Courtroom: The Noir Trilogy | Build Your Case. Convince the Jury. | Board Game Preview
Transcript
I feel like we need to play this game with everybody wearing full-on suits, very serious sunglasses, poker faces.
Could be fun.
Could be fun. Hello everybody. My name is Ilia
and my name is Tyler. Together we make up Cry, a couple that loves to play board games.
And today we'll be telling you about Courtroom, the noir trilogy.
Courtroom is a two to six plus player game designed by Robin Hegades and Tund Mate and it's published by Mine Clash Play, who helped sponsor this video. Let's go to the table and give you an overview of how this game is played. In courtroom, you'll split into two teams and take on opposing sides of a criminal trial. One team represents the prosecution and is trying to prove that the defendant is guilty, while the other represents the defense and is trying to establish enough doubt for the defendant to be acquitted. Now, this game is played over three phases: discovery, testimony, and closing arguments, followed by a final judgment to determine which team wins the case. For this overview, we're playing with a condensed demo case designed to show how courtroom works without spoiling any of the three full cases included in the game. So, you'll see a complete flow of the case, but with less evidence, testimony, and information to work through. Now, each case begins with an introduction card, which sets the scene and explains the crime, the defendant, and the circumstances surrounding the case. You'll read this out loud so both teams can begin with some basic information before any evidence is investigated. Each team also receives an uncertain jury card, which you can look at throughout the game and gives you some early clues about the details certain members of the jury may care about. With the case introduced, you'll begin with a discovery phase where evidence is placed in the middle of the table with only its title visible.
Starting with the defense, teams alternate choosing evidence to investigate. When you take a card, you'll privately examine everything on it, discuss what you found with your team, and take any notes you think could be useful for later. In a full case, there are 15 pieces of evidence. Each team will collect seven, leaving just one unseen. From the seven you collect, you'll choose two to keep hidden and reveal the other five to your opponents. That means you'll eventually have a larger pool of information to sort through, including evidence known to both sides and evidence that remains private to each team. From there, you'll move to the testimony phase. In a full case, there are six witnesses, and each can be questioned about four specific pieces of evidence. Both teams secretly choose what they want to ask about using their testimony dial before revealing their choices simultaneously. You'll then reveal the corresponding witness reaction and add that information to everything you've already learned. Some testimony may support the defense, some may support prosecution, and some may not help either side. You'll also have motion tokens that can affect which testimony is heard. An objection can force the opposing team to change what they're asking about, while pressure lets you question a witness about an additional piece of evidence after hearing their initial response. Each team only has two motion tokens, so timing of when to use these will be crucial in your gameplay. Once the witnesses have been resolved, you'll move into the closing argument phase.
Each team will review everything they've learned and prepare their version of the case. The prosecution is building an argument for the defendant's guilt while the defense is constructing an alternative narrative and establishing doubt. One player from each team will then present their closing argument while another player from the opposite team will evaluate it against a set of hidden concepts. These represent specific conclusions or pieces of information you're trying to identify and utilize in your argument without knowing what exactly the evaluation sheet is looking for. You'll also be trying to convince uncertain jury members who care about particular details from the case. The introduction will give you a hint about the kinds of information that may sway them. So, you'll want to work these details into your closing arguments as well. Now, the demo we're presenting only has three concepts to identify, while a full case will have six for each side. Identified concepts are worth two points each, while each uncertain jury member you convince is worth one. So, as you can see, the full game gives you considerably more information to connect and decide what's important enough to include in your argument. After both closing arguments, the evaluation sheets are revealed. Each concept you successfully addressed is worth two points, while each convinced uncertain jury member can earn you a point each.
You'll compare the points, and the team with the most wins. And there isn't a predetermined solution waiting to be revealed at the end. The outcome is determined by which team was able to use the evidence and testimony they uncovered to make the stronger case and convince the jury of their version of events. Now, with that overview out of the way, let's talk about the key features of courtroom.
First off, there are two sides. There's the prosecution and the defense. And each of them comes with their own unique lens. As soon as you get assigned that team, you're going to start thinking, how do I prove that this person is indeed guilty
or not guilty?
We're not guilty. But naturally and in our experience playing this game, your brain just goes, "Hm,
I can see how the other side is going to spin this because of the evidence and making all those connections is a really different way to perceive these types of games."
Yeah. It makes you sort of think about it from all different sorts of angles. And I think that that creates this space where you're able to like push your own solution forward by thinking about what other people might do. And it's very immediate what that is when you're playing the game and working it out with your teammates. It's it's just like good puzzle to work yourself through. And when you are stuck, you can say, "Okay, if I'm the prosecution, what would the defense be saying that would go against what I'm trying to argue?" And then you can build it out through there. And then it really sort of relies on your team to offer you up these solutions or these arguments to be able to create.
Speaking of your team, in terms of player count, you really can do this as a head-to-head, two-player type of game, or you can scale it out as much as you want. When we're first playing this, we even had the conversation of like it'd be so interesting to have like two very large teams cuz then you're looking on all the evidence, you're drawing all the strings and trying to build up a case. And it really does feel really thematic in everything that you're doing because you are team trying to protect this defendant or come after them potentially.
Mhm. The next thing we can talk about is the whole choosing what you can investigate. So this is like a fun well a fun little puzzle that you can pick different things based on what you have. And on top of that, it's almost as if you're never going to have the full information. So, you've got to puzzle all of this together, work with your team in this closed system because like the some of the courtroom stuff that you see on TV shows, people hit you with surprise evidence and it doesn't necessarily work like that in this game, but the closed and confined space that this game creates allows you to push forward in a quick like timely manner, but also start to question exactly what is going on. I like the tension behind this process because you'll choose a piece of evidence and you'll take it back and your whole team will review it and see, oo, that is really interesting.
