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Totally Renamed Spy Game
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Imagine, just once, luring the master spy into your lair and putting a bullet in his head. Imagine resisting the urge to gloat over your prize, to tell him your secret plans, to let him escape certain death and blow up your lair in the process. Imagine winning.
Yeah, right.
James Ernest’s Totally Renamed Spy Game is a long-awaited remake of Before I Kill You, Mister Bond. The new edition has glorious full-color artwork, high-quality production values, and the improved game mechanics you’ve come to expect from James Ernest’s color upgrades.
Players take the roles of super-villains, earning points by luring secret agents into their dastardly lairs, taunting them with deadly devices, and then killing them. Sure, you could kill a spy without taunting him, but he’s not worth nearly as many points. It hardly matters that he will destroy everything if he escapes. You’ll still have time to build another mysterious island.
Among all my games, Spy Game is one of the games that I can get most anyone to play and that people will ask to play later. Even though it says its for 3-5 players, we often play 2 player games. Theres just something fun about blowing up other peoples progress and the risk of trying to double your points.
This is really kind of a fun game. We are thinking of creating some new lair cards and revising some of the taunts. We have come up with some great lair ideas!
We had a problem with people just using a spy from someone else's hand _every_ turn, meaning you could not build up a lair. So we made one rule revision to the Better Edition. As your spy action, instead of putting a spy in a lair, you can lay down a spy face down (like a lair card) by your lair. That spy is still in your hand, but no one can steal it from you. This allows you to collect spies for large lair killing.
Admit it. You want the whole world to cower before your wrath. Heck, you'd probably be just as happy to have some wrath. But taking the world over isn't always easy, what with all the spying and all. And every time you turn your back on those pesky spies, they go and blow something up. Do you have any idea how expensive a Cavern of Woe is? You can't replace something like that.
Before I Kill You is fairly unique in the CAG line of games in that it requires nothing else to play. No money, no pawns, no dice. Just what's included in the package. As for that, it's standard James Ernest fare: A creative game with an ingenius mechanic, but only passing production quality.
Each player takes on the role of a supervillian in an Ian Fleming-styled universe, plotting the takeover of the world. The game isn't about taking over the world, though. It's about accessorizing your lair, and killing snooping spies. You build your lair bigger and bigger, making it more difficult for spies to blow it up. You will occasionally capture spies as well, and are then given an opportunity to kill them or taunt them. Killing them immediately gives you a few points, but taunting them doubles that value at the risk of another player blowing your lair up.
The one shortcoming here is the balance of the deck: There are far too few lair cards for the standard rules, making it easy for one player to pull out into the lead quickly and keep beating everyone else into submission. However, if you are fortunate enough to have the Better edition, you'll find that there are a few changes to make the game more playable. As with most of the Cheapass line of products, a good cost-to-fun ratio.
