An 18-card solo game played entirely in your hand!

Intrigue & lost souls lie deep behind enemy lines. You've been summoned to help with a series of daring operations, & you've answered the call determined to bring your expertise in these matters. Now the fate of these heroic missions rests in your hands.

You're the pilot of a spy plane, attempting to guide allies on the ground to obtain intel & rescue lost agents far from home. But beware, for danger lurks around every bend.

To play:

Simply perform a basic "round" over & over again until game's end.

Each round has 4 turns:

• 1st, you'll guide your secret CONTACT as they navigate their way through maps with varied terrain & icons.

• 2nd, you'll move your UNIT of Special OPS as they attempt to maneuver to desired positions.

• 3rd, the ASSASSIN (bad guy) will travel to areas according to the current logistics in play.

• Finally, you'll SURVEY the land from your cockpit & address present weather conditions.

TO WIN, you'll have to complete 2 main stages: INTEL & AGENTS.

• Find secret intel by getting the correct ally to occupy a specific space within the maps. You must find 4 out of a possible 8 intel.

• Then, rescue 4 out of 8 lost agents in the field by acquiring pieces of each of their unique code symbols scattered throughout the land.

• After all this, you'll be tasked with getting your team to the chopper extraction point for the final escape. If you can do so, you win!

You'll gain rewards &/or setbacks each time you find an intel or agent. You'll also risk damage to your pressure gauges, fuel loss, & the elimination of some of your Special OPS members depending on your movement, strategy, & tactics. If any of these aforementioned levels reach zero, you lose!

You'll also have access to a few emergency AIRSTRIKES to use on the Assassin if caught in a major jam.

Lastly, there are 5 optional expansion modes built into the final page of the rulebook (no need to purchase extra cards or components)! These can help ease you into the game (e.g., ROOKIE mode), provide harder challenges (MAYDAY), or just mix things up in new ways (THE DRUNKARD, PICK UP & DELIVER).

NOTES:

• All cards are kept upright in a pile in your hand, with no need to hold them spread out awkwardly or turned horizontally.

• There is no draw or discard pile. Easily play this on an airplane, couch, toilet, or wherever you like.

• There's a handy "turn order" card that stays at the top of the deck. This helps you remember the decisions for each of the 4 turns. It also makes it easy to put the cards away & return to the game later to know exactly where you stand & where you left off!

• You can also play this game with the cards laid out on a table if you like. Everything works the same way!

RULEBOOK

The 8 page, full-color rulebook is only available as a PDF, which you can print out and keep with your copy of Spy Plane. To guarantee that the game would fit in its custom "pocket" packaging, a physical version of the rulebook could not be included in the manufacturing parameters. Apologies.

However, if you print out the PDF and fold it, the resulting rulebook is the same size as the playing cards, and can thus be tucked snugly into the packaging.

DESIGN DIARY

I thought I'd provide you some background on the creation of this game, just in case you're interested.

Not too long ago, I was at a busy family gathering, with lots of guests milling about. I believe it was Christmas, but it could have been a birthday. Anyways, I remember there were gifts, food, and other various holiday items strewn about the home (as it should be during a lively celebration). I was seated at a tiny spot on the couch, and was enjoying the festivities.

At one point, with everyone else's attention otherwise occupied, I thought it would be a good time to play a little solo wallet card game. The problem was, there was no room on the coffee table. And even if I had laid out a game, perhaps someone would accidentally bump the table and mess up the layout and ruin my progress. Or maybe someone would spill a drink on it. Or a curious niece or nephew grabs the cards and tries to eat them. It just wasn't feasible.

So I set out to design an 18-card game played entirely in your hand, with no need to hold cards spread out or held awkwardly. This concept was not new, but I wanted a new one to play, so why not make one myself? I also wanted a game where you could put it away and come back to it later knowing exactly where you were in the process just by quickly glancing at the current card order. Finally, I wanted it to be as enjoyable, challenging, and replayable as possible.

I went back through all of the previous postcard games I had designed over the years, and one stood out to me. It had game mechanics that I developed to mimick the movements of a sliding puzzle when trying to solve it. It was called Spy Plane: Elite Recon Command. After some tweaking and a lot of thought and playtesting, I was able to convert the basic concept into a working in-hand card game, and I (at last!) had my potential future holiday "couch pastime" to pull out if the opportunity ever arose.

I preferred that the name would differ from the one that inspired it, but I couldn't come up with one that worked as well as "Spy Plane: Elite Recon Command," so I left it the same as its postcard predecessor. That name was my take on B-movies, in that they are often given super general, sort of cheesy titles that only somewhat vaguely relate to what you're actually going to witness. I'm sure you've seen this concept in loads of movie trailers. It's like a bunch of cliche dialogue and fast action, then an explosion and the narrator goes, "Codename: Deadly Revenge," or something like that.

Anywho, thanks for reading this. Hope you like SPY PLANE: Elite Recon Command as much as I enjoyed designing it. Take care.

-T. Howser, Old Schrader Creek

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