Shadowfist


Shadowfist is a card game created by Robin Laws and Jose Garcia. It was released in June 1995 as a collectible card game, but was shifted to a fixed distribution of cards as of 2013. It shares the same background as Feng Shui, a role-playing game created by Laws and Garcia and released the following year. In September 2018 ownership of Shadowfist transferred to Vetusta Games.

Overview

Shadowfist is a multi-player asymmetrical strategic game, the design of which is influenced by games such as Cosmic Encounter, Dune by Avalon Hill, Magic: The Gathering and its direct predecessor, On the Edge.
Shadowfist is primarily inspired by Hong Kong action cinema and wuxia films of the late 1980s and 1990s, and by action films in general. In the game, various factions from across time battle for control of the world's Feng Shui sites in a conflict known as the "Secret War." Time travel takes place through an alternate dimension known as the Netherworld which opens to various time junctures. The current open junctures are AD 86, 1867, and 2013. The pulp and future junctures were closed with the 2013 Combat in Kowloon release. Unlike Feng Shui, Shadowfist's time junctures move forward as time actually progresses, permitting new game releases to reflect the present.
The titles of cards and the flavor text in the game are rife with humor and pop culture references, especially the Jammers faction, which contains cards such as "Furious George" and "Entropy is Your Friend."

Publication history

Shadowfist is a collectible card game that was originally published by Daedalus Entertainment until the company went out of business in 1996. In 2000, the license for the game was acquired by Zev Shlasinger, who established Z-Man Games to reissue the title. Z-Man Games released ten additional sets over the following five years before focusing on other projects. In 2006, a group of players formed Shadowfist Games to continue producing expansions. This group collaborated with Shlasinger to publish three more sets between 2006 and 2009.
Shadowfist remained a CCG, with randomized distribution of cards within decks or packs, from its inception through the last Shadowfist Games set in 2009. No new sets were then published, until 2013.
The game was then published by Inner Kingdom Games, founded by Daniel Griego and Braz King, but then managed solely by Griego. The card set that would become Combat in Kowloon and Back for Seconds were originally slated to be a single booster pack release using the long-standing CCG model. It carried the working title "Hong Kong 2010" from its design and development in 2009 through play-testing in 2010 and art design in early 2011.
In 2011, Inner Kingdom Games re-published the award-winning Seven Masters vs. the Underworld expansion. After only moderate success with this release, Inner Kingdom Games switched Shadowfist from the CCG model to the fixed distribution Dynamic Card Game model. The DCG model was directly inspired by the Living Card Game model used by several other card games, many of which also transitioned from the CCG model.
To fund new sets, Inner Kingdom Games conducted a Kickstarter campaign in August 2012 that exceeded the required funding targets. Inner Kingdom Games broke up "Hong Kong 2010" into two separate releases, and published them beginning in January 2013.
Following the release of Combat in Kowloon and Back for Seconds, 2013 saw the release of the first expansion block in the DCG model. Dubbed the "Rebirth Cycle" It included the decks, "Reloaded", "Reinforcements", and "Revelations". Reloaded is composed primarily of reprinted cards deemed necessary for the new environment. Included with these were nine new cards and updates to seven previously printed cards. Reinforcements and Revelations included 50 never before seen cards each.
Included in this release was the first Action Pack, a 50 card pack of cards from the expansion that players would want more of for their decks. An acknowledgement that a flat distribution wouldn't fulfill the needs for some cards that would have been more common in the CCG model.
A second Kickstarter campaign in 2014 resulted in the release of the Coming Darkness block, consisting of the Queens Gambit, Knight's Passage, and Endgame sets. A second Action Pack was released in the same model as the previous one.
A third Kickstarter campaign occurred in 2015. It resulted in the release of the Year of the Goat starter expansion, with each of the six remaining factions receiving a pre-constructed starter.

Basic story

The world of Shadowfist follows the background of the Feng Shui role playing game, where the art of Chinese geomancy, or Feng Shui, is real. Thus, control of this world does not depend on military might or political pull but on control of major Feng Shui sites. These are in-game locations that channel the greatest amount of Chi, the energy of life. Having more personal Chi than your opposition causes everything to go your way, statistically speaking. With enough Chi, characters can see and use portals to the Netherworld, an alternate dimension that connects the various junctions in time.
These characters are generally aligned with one of several warring factions. Each game of Shadowfist represents one battle in this ‘secret war’. Each battle contributes to the story, since controlling enough sites in a past juncture would allow a faction to take control of the planet and dramatically alter all subsequent junctures. Of course, those who already control the past and the future are all trying to do the same.

