- Original Release: 1996
- Developer: James Ernest
- Publisher: Cheapass Games
- Platform: Board Game
This is an unlicensed James Bond-inspired card game from Cheapass Games. In this, each player is taking on the role of a supervillain, trying to capture spies in their evil lairs.
Each turn you draw a card and can improve your lair, and then play a spy card to attack an opponent’s (or your own lair). You can play a spy from your hand, or one from an opponent’s hand (the backs of the spy are different) and risk not knowing the value of the spy.
If the spy is a higher value than the lair, the lair is discarded. You don’t score any points for this, you just mess up your opponent. If the spy is lower value than the lair, then the owner of the lair has two options: kill or taunt.
If you kill a spy, you score points equal to the value of the spy. You can taunt by playing a “Doubler” card, saying “Before I Kill You, [Name]” and reading out the card. The card has a letter in the corner and if another player plays the second card with this letter, the Spy escapes and you lose your lair (and all the points), but if you’re successful, you double the points of the spy. You can play additional Doubler card, however, you run the risk of losing all the points with each additional one.
It’s a fun, silly game, but also quite flawed. The only incentive to attack opponents is to potentially stop them from getting points, which makes it too risky to play unknown cards from other players.
Danjaq got wind of this game and ordered Cheapass Games to remove any reference to “Bond” and was relaunched as James Ernest’s Totally Renamed Spy Game before being revised as “Before I Kill You, Mister Spy…”. The newest version fixes some of the issues, such as being able to play lair cards face down or stealing lair cards from your opponents, giving you an incentive to attack.
Where to get Before I Kill You, Mr Bond…
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