Nige sent me the following report:

"With Garry absent for another week (has he a new secretary or something?) I decided to write the game report for this week.

I had recently purchased Mystery of the abbey" and was keen to give it a try. Having read the rules I must confess I was a little bit disappointed as it seemed a little too"cluedoesque" in its gameplay. However I could not have been more wrong.

The objective of the game is to find out who killed Brother Aldemo. There are 24 suspects all monks who have different traits eg from different orders, fat or thin, cleanshaven or bearded etc. Players are dealt suspect cards at the start of the game as so can eliminate suspects and by asking questions eliminate other suspects. Where the game is different is that the suspect cards pass from one player to another so it is difficult to keep track of which suspect is where and by going into different rooms certain game altering events can happen. Victory points are awarded for making revelations about the culprit and for finally unmasking the killer.

The game started fairly quickly with all monks leaving the chapel in search of clues. Dean felt the urge to confess and picked up some early vital clues from other players. Mark K and I raced off to the parlour to pick up the spare suspect cards. Once all these had gone then the real questioning began. Mark G visited the library and ended up knowing all my secrets.

My starting hand contained mainly novices so I set about finding out whether it was a brother or father had done the deed. Triumphantly announcing it was a brother as I had about 6 possible culprits who were all brothers I picked up the first VPs of the game. Sadly what I hadn't realised was that everyone else had seen all of the brothers except one so Brother "Cadfael" Kennett sneeked in with a win

A hugely enjoyable game which is my fave of the year so far (just about beating Amun Re). Any deduction game must always be compared to Cluedo and it is much better than that - even better that Cluedo super sleuth."