Shadowfist (1994)

Date Reviewed: 8-1-03

Critical Kobold Rating:    (5 out of Dice)

 

     I came across Shadowfist at its Gen Con booth the year of its release. I was only marginally interested upon seeing the display, because while it was nicely packaged (and they were giving away free posters), I was already numb from the constant barrage of new games being thrust towards me at the Con. Ah, but I do know that once I opened my first Shadowfist package and looked at the cards, I was hooked. I hadn’t even read the rules yet, mind you, so I didn’t have the faintest clue how it was played, what all the myriad symbols all over the cards meant, or anything else about it.

     But sweet monkey giblets, was it an amazing spectacle!

     The overall feeling of the game is intended to emulate the Hong Kong "wuxia" films, much like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or some of the low-budget chop-socky films produced in the 70's, with a touch of more modern action flicks such as The Matrix and Big Trouble in Little China.

FAKED DEATH

     Shadowfist was originally produced by Daedalus Games, the same company that first printed the wonderful Feng Shui rpg. (See this kobold’s review of that here.) The two products are set in the same quirky “universe”, so the rpg and the ccg mirror each other in tone, setting, characters, and action.

     Daedalus printed two ’Fist expansion sets in addition to the core set before going under financially, and the card game died a brief death. It was revived a few years later by the next publisher, Zev Shlesinger of Z-Man Games, under whose illustrious banner several more expansions were released… before the game was once more sentenced to death due to costs. THEN, it was picked up once more by a couple of fans, who have released yet three more sets under the Inner Kingdom Games logo. So, the ccg is once more alive and kicking, if not perhaps thriving as it once did a decade and a half ago.

     In the world of Shadowfist, time travel is possible using magic portals leading from one period in history to another. In each time juncture, there are groups who secretly manipulate world events by controlling “feng shui” sites. These sites are locations that give their owners control of the world’s mystical ch’i energy there, allowing them to change reality and mold the world into whatever image they’d like. All these factions throughout history are therefore using their agents and resources to find, steal, or destroy feng shui sites along a timeline spanning more than two thousand years.

     And you thought your job was rough…

The Cards

Sites

     The objective in the card game is to control several feng shui sites to win. These are either played from your own hand, or may be “seized” (taken over) from your opponents’ own play areas. Each turn, feng shui sites generate Power for their owner, representing the ch’i of the site. The more Power you possess, the more cards you can play, so you want a nice supply of sites generating Power for you.

    Your sites are the territories you control as a player, and you need to guard your sites jealously from the other players, who will be attacking them to destroy your power base. Even worse, instead of destroying them, your wily enemies may steal your sites, to use as their own! (Thooooooose bastards!) In addition to generating Power, many sites have extra abilities, such as healing characters or deflecting damage done to them.

Characters

    Your first line of defense, and agents of attack, are Character cards. These represent the factions throughout history involved in the Secret War for domination of the timeline. Characters may be individuals, such as Battlechimp Potemkin, a cybernetic rocket-powered gorilla rebel who can lay the serious whoop-ass on enemies, or more generic cards like “Mooks”, who are groups of low-level errand boys.

     Characters all have Fighting scores that denote their effectiveness in combat. The higher the Fighting score, the more damage your Character can sustain, and the more hurtin’ she deals out. Characters will be doing the fighting for you, and will either be attacking feng shui sites, doing combat with opposing Characters, or both.

    Many Characters also have special abilities, such as being able to instantly assassinate other Characters, reducing damage done to them, or sneaking around opponents to avoid combat. More powerful Characters from the same faction often have traits common to their group as well, such as the power to cast spells, or access to high-tech equipment, or masterful kung fu abilities.

(“Ah! I see you, too, know the deadly ‘Quivering Uvula’ technique, young one!”)

The 4 (upper right) is the Fighting score. The Lotus Faction and Magic symbols and 3 Power (lower left) are the Cost to play the Character. The Lotus faction symbol (lower right) is the Resource the Horror provides to you.

