer. You win by killing enough people to stop the good guys testifying.

As I was a good guy to start off with, I hid behind a tree and followed the other guys until I saw someone murdered. Once I knew who was a bad guy I shouted “Chris is the murderer to warn everyone else” and ran away into the park and hid from him. I found Dave and we hid behind a wall as a bad guy passed. Unfortunately we didn’t find the witness in time but it was a good first round.

We played a few more rounds of this and by the end of it my strategy had evolved and I found it interesting to see how different people played being the murderer. I also removed several items of clothing as murdering is hard work!

It felt quite strange running around the park in the dark, hiding in bushes and shouting about murderers but it was very fun.

We changed games and played Capture The Knife. Each team had a fake rubber knife at their base. The aim was to capture the other teams knife and return it to the base with your knife. You can stop someone from the opposite team by tapping them on the back, they then have to return to their base for 20 seconds. This was really active and after 2 games I was knackered however I did manage to get hold of the other teams knife for a few seconds before Greg murdered me.

We had a great night and met some lovely people. It’s a great alternative to the gym as we ran about for 2 hours and had lots of fun doing it.

Rankings in comparison to Roller Derby

Fun – I’m not sure I would want to do it every week but I had a great time and would go back.

Value for money – 2 hours and totally free.

Join-ability – If you want to join, you can introduce yourself on the Facebook group and come along. All equipment is provided. Basic level of fitness and willingness to run about in the dark and mud is required which may not suit everyone.

Spam-ability – I would recommend it to friends that are social, active and like games.

Total of 14/20 It was a unique experience that I will do again.

More details about Murder Club can be found on their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1155057157839549/

More details about Gregs games: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/69357/gregory-carslaw

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