Shadowfist

The CCG of Hong-Kong Movie Action!

Overall score:

www.shadowfist.com

Shadowfist is the collectable card game of Hong Kong Movie action. Set in roughly the same universe as the RPG Feng Shui, Shadowfist sets out to play like Magic: The Gathering, only with Ninjas and the knob turned up to eleven. It does this very well.

Shadowfist is a very old CCG, around ten years, but ceased circulation after the first few expansion sets. The game kept a cult following of players, however, and eventually the company Z-Man games was founded to resurrect the game. Since then the game has only continued to grow, with regular expansion sets and a hardcore legion of devoted players. While nowhere near as large as the community of players for a game such as Magic, Shadowfist players are a tight-knit community worldwide.

The mechanics of Shadowfist are fairly simple, allow for a good number of strategies, and focus on good playing skill over deck design. While a good deck will always have a huge advantage over a poorly built one, in Shadowfist, having skills on the table is far more important. Furthermore, there is very little reliance on rares--if you’ll want to put three or five of a card in your deck, it’s probably a common. This makes Shadowfist an ideal game for those on a budget, as you don’t need to buy masses of cards to be competitive. You’ll want to buy masses anyway, however, as the art on the cards is fantastic, and, like all CCGs, it becomes quite addictive.

Like the colours in Magic (and yes, that comparison will keep coming up, so get used to it), Shadowfist divides its cards into factions. There are nine factions currently, with a tenth to be introduced in the upcoming Critical Shift expansion set.These factions reside in various time junctures: Ancient China, the 1850s, the Modern day, and an opressed, dystopian future. Certain sets introduce temporary new junctures so cool new themed cards can be added: Boom Chaka Lacka took place in the seventies, while the latest set, Two-Fisted Tales of the Secret War occured during the pulp era.

The mechanics of Shadowfist are best likened to Magic on steroids. There are two types of "mana": Resources are provided by cards both while they are in play and while they are in your smoked (dead) pile. Playing a card doesn't use these up; you simply count them to make sure you have enough Resources, and then pay the second type of mana: Power. Power is accrued each turn through Feng Shui sites, as well as by many different cards. Unlike Magic mana it remains from turn to turn, allowing it to be both saved and stolen. There are a great number of free cards that require no Power at all, just Resources, meaning even an opponent with no power often has a counter. In addition to generating Power, Feng Shui sites also form the key to victory: you must control a five in order to win (six in a one-on-one duel). You can play these yourself, one per turn, at an ever-increasing price point, or gain them by seizing from other players. This occurs when an attack reduces the site's body level to zero, which brings us to combat.

In order to win, the final Feng Shui Site must be taken from another player, you cannot play it yourself. This means that combat is a part of every game, and requires a reasonably aggressive style. This is ok: you draw up to your full hand size every turn, and can freely discard; characters keep damage between turns but can spend a turn healing, you can attack as soon as you play a card, and defend even after attacking. The combat system is fairly deep--every character is at a certain site location, and must turn (tap) to move between them. This makes more sites wider and harder to defend, as your forces spread themselves thinly.

Despite the fast-paced and aggressive nature of the game (though it often slows down--a small decision such as which site to attack can be the difference between winning and losing) the players are very casual and laid back on the whole. How can I make this claim? Well, Shadowfist is played by a very small, devoted group, almost all of who post to an online email group. Cheesy tactics are frowned upon and disliked, while theme decks, interesting combos, and decks full of less powerful or less used cards are encouraged and liked. Unlike Magic (Where I often see players in fights over how a card works), disputes tend to rarely come up. Partially, this is because of the limited playing environment – cards that control your opponent or make them discard cards are rare because they inspire anger, and the game is about sitting around and kicking butt, not about shutting down your opponents so they can't do anything. This in some ways is limiting--you can’t, for example, build a direct damage deck. That said, it also refines the game. When you play Shadowfist, you play Shadowfist, pulling out big butt-kicking cards and forcing interaction between the players. You rarely see a game where every player sits on their own side playing with themselves, and when you do, it’s because everyone is playing Purists.

