Introduction
I first encountered Shadow Hunters when it was for sale on Pozy. Having clicked through to the Finalize Order screen, I did some last-minute research, then finally decided I didn’t want the game, so I closed the window. Over the next couple of days, I started regretting not buying it as I looked at the pretty artwork, but oh well, no biggie. And then 4 days later, I was surprised when I received a UPS package. I opened it and sure enough, it was Shadow Hunters in there! I checked and found that I was charged for it, even though I never clicked on the Submit/Complete Order button.

So what did I learn from this? That Pozy ships and charges you for stuff and ships it even if you didn’t click on the Submit Order button, and that I’m glad they did it, because Shadow Hunters is a pretty solid deductive filler for large groups.

Let's get some of the basic stuff out of the way, so you'll understand what I'm talking about later.

What is the objective/theme of Shadow Hunters?
Hunters are good and trying to kill the Shadow.
Shadow characters are evil and trying to kill the Hunters (and innocent people).
There are 4 neutral characters, each with their own unique winning condition.
Should more than one player satisfy her own winning condition, then all these players win.


The four neutral characters, each with their own unique victory condition and special ability. Werewolf players eat their hearts out!

What's a sample turn like?
Roll a D6 and D4 and go to the location represented by the number that comes up.
Choose whether to trigger the text on the location (most often drawing and playing a card).
Attack somebody who’s within range by rolling the D6 and D4. The damage inflicted = the difference between the two dice results.
You can reveal your identity at any point in the game, so that you can use your Special Ability (printed on your identity card).

What forms of player interaction are there?
Very high, befitting the large number of players the game supports. You can:
- attack people to try and hurt them, possibly killing them.
- use card text to hurt, heal or steal equipment from other players
- give a player of your choice a Hermit card, which has a chance of exposing the identity of that player to you.

What skills are needed to do well in this game?
- Deduction. The crux, and most fun part, of the game is in figuring out everybody’s roles, so that you know who to attack (don’t kill the wrong people!)
- Bluffing. Be inconspicuous. Hide your identity well, such that nobody knows who you are, and hence won’t dare to kill you.

What game(s) is Shadow Hunters! similar to?
- Werewolf / Mafia.
- Bang!. But not really (below).

My take:

I decided not to purchase Shadow Hunters at the order screen, because I had many concerns about it after reading the rules. So let me preface my critique of the game with these concerns I had.

I can’t choose where I can move? That’s too random!

As mentioned above, movement is governed by rolling dice and seeing where you go. Movement is important because it allows you to attack somebody if she is in the same region as you after your move. This seemingly random movement rule isn’t actually a bad thing though. There are only three main regions in the game, and at least 4 players in the game, so there’s a good chance you’ll end up where you want to go (so you should be able to attack somebody). Even if you don’t end up there, your teammate(s) will probably end up there. Also don’t forget that the most common dice result, 7, allows you to choose where you want to go.

In essence, don’t think of Shadow Hunters as an uber-strategic game, where you get to snipe whomever you want from afar with strategic and thought-out moves. Think of Shadow Hunters as a pure deduction game (akin to Werewolf), but with dice and movement rules that add to the fun and speed the game along. All the movement rule does is to give you a random card draw, and restrict your decision set (on who to attack). Once you think of it as “make do with what the dice give me” instead of “damn it, I want to attack that person but I rolled a 8!”, you’ll find the game much more rewarding and that it is what it is: a deduction game, with some fancy cards and dice to keep the game moving and add to the theme.

Hermit cards allow me to confirm what role somebody is? That’s no fun! All the fun is in me not being sure who somebody is!

To the uninitiated, a Hermit card will have text along the lines of this:

I bet you’re a Hunter! If so, you take 1 damage.

or this:

I bet you're a Hunter or a Neutral! If you're either, take a damage.

When you draw a Hermit card, you give it face-down to a player of your choice, and that player has to execute the text. If she takes 1 damage, then you know that she is a Hunter (the first example). That, for me, begged the question: what’s the point of having these Hermit cards in a game where you’re supposed to deduce everybody else’s role?

Because without them, the game can drag on, much like how Werewolf games tend to. In the game, you’re going to (by observing other people’s actions) end up with a good idea of the roles of, say, 5 of the 8 players, so you’ll be trying to pass a Hermit card to one of the remaining 3, so as to complete the puzzle, and better deduce the roles of the remaining players. Hermit cards, hence, are an aid, and rarely are the puzzle-solver by themselves. Also take into account that there is one character (the Unknown) in the game who has the ability to lie when given a Hermit card, and you’ll see that just because you passed Hermit cards to most of the players doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels and know everybody’s identity, without actually doing some deduction! Fail to take into account some signals you read wrong, and the fact that there might be an Unknown in your midst, and you might get killed for putting too much stock into your Hermit cards.

