Android (board Game) - Gameplay - Following Up Leads

Following Up Leads

A player moving into an area containing a lead can choose to investigate that lead (which takes one Time unit). Investigating leads give players two options. The first is placing evidence on suspects. Evidence consists of tile; one side of the tile is a standard blank back, the other side is a number ranging from -4 to +5. A player draws a face-down tile then places this evidence upon one of the suspects face-down. The higher the number, the more guilty a suspect becomes; the lower the number, the more innocent. Additionally, there are evidence tiles that contain Surprise Witnesses (blue faces) which are equal to -5 and Perjury tiles (red faces) that eliminate the benefit of a Surprise Witness or Alibi and add +5. At the end of the game, the score on each suspect is added up via the evidence on their suspect sheet; the evidence tiles total determines guilt or innocence.

Instead of placing evidence when following up a lead, a player can investigate the Conspiracy surrounding the murder. By doing this, a player can draw a piece of the "Conspiracy Puzzle" and place this puzzle tile within the Conspiracy area of the game board. Linking the puzzle tiles together via linkage lines on the tile links the Conspiracy to groups around the puzzle. Each link from one of the four sides of the central Conspiracy piece to a group gives Victory Point bonuses to all players who hold one of the four kinds of Favor pieces, successful Guilt or Innocence outcomes, or Happy or Sad endings to their plot lines.

There are 3 different piles of Conspiracy tiles, giving the character placing them Shifts (on their Twilight Track, see below), Favors, or Baggage (more on Baggage below), and other items. Players can forego drawing a Conspiracy tile in order "Dig Deeper," allowing their character to draw conspiracy tiles in the pile of the next higher value the next time they follow a Lead. Higher-value Conspiracy tiles therefore cost a greater number of followed Leads and will not be readily available to players early in the game. A player may choose not to play a tile (and in some cases a tile might not be able to legally fit anywhere in the puzzle), in which case the tile is discarded but the player still earns all items and bonuses shown on both sides.

Once evidence is followed up, the player to the right of the investigating player moves that evidence to a new location. This can constantly change a player's ability to win the game. The new location must not be in this player's current "district", must not already have an evidence piece, and must be of the same color-coded building type as where it was first found (civic, religious, residential, business, or nightlife).