The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth Game Review

The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth is a brand new board game published by the company Blue Panther. In the game, you take on the role of government detectives attempting to track down John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The goal of the game is to capture or kill Booth before he escapes out of the country or out west.

I preordered a copy of this game last month and received it earlier this week. Since then, I have played the game four times, three times using the default solo player mode, and once using the two player cooperative mode with my wife, Jen. The game also features a two-player competitive mode, where each player is trying to be the first to find Booth to claim the reward money for themselves, along with a two (or three) player mode where one player can play as Booth, attempting to elude the pursuers.

As a preface for this review, I want to note that while I enjoy board games, I would not consider myself a big board game player. I enjoy the classics like Monopoly and we often play more modern games like Wingspan and Pandemic. However, sometimes I struggle with the complexity of more modern games, especially those with many rules and complicated strategy. From the preorder images showing the two instruction manuals and all the cards and pieces, I knew that The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth would challenge me in the beginning (and it did). However, I will say that after a couple of hours, even a dummy like me eventually got the play sequence down and had a good time.

The board for this game is actually a canvas-like map showing Washington, D.C. in the center, with different possible escape paths for Booth emanating out. While we know that the real Booth made his escape south in the direction of Richmond, that is one of six different routes Booth can take in this game. In addition to the main six escape paths, there are many connecting trails in gray that he can use to jump from one escape route to another. Booth’s movements in each game are dictated by the drawing of random trail direction cards, which means that no two games will be the same.

A single turn in this game consists of three phases. During the first phase, a random trail card is placed face down demonstrating Booth’s escape progress. If the player does not find and capture/kill Booth before the ninth trail card is placed (or tenth if you are playing easy mode or a two player game), then Booth escapes and the game is lost. The goal is to determine Booth’s path and catch up to him before it is too late.

In order to flip over each of Booth’s trail cards to determine his direction of travel, the player needs to complete tasks in Washington, D.C. and its surroundings during each phase. These replicate the investigation that occurred in the aftermath of Lincoln’s death. As one successfully completes “Leads” in different areas of the city, you acquire clue chips. Once you get enough clue chips, you are able to flip over one of Booth’s trail cards and start the chase. The player essentially controls a group of detectives, policemen, and cavalry, who help to fulfill leads, to earn clues, in order to determine Booth’s path and chase after him.

While Booth only advances one trail card during the first phase of a turn, he does not sit by helplessly during the other two phases in a turn. During phases two and three, Booth acquires cards of his own. These consist of “Search,” “Raid,” and “Play Now” cards which give Booth advantages when the player finally catches up with him. In this way, the player might determine exactly where Booth is on the board and catch up to him, but Booth’s deck may give him advantages that make your search for him fail, requiring you to try again during the next phase.

Not to be outdone, the player also has access to their own deck of helpful cards. During any phase, a player may choose to draw two cards from the “Stanton” deck rather than moving their pieces or investigating a lead. Stanton cards usually give advantages to the player like bringing in more detectives or allowing them to draw extra clue chips. A Stanton card can also be sacrificed to remove a card from Booth’s deck, helping to even out the odds when the final confrontation comes.

When you are able to track Booth and move a detective piece to his location, you have to successfully complete a two-stage process to win. While you know what city or zone Booth is in, you have to search and find him there first. The more detectives, cavalry, and police you have on site, the greater your search ability becomes. Certain detectives and Stanton cards can also help. It’s a battle between the player and Booth with his acquired deck to see who ends up with the most points. If Booth bests you, you fail to find him that phase and may even lose a detective in the process. If you are able to locate him, then the final stage begins: a raid on Booth. Once again, it’s a battle of points as Booth uses his own acquired weapons or accomplices in an attempt to fend off the attack by your detectives, cavalry, and police. If you lose the raid, prepare for casualties on your side. If you manage to overpower him, however, Booth is captured or killed and the player wins the game.

As stated before, unless you are already a gamer, there is a pretty large learning curve for The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth. While I have played four games so far, I wouldn’t really count my first play through as a real game. I was constantly referring to the rulebook, and even after I finished (I lost) I realized that there were several mechanics I had completely forgotten about which would have made the game easier. I actually wrote a few reminders for myself on a notecard of important things you might forget about or miss. This made my subsequent games much easier.

For my second game, I played the two-player cooperative mode with Jen. The co-op mode plays pretty much the same as the solo mode. Armed with experience from my first slow run through and my little notecard, we were very successful. We managed to track Booth to Philadelphia and succeeded in our search to find him. However, when we conducted our raid on his position, our numbers weren’t high enough for an outright win. Instead, we ended up killing his accomplice George Atzerodt, and Booth escaped. Luckily, during the next turn, we caught up to him again, and since he had used all of his deck cards attempting to thwart us during the previous turn, we easily found and overpowered him resulting in his capture and imprisonment.