The chrome, or design, is one of the best and most fun parts of the game. With cards like “Funky Monkey”, the chimp pimp, and “Steven Wu” the Zen Gunman, the art, titles and flavour text is uniformly high, providing the perfect, semi-serious tone of kung fu movies. That said, the theme never changes, save for minor motifs (the Boom Chaka Lacka expansion, taking place in the seventies, simply put afros on the ninjas and got back to business). If you don't like Hong Kong style movies, it's unlikely that you'll like the game. That said, the variety within the factions means that there's a good chance you'll find one you will like and, well, who doesn't like ninjas?

The game isn’t perfect. Currently, it’s very hard to build a collection to play a variety of factions--of the four factions I have the cards to play, three of them I bought a starter for. This is mainly due to the reliance on characters who provide resources, who are common but needed in large numbers. Not every expansion has these for every faction, either. The game also falls down heavily in duel--while three player games are excellent, two player games tend to come down to who gets an early lead. The tight-knit community also has a downside, in that the game is hard to find, and players can be even harder. The lack of banned cards, while admirable, also presents many problems in which large arguments occur over the email list--should this card be erratad, or not? Another downside is the large amount of counters required, which means you need to carry around counters as well as a deck if you want to be ready to play.

Though it has some minor flaws, Shadowfist is an excellent card game. The game is fun, has a great theme, is cheap to build tournament level decks, and has a good level of skill in gameplay, matched to some level of luck. If you can find a group, the game comes in highly recommended.

The Factions

The Dragons: A group of misfit heroes from across all time junctures. The Dragons are the good guys, dedicated to ideals of freedom and truth. They have a lot of Kung-Fu and Gun-Fu, and are renowned for having the best Character cards, as well as the ability to bring them back from the dead.

The Ascended: The rulers of the modern day, the ascended are animals transformed by magic to skip the karmic cycle and become human. They fear magic because it could turn them back. In the modern world they are the Illuminati, the secret rulers, where they are served by the Pledged. They play a game of Bureucracy, control, and cool tricks.

Eaters of the Lotus: Sorcerer Eunuchs from Ancient China and the Demons they summon, The Lotus are evil--very evil. They have powerful cards that often require sacrifice (usually of hapless minions), and Demons that are powerful but have strong drawbacks.

Architects of the Flesh: The rulers of the future, the Architects combine both magic and technology to create Abominations--huge flesh things that are evil and disturbing. As rulers of the future, they control the Buro, or government, and Buro Mil, the millitary of the future. They also control Pub Ord, or public order, the police department. The Architects are the biggest faction when it comes to blowing things up, having a huge amount of anti-character effects and damaging bombs.

The Guiding Hand: A group of monks who devote themselves to the seven coloured principles of the Perfect Master, and who wish to restore the world to Confucian ideals. They play a very defensive game, with a great number of abilities to counter other players.

The Four Monarchs: Rulers of the Netherworld, where all people must travel to move between time junctures, the Four Monarchs are siblings who fight each other as much as the other factions. They consist of the four monarchs and their pagodas: The Queen of the Ice Pagoda (The only good one, who is married to a Dragon), the Emperor of the Thunder Pagaoda, the King of the fire Pagoda, and the King of the Darkness Pagoda.

Jammers: A group of anarchist rebels and monkeys from the future, fighting against the Archtects. They believe that Feng Shui sites are evil, and the cause of all our problems, and want to detroy them all. They play a very destruction-heavy game and specialise in destroying other players' sites.

The Purists: An offshoot of the Architects who abandoned Technology in favour of pure magic, the purists consist of sorcerers and their magical constructs. They're an interesting and weird faction who play around with metagame effects, such as the number of letters in a cards title. That said, they tend to play on their own side of the table a lot, generating huge amounts of power without interacting with other players.

The Seven Masters: The newest faction, the Seven Masters have so far only appeared in the Seven Masters expansion. They're very small, being mostly the Seven Masters themselves, a few events, and a few small characters. They exist mostly to allow multifactioning with other groups, as they have the ability to add both the Magic and Chi talents to any deck, enabling a wide assortment of other cards to be used as well.

Technomonks: What everyone is calling the tenth faction, the Technomonks have been announced but remain largely mysterious. We know that they utilise both Tech and Chi, and that fighting them is like fighting smoke. That's about it at this stage.

Written by JamPaladin on February 28th, 2005