Gameplay

Players create a deck of cards and draw blind from a randomized stack, playing cards when possible and discarding unneeded cards. Card types include: Sites, Characters, Events, Edges and States. Sites are considered locations that stay in play permanently until removed or destroyed. Characters are used to attack and defend locations or other characters or generate effects and stay in play until 'smoked' or 'toasted', Events are played at any time and generate a specific effect and are then discarded. Edges are permanent cards that generate effects. States are played on other card in order to modify them or provide an additional effect.
The goal of Shadowfist is to accumulate five Feng Shui sites. These can be played from a player's hand or taken from other players. However, in order to win the game, a player's final Feng Shui site must be taken from another player. Attacking and attacking to win the game are very different events during the game. The former might only draw a response from the defending player while the latter will certainly draw a response from all the other players in the game.
Players must meet both the power cost and resource requirements of a card to play it. Power represents a player's assets and is primarily generated by players’ sites at the beginning of their turn. Resources represent either a faction's increasing involvement in the conflict or additional access to one of three talents. Resources are typically provided by players’ characters. Spent power is taken from the player's power pool but resources remain available, even after characters are killed off in game.
Shadowfist uses a "last in, first out" or LIFO system for resolving effects. When an effect is generated by the playing of a card or from the rules text of a card in play, a new scene begins and players can generally respond with new effects. After the final new effect in the scene is generated, they begin to resolve beginning with the newest effect and ending with the oldest.
Shadowfist, released in 1995, differs from its CCG contemporaries in that focuses on multi-player gameplay rather than dueling. A key factor in Shadowfist gameplay is that players must team together to stop the player who is poised to win the game. All players can play cards that affect any other player's cards, even if they are not directly involved in attacking or being attacked. One of the most important skills in the game is judging when and how to use resources for defense against other players in lieu of attacking power. One of the other major differences between Shadowfist and other CCGs in multi-player is the fluidity of the game: players are rarely removed from the game and can often recover quickly from even the most crushing defeat.

Factions

There have been up to ten factions involved in the secret war:
  • The Eaters of the Lotus are a cabal of evil eunuch sorcerers from ancient China who have usurped power in the Imperial court using black magic and demons.
  • The Architects of the Flesh are scientists from the future who figured out how to combine magic and technology into a perverse new form of science called Arcanotechnology, which they use to convert captured demons into creatures known as abominations. The Architects formerly controlled the future, but a civil war split them in half, and then a critical shift in 1934 essentially wiped them out of the timestream. The faction's two halves have now been split across the time-stream: The BuroMil, the military arm led by Johann Bonengel has taken over Nazi Germany from within, while the CDCA, the research division headed by Dr. Curtis Boatman, heads a multinational corporation in 2072. In the game, their home juncture was first radically changed by the critical shift, and then subsequently closed.
  • The Dragons are a rag-tag collection of mavericks and heroes from across time who've banded together to fight against evil and tyranny in the name of freedom and justice. Their success in the 1930s, in the Pulp juncture caused the most recent 'critical shift' and made their de facto leader, Zheng Yi Quan, the new master of the modern world. With his disappearance, the Dragon's tenuous hold on the Modern juncture has been weakening.
  • The Guiding Hand are a secret society composed of monks, revolutionaries, and martial artists led by the Perfect Master Quan Lo who seek to drive all foreign influences out of China in 1866 and extend their vision of a world based on Neo-Confucianism principles across time.
  • The Ascended are animals who achieved human form long ago and who once controlled the world both in AD 1866 and 2012 from the heart of a vast conspiracy. They still have control of the 1866 juncture, but have lost much of their power and influence in 2012 following the 'critical shift' in 1942.
  • The Jammers are a loose organization of rebels, malcontents, anarchists, and cyborg monkeys. Originally a rebel group in opposition to the Architects of the Flesh, they believe that the only way to free humanity from tyranny and oppression is through the destruction of every feng shui site in existence. They operate primarily out of the Netherworld. With the release of the Year of the Goat expansion, the portals to the Future juncture have reopened with the Jammers in control.
  • The Four Monarchs were two brothers and two sisters of incredible magical might who once ruled the modern world in an alternate timeline. Their version of reality was erased by the Ascended, forcing them into exile in the Netherworld. With the defection of their sister, Ming I to the Eaters of the Lotus, the faction is now referred to as "The Monarchs".
  • The Seven Masters are a group of legendary warrior-monks who live in isolation and practice a philosophy of non-intervention, except in the most dire of situations. They appear to be based in the AD 85 juncture.
  • The Purists began as Lotus infiltrators of the Architects sent to study that faction's Arcanotechnology and, being unbound by Lotus traditions, developed a radical new "pure" and math-based sorcery known as Paradox Magic. Having recently lost their stronghold in the future, they've quietly re-established themselves in 1942.
  • The Syndicate is a secretive organization which rules the world in 2072 through control of all the major criminal organizations and corporations. They came into existence after the critical shift in 1942 that erased the Architects' version of reality. In game, this juncture has been closed.