Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
Spy comes with:
- 120 cards
- 48 spy chips
- 1 rulebook
Cards: The cards are printed on medium-heavy cardstock at normal card size. There are 12 target cards, 6 of which depict a color-coded continent and 6 of which depict an item; and there are 108 playing cards, each of which depict a combination of color-coded continent and item.
The cards are entirely utilitarian. Each continent is clearly colored (e.g., south america is blue) and each playing card shows the combination of continent and item not just in the center of the card, but also in all four corners. This all makes the game easy to play.
Unfortunately, the cards are entirely plain as well. The art work for the continents and items might as well be clip art and the playing cards are all printed against a plain white background that just doesn’t look interesting.
(The target cards at least have a gray background showing a spy in low contrast, but they're entirely grayscale or duotone, and so look pretty plain as well. The target cards also have one problem: they end up covered with spies and it gets hard to make out what's on a card toward the end of the game, especially for the non-color-coded item targets.)
Spies: These square chips each depict a spy, green on black. They're printed on thick linen-textured cardboard and are generally evocative.
Rulebook: A four-page rulebook printed in full color. The rules are clear and there are good examples and hints. A couple of pictures are displayed in the rulebook, but unfortunately they're pixelated, which makes the rules look a little unprofessional.
Box & Tray: The game comes in a small square box which is standard for the Kosmos/Uberplay small-box game line. The box has two slots for cards and a third which holds the spies--and works just perfect for this game.
Overall, the spies are high-quality, while the cards solely work (there's no beauty to them). Thus the game ekes in a low "3" out of "5" Style rating. It could easily have been a "4" if more graphical design attention had been expended on the cards (and a "5" if the decision had been made to go with higher quality coated and/or textured cards).
The Game Play
The goal of Spy is to use up all your spies through the playing of sets of cards.
Setup: Each player starts off with a hand of three cards and between 9 and 18 spies (depending on the number of players). In addition, the 12 target cards (6 continents, 6 items) are placed in the middle of the table with one spy each on them.
The Cards. As already mentioned, the playing cards each feature one continent and one item (e.g. a purple/Australia hat or a orange/Europe watch or a green/Asia sunglasses).
Order of Play: Each round a player takes the following actions:
- Prepare a Mission
- Carry out a Mission
- Draw a Card
Prepare a Mission: If a player has exactly three cards in his hand he must play one to the table in front of him. A player organizes these cards by items (e.g., he keeps all of his sunglasses on the table together). These cards are parts of missions that are being prepared (and, more importantly, give your opponents some clue as to what you're up to).
Carry Out a Mission: A player may optionally carry out one or more missions during his turn. This is done by a player collecting together a set of cards from the table in front of him, either all depicting the same continent or all depicting the same item, and supplementing them, if desired, with additional like cards from his hand.
These cards now define a mission which is carried out. A number of spies are placed on the appropriate target card equal to the number of cards gathered together minus the number of spies already on the card. The cards are then discarded.
(e.g., A player has out on the table a green/Europe sunglasses, a green/Europe watch, and a a yellow/Africa watch. It so happens that he also has a third green card in his hand, a green/Europe pen. He decides to carry out a mission to Europe. He gathers together his two face-up cards and adds the one from his hand. He now has three green/Europe cards. Since there is currently only one spy on Europe he gets to add two more before discarding the cards.)
Draw a Card: One card is drawn at the end of the turn.
Winning the Game: A hand ends when one player has played all his spies, with that player being the winner. For a longer game, each player instead counts up the number of spies he has left, as penalty points. A number of rounds are played equal to the number of players, and at the end the player with the least penalty points is the winner.
Relationships to Other Games
Spy is a set-collection card game with two unique twists: a press-your-luck element, wherein you can lose out by trying to collect your sets for too long (reminescent of Coloretto (2003), another press-your-luck set-collection game); and a unique strategic addition, wherein each card can be used for two different types of sets. As with most set-collection games, Spy also falls into the same category of play as traditional Rummy card games (and, as it happens, in some Rummies cards can be used in two manners, usually for sets and runs, though this isn't universal, and definitely not as symmetrical as the two options in Spy).
Spy is also a member of the new small box set of games put out by Kosmos and printed for the U.S. market by uberPlay. It's one of two set-collection games in the series, the other being Oh, Pharaoh!. It's also vaguelly reminescent of Saga, another game in the series, since they both involve building up sets to attack a certain target while pressing your luck against your opponents. (Saga is, however, a more serious game, designed less for the family demographic than Spy is; on the other-hand, Spy and Oh, Pharaoh! are a nice set which definitely complement each other.)
The Game Design
Spy is a fairly Rummy-like game that has some nice design flourishes that keep it original. Some of the best points of the game are:
Fun Brinkmanship: Because you can see many of your opponents' cards you're constantly engaging in an enjoyable game of brinkmanship, where you try and hold out for as large of sets as possible, while still playing before your opponent. (This brinkmanship also results in the hard decisions so important for a good game.)
Doubled Cards Increases Strategy: The fact that each card has a continent and an item on it, and thus can be used as part of two different sets, allows for an additional level of strategy, as you measure brinkmanship against whether cards can be reused elsewhere.
Typical Plusses & Minuses of Rummy: Although this game isn't quite Rummy, it's close, which means you have all the normal advantages and disadvantages of a Rummy game (from the tactics of collecting sets to the randomness of drawing for a certain card).
Here's some of the problems with the game:
Increasingly Chaotic with More Players: I've only played the game with two players, but I'm pretty confident that this is where the game works best. You can always see what your opponent is doing, and use that to make your decisions as to whether to play cards or keep them. With more players it gets harder to track everyone's cards and there's also a higher likelihood that things will get out of control because more people can do bad things.
Overall, Spy is an interesting game for its genre and I heartily suggest it as an alternative if you like Rummy and its kin. I think it has a little bit more strategy and the upped tension as you play brinkmanship with your opponents definitely adds to the game. I originally gave Spy a low "4" out of "5" for Substance, but it just hasn't called out for replay and I've thus dropped it to a "3". I think this might actually be an issue of mediocre components & theming reducing the fun for a game with good mechanics.
Conclusion
Spy is another game that riffs off the basic designs of Rummy in new and original ways. This one adds some additional aspects of strategy with double-use cards and also adds in an element of brinkmanship, with the result being an interesting addition to the genre.
