User:Trevor William Collywobbles/sandbox

Spy Ring is a board game first published by Waddingtons in 1965. On the box it says ‘by the makers of Monopoly’ and indeed it was being sold in the wake of the huge popularity of Monopoly and, with a theme of espionage, at a time of the early big James Bond movies. An exciting family game, the object is to find ‘secrets’ in the embassies, ‘spot’ other spies and ultimately create code words to score as many points as possible. The game can be played by 2, 3 or 4 players and takes around 45 minutes to play.

Description
The game is set in the newly-created, international city of Espiona. Sixteen Embassies are grouped in the quarter of Bludt, built on the site of an earlier town that was honeycombed with underground tunnels. There are no roads – only footpaths separated by trees. Players operate as Spies in this area; each controls a Spy and a Contact Man – Spies carry wireless transmitters in their hats. Players set out to gather as many "Secrets" as they can – the one who collects the most valuable set of Secrets is the winner.

Game Play
Reference to Rupert. Each player controls a spy (represented by a shady looking man with a hat) and a ‘contact man’ (con-man). Initially 16 ‘secrets’, represented by coloured tiles, four each of red, blue, yellow and green, are randomly distributed, face down, across the 16 embassies. The aim is to locate your own ‘secrets’ which allows you to collect 2 cards from the stack. The cards contain letters which, when enough collected, can be used to make a code word. Cards and code words give points and the player with the most points wins the game.

A player’s spy is moved around the city by the roll of a die. A spy can also jump across the city quickly by using a network of tunnels, accessed via the various manhole covers. Once in an embassy, he can peep at the tile – and remove it if it’s his own colour, or if not, replace it in the same or different embassy.

Each player has a con-man to help him. Upon throwing a ‘1’ the spy puts up his aerial and is allowed to radio an instruction: either for the con-man to move to a new position or if inside an embassy, look at a secret.

In the world of espionage, spies must keep a low profile; and in Spy Ring this is no different. A spy landing beside another spy will ‘spot’ him and can take any card from his opponent. And if a spy has his aerial up he is particularly vulnerable as he can be spotted from any distance if he is in direct line of sight. To help a spy with his aerial up being quite so conspicuous, he is allowed an extra roll of the die to try and ‘hide’ behind trees or in an empty embassy.

Winning
Normal game play ends when all 16 tiles have been collected or when a player finds all his four secrets, constructs two code words and makes it to the embassy associated with his designated code word. At this stage players should try and form the best code words they can to maximize their point count. Each card is worth 1 point, but bonuses are scored for each code word created (see table below). The winner is the player with most points.

Code Words
Each Embassy has its own code word. But unknown to one another, all of them chose the same word: "Fish" albeit translated into the appropriate language. A certain amount of skill is required to make the best combination of code words, especially if the a player has many cards.

Strategy
Although racing around the city to collect your 4 secrets may seem the obvious tactic, the underlying fact is that it’s the player with the most cards at the end who will most likely win. For this reason a player must consider ‘spotting’ another spy and be aware of being ‘spotted’ at all times. Towards the end of the game, there is often a spotting frenzy by all players trying for the same goal.

The game for 2 players
All 16 Secret tokens are used. Each player directs 2 Spies, the two pairs playing as 'teams’. Spies in the same 'team’ may not 'spot’ each other. They may not exchange Secret cards at any time. Scoring: Each Spy totals his own score, but the scores are added together to find the winning team.

The game for 3 players
Each player directs 1 Spy. All 16 tokens are used. All 3 players search for their own Secret tokens and also tokens of the fourth colour.

Other Versions of the Game
A newer version of the game was brought out in the 1970’s. Resembling the original, it concentrates more on the race to collect your set of secrets (using a decoder) and completely drops the use of code words and cards. The con-man has become a bodyguard (a bald-headed henchman) and has been given more movement.