Could I resist picking up a few games at Oxcon? Of course not. The first of these was Murdero, a game where you collect cards to make runs. It is reminiscent of Rummy.
The production values of the set are pretty high. The cards feel decent, with (usually) amusing captions and nice photographs, all of which keep with the theme (20s crime).
The main let down is the rules, which are a little unclear in places and fail to cover the second of two ways that a hand can end (this way is spelled out in the FAQ on the website though).
On to the game play. The objective is to collect case files (numbered one to five) in each of the three suits (Mafia, Hollywood, and Politics). Each suit has five ones, four twos and so on.
When you play a card, it is worth its face value, but you can’t play a card if you haven’t already played a card with a value of one less in the same suit. (So given a hand of Mafia 1 / 3, Politics 1 / 1 / 2 / 3, you could play all four Politics cards, but only the 1 in the Mafia cards).
The hand ends if anybody plays the 5 card in a suit (which also scores them double points for the hand), or if the draw desk is exhausted. Cards left in hand at the end count against the score.
The game is spiced up by a number of cards with a face value of 0, which have a special effect such as allowing you to draw extra cards, or preventing the hand from ending if someone completes a given suit. This makes the game rather more interesting.
Murdero is a pretty quick game, which makes it good for killing the second half of a lunch hour, but it high on luck and doesn’t have a vast amount of strategy, so I don’t think it would suit frequent play.
Overall, I’d give it five out of ten.