Spytails:Tactics in the Shawdows Game
Transcript
Join me as I look at a new trick-taking game, Spy Tales: Tactics in the Shadows.
Thank you for joining me here at Tantrum House Studio D. I'm Kevin Delp. Today, we're looking at a prototype of Spy Tales: Tactics in the Shadows. It's a competitive trick-taking game for two to four players that takes about an hour or so to play. It'll be on Kickstarter from Macawamo, and they sponsored this overview video. We won't be giving any opinion or critiquing the game, just showing you what it's like so you can get a feel for it. And since it's a prototype, there might be some changes for the final product. The game has player meeples and dashboards, mission, event, reinforcement, and operation cards, and there's tokens. Here's a quick overview of the game. The game has five or six rounds determined by the number of players. Each round, players are going to be bidding on the number of tricks they think they can win, earning more influence tokens along the way by completing mission cards and successfully guessing tricks that they think they're going to win. Each round will consist of seven tricks, and at the end of the game, whoever has gained the most influence tokens will win. Let's jump in and see a little bit more how the game works. There are a few different things about this trick-taking game than others that you may have played before. But, one of the first things you're going to notice is that each player has their own deck of cards.
It's not one deck that gets shuffled and then divvied out. Each player's deck starts out the same, but will change throughout the game. Each round, you'll draw seven cards into your hand from your deck. Then, you'll determine how many tricks you think you'll win and place your meeple on the number you forecasted, and then choose a number of influence tokens to bet. If you win the number of tricks exactly, then you'll double your bet. But, if you don't, you'll lose all the tokens that you bet. In order to win a trick, you're going to be playing the highest number card from the color that was led. Now, there's ways to beat that from playing Trump or playing special cards. When you win a trick, you'll be getting a token so that you will be able to count up the number of tricks won for that round. Each round, you'll draw cards from the mission and event deck. It's one deck that is shuffled together. Three cards are drawn and placed above the reward markers.
Missions will be giving players influence tokens if they complete the mission successfully. If an event card comes out, it triggers special conditions for that round, but no one's going to be getting influence tokens from that card. As you can see, there are a bunch of different event cards that will be giving these special rules for how the tricks are won or played throughout that round. After the round is played with players playing their seven cards, there's a debriefing phase. This is where you see if you've completed your forecast and resolve the missions. There's also reinforcement. This is where the players' decks will start to diverge from each other. When it's your turn, you'll pick a face-up reinforcement card, or you can pick blindly. And then you get to permanently remove one card from your deck. You don't have to do that, but why not try to make your deck as best as possible for your strategy? And then you'll repeat this process in turn order. So, each round, two better cards are gained, and two cards you don't want are removed. This reinforcement deck also has a red number cards that are the Trump suit called the intimidation suit.
And there's some pretty powerful cards in this reinforcement deck, even the all-powerful Alpha Strike card. Another thing to consider in Spy Tales is that each player has a ghost token and a regroup token. The ghost token can be flipped and you can pay one influence token for a player to skip their own turn. So, you don't have to be playing into the trick. This can help ensure that you reach your forecast for that round. Now, the regroup token can be flipped to discard the cards in your hand and draw that same number back. That can be a game-changer. Also, each character has special powers. Alka gets eight cards in hand instead of seven and if they play their regroup token, they get to draw an extra card.
Mimic can flip their special token to designate any card as the intimidation suit. Echo lets you once per round swap a card from hand for a card in your discard pile. This can get a powerful card back into play. Mirage can play an off-suit card regardless of what card was led. So, there's a lot you can use in your strategy throughout the game. Using your special power, getting better cards, getting rid of cards you don't want, forecasting the right number of tricks to win, and how much influence to bet. Complete those missions and watch out for those events that can change things up each round. There's also a semi-co-op mode for four players where you can play two versus two. So, if you like trick-taking games with a little bit more going on, then check out Spy Tales: Tactics in the Shadows from Mocha Komodo on Kickstarter. Thanks for watching.
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