Played: Kill Dr. Lucky

Kill Dr. Lucky is the story of 2 to 7 players who gather at a Clue-like mansion, each with the intent of killing the eponymous Doctor. Players take turns sneaking about the premises, laying in wait for Dr. Lucky, making attempts on his life, and foiling the assassination attempts of the other players. (The game takes place in a time before Internet message boards and instant messaging, so none of the players realize that everyone else in the mansion wants Dr. Lucky dead, too.) The bare bones Director's Cut is available through Cheapass Games, and Titanic Games produces a deluxe edition. One version or the other should be available through your Un/Friendly Local Game Store.


In addition to providing pawns, a very pretty board, and cards of high quality stock (the philosophy of Cheapass Games is that you already have game pieces, dice, etc., so why not pay 5 to 10 bucks for a game instead of 30 to 50?) the Titanic version gives you spite tokens. In previous incarnations of Dr. Lucky, the only way to fail a murder attempt or increase the value of an attack on the Doctor was to play the right cards. Spite tokens offer an extra wrinkle. Every time a player attacks Dr. Lucky and fails, they gain a spite token. These add one point to all future attacks on Dr. Lucky, and, yes, I quadruple-checked, they are not spent in this manner. They are only spent to contribute to a failure, at which point they are given to the player who failed.


Allow me to explain how a board game night involving Kill Dr. Lucky usually runs. During first game, which takes 30 minutes to an hour, everyone learns or slowly remembers the rules. The second game lasts half that time. A third game is suggested, now that everyone knows what the hell they're doing and can plan against what went wrong on their second try. The third game doesn't end until the player who is the second most and second least stubborn throws the game.

On a typical board game night, I am the least stubborn person, allowing games to go on far too long after I realize that we've either screwed up the rules or we broke it. Meanwhile, the most stubborn player won't give up because, damn it, we kept at it this long, and they still have a good chance of winning.

The problem with spite tokens is that unless you're playing with people who openly adhere to the Jander School of Failure Cards, the game will never end. In the original Dr. Lucky, failure cards are kept unseen in a player's hand. Spite tokens, however, are on the table. So it's easy for the other players to conclude, "I'm not going to waste failure cards on this attempt, because I know the last guy has enough tokens to take care of it."

Which gives the attacking player more tokens. After all failure cards are spent, the game becomes a tedious exercise in keeping the player with 14 spite tokens away from Dr. Lucky while slowly siphoning those same tokens to other players until their combined efforts can't stop an attack. Or alternatively, the session ends when the second most/least stubborn player says, "Fuck it, I don't want the guy to my left to win."

Which is what spite tokens are all about. The player with the least spite is most likely to harbor the most.

This is not to say that I don't endorse spite. I highly recommend the deluxe version. Spite tokens embrace the gameplay attitude that Jander always understood: "I have two spite tokens here. But if you leave it up to me to save your ass, I'm not spending them. That's why they're called spite tokens."