Crenshaw Stormcrow
Germany
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[This is my very first post here on BGG, so please apologize my poor English skills concerning the following text.]
I'd like to point out that I have not played this game often enough for a solid review so I will stick to a mere session report with some explanations alongside.
My girlfriend was very kind to get me my three boxes of Spycraft for Christmas:
1 Starter Display-Operation Nightfall (1st basic set )
1 Starter Display-Extinction Agenda (2nd expansion set)
1 Starter Display-Day of the Bullet (3rd expansion set)
Aint' that nice? No, not really, because she refused to play the game with me, and nothing makes me as uncomfortable as the possession of a cool game I wanted to play with no potential players for it 
So I started looking for another companion. Finally, Frank, my venerable old-time buddy for collectable card games and overall game junkie was hooked by the notion of James Bond vs. Jason Bourne in a collectable card game. The mentioning of David Williams, who also designed/co-designed "Legend of the Five Rings","7th Sea" and "Deadlands: Doomtown" helped a lot  .
There's Much Ado About...What?
You and your opponents play different factions in the shadow war between extremist groups, chiliastic doomsday sects, organized crime syndicates, governments, private corporations, freelance mercenaries and former spec ops secret agents gone AWOL.
There are following factions:
The Krypt: former agents of KGB. Their top leader, Iron Flower (a.k.a. Alexandra Kolesnikova), is one of the two most recognized game mascots - you can never go wrong with an angry gun-wielding brunette in skin-tight Red Army uniform.
The Nine Tigers: a gathering of Yaks, Triads and other Asians. They are led by Mai & Tai (a.k.a Khan Mai-Ling and Khan Tai-Tzu), two sultry twins in purple bikinis loaded with c4, grenade launchers and M-60s. Guess who the other most recognized game mascot is? 
Banshee.Net : just think of Anonymous on steroids...these sneaky guys are crafty enough to challenge entire governments let alone less powerful players. They are led by Nathan Sparks, codename: Bedlam.
Shadow Patriots:: these guys were sent into retirement by their former employer: MI:5. Unfortunately, their most capable (and most paranoid) agent, Sir Richard Poole, refused to accept his retirement and launched his own secret war against what he sees as a clear and present danger.
Bloodvine Syndicate: the Mafia, put together from all kinds of criminal organizations working on a global scale. Yeah, it's them goodfellas who cut off fingers, stab pencils into your eye, blow up your house, break your knees and kill your children if you don't have the money in due time. They are represented by Emilio Thorne, a.k.a. The Rose.
The Franchise is the most dangerous group of them all, It is lead by the sinister mastermind Dr.Friedrich Kholera and these guys envisage creating a brave new world by destroying the existing one.The Franchise mostly employs freelancers, but also renegade agents from other factions.
What You See is What You Get:
The basic feeling I had when opening the starter boxes was the same I felt for Shadowfist - you get :
A.) all kinds of cool characters: AGENTS/LEADERS - how can you go wrong with names and chars like Barracuda, Reena Riccobono, Johnny Costello, Lord Zen, The Jackal, Marina Moreau and Kiriana Semenov ? We liked the chars a lot and the idea of sending them to all kinds of missions instantly thrilled us.
B.) all kinds of amazing actions they can pull off: ACTIONS - use their martial arts, blow things up, shoot down hordes of enemy mooks, pull off incredible bullet-time-stunts, etc. Here you get cards like
Stolen Identity, Lost in the Crowd, Trail of Crumbs, Superhuman Effort, Silent Night, Agent of Heaven, etc.
C.) all kinds of stuff these guys get: GEAR - any weapon, car or device your agents can use --- you name it, you get it. SIG-Sauers, Glocks, H&Ks, Garottes, Kalashnikovs, Spy Shades, Harrier Jets, Racing Cycles, Lockpicking Kits, Smartskin Faces. My favorite is the Mossberg "Cruiser", that can immediately kill an enemy agent in combat 
D.) the idea of these guys and gals doing this kind of things with these toys was awesome ! It feels like you open a great-looking board game box, see the components and go, like, "I can't wait to try it out!"
