I think infiltration offers the best Gameplay.

Sneak - A bit Spy-ish, but seems a bit over complicated for the benefit.

Sneak Away - this one just feels cheesy to me

Deep Cover - the benefits don't seem to translate well to the ability name, and Spies generally shouldn't be big damage dealers - the are really more a support role (hence how they usually have Spotter).

Information Retrieval - Good support role ability, but rather than giving everyone It's a Trap I think it'd be better as a Counter for Cloaked than stealth.

Objective - Personally I don't feel like this as defined is very spy-like at all.

I like the Sneak ability for a "spy" - like wallclimber, but on the ground.

I like the Infiltration ability, but for something else besides a spy - more of a tech role in my mind.

Infiltration.

Infiltration looks sweet

I would go for infiltration. Most usefull and IMO not a total game changer.

Seems to be the popular pick - I really didn't know which one would prove most popular.

I liken it to walking in behind open doors rather than rigging the door open, but a spy doing any sort of infiltration would need some technical skills anyway. Note that it doesn't open doors that are closed with Override, and there's still a normal door check at the end of the turn.

Cool thread, and cool ability ideas. Perhaps make more threads like this

Not sure if you were just thinking of Cover in the Star Wars sense. This is just referring to being 'undercover' and part of the enemy's team but still working for you. An abstraction, for sure.

Here's another thought about being undercover, less abstract but it's pretty radical I think:

Undercover: This character sets up in your starting zone but is considered to be part of your opponent's squad. Your opponent decides when to activate the character, but you take its turn. When this character would be activated, you may voluntarily "break cover" and this character joins your squad for the rest of the skirmish. When breaking cover, the character is not activated and does not count as one of your opponent's activations.

Could cause targeting problems for you since he could be the nearest enemy when you don't want him to be. I also didn't think through the interactions with Betrayal or specify who gets the points if he's defeated before breaking cover. (The opponent should get the points.) Anyway, I didn't include it because it's already pretty complicated and I didn't even cover everything.



Goodness no - it wouldn't turn your attack back on yourself, and even if the spy gets away he's at least out of your hair for a round or two.

Thanks!

I like it.
Along those lines, and fitting in with the thread, what about an SA that negates Reinforcements?
I think that would be awesome.

Well, I am against such an SA because the cost of Reinforcements are built into the cost of the character itself. Now you're paying 27 points for a 20 hp Lobot with Override rather than getting the 20 pts built into his cost. I personally don't like that.
So I don't want to mess with SA's that negate Reinforcements.

I chose negating Reserves because the cost of building Intelligence into your character is a gamble, meaning if you face a squad that doesn't have anyone with Reserves (which as I said is a small number to begin with), you're now paying for a useless SA. So I tried to make my custom piece at least do something else so as not to be worthless if not facing a Reserves piece. (Mine was Black Sun Intelligence, built like the Bith Vigo but melee, a few less SA's, and costed about 17 or so.) But if you do face a character with Reserves, it could be very helpful to have a piece with Intelligence. My thought was that if a character (possibly a spy. :) had intel on what forces were coming to aid the enemy, they could take steps to cancel those reserves out.

Sorry to hijack the thread. I was just saying that if we're playing in the "custom SA's for Spies" tree that I think Intelligence would be a good one to consider. As for the ones you proposed, I like Infiltration the best.