Playing – SPECTRE

New Game to my Table

It’s a semi cooperative game for 2 – 4 players and it does nicely capture the feel of being evil masterminds bent on global domination that must work together to commit schemes but still establish who gets to be Number 1 of SPECTRE. Seriously, the rules encourage that the current Number 1 should lord it over their fellow players while they can. Overall, I enjoyed it.

Each player taken on the role of a James Bond Villain, be it a classic like Ernst Blofeld or the more recent Raoul Silva, with their own set of starting abilities and others that will get unlocked through play and the expenditure of resources. Some abilities are restricted to your Villain pawn while others can be activated by either your Villain or Henchman. Meanwhile the main board is where the real action is played out as cubes representing your nameless Agents seek a majority to control of different regions will give you special actions to gain resources (gold, intel, blueprints), shift other Agents, complete Schemes, or advance on the track to being Number 1. You might even succeed at a secret objectives randomly drawn at the during the game – the catch is that not only do you have to complete the Scheme as a team, you have to contribute the most before you make an attempt at your secret objective. Meanwhile time is ticking as the game ends after the 7th turn. And then there is always the risk of a certain Mr. Bond (represented by a stylized poker chip) will show up and make a mess of things …

Things I liked …

There was a decent mix of old and new Villains and their special abilities thematically fit. I was reminded a little of Villainous in terms of the asymmetrical abilities on an individual board (and it is easy to forget what some of your opponents might be up to or able to do) but that’s a mechanic growing in popularity these days. The main board has some help notes on it (turn sequence, how to determine if 007 shows up) but it would have been nice to have some individual ones for the players (my table has got some vision challenges these days). I also liked the durability of the pieces. There are a lot of games out there currently using what appear to be 3D printed pieces and I’m concerned about snapping things like masts on ships or spears of soldiers. I’m also a fan of games that have a distinct end game, in this case after the final card from the deck of Schemes has been played. And once we got going, the game flowed pretty well.

With this I took issue …

There are some things that I would expect better of from a big company, but technically a company that does more RPGs than board games. The layout of the rulebook could have been friendlier (and not just because of the visually dark elements) as it really isn’t that complex a game and yet when we had to consult a rule, there was a fair bit of page turning. If you plan to play it, check out Board Game Geek’s Rules Summary that someone put together. It simplified things immensely. I remain puzzled as to why the regions ‘flipped’ where the Agents and Villains / Henchmen are placed. At least there was a minor color hint as to this happening.

I’m a little surprised that there was neither Villain Bios included nor booster packs for further Bond foes released. I suspect that as a game, it performed poorly against what was expected and was quickly abandoned in favor of greener fields (I found this copy in a liquidation store). Recently when looking for info on the Modiphius website, there wasn’t even a listing for the game anymore. The good news is it’s showing for $20 or less via Amazon and eBay currently. I’m also hoping that as more folks discover this game that there will be some home crafted additional Villains and Schemes.

Would I play it again?

Totally. I’m eager to see how the different Villain abilities will interact with each other and the various Schemes. There are plenty of Schemes to work through, either randomly or by putting together an arc, and you only go through a handful each play. First time playing, it took much longer than a predicted 45 minutes, but I expect once we know what’s going on with less deciphering of the rules it will still be at least 90 – 120 minutes for us.

19 different Schemes from10 different Bond movies so there is certainly room enough for more.