Double Agent
Double Agent Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- A board with the six agents and their Influence tracks.
- 6 influence counters (unactivated side grey, activated side green). The board is placed between the players. The influence counters are placed unactivated (grey) side up on the lettered spaces of the tracks (half on each player's side, as indicated on the board).
- 6 loyalty tokens for each player, in his color, numbered 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, on plastic supports. Each player secretly places a loyalty token in front of each agent, thus deciding his loyalty score for this agent. Of course, he doesn't know how his opponent distributed his loyalty tokens.
- 2 "+1 file" counters used with the Nosy card.
- A set of 22 file cards for each player, in his color. All file cards have a value, between 0 and 7, in the top left corner.
There are 2 different types of cards:
- Simple file cards also have their value indicated on the back. Four of them are marked 0/7, meaning that the card's value is either 0 or 7. These cards can only be played as face down file cards. Two of them, Personal Files and Booby-Trapped Case, have a specific effect applied when the files are delivered and the cards revealed (see below).
- Personal Files (0, play this card face down like a file): Add 1 to this agent's loyalty to you.
- Booby-Trapped Case (0, play this card face down like a file): When this agent's files are revealed, the highest value file card(s) is removed from the game.
- File / Action cards have a green title-bar and green text. Their back has a question mark (?) with no indicator of their value. These cards can be played:
- either face down, as a simple file card. Only one File/Action card can be played on each agent by either player. The card text is ignored.
- OR as an action card. The text in green is immediately applied and the card is discarded. The card's value is ignored.
- Examples: Tip (value 2 as a file; action: choose two agents whose loyalty has not been checked yet. Your opponent must tell you the summed value of their loyalty tokens). Clues (value 2 as a file; action: look at the files played so far by your opponent on any one agent of your choice). Important Files (value 3). Useless Files (value 1). Ultimate Files (value 7). Espionage (value 0; action: look at the cards in your opponent's hand).
Setting up the game
The board is placed between the players as shown above. Each player secretly places his 6 loyalty tokens (1, 2, 2, 3, 4 and 5) in front of the 6 agents. Players do not know the values of the loyalty tokens of his opponent.
Each player shuffles his deck of file cards, and draws the first five as his starting hand. He then places the remaining cards as a draw pile in front of him.
The first player is randomly determined.
A player's turn
On each turn, a player can either:
- Play a file card, face down, on his side of one of the spies. Cards should be stacked in an overlapping manner to show the number of cards on each side and the value indicator (1, 2, 3, 4, 0/7, or "?"). Reminder: Only one card with a "?" on its back can be played on each agent (so if one player has already played a "?" on his side of the agent, the other player cannot place another "?".)
- Play a card face-up as an action (Green text file/action cards). The text in green is immediately applied and the card is removed from the game unless otherwise specified in its text.
Additionally, as part of each player's first three turns, after playing a card, the player must move one of the six influence counters one space towards his side. Once the influence counter has been moved, flip it so the activated side is up. Players may not move counters which have already been activated. After each player has taken three turns, all six counters will have been moved.
At the end of his turn, the player draws a card to refill his hand to five. If a player's draw pile is exhausted, play continues with the cards remaining in the player's hand.
Checking loyalty
When the fourth file card is placed in front of an agent, regardless of the color of these cards, the agent's loyalty is checked and the agent delivers the files.
Both players reveal the loyalty token placed on this agent. If the influence counter of this agent is on the space nearest to a player, that player adds one to the agent's loyalty.
The file cards on both sides of the agent are also revealed. If there are any Personal files or Booby-trapped case cards among them, their effect is applied. (Note: if each player plays a Booby-trapped case card on the same agent, the effect is applied only once.)
Then, the player with highest loyalty takes all remaining file cards and places them in front of him, face up, in his scoring pile.
If there is a tie for loyalty, the files are taken by the player on whose side the influence counter is.
The influence counter and loyalty tokens are removed from the game. The agent is now considered out of the game, and no more cards can be played next to him. The game resumes from where it was interrupted.
The number of file cards needed to have an agent's loyalty checked and his files delivered is immediately reduced to 3 when a neighboring agent delivers his files. This can result in a "chain reaction", with the playing of a file card triggering the loyalty checks of two or more agents.
Example
Agent S has 3 file cards. The red player adds one more file. There are now 4, so agent S' loyalty must be checked. Consequently, agent B's loyalty must also be checked, because he has 3 file cards. If Agent A did not have a "+1 file" token, his loyalty would have been checked as well.
Agent S' loyalty tokens are revealed - 4 for Blue and 3 for Red. However, the influence counter gives Red a +1 loyalty bonus, and breaks the tie (4 against 4). Red gets all the file cards, for a total score of 13 points.
The same procedure is then applied to Agent B.
End of the game
The game ends if:
- At the end of a player's turn there is only one (or fewer due to a chain reaction) agent whose loyalty has not been checked.
- Both players' draw pile and hands are completely exhausted.
The player with the highest total value of files in his score pile wins. In case of a tie, the player with the fewest cards in his scoring pile wins.