Spy Club (Foxtrot Games)

When I think of famous characters in children's literature, I think of such names as Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, Encyclopedia Brown, The Boxcar Children, and The Baby-Sitters Club just to name a few. What do all these names have in common? They are all detectives. Yes, when you think about it, mystery series are a staple of children's literature (and adult literature too)! Drawing on this popular genre, Foxtrot Games developed the game Spy Club. Spy Club is a cooperative game for 2-4 players, ages 10+.  It takes approximately 45 minutes to play and retails for $45. In this game, you and your fellow detectives will work together to unlock the five clues necessary to solve the case. Let's learn how to play!

Setup
1. Situate the Board and Supply - Assemble the puzzle pieces to form the Central Board. Determine the difficulty level you want (standard or advanced), and flip the Central Board to that side. Place the Escape Marker on the bottom space of the escape track of the Central Board. Place all 18 Idea Tokens (light bulbs) within reach of all players.
2. Create the Movement Deck - Take the 25 Movement Cards and divide them into 3 stacks (daytime, sunset, and nighttime). Shuffle each stack and remove one card from each stack. Form a single deck in the proper order of daytime, sunset, and nighttime and place this deck in its spot on the Central Board.
3. Create the Clue Deck - Shuffle the 54 Clue Cards, making sure to cut and flip the cards to create a thorough shuffle. Place this deck in the card tray, and place the tray next to the Central Board. Then, deal out a number of clue cards to the right of the tray, based on the number of players. These are now known as incoming clues. Place a Placard over each incoming clue according to the table in the rule book.
4. Prepare the Player Areas - Give each player two puzzle pieces to form their Player Board. Randomly determine a starting player (I usually go with the youngest!), and deal one card from the top of the clue deck over each empty slot on the players' boards, starting with the first player. This forms a player's hand. Each player places one Focus Token (magnifying glass) on their Player Board below their rightmost card. Each player also receives one Idea Token.
5. Position the Suspect - Place the Suspect Pawn over the rightmost card of the starting player.
6. Select and Name Characters - Have each player select one of the eight Character Cards. Take a blank sticker, writing the name you created for your character on it, and affix it to the lower part of the Character Card.
7. Case 1 Only - Reveal cards 3 and 4 from the Campaign Deck and set them aside. You will flip them when the instructions on the card tell you to do so.

Game Play - The game is played over a series of player turns, until an end game condition is met. On a player's turn, they will perform the following three steps:
1. Use Actions - There are four actions you can take. You may perform up to three, including the same one multiple times.
a. Investigate - Flip any of your Clue Cards (one at a time) in any order. You decide after each flip, whether you want to keep flipping or not.
b. Shift Focus - Move your Focus Token to one of your other Clue Cards. Gain one Idea Token for each Clue Card that is the same aspect (color) of your new Focus Card.
c. Confirm - Move one Clue Card from your hand to the center row. (Note: Doing this will require you to spend Focus Tokens. )
d. Scout - Draw one Clue Card from the incoming clues. (Note: Doing this will require you to spend Idea Tokens.)
*Teamwork Bonus - You may also do bonus activities such as trading cards or taking Idea Tokens from other players.
2. Refill - Fill any empty slots in your hand. Then, fill any empty slots for the incoming clues.
3. Move the Suspect - Reveal the top card of the Movement Deck, and place it face-up on the movement discard track to the right of the previous card.
a. Advance the Escape Marker - If the revealed card has an escape icon, move the escape marker one space. If the marker reaches the "Escaped" space, the case ends immediately!
b. Move the Suspect Pawn - Determine what number on the previous card is connected to the suspect icon and move the Suspect Pawn that number of spaces. An event is then triggered depending on the color of card that the Suspect Pawn ends their movement on.

You will solve aspects of the case by having five cards of the same color in the center row. Of these five cards, the solution card is identified by the symbol in the center of the most recent Movement Card. The game will end in one of five ways with only one resulting in a win. The end game possibilities are : 1 Succeed by solving all five aspects of the case. 2. The Escape Marker reaches the "Escaped" space. 3. You do not have enough ideas to remove from the game when required to do so. 4. You do not have a movement card to draw at the end of player's turn. 5. You do not have enough incoming clues to fill all players' hands.

Note: There are campaign rules where you will be required to solve five cases to win. This adds a newer wrinkle in difficulty and creates a fun way to unlock new rules, change the way you play, add story that will carry forward from one case to the next, and create a wealth of replay value!

