Spytails - Official How to Play. Complete, Concise, Clear Board Game Tutorial

Your victory doesn't always come by being the strongest as sneaky secret agent in this new trick taking game Spy Tales. >> And today we'll be teaching you how to play Spy Tales game designed by Seb Horton and published by Muimo. Check out the link to the project page in the video description below. >> And hi everyone, it's Stella >> and Tarant.

Welcome to Maple University. >> And hey, if you enjoy this video after watching, like, subscribe, and comments. You know what to do. Now, let's get to the classroom. In Spy Tales, players take on the roles of elite spy operatives, competing to be the one who claims the most influence. Over several rounds of competitive trick taking, players will place bids on how many tricks they think they'll win, staking their influence on success or failure before resolving rounds of tricks trying to hit their bid exactly.

When the round is done, players gain influence for their successes, lose it for their failures, [music] and gain bonus influence for matching the special missions. But this game is much more than the luck of the draw with special player powers, gamechanging tokens, and more powerful upgraded cards added to the personal deck you draw from, giving you many chances to influence the outcome.

The player with the most influence after five or six rounds of play, depending on your player count, will be the winner. So, now let's have a look at setup and components. >> Beginning with those cute mochu almost signature wooden figures. To begin setup, each player should choose a character and take its matching player board, a set of three tokens, one showing your character and then a regroup and a ghost.

And the deck of 21 basic cards showing your color in the bottom right corner, shuffling it up and placing it face down beside your board. This deck has cards numbered from 4 to 10 in three different suits. Stalk, codereing, and surveillance. Make a supply of influence tokens. These are your victory points in the game.

And give each player a starting supply of 10. Also, keep the six leverage tokens. This is what you'll use when you run out of influence. and the seven operation tokens, which are what you'll use to track progress within each round. Collectively, this area is known as the headquarters. After each player has taken their deck of 21 basic cards, set aside the basic decks of any players who aren't in the game.

All other cards with the same back are called special cards. And there's several different types, some even looking the same as the basic cards. What they all have in common is no player icon in the bottom right corner. Shuffle up all of those cards and then deal out a number equal to one more than the number of players.

This would be a fourplayer game. Below that, shuffle the mission and event cards showing this red X on the back. Lay out the three mission reward tokens in order two, three, and four, and deal one card above each. This central area as set up influences the first round of the game. As we'll see later, these are refreshed and set up a new each round.

Set up the round checker and randomly choose a first player who takes the starting token. Each player draws a starting hand of seven cards and you're now ready to play. Spy Tales plays over either five or six rounds of trick taking and each round is resolved in three phases. Forecast, operations, and debriefing.

In forecast, players will look at the cards in their hands and then try to predict exactly how many tricks, also known as operations, they think they'll win this round. They must also wager influence on this forecast. They'll double this influence if they get their forecast exactly right or lose it if they're wrong.

Second is the operation phase. Players will play a total of seven operations and each involves each player playing one card face up from their hand in turn with the operation being won by whichever player played the highest ranking card. Third is debriefing. Players who won exactly as many operations as they bid win influence.

Those who failed lose influence. Players take any extra rewards for completed mission cards and gain new special cards to bolster their basic decks before everything is reset and refreshed for the next round. After five rounds in a four-player game or six rounds in a three or two player game, the player with the most influence will be the winner.

The first phase is forecast. Make sure all of your tokens begin face up. Now, review all the information you have at hand, which will include which cards are in your personal hand and to check the three cards in the missions and events row. A card which says mission reward is a mission. It provides an extra way of gaining this much influence if you meet its objective.

While cards without a mission reward are events and they will provide a rule change which applies throughout this round. Based on these cards, your hand, and any other information you might have, you now try to work out exactly how many operations you'll win, and place your player marker on the appropriate number.

You must choose between 0 and five. Zero is a valid bid, but you can't bid above five. Now, commit an amount of influence from your personal supply to this bid. This can be any amount except for zero. You must bid at least one. Players make their choices openly and in real time and can change what they've placed down in response to what other players have bid.

Whether that be by changing the number or by changing the stake. Only once all players have declared that they're happy and have stopped are these forecasts now locked in for the rest of the round. You now proceed to the operations phase. >> This is where the trick taking begins. >> With so many different basic cards, special cards, tokens, and event effects, there's a lot of different ways to influence the tricks or operations.

I'll begin by taking you through the standard rules using only the basic cards. An operation begins with one player as the leader. And for the first operation, that will be whoever has the start player token. That player looks through the hand and chooses any single card from it without restriction, playing it face up on the table.