Artwork & Card Design:
The artwork is cool! It reminded us of the "Danger Girl" comics by Alex Garner and J.Scott Campbell. Almost all illustrations in "Spycraft" are made by the same group of artists (A4H Design), so the pictures look very homogenuous, even in the later sets. It is hard NOT to find
uberbusty hot vixens in skintight leathersuits, bikinis, or cocktail dresses but I am sure that you guys will be able to come to terms with that Grim and gritty wheelmen, fixers, pointmen, snoops, soldiers..they all go well along with the theme.The design is very clear, intuitive and almost puristic. The cards are nice to look at and are easily distinguished from each other (different agent colour depending on the faction; grey for gear; teal green for actions.
The gear cards perfectly fit under character cards, showing only their name and the boost they give to their stats.
The World Is Not Enough:
Your main guys in the game are leaders and agents. You start with a somewhat weak leader, who is able to bring in agents at an unpretentious entry level. Later, as you amass ressources you bring in your more powerful leaders, thus slowly increasing the power of agents and the gear they may be equipped with.
You and your opponent take turns playing agents, equipping them with stuff. All cards in your hand can be played face-down, so your opponent would not know whether you would play a useless action cards or powerful weapon.
The most tricky moment comes when you decide to send your team on one of the 24 missions of the game (the later expansions 10 more missions) These missions represent the 24 hours in which all the high-octane-action of the game takes place.The missions represent shootouts, chases, mole hunts, acts of sabotage, wetworks, and have appropriate names like Manhunt at Carnaval, The Warlord's Fortress, Tracking Subject Zero, Destroy Biochem Lab, The Side Streets of Bern. There are three kinds of missions: chases, intrigues, and fights.If you take too much time recruiting agents or equipping them with stuff, you opponent will go on a mission and get a chance for gathering the missions's victory points (you need 20 of them to win the game). On the other hand, venturing on a mission with a weak team of poorly prepared agents can result in an abysmal fiasco.
You and your opponents use the same mission deck and must race if they want to complete any mission before other players do so - especially if they want to get a mission suitable for their agents (wheelmen are perfect on a chase mission while soldiers are certainly better off with fights)
Being sent on a mission, agents must perform all kinds of skill checks, be it charisma [the ability to influence others], combat [the ability to kick other's asses], transport[the ability to get lost] and craft [the ability to get the spy-ish things done].
If they can meet the pre-requisite of the mission (e.g. Craft +3 or Combat +6) then the mission is won.
How do you do skill checks?
First, all agents can perform
--> 4 basic abilities depending on the type of the mission they are heading into.
Almost all agents also have some nifty
--> special powers which either modify other skill checks or initiate these on their own.
Every faction has its own
--> special faction ability (the Nine Tigers can go gun-blazing into ANY kind of mission, the Russians can manipulate missions), etc.
Wait, it's not over yet - your agents can suddenly:
--> activate their face-down devices, in order to manipulate skill checks.
Finally, you can always
--> play a bravado card in order to modify your agent's skill check
Well, last but not least: you can use every card in the game as some kind of a destiny draw card. You can discard it in order to add its ~destiny value (called here bravado) to any required cost or skill check.
In Spycraft, this bravado mechanic represents the amount of guts a daredevil agent can summon while screwing up his courage, overplaying his problem. This perfectly imitates all tasks you have seen James Bond performing in all movies since "Dr.No": 007 can play any casino game and win, he can successfully seduce any woman, steer any vehicle, shoot any weapon and defuse any explosive...you get the point
You can imagine that combining all those aforementioned factors AND use the special abilities listed on each mission card can quickly become straining. Don't forget that you can play all this stuff in response to any of your opponent's actions. In these cases you will have to concentrate on the skill checks whose target numbers start dancing up and down like crazy. All this goes not for the most important final mission check but for ANY check initiated by any of your agents, be it the killing or baffling of an enemy agent. Oh, and don't forget that some cards can start manipulating the missions, removing the keywords you were looking for and giving you new target numbers to beat and new skill checks to make etc. etc. 