While the other team
maybe in the room, maybe not, but they're like, oh, they have something. They may have thought of something. And that whole process of going back and forth and eliminating the options between the two teams, it's just really interesting.
And you never know what the other team knows either. So, that's what's interesting, like we've been talking about, is you go back and forth and you're like, if the defense knew this and I'm the prosecutor, what do I have to be ready for or what do I have to then think about to mention during my closing statements to make sure I'm scoring and capitalizing on all of the topics that I need to touch on?
And I think with not knowing the other team and kind of having that tug and pull, you're trying to conceal some evidence because there's some evidence you're going to be putting away. There's also the ability to ask those questions of the witnesses and making sure you're asking them thoughtfully because both teams get that information and potentially using your motion markers to object when a question is asked that you may not want the other team to know the answer to.
Mhm. You definitely get into this space where you're like playing the players type situation, asking yourself what they might ask or if they do ask this, are you going to object? It's just quite the dynamic experience. I feel like we need to play this game with everybody wearing full-on [snorts] suits, very serious sunglasses, poker faces.
Could be fun.
Could be fun. Now, the next key feature we'll talk about this game is the companion app. There is a companion app in this game, and it is not required to play this game. You do not need it to play the game, but it adds a little bit of flavor because it'll read you the introduction. and I'll read you the introduction to the witnesses, the witness's reactions, and as a voice recorder for those closing arguments. In case there's some disputes and what was said and was not said, you can always play it back and you can hear for yourself.
Mhm. Speaking of which, we should probably talk about the closing arguments at this point because that is another key feature of this game. The great thing about this is you can get up there, do a little improv, have a lot of fun with it, but also at the same time, the way that scoring is set up, if you aren't that type of person who wants to create that story live while everybody is doing it, you've got time to write one out or you can actually just state the facts and then that's what you're looking for and hope that you check all the boxes. When it comes to scoring,
there's just an ability for the closing argument to be catered to any type of person. If someone on your team is like, "Yes, yes, me. I want to go out there and talk to the jury and tell them all the exciting things that I have, we have learned to build a case, build a picture, build a story." Or if you're just playing by yourself or you're feeling more reserved, like there is just so many opportunities to go the way that you want to play this game. And I like that because it doesn't really force you into a box, force you to perform, or do something that you're not comfortable with. The other quick thing I'll talk about as well is when we were playing this game, we compared it to a lot of other mystery and detective type games,
which I think there is a similarity, but there's also a distinct difference. I feel I'm not the most tied to those mystery games because I feel like there's always a lot of red herrings and you kind of have to make the leap and make the jump. And what this game really presents is facts. You there's no making the leap. You can maybe make the leap in like the evidence of like, hm, it's interesting that this name was mentioned. maybe we want to learn more about that. But at the end of the day, you're presenting facts. You're presenting what you know. There's no leaps to be made of maybe he did this which led him to be here. You have the facts. You have the evidence, which I really like because you're able to build a case more on concrete information rather than trying to chase red herrings or make leaps like other mystery type games would encourage you to. Now don't get me wrong, you are going to be chasing leads in this for sure, but it is done in such a way that like Ilia said is these are all like factbased generated stuff. So you know that by going a certain path or following a lead that you think might be something, it's it feels very black and white in the sense where you're going to find something out that's going to be useful or you're going to find something else that will push you into a different direction completely. And you can you can connect those dots and draw those lines in a very factualbased experience. I guess
exactly. And last but certainly not least, you may be wondering, well, what is is there an answer to these cases? Is there an outcome? Are we just walking towards a certain path?
No, there is not. Uh either outcome can really occur. It's based on the case that you built, which I think is really unique and a really neat way to present this information. So, hey, if you have the evidence, it's going to work in your favor. You can build a case to make that defendant guilty.
But if not, maybe they'll walk away free.
Yeah. Yeah, and that's the thing about this game is the scoring in this game sets you up to be are you the one that interprets and creates and draws those lines to the right facts the the fastest or not the fastest but the most successful and you're able to present that in your closing statement because ultimately that will be the like one small piece of information that you collected during the game could be the difference of you winning and you losing. the closing statement.
Exactly. And that has been courtroom. If you ever wanted to be on the TV show where they go through all the evidence and find the information and find the revealing evidence that leads to this big grand moment, this game would definitely be for you. There's so much information. There's such a camaraderie in the team building where you're trying to discover what you're doing. So, if any of that or anything that we talked about in this video resonates with you, check it out down in the links below. And of course, if you enjoyed this video, make sure you hit that thumbs up button. Hit that subscribe button if you're new here because we love talking board games.
We sure do. And hit that little bell because you know when our next videos come out, we can all partake in the joy of board gaming as well. Now, for a question of the day, have you ever been a jury member?
Oh,
have you ever been called summoned for the jury?
Mhm. Maybe if you've ever been summoned for a jury, because I don't know how that works is um I guess it's a yes answer because I think I think yes or no because I don't know. I don't know how much you can disclose of those types of things, but tell us about your experience. I have been wanting to be summoned for jury
all my life. I'm waiting for the letter.
Me, not so much.
Do I think you'd be a really good juror?
No, I'm good.
Anyways, let us know your answers down in the comments below. But until next time, we will see you later. Bye.