Review
Foxtrot Games isn't a publisher that cranks out 20 games a year. Instead, they take their time focusing on one to two games a year, and making those games excellent. This started with Relic Expedition, moved on to Lanterns, World's Fair 1893, Sundae Split, The Fox in the Forest, and has ultimately led us to Spy Club, arguably their best game to date. Each game is thoughtfully and meticulously crafted in terms of art and game play, making the games visually appealing on your table and welcoming for players of all experience levels. I don't just dole out this praise lightly either, as I own the majority of their catalog, it is well-deserved. However, let's focus primarily on Spy Club.

Spy Club on the surface is a box of colorful double-sided cards that you are trying to match into a five of a kind set in order to solve an aspect of a case. It sounds simple enough, but you are having to manage resources to make these matches happen and also going against a timer in the form of a deck of cards that is going to frustrate you to no end your first couple of plays until you and your group get used to the various actions and bonus actions you can take to match the cards and solve the case. If you master the art of a single game, you can play five separate games to make up a game, and this is where the game really shines.

The campaign mode of Spy Club elevates this game to an 11 out 10 ranking. Yes, you read that correctly. Starting with Case 2, you will unlock new content based on which aspect of Case 1 that you recorded. This will then instruct you which card (from two giant decks of cards) to reveal, read, and alter the way you play the game. I won't go into details how, but it added new challenges to an already great game. What I like best about the campaign mode is that it is not a legacy style format, meaning that nothing you do during the campaign will destroy any cards or components. Instead, it is called a "mosaic" game, meaning that rules and elements of each case will change each time you play. There are 40 different modules and each you only use 4 each game. That means, at a minimum, it will take you 10 games to discover all the modules. In reality, it will take you more as sometimes you will face the same module more than once. That's a lot of replay and value for $45!

This is my #1 family game of the year and a game that I believe belongs on everyone's shelves. There are a lot of cooperative games out there, but they generally fall into one of two camps - 1. Very childlike with no real depth or 2. Doom, gloom, and the end of the world. Spy Club breaks the mold by creating a light and captivating theme. Once you have finished a game, you are then encouraged to make a story out of the five aspects of the case to further immerse yourself in the experience. This help foster imagination in your younger players and gives you a satisfying end to a job well done. I can think of no family game currently that offers the depth and replay that this game does for this price. And while I have not been through every module in this game, I look forward to experiencing them all and hope that there will be an expansion down the line that adds even more modules for us to unlock. Can't recommend this game enough!

Spy Club (Foxtrot Games)

No matter how old you are and no matter if you are a boy or a girl, you probably grew up reading mystery literature. There was The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children just to name a few. Didn't like to read growing up? Well, surely you watched Scooby Doo and helped those meddling teenagers crack cases in their psychedelic van. Foxtrot Games is taking that love of the mystery genre that seems ingrained in our DNA and turning it into a board game called Spy Club. Spy Club is a game for 2 to 4 players, ages 10+. It is currently on Kickstarter for a pledge of $39. Randy Hoyt (Relic Expedition) and Jason Kingsley (Lanterns: The Emperors Gifts) are the designers and Bartłomiej Kordowski (Dream Home) and Keith Pishnery (The Fox in the Forest) are the illustrators.

Unlike other mystery solving games (let's use the old standby of CLUE), you aren't playing against other players, but instead you are working together to solve the case! With double-sided clue cards in front of each player, you are taking turns manipulating the cards (flipping, drawing, or trading them) to uncover part of the solution. In order to completely crack the case, you must solve all five parts before your suspect escapes or you run out of clues! And now for the really cool part...

You can play this game in campaign mode! There is a campaign deck with 40+ modules and 150+ cards in it that ties five games together. With each game you complete, more of the story is revealed. But before you go thinking that this game is a five time only game and then you're done, you can reset the campaign upon completion. With all the different modules available and only using five each game play, you will get a ton of play out of this game. It's only the first day, but the game is currently 2/3 funded on Kickstarter and needs your help to get published. So head on over to their page and give them some love. This looks like a great family game that your kids will ask to play many times over.

