Until Root, I really wasn’t sure the ‘lovable forest animals’ side of board games was for me. But after years of happy scrapping with the industrialist cats and badger paladins of Cole Wehrle’s 2018 barnstormer – one of the best board games of all time – I’m a true critter convert. Which makes me all the more susceptible to the kawaii charms of Spytails: Tactics in the Shadows, a gorgeous little trick taking game that hit Kickstarter last week.
This is the eighth Kickstarter by Kyoto-based woodwork studio Mokuomo, and easily one of the board-gamiest board games it’s made, since breaking into crowdfunding with gamified variations of ‘Woodas’, a stacking toy made from irregular, pretty wooden blocks.
But Mokuomo also does a very nice line in hand-carved animal figures that’ll melt your heart, and its more recent projects have understandably leaned into that, hard. Its most successful Kickstarter so far, Piri Piri Summoners – a card game featuring a wooden pig, red panda, bunny rabbit, and capybara – made $115k in 2024. The format clearly appeals – and Spytails’ mascots Alka the wolf, Mimic the rat, Echo the bear, and Mirage the mink have drawn even my cold, heartless attention.
Eminently huggable though its heroes are, Spytails, like Root before it, is not a chilled out, cozy experience. This is a hard-nosed strategy card game that layers several brainy mechanics on top of the core idea of ‘high card wins’. At the start of each round of seven ‘operations’ (hands) you’ll spend Influence tokens to bid on how many you’ll win, by playing the high card in the lead suit or the ‘Intimidation’ (trump) suit. Certain wild cards, like Alpha Strike, can trump the lot when you really need the win.
Matching your win forecast exactly lets you keep those Influence tokens, which is crucial because they’re also the game’s Victory Points. But to gain a lead, you’ve also got to complete Mission cards – randomly chosen extra objectives that earn you extra Influence tokens for things like winning specific hands, specific numbers of hands, winning with a specific card, and so on.
And it gets crunchier: you have other resource tokens to spend on extra abilities that tweak your plays, including your chosen character’s special ability (because yes, those wooden cuties are a little bit asymmetric). Alka the wolf draws an extra card; Mimic the rat can turn any card into a trump; Echo the bear gets to re-play a card from the discard pile; and Mirage the mink can elect to ignore the lead suit for a whole round. On top of that, at the end of each round you’ll deck build by adding a new, upgraded card to your deck, and optionally chuck an old one out.
The result looks like a very appetizing strategy game to me, and the presence of a 2v2 mode is a smart addition that’ll help it find a place in the ‘warm-up’ section of larger group game nights (though a 45 minute minimum playtime might see it lose out to quicker playing favorites).
Still, it’s got more aesthetic presence than many 20-minute games. While the signature cutie pie meeples aren’t physically very involved in the gameplay, their charming, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing aura permeates the theme, art, and vibes nicely. Wooden display bases that double as token dishes thanks to a hollow on the underside are a delightful paid add-on for those who want them, too. As promising as Spytails’ gameplay is, Mokuomo clearly knows where its core audience’s heart truly lies.
The Spytails: Tactics in the Shadows Kickstarter runs until Thursday, July 2, 2026, and the core package pledge costs around $64 (or $59 if you nab one of the two remaining Early Bird copies still available at time of writing).
For reference, I’ve pointed my AI-scope all over this project and there are no obvious red flags for me – though the campaign doesn’t have an explicit disclosure, and Mokuomo’s blog does appear to use images from AI stock image site StockCake. I’ve contacted the company to ask them if GenAI has been used in the making of Spytails, and will update this story when we get a reply.
In the meantime, what does your heart say about Spytails’ combo of crunchy cardplay and cuddly creatures? Come join the free Wargamer Discord community and let us know if these li’l dudes would get a spot at your table.
Source: Wargamer
