Spymaster - Test My New Card Game About Collection Management!

Last year I was struggling with how to make the classroom discussion of collection management (you know... the allocation of collection assets such as spies and satellites in order to gather required information in a timely manner) more interesting.

Couldn't do it.  

Even people who find the job enormously gratifying (and there are many), seem to have a hard time explaining why they like it so much.  

So...I decided to make a game out of it.

I call the game Spymaster and I have been using it in classes and playing it in my weekly Game Lab for most of the last year.  It seems to work really well both as a game and as a tool for making the challenges of collection management more real to students and young intel professionals.

It plays fast - in about 15 minutes - and is a cooperative game.  For those of you unfamiliar with this term, a cooperative game is one where all the players are on the same side trying to beat the game.  If you have ever played the board games Pandemic or Forbidden Island, you have played a cooperative game).  You can even play it solitaire but I have found it works best with 4-5 players and works really well in a classroom.

I have spent the last week or so cleaning up the game and making it look pretty and writing down the rules and a brief tutorial.  Now I am looking for people who would like to take this "beta" version out for a spin.

If you are interested in receiving a print-and-play version of the game on the condition that you give me some feedback, drop me a line at kwheaton@mercyhurst.edu. If you just want to follow along as I develop the game, check out the Spymaster Facebook Page.