Setting: The game is set in an alternate reality where rival organizations of superspies are vying for control of the underworld. They range from the noble Shadow Patriots, willing to do anything including murder to protect mankind, to The Bloodvine Syndicate, who are a sort of arch-Mafia, to the 9 Tiger Dynasty, who are seemingly out to take over the world.
Gameplay: This is where Spycraft really shines. You're given your level one leader to start off with, and throughout the game recruit additional agents and procure gear. The agents and leaders all have 5 important numbers: charisma, combat, transport, craft, and expense. Expense is slightly misnamed because it is both how hard it is to recruit that agent, and that agent's capability to equip expensive gear.
First there's the intel phase, in which players take turns hiring agents, equipping gear, and doing any number of other things. This is also where they brief their higher level leaders, in order to bring them into play and get the ability to play more expensive cards. Here's the twist: all cards comes into play facedown, and are only flipped over when they're targeted or their player wishes them to. Furthermore, you're allowed to lie. Even if your opening hand has no agents whatsoever, you could play some gear and actions as agents just to discourage your opponent from trying to blitz a mission, depending on the strength of his opening draw. This not only adds a degree of uncertainty to the strategic element (the intel phase), but it adds some real complexity to the tactical. In a tournament I played in recently, I played Hit and Run, but did I want to target the known threat, or the facedown agent? I picked the facedown agent and it turned out to be Beowulf, an exceptionally nasty killer who would've one-hitted my final leader and won. Luckily for me, he's now nothing more than a stain on Blitz's hood.
Then there's missions to deal with. At the beginning of the game, you deal five missions from the mission deck. The first two are face up and the last three are face down. This queue gets replenished whenever a mission leaves it. The missions themselves have several important traits: how many points its worth, cover (how hard it is to hit characters who aren't good at combat), what skill you need and how much you need to beat the defender by, and finally whether it's a chase, intrigue, or fight mission (this tells you which actions your agents can perform).
When a player decides to go on a mission, he selects up to 5 agents and his current leader as his team. This mechanic, while artificial feeling, is vital to preventing massive agent swarms which would radically alter the gameplay experience, not to mention destroying the feeling of the setting. Then the players take various actions (the most basic being shoot, evade, and baffle) to reduce their opponents' skills so that when the dust settles, they'll have more of the skill needed to win than their foe. After this, it's back to the intel phase
Only X-1 players are allowed to run missions in any turn, where X is the number of players. You have to walk a fine line between moving quickly and moving out unprepared. Once you run a mission, you can't perform any more actions. Once both players pass, it's on to the debriefing phase.
In the debriefing phase, you draw five cards, discard down to seven and then do the whole thing over again. You thought I was kidding when I said fast-paced, didn't you?
Art: The card illustrations are on the edge of being comic-bookish, and some people are turned off by that. I personally think that it serves to reinforce the feeling of the setting. As per the CCG usual, there's also a bunch of fun easter eggs to find (on one card, there's a news ticker proclaiming that all Asian countries have SARS besides the Phillipines. Can you guess where the artists are from?)
Collectability: With the base set clocking in at 344 cards, and the existence of foil cards, AEG strikes a nice balance between making it impossible for casual players and making it interesting for collectors. There's also a minimum of promo cards out so far, and none of them look game-breaking. The only annoying aspect is trying to get multiple copies of your faction of choice's rare agents and leaders who may or may not be vital to your deck. If you tried playing Banshee Net without Rachel Dunn, you know exactly what I mean.
The good: Gameplay, overall feel of the game, balance, variety, and depth of play.
The bad: Some factions (mostly Bloodvine), are underpowered. Only a few competitive archetypes (should be remedied with an expansion), not all starter decks play equally well. If you want to get into Spycraft, I strongly recommend you don't buy a Bloodvine or Banshee Net starter as your first.
Overall, I can't sing the praises of this game enough, and I'm looking forward to what the first expansion will bring. Ever since quitting from serious CCG play years ago, I've searched for a game deep enough to spark my interest, and I found it in Spycraft.