States

     States are helpful additions to your other cards. States may be weapons, vehicles, equipment. They may be skills or combat techniques that you play onto your Characters to boost their effectiveness, or perhaps defenses and bonuses you play on sites to make them more powerful.

Events

     Event cards (a staple among most ccg’s) allow you to change the rules briefly, unleashing a nasty surprise situation on your foes, or saving your own bacon in the clutch. These are the only cards that can be played outside your own turn, so they have the most potential to muck with your opponents from afar, when they think you’re harmless. (Heh heh. Suckers!)

Edges

    Longer lasting than Events, Edges also alter the game rules in some way, but they

 usually hang around until your enemies find a way to banish them. Edges are generally

 powerful, giving you an ongoing advantage over your silly competitors for the duration of

 the game.

    Getting more than one Edge in play can seriously cheese off your adversaries, making

 them glare at you and mutter curses about your ancestry. Fun, fun! Expect a lot of kung fu

 punishment to be coming your way if you do this.

So What’s the Point?

     OK, to win, you need to control five feng shui sites. To do that, you play them out of your hand onto your playing area, or attack someone else’s and take it for your own. (Yooooooou bastard!) You need to take some care with this, because your sites need to be played in a prescribed pattern of columns and rows on the table, and where you place your sites in your arrangement may impact your game play and the sites’ usefulness.

     Your Characters are played out at these sites as well, and given whatever states you’d like. On your turn, you’ll use these guys to do your bidding, fending off attacks against your sites or setting them loose upon hapless opponents. The first guy to control five feng shui sites is the winner. TA DA!! Simple as that.

”This is Gonna Cost Ya, Pal.”

     But, you can’t just slap cards down willy-nilly. Each card in Shadowfist has a Cost. This may be a cost of Power and/or Resources.

     In order to play cards, you need to have the Power available to pay for them. Each turn your sites will generate Power for you, and you can then play as many cards as you can pay for… but once you’ve spent all your Power that turn, you’re empty, dude.

     Next, even if you have the Power, you may still need the proper Resources available to play the card. Most cards have Resource symbols on them; these symbols tell you whether you are required to have those Resources in order to use the card, or whether the card provides those useful resources to you. These symbols may represent the Faction associated with that card, or they may represent the areas of technology, magic, or chi. If the card you want to play requires resources, then that means you have to already have a card in play that provides those resources before you can bring out the new card. More powerful cards require more than one of these Resources in order to be played. Resources provided by cards you play allow you to bring out even more cards with Resource requirements. It's a snowball effect for your arsenal.

    Example: I want to give my character a fusion rifle. The fusion rifle card has a Cost of 1 Power, plus a “Tech” symbol. I have the one Power point in my pool generated by my feng shui sites, so I can pay that. Now I have to make sure I have some other card already out with the “Technology” symbol on it. Luckily, I have an arcano-technician character in play, and he provides a Tech resource. So, with the Power and Resource requirements covered, I can go ahead and play the fusion rifle onto a Character. Someone's about to get toasted, baby!

What the %&*# Is Goin’ On Here?!

     The best part of this game is the freaky bizarre mixture of elements. The setting of the ccg is a heady stew of fantasy/ sci-fi/ action adventure. As a player, you’re free to design a deck that mixes all the diverse factions you want, throwing in sites, people, and equipment from all over the history timeline and from every genre.

     You may have ghosts from first century Mongolia armed with disintegrator rays zooming around in a hovertank to protect your noodle restaurant feng shui site. Your opponent may attack your bamboo garden with a cyborg demon from the future leading a band of Chinese river pirates from the year 1861. And that’s before you unleash the nuclear weapons!

     I love this game. Out of all my ccgs (and I have a LOT of ccgs), I play this one most often and with the most glee. Perhaps it’s my warped sense of reality, or my appreciation for kicking ass, but there are few games on the market that can compare to the simplicity, variety, and absurdity of a few hands of Shadowfist.

Friends will be lining up to kick your ass in Shadowfist!

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