A trick-taking game where winning too many tricks can backfire, played with hand-carved wooden animal spies? Spytails: Tactics in the Shadows is the sort of thing that makes you stop scrolling. Designed by Seb Hawden and published by Kyoto woodwork studio Mokuomo, it is live on Kickstarter right now.
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Find events near youThe clever bit is how it fuses two mechanics that rarely share a box. Everyone starts with the same basic deck and reshapes it between rounds, deck-building style. Then comes the bidding: you call how many tricks you will win and stake your points on hitting that number, so greedily hoovering up tricks can wreck your score. As Zatu puts it, the system favours the bold. It plays 2 to 4 (including a 2 versus 2 mode), takes 45 to 90 minutes and suits ages 10 and up.
The headline feature sits in your hand. Each of the four agents, Alka the wolf, Mimic the rat, Echo the bear and Mirage the mink, is a hand-carved wooden meeple with its own special power, not a printed standee. That craft focus is Mokuomo's whole thing, following their earlier wooden-meeple campaign Piri Piri Summoners, and backers have clearly bitten: Kicktraq had the campaign sitting above 1,300% of its modest goal in mid-June.
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Set up your group for freeThe campaign runs until 2 July 2026, with the core pledge around $64 (roughly £48). It looks like a quick, sharp, genuinely pretty filler for the right group. If it grabs you, rally your regulars for a game night.