Then in clockwise order, each subsequent player also plays one card to the table. If when playing a card, a player has any cards of the same suit as the card that was played by the leader, then the player must play a card of that suit. This could freely be a higher, lower, or equal-numbered card. If and only if a player has no cards of the same suit as the card that was led, then that player may play a card of any suit.

Once everyone's played a card, whichever player played the highest numbered card of the lead suit is the winner of the operation and takes one token. This is true even if there are higher numbers of non-LE suits. Here, yellow was led and so this four yellow is the highest card of the lead suit and wins the operation.

If there are equal winning cards, then whichever one was played earlier in turn order wins the operation. This order can be represented by the strength protocol chart shown in page 13 of the rule book. Once the operation is done, all players discard the cards they played to a personal discard pile. This is different to many trick taking games where the trick winner collects the cards.

And this is done because you'll be collecting those special cards through the game which don't show your icon. That means you'll need to keep your cards separate from everyone else's. You now move to the next operation where it's the player who won the previous operation who must lead the first card for the next one.

From the second round onwards, once the special cards are added to players decks, the operations will have more variety. The special cards include a new fourth suit, the red intimidation suit. And this is a trump suit, meaning that its cards outrank all others. When playing operations with these cards, you must still follow suit if you can.

Meaning that here, a player with yellow cards in hand would still have to play a yellow card into this operation. But a player who cannot follow the lead suit can instead play an intimidation suit which will give them a good chance of winning the operation. An operation with any intimidation cards is always won by the single highest intimidation card.

And only if there are none is it won by the highest card of the lead suit. Intimidation cards follow the standard rules of following suit. Meaning if this card was led, then any other player who has an intimidation card must play one in this operation. There are special cards in each of the four suits with ranks ace 2, three, jack, queen, and king.

Each of these has a special text effect resolved as well as its face value. Win with a king, which counts as face value 13, and you immediately gain one influence from the supply. Win with a queen whose face value is 12 and you get to draw one extra card from your personal deck to your hand. Win with a jack whose face value is 11.

And you get to refresh your regroup token if you've already used it this operation phase. More on what these tokens do shortly. Twos and threes are shrews and you don't want to see these in the operations you win since the winner must lose one influence per shrew. Finally, aces give you flexibility and at the point that you play one, you decide whether it's going to be an ace representing the highest face value of its suit.

So here as an ace it beats the king and wins the operation or if you'll play it as a one in which case it has the lowest face value in the suit and like the shrew causes the winner of that operation to immediately lose one influence. Finally, there are three special cards with no suit and no face value.

Skunk Bomb, Ghost Move, and Alpha Strike. You can play one of these on any turn, even if you still have cards which match the lead suit. And you may choose to lead with one of these cards, in which case it's the second player's card which determines the lead suit and therefore what subsequent players must play to legally follow.

Alpha Strike is the highest card. It doesn't matter what anyone else plays. The first played alpha strike in any operation always wins that operation. The ghost move card always loses the operation. Remember, you're always trying to hit an exact number of operations one. So, ghost move makes sure you can't possibly win this one.

Finally, skunk bomb obliterates an operation. There will be no winner, and you set the token aside. Players who haven't yet played must still legally play, but all cards in this operation are discarded and you'll move to the next operation from the same leading player. With all of these special cards in play, the strength protocol is modified to include them as shown here for the full chart on page 13.

You begin the game with three tokens which you can use to influence the operations. When it's your turn to play, you can flip over an unused ghost token at a cost of one influence from your supply to refuse to play in this operation. You do not play a card. Play simply passes to the next player and you cannot win the operation.

You can use your unique player power. In most cases, this means flipping over your power token and resolving the text as written. Although note that Alka's power is passive and does not require the token to be flipped. You can also regroup. Flip down your regroup token. Discard any number of cards from your hand and redraw the same amount.

This will give you a new set of cards that you can choose from when playing into this operation. This can really allow you to tailor your hand to your strategy without regrouping from this deck of 21 or more cards, you'll only initially draw seven. But if you regroup and maybe get some more regroups through winning with a jack, you might end up being able to see your entire deck through a round.

You begin each new round with all three of these tokens available. And do note that during the forecast phase, you're allowed to spend your regroup to redraw your hand before even making your forecast. And if you have a relevant player power, you could use that during the forecast phase as well. Having mentioned that, I'll now take you through the four different individual player powers.

