Description

Each player is the Head of a Counter-espionage Agency and has the mission of catching as many enemy agents as he can. Unfortunately there are a lot of false trails which make the job more difficult than it could be. Besides this one must constantly work out what it is the other players are trying to do. Who is it then who will turn out to be the most successful Counter-espionage Chief......?

SCHNAPP DEN SPION, or Counter Espionage is a memory and tactics game for 2 to 6 players from Age 6.

The game has 60 agents cards which are laid face down on the board. These represent either the agents that players are trying to capture, or false trails. There are 10 cards in each colour of which 3 are agents and 7 are false trails.

Each player attempts to capture enemy agents (any agent that is not the same colour as the player's counter). When less than 6 people play all agents, including those not directly involved in the game, are considered to be enemy agents. A player can theoretically capture 15 agents - there are 18 agents in the game, 3 of which are friendly.

Players take it in turns to look secretly at two cards, returning them face down to the space they came from In so doing the players try an identify and memorise where the agents are on the board. When a player has discovered the location of a sufficient number of enemy agents he can, when it is his turn, place one of his three capture cards in the middle of the board. He does this instead of looking at two cards. In playing the capture card the player is allowed to take any number of agent cards from the board. He lays these cards face down in front of him without having a look at the front of the cards.

A player that has used a capture card may, before his turn ends, move up to three cards, one at a time, from where they are to any unoccupied space. This is done without looking at any of them.

Play continues until players have used up their capture cards or believe there are no more secret agents to capture. At the end of the game all the players turn over their agent cards and scores points as follows:

Captured enemy agents + 3 points
Captured own agents - 3 points
False trails (own or enemy) - 2 points

The winner is the player with the highest score.