Our The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth game board at the end of a successful two-player cooperative game. The Booth meeple token is shown in the Old Capitol Prison with David Herold and Lewis Powell.

My two subsequent solo games today both resulted in failures. In one, Booth escaped up to Canada with George Atzerodt after I failed to successfully search for him south of Detroit. In the second game, I managed to catch up to him on the very last phase before I would lose the game by placing the ninth trail card. He was in New York and I felt good because I was there with two detectives and three cavalry. Unfortunately, it had taken me so long to find him that Booth had acquired a sizable deck of cards and two accomplices (George and David Herold). In the end, his search points outnumbered my own and he escaped.

The end of a solo player game in which John Wilkes Booth escaped via New York.

In this particular game, I was thwarted by less than helpful Lead cards, which limited my ability to acquire clue chips to flip over Booth’s trail. For a long time, I had Samuel Arnold as a lead card. However, in order to resolve him you first have to complete either the National Hotel or Michael O’Laughlen card. You are only given two lead cards at a time and they have to be fulfilled before a new one can take its place. It took most of the game to finally get the Michael O’Laughlen card so I could then revolve the Arnold card. Since this meant I couldn’t acquire as many clue chips, it took me too long to locate Booth’s path and catch up to him to beat the game before it ended. Though I did have a nail-biting finish there.

As I hope you can tell, I enjoy this game very much. It was definitely intimidating to learn and I wish some parts of the rulebook and player’s guide were a bit clearer, but with persistence it is possible for even a gaming newbie to learn how to play. I found it very helpful to watch this video of one of the game’s designers doing a playtest of the game during the prototype stage a year ago. It really helped me to see the game being played rather than just trying to understand it by reading the rulebook.

I was also very impressed by the historical flavor given on the cards and in the manuals for this game. It is clear that the game designers, Wes Crawford and Ryan Heilman, did their research on the Lincoln assassination story. The graphics look good, and each card has small text in italics that gives the historical background of the card. For example, here is the Leads card for Dr. Samuel Mudd:

I appreciate not only the historical text at the bottom of the card, but the thought process that went into how to resolve this lead card. While most leads are found within different sections of Washington, D.C., and are resolved just with a detective, this card requires both a detective and a cavalry to be present at Green 2 in order to acquire the two clue chips and place Dr. Mudd in prison. On the overall map, the green escape path replicates the actual path Booth took and the section circle could represent Southern Maryland. So the designers have accurately placed Dr. Mudd where he would be on this map and how it took both detectives and cavalry to find and arrest the doctor. There are other impressive details like this in the game. The John Surratt lead card, for example, requires you to be in Elmira, NY, and for it to be within the first four turns of the game. If you pull that card after the fourth turn, Surratt has already made his way to Canada, so you can’t capture him anymore. Similarly, you can’t acquire the Lewis Powell card if you have already arrested Mary Surratt, since he was arrested at Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse and you already have her locked up. These details aren’t stated in the game, but if you know the story of Lincoln’s assassination they make sense, and I love that the designers included them.

When I first got a Google Alert that mentioned this game, I had high hopes but tried to keep my expectations in check. A few years ago, I was involved with a different company that attempted to bring a Lincoln assassination-based board game to market. I acted as a historical consultant for them before it became clear that they weren’t actually interested in the history and merely wanted to skin their already completed game in Lincoln assassination figures, even though it didn’t really work. That’s when I bowed out. So having been burned once regarding a Lincoln assassination based game, I wasn’t sure how this would turn out.

This is why I am so pleased with The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth. It’s a compelling, history-driven game that is also a lot of fun to play. The solo mode is very engaging and Jen and I both enjoyed the two-player cooperative mode. I think we’ll play cooperatively a bit more before trying to compete against each other or try our hand at being Booth, but I love that those modes are also available. Since Booth’s escape route is different and random each time, there is so much replay value. It’s a challenging game and you will definitely lose more than you will win, but that makes the times you successfully capture Booth even more rewarding.

I’ll catch you next time, Mr. Booth.

If you enjoy history and board games, I highly recommend you pick up The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth. At $70 plus shipping the game is a bit on the expensive side, but I feel that it is worth it, especially since Blue Panther prints and manufactures their games right here in America. Here’s a link if you want to purchase your own copy of The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth. I’m really enjoying this game, and I think you will, too.