Tiny Epic Crimes: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Cooperative, Time Track, Semi-Cooperative, Push Your Luck, Event Resolution
Player Age: 14+ Player Count: 1 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 60 Minutes
Game Designer: Scott Almes
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Scott Almes
Rundown:
Tiny Epic Crimes is a semi/full cooperative game that combines cluedo with a high-thrill crime movie. Players are trying to deduce the murderer in a tight time frame of 48 hours.
There are five pieces of evidence that players can gain that will split your suspect pool in half; the weapon, forensics, getaway vehicle, gang and rank.
This evidence will be gained in various ways such as returning a mobster from each colour into holding, gaining three correct search tokens, completing three stakeouts, and catching witnesses or informants in certain columns or rows. In the cooperative game the players try to gain this information together, however, in the semi-cooperative (competitive) game, the player who gains the last piece of the puzzle gets to look at the evidence another player has while everyone who assists gains a suspect card.
Actions on a Turn:
This game is a time track game meaning the player furthest behind on the track will be the active player for each turn. With this game, it is precious to use each hour effectively, after all crimes should be resolved within the first 48 hours or you could lose all the critical leads.
The first part of a turn is driving, the active player can move their piece as many orthogonal movements as they want, however, each space equates to an hour on the time track. After this, the player has to perform one mandatory action from the below list:
- Coffee Break: no action but still costs one hour.
- Arrest: Spend one hour to remove a mobster in your space. In a competitive game, one of each colour is collected until a set is gained to increase the badge token.
- Call for Backup: Call for backup allows you to arrest the mobster in your location and any orthogonally adjacent tile. The trick is you have to spend between 1-6 (inclusive) hours of your choice. Then roll a die and if you roll the same number or less you have passed. Place all the mobsters in the bag and gain one force card.
These force cards are one-time abilities that you can do before discarding the card. If you fail at the dice roll, you have wasted precious time and can only place the mobster from your current location in the bag.
- Catch Informant or Witness: these are two different actions but are the same in how they work. If the mobster in your square has a witness or informant token at the end of the row/column you can spend two hours to gain one of these tokens, place the mobster in the bag, and advance your badge one space.
- Search Scene: by spending two hours you can flip over the green search token on your location. There will either be a green tick or a red cross. A green tick means you have found a useful clue and collecting three will reveal the forensic evidence. After this is achieved the player moves their badge one space.
- Stakeout: Spend between 1-5 hours to reveal the stakeout token on your location. If the number on the token is less than or equal to your spent value, gain the token and advance your badge. If you fail, however, you just waste time.
- Bring in for Holding: This is a two-turn process. First, you pick up the mobster for two hours. Then on a later turn at the HQ, you have to spend two hours dropping them off at their cell. This gains you the token matching their colour and advancing your badge. If this colour is already taken you will gain one force card instead.
During the competitive game, there are day and night hours spread across the time track in slots of 12. Certain actions are restricted based on whether you start your turn in the daytime or the nighttime, so planning when to resolve certain events is crucial for players to factor in. In a cooperative game players instead have different actions allocated to each character, whereby creating essential teamwork.
Pressure:
Pressure is a key function of this game, as events causing players to divert their attention from the murder will constantly spring up (i.e. whenever the first player passes a red marker on the time track).
Each event will cause a negative cost for players. This could include making actions cost more to achieve, or even fully blocking actions. These events can also reward positives such as one-time use force cards that shake up what a player can do; reveal suspects so players are closer to the murderer; and in the competitive game, gain the ability to peek at the evidence that others have found. Certain events will have to be ignored in the pursuit of using your time effectively and the real pressure comes from the fact that only three events can be active at a time. Any more than three results in a silenced suspect in the competitive game (discarded suspect), or less time on the track in a cooperative game.
Adding to this pressure is the mobsters. Every turn, a new mobster will be drawn from the bag and only a value of 6 on one die, or a 3 on both dice, will cancel the mobster spawn. In fact, if a double is rolled (ignoring 3's and 6's) another mobster spawn will activate, which can occur multiple times on one turn. As the mobsters don't directly attack, you may think that they add no real pressure, but you would be wrong. If they spawn on a location with an existing mobster, a new event is drawn instead. If no mobster can be drawn from the bag, it is the same as having a fourth event. So you may have to call for backup and clear as many mobsters as possible purely to get away from this pressure. Although, this doesn’t leave too much time to find the murderer.
In-Game Modes:
As you have read throughout the review, there are two main game modes; Competitive and Cooperative. My favourite of the two was easily cooperative. With the competitive mode, the game is still semi-cooperative where players still have to aid each other. The catch being that only one player can be the winner. In a game like this with so much pressure through the events and cleaning up the streets from mobsters, I find the competitive nature to throw too big of a spanner in the works.
The other problem I found was a lot of elements in the game, such as clearing events, didn’t fully work until one player had found some evidence. Cooperative mode, however, is where this game shines. Since each player has certain actions available to them, it helps push players into specific directions straight away, giving purpose to everyone. Then when spanners get thrown into the mix like the board filling up with mobsters and events getting out of control, players can work together in 100% unison to put a stop to these crimes.
Determination:
- Events are interesting and varied.
- Cooperative mode is great as players have to work in tandem to put out the issues of the city
- A lot of content in the box, can be a challenge to pack it back together.
- Competitive game takes a while to kick off and has too much to resolve to be overly competitive.
Tiny Epic Crimes was a game that took me a while to get a feel for the core engine. As a competitive game, it just didn't work for me. I found that there was too much occurring to the players for the force to be effective when the agenda is split. As a cooperative game, however, Tiny Epic Crimes shined. I found that as a team, we worked together to gain the evidence that our particular character was skilled in. There is a constant influx of events and mobsters to clear so if the players don't plan together and time out the actions effectively, they may even waste each other's time. I haven't previously played a cooperative game that uses a timetrack as a core mechanic. I found that this creates the need to use time as a resource in a different way than other time-track games, as players aren't purely focusing on themselves and how to keep gaining turns. You instead have to plan the way you spend your time that may allow other players to shine with their available actions. If you enjoy tense law enforcement games that require the constant need to stop the onslaught of problems, then this is a Tiny Epic that you should add to your collection.
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