Review: SpyMaster (Calliope)

A furtive glance and an almost imperceptible nod. A switched briefcase. A mysterious code. It’s all just another day in the world of international espionage.

There’s something about spies in pop culture (and real life) that captures the imagination. And now, thanks to SpyMaster from Calliope Games, that world just landed on your tabletop.

So find your source, make contact, and follow the clues below to find the top five things you need to know about the world of SpyMaster.

Running Your Organization

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In SpyMaster, players take the role of espionage bureau chiefs, each with a group of agents at the ready.

At the beginning of each round, players look at the six missions available around the world (er, the board) and carefully select the intelligence cards they’ll need to complete some missions and earn victory points.

Play continues through five rounds of intelligence gathering and mission operations. After that, players total their victory points and determine the winner.

Cards with Three Uses

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Intelligence cards can help you in three ways during a game of SpyMaster.

First, you need one or more intelligence cards to complete each mission. The missions show both the type and the value of the intelligence cards required to claim them.

But before you can claim a mission, you need to maneuver your agents — and possibly some freelancers — into the right location. To move them, you play one intelligence card at a time from your hand. But pay attention to which cards you need to finish those missions so you don’t spend them while moving agents!

At the end of the game, players who kept the highest value intelligence cards in their hands earn valuable bonus points that might even sway the balance of power.

Splitting the Decks

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One of the game’s most interesting strategic moments happens when the round’s lead SpyMaster (first player) splits the available intelligence cards among the players.

During setup, you build five draw decks, each with a specific number of intelligence cards depending on the number of players. At the start of each round of play, the lead Spymaster turns one deck face-up and carefully places the cards in order on the table.

They then split the cards into hands for the other players to select. One of the hands also gets the card which lets that player become the lead SpyMaster next round. (At the end of the game, the SpyMaster card becomes the final tie-breaker condition.)

The lead SpyMaster can’t change the order of the cards as they do this — they can only adjust how many cards go into each hand. This creates some of the game’s most wickedly challenging moments, second only what comes next when the players choose the cards they’ll add to their hands.

Playing, Replaying, and Doing It Again

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Thanks to how the game’s clever card mechanics work, SpyMaster is almost infinitely replayable.

Setup begins with players randomly placing their agents and the freelance agents around the board, followed by assigning two mission cards to each of the map’s six geographic areas.

With five potential mission locations in each of the six geographic areas of the board, you never know where you’ll need agents and freelancers or which intelligence cards you’ll have access to.

Plus, a single game will use only half of the included mission cards (at most), so you always have new missions to look forward to. (In case you wondered, our favorites were “Protect the Android Panda” and “Sabotage the Ambassador’s Porch Light.”)

Message from \[REDACTED\]

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Just before submitting this review, we received a priority message from one of our informants inside Calliope HQ.

We ran it through the decoder twice to make sure that we got everything right, but we still can’t make much out of it. Maybe you can figure it out when you get your own copy of the game.

Here’s your message: “Clever spies will be rewarded with hidden objectives if they think inside the box.”

Verdict

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We see a lot of good games these days, but SpyMaster is great.

The designers delivered on the theme with everything from card text and components to board design and game mechanics. Players stay involved every moment as new missions replace completed ones and spies shift around the board. Everything works together to make the game both gorgeous and engaging.

SpyMaster brings the exotic world of international espionage to your tabletop with a great combination of strategy, replayability, and table-pleasing entertainment, all delivered with a sly wink and nod to classic tropes of the espionage genre.

From our hidden lair on this innocent-looking tropical island, we give the game a solid thumbs-up.