Lanterns: The Harvest Festival (Renegade Game Studios and Foxtrot Games)

There are some games that take a long time to set-up, explain how it works, play, and then score. And then, there are other games that you can sit down, explain the rules in two minutes, open the box, play and score in 30 minutes. Lanterns: The Harvest Festival is one of those quicker games, and because my wife likes the lighter and quicker games, it has been making it to the table a lot lately. Let me tell you about the game!

Lanterns: The Harvest Festival is a tile-placement game for 2-4 players. The recommended age is 8+, but can be played at a much younger age. Total playing time is approximately 30 minutes, It retails for $35, but you can usually find it for around $25. The game takes place during the time of imperial China. You are an artisan who is decorating the palace lake with colored lanterns, which you will exchange for honor. The person with the most honor at the end of the game wins. Simple, right? Right! Let's get to the set-up for the game, which I will explain for 4 players, as this is the best number of players to play with.

Begin by making a stack for each color of lantern cards (red, yellow, green, blue, pink, grey, and white). Underneath them, place the dedication tokens in four stacks - green, blue, red, and grey. Each stack of dedication tokens should have the numbers arranged from largest to smallest. You will then have a pile of wooden discs called favor tokens. Last in the box are the lake tiles. Pull out the one with a brown boat in the center. Then, shuffle the rest of the lake tiles face down and deal everyone three. Arrange the players so that they are sitting like the points on a compass (North, South, East, and West). You may then either select the first player or spin the lake tile with the boat on it. Whoever, the red area ends up pointing at goes first, because red is considered lucky.

Looking at the first tile, you can see there are four colors on it - red, white, grey, and blue. Depending on where you are sitting is what color lantern card you will receive. If I was the starting player, I would receive red. The person to my left would receive white. The person across from me would receive grey. And the person to my right would receive blue. It is important to distribute the lantern cards clockwise, as they could run out, and if so then that person would just be out luck and not receive a card. Now, it would be my turn to place a lake tile, and I place one underneath the starting tile. If I matched the connecting colors (not something that is required, but it does behoove you), I would get a red lantern card for making a color match and a blue lantern card because that is the side of the tile facing me. The other players would get pink, red, and green respectively. I draw a replacement lake tile to get my total back up to three, and it's the next players turn. That person plays a lake tile with a platform on it. The platform gives them a favor token if they matched the color of the tile they played next to, so they get one favor token, a white lantern card for the color match and a yellow lantern card, because that is the side facing them. Everyone else would then get a green, white, and green respectively.

You're probably thinking,"What is a favor token?" and "What do I do with all these lantern cards?" Well, these are where you score your honor points in the form of dedication tokens. Before placing a tile on your turn, you can take two favor tokens and a lantern card you own to exchange for a different colored lantern card. You may then exchange lantern cards one of three ways. You can turn one of every color to receive a green dedication token. You can turn in three pairs, i.e., two blue, two red, and two green to receive a blue dedication token. Or you can turn in four of one color to receive a red dedication token. You can only exchange two favor tokens or claim a dedication token once per turn. It also behooves you to claim these dedication tokens early, because the points you receive for them drops the more people claim them. In the green stack for example, the first person to "cash in" one of every lantern color gets ten points, but the next person would only get nine. You continue to play lake tiles and redeem lantern cards until all the lake tiles run out. You then have one final chance to redeem any remaining lantern cards. Then you total your dedication tokens and the one with the most honor points wins.

I really like this game, because it is deceptively simple. By that I mean, it is easy to learn, but there are different strategic moves you can make to benefit you and/or hinder others. For starters, everyone has a hard time getting it out of their heads that colors on lake tiles have to match. Most of the time, it is to your advantage that they do match, because it nets you an extra lantern card. However, if you have six different lantern colors, and you need one more to claim that ten point green dedication token, it might be to your advantage to not match the colors and instead place a tile in a way to get you that seventh color. You can also pay attention to what lantern cards other players have, and if you see that they are one lantern color short of cashing in, make sure they don't get that color. In addition to the simple strategy, it is just an easy and fun game. The gameplay and goal is straightforward and when you're done, you can sit back and admire the beautiful lantern display you made for the emperor. (Side note, the emperor is Christopher Chung. His last name is the symbol that appears on the favor tokens.) If you are looking for a relaxing and fun game to play with the kids or warm you up before tackling a bigger, more serious game, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival definitely scratches that itch!

This game was provided to me for free by Renegade Game Studios in exchange for an honest review. If you found this review helpful, please click here and hit Yes!