Let's Get Dangerous:
While Frank decided to stay with the Iron Flower, I picked the Mai Tai cocktail.
I introduced him to the well-printed rulebook and soon we started.
We found mimicking each other's actions while recruiting and equipping our first wave of agents. My initial round-up consisted of Recon (a blond Van Damme variant), Li Cong (my cool leader looking like a green Foot Clan ninja - I liked this guy) and Project: Pitfall Agent (a freelancer snoop, an Asian girl in glasses --- obviously an action card mistaken for an agent name  ); Frank came up with Clean Sweep (leader), Sleeper Agent (the invisible guy in the crowd) and Sasha Elgev (a tattooed, well-endowed gymnast).
He then went on a mission, I think it was A Raid on the Motorpool.
Due to the incredible amount of heavy weapons in my deck I was able to wound all of Franks agents, thus decreasing all their stats so that they could not complete the mission. Li Cong also ended up wounded but the rest of my strong guys remained unharmed. We returned to the headquarters. On with the next mission, called The Direct Approach.This one made us smile, for it was perfectly tailored in the terms of theme and game design: a bunch of trenchcoated Agent Smiths walking into a public building with Punisher bags full of weapons, shooting everything in sight - it was an action mission, which was played public and it had a high combat rating to beat. In this mission I managed to kill Frank's current leader and we found out that this is the best and quickest way to bring in new leaders  ) After this unfortunate event Frank activated Jessica Styles, his next leader and recruited King Maul,a tough bruiser.
I replied with The Jackal, a brutal crew-cut killer in an army uniform and very soon we found ourself again on A Pleasant Countryride, a chase mission. I remember that King Maul wounded one of my agents and I had to discard a piece of gear due to Maul's special ability - I guess he just mauls things, hm? Again, the name, picture and the card's game effect seamlessly fit together and create a very cool feeling of gameplay.It was the case with most cards we played this evening.
We did not play the game to an end since it was already late and each of us has managed to win only one mission so far.
Things We Lost in the Fire:
So, what can I tell you about the game after playing it one time:
PROs:
No long single-player turns mean very little downtime for all participants. All the players go through the main phases (drawing cards, playing intel actions, etc. )at the same time.
Since every player may perform only one action, the game basically moves along pretty quick, encouraging multiplayer games.
The bluffing element of playing cards face-down is incredibly appropriate for a game that feeds on espionage and secret information.
The cards are nice to look at and feel pretty good. Good computer colouring effects.
No "tapping", believe it or not! Agents use their numerous abilities simply by activating them!
A good, balanced system of bringing cards into play with a graduate curve of resource availability without any "resource-giving cards" like lands, locations, planets or similar bullshit.
No dice! This game handles everything by its cards and cards only !
An excellent flair of the secret world of spies packed with fast action,tough guys, gorgeous women, beautiful gadgets and dangerous intrigues. This game is so well-designed, you find all things you like about "Mission: Impossible", "True Lies", the "Bourne" trilogy and the more recent Bond flicks like "Goldeneye", "Casino Royale" and "A Quantum of Solace" in it. You have the leaders posing in the role of Ethan Hunt, responsible for the mission, not afraid to go in and risk their life for their teammates, You have your small teams full of weird, cool, funny, uncanny or inexperienced guys you learn to love or hate, while they are performing stuff like hacking enemy websites or defuse a ticking neutron bomb. You have all the exotic locations like Scorpio's secret volcano lair and Blowfeld's alpine hideout. You have fierce modern-day weapons as well as all the amazing devices Q created for 007. Your sexy girls bedazzle male enemy agents with their pheromone make-up; your getaway driver escapes your opponent's punitive expedition squad only to find himself the only survivor of the operation.
The agents in this game are "retired", not killed.
CONs:
 This gotta be the most complex CCG I've played so far.