The Alka blue player has a passive ability which does not require spending the token. Every time Ala draws one or more cards for any reason, and this starts with the initial card draw and continues throughout the round, Ala draws one additional card. Therefore, Alka begins with eight cards instead of seven.

Draws more when regrouping. For example, here could discard two cards to draw three new ones and draws two cards when winning with a queen. The yellow mimic player can flip a token to treat the number card that's played as if it had the red intimidation suit. So here, this would be a seven red for all purposes.

This can be a good way to guarantee a trick win early in the game when none of the other reds and special cards are yet in play. The red mirage player can flip their token in order to play a card which does not follow the lead suit, even if they have the ability to follow it. And the green echo player may flip their token in order to exchange any one card from their hand with any one card from their discard pile, giving them the flexibility to play a given card twice.

Finally, make sure you pay attention to the text on the event cards, as the rules I've just explained may be modified by those events. The operation phase always lasts exactly seven operations as counted by these tokens. As a result of playing ghosts or through other special player powers, some players may still have cards in hand, and any such cards are discarded.

You'll now move on to the debriefing phase. >> The debriefing phase is where you lose or gain influence based on your operations >> and then you strengthen your decks for subsequent rounds. Begin with gaining or losing influence. If you forecast exactly the number of operations that you won, then gain as many influence as you bid.

Here, red, blue, and yellow were all successful. So all gain influence forecast incorrectly whether you are high or low and you lose your bid. Next payout influence for any successful missions. The indicated mission reward is a total possible prize pool for all players who meet that mission. So here if a single player took exactly two operations whether they forecast it or not they would gain two influence.

If two different players took exactly two operations, they would split the reward one each. If there are leftovers after splitting, then the excess is lost. Likewise, here for doppelganger, there is a total prize pool of four influence to be split among any players who achieved it. If you're not yet at the end of the game, discard and replenish the events and missions.

This way, everyone knows what's coming for the next round. Now proceed to reinforcements. Each player will take two turns during reinforcements, starting with whichever player won the final operation of the last round. On your turn, you must add a new special card to your deck. This can be one of the face up special cards or the top one face down from the deck.

If you do choose face down off the deck, you must reveal it to all players before adding it to the deck. Then you may optionally remove one card from your deck. Look through your deck or discard pile, choose one card you no longer wish to have, reveal it to all players, and then set it aside. It will play no further part in the game.

Again, adding a new card is mandatory. Discarding one is optional. As players take cards from the face up display, the amount of choice will dwindle and after twice around the board, during which time some players will likely be forced to draw from the top of the deck, you prepare for the next round.

Return any unchosen special cards to the bottom of the special card deck and draw a new display equal to the number of players plus one. Refresh all player tokens. Return all operational tokens to the headquarters. Retrieve your influence and stande ready for the next forecast phase. Shuffle your deck and discard pile together to form a new deck.

Draw a new starting hand and rotate the start player token one player clockwise. You'll now proceed to the next round. The aim of the game is to earn the most influence. But through the process of some bad forecasts or some pesky shrews, you may end up with none. If ever you find yourself with no influence when it's time to make a forecast or when it's time to pay a shrew, then you must take a leverage token.

This is essentially a loan. immediately take five influence and at the end of any round between now and the end of the game, you may repay that debt, removing five influence and the leverage. You can never gain leverage optionally. It's only allowed when you have no influence and must make an influence payment.

If you run out of influence as the result of making a forecast, you're not allowed to take leverage to continue adding to that same forecast. After the fifth round is complete in a four-player game or the sixth round in a two or three player game, players count up their influence and deduct eight influence for any leverage they still hold.

The player with the most influence wins, and if tied, keep playing rounds until there is a clear winner. And that's how to play the individual mode. >> But there's also four players partnership mode playing two against two. >> To set up partnership play, take the four team cards, two for each area and two for Wester.

Shuffle the cards and deal one randomly to each player. Now reveal the cards. You will know who your teammate is. The mechanics of the game still play exactly like the individual game. You'll still have your own deck. You'll be making your own forecasts and you're not allowed to share cards or tokens with your teammate.

Your aim is to be on the same team as the single highest scoring player. So here, even if the two blue players had more overall influence, it would be the red team who wins because of yellow's high influence count. When playing partnership mode, it's important to work out which of your team is going to try to gain all the influence and which player might sacrifice their game to make sure that happens.

>> Thanks for watching. We use the protoype version of the game so things are not final. And if you like this video, maybe you like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.