While the basics are simple, the game quickly becomes amazingly complex due to the vast amount of choices you have to make every turn. This game is VERY TACTICAL and feels almost dizzying when it starts modifying the effects on a given skill check. Remember what I said before about all the difficulties arising when you go into skill checks ? Yes, this is the moment when you leave that comfy area covered by the rulebook and re left alone with a lot of important question in highly tricky situations (Can you play your leader's special ability from your headquarters during combat on a mission ? What happens if you play it in response to your opponent's response to your action? Can you play the Standard Agent Mission Combat also in Chase or Intrigue Missions or does that only cover the Special Agent Ability which must be initiated by the agent himself ? May I do it with a special gear card or not ?  ).
If you can recall the array of possible skill check modifications I mentioned above and put it into the big picture, then, maybe, you already are a skilled secret agent. Well, we weren't and it showed. We often had the feeling that much information in the rulebook is hidden between the lines and you have to re-read it a lot.
THE RULEBOOK, despite being printed in a convenient font size and having a good, clear layout IS NOT GOOD AT ALL. We had to make a lot up by our common sense...and it was a definitely a good thing that we are kinda experienced with ALL kinds of trading card games, from Magic and Middle-Earth to Mythos, VS System and Behind.
The problems we had with the rulebook:
-> it mentions non-relevant fluff in wrong places
-> it repeats info which has no impact on the game AND has already been
mentioned four times in the rulebook,
-> it brings examples of easy game situations while dodging the more
complex ones
The rules, though neatly wrtten, are not well organized at all. At first, they cover the basic aspects of the game. Then, they go into explaining the different phases with the more advanced mechanics. This neither encourages a quick start into the game, nor fulfills the role of a accompaniment which you might use for extensive reference during later gameplay. We found ourselves being forced to jump back and forth between the basics and the actual gameflow WITHOUT being able to figure out how things must be dealt with.
Sure, this game is no Dominion, with its what, 14 pages of rules, a sample game AND a description for all the cards included. Yes, Spycraft may be pretty complicated at it's core. Therefore, more pages for the rulebook, more ability overviews and more examples wouldn't have hurt. All right, people may be scared away by too much rules. But on the other hand, being left alone with an insufficient rulebook feels much worse to me. I would prefer a good, though somewhat extensive rulebook which offers help in any situation and clearly differentiates between basic and advanced gameplay. No, we didn't went online on that evening because we wanted to play the game and not investigate on specific problems.
You will need a lot of time for this game. While this game surely plays well with 3-5 players from what I have heard so far (I havent' tried it out yet), it will require a lot of time.
Maybe some dice throws would have been not that bad if they could significantly reduce that sometimes tiresome accounting.
The Verdict
At the end: after this short gaming session, I cannot but give this game pretty high marks for what I have seen so far:
It surely requires a lot of skill and patience for the tiny details but is very rewarding - now I know what all the reviews of the Dune CCG from Last Unicorn aim at
I look forward to playing it again, if possible, with 3-4 players.
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Adam Daulton
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
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I remember when this game first came out, I was thinking about giving it a try since LotR TCG was fading. I never did, which I'm glad I didn't get into playing it, but I still would like to play a game or two of it. Thanks for the session report.
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Crenshaw Stormcrow
Germany
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You really should! Each of the aforementioned display boxes came at a mere 15 €, containing eight ready-to-play starter. At the beginning, we stuck with the Tigers and the Russians, since they are supposed to be easier to play when compared with the Banshees and the Bloodvine Syndicate. While the Tigers and the Russians are good at shooting themselves out of trouble, the Banshees and the Syndicate require more game experience.
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Zen Fairborn
Australia
Perth
Western Australia
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I agree that I do like the Spycraft CCG. Such a shame it went out of print. The design was great, although there were one or two features that I felt needed a bit of polishing. However I adored the bluffing mechanisim of playing any card face-down to make your opponents wonder what you were using (if anything at all).
If anyone does know a group where people play this online, I'd be very keen to get involved :D
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Posted Fri Feb 3, 2012 10:54 pm