Make no mistake: the Hermit cards are the most unique thing about this game, and provide a very interesting strategic dimension to your deductive choices. Who should I give this Hermit card to? How much should I believe in what she did? What definite identities of other people can I pinpoint as a result of that person responding like that to my Hermit card?

I don’t have a hand of cards? Where’s the fun in that?

In Shadow Hunters, you don’t maintain a hand of cards. If you draw a card, you play it immediately, whether it’s good or bad. This is why Shadow Hunters is more Werewolf than Bang!. There is no hidden information in Shadow Hunters, except for the identities of every single person, and that distills the game down to its pure deduction essence.

I had my doubts about having no hand of cards, because I thought it’d be cool to have a hand of cards and pick my play carefully such that it could mislead people and/or harm the people I want to harm (much like in Bang!). But you still have that element here. Locations that allow you to draw cards all say, “You may draw a card.” That can create some agonizing decisions. If you’re a Shadow character and you’re on the space that allows you to draw a White card, you might think twice about drawing it, because White cards can really hurt Shadow sometimes. But if you don’t, what if everybody else now thinks you’re a Shadow?

It's okay having no cards, because it's not the cards you play that matter. It's whether you choose to draw a card, and who you choose to affect with the card text (if it says something like "Deal 2 damage to a character of your choice.").

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A little bit about the components in the game, before I make my case as to why this could be the best deduction game out there for large groups.

The game comes with two pawns, one for the damage track, and one to represent where you are on the game board. You get a colored player board that holds your identity card, which actually looks kind of cool, since it frames your card.


Richly colored player boards that indicate what color you are, and beautifully frame your (hopefully face-down) identity card.

The game comes with a game board that outlines the locations and includes the damage points track. Usually, I get very miffed by card games that unnecessarily include a board, and the board would have been an unnecessary inclusion, but for the very well thought-out damage points track on it. Here, players keep track of how much damage they have accrued over the course of the game, and if their damage exceeds the vitality printed on their identity cards, they die. The brilliant part is that Allie, who has 8 hit points, has her name printed on the 8-space, and Daniel, who has 13 hit points, has his name printed on the 13-space, and so forth. This means that you won’t have cases where somebody forgets how many hit points she has, and forgets to die (which would completely screw the game up), or cases where a person checks her identity card at a very suspicious time, accidentally giving away her identity. The damage track also adds to the deduction aspect, because if somebody accrues more than 13 damage, you know that person definitely cannot be Daniel, Allie etc, and that can help narrow down who you think everybody is.

I have made the case that Shadow Hunters is more Werewolf than Bang!, because Shadow Hunters and Werewolf are both pure deductive games, whereas Bang!... no comment. So which is better: Shadow Hunters or Werewolf? This depends on the crowd and situation, but I’m happy to say Shadow Hunters provides a very competent alternative to the old favorite.

Shadow Hunters has several factors going its way. How much fun you get out of Werewolf really depends on the crowd you play with, and depends a lot on how much each person knows about the others (playing Werewolf with strangers can really suck sometimes). This problem isn’t there with Shadow Hunters, because you follow your turn, and make educated guesses on identities based on what people do and through Hermit cards. There is also a tendency in a “strangers’” game of Werewolf for players to just sandbag somebody and kill some hapless victim just to get the game moving. In fact, most first few rounds in Werewolf seem really chaotic and random. Not so here; a really nice aspect of Shadow Hunters is you can never be sure if the decision to attack a character and possibly condemn him/her to death might come back to bite you in the ass. What if it’s your teammate? What if it’s Daniel (who wins if he’s the first person to die)? What if he’s the 3rd neutral character (meaning both Charlie or the Shadow might win)? You can’t blindly fire salvos in Shadow Hunters, and not expect to pay for it, and if people are sandbagging you without knowing who you are, there’s always a dark warning you can give about their impudence, based on the possibility that you might be somebody they don’t want to see die. The game really rewards getting a hold on people’s identities before acting rashly. Speaking of killing people, there’s player elimination in Shadow Hunters, but I have found it much more bearable than that in Werewolf and Bang!, because Shadow Hunters plays so quickly that it’s not much of a wait (strike Werewolf, and possibly strike Bang!), and because it’s actually interesting to see what the other players do (strike Bang!). Last, but definitely not least, getting a villager card in Werewolf absolutely blows. Not so in Shadow Hunters. Every identity you might get assigned to is interesting, and has its own interesting victory condition.

The interesting role cards come at a price. You might find the need to explain every single identity card (there are 10 of them) when teaching the game so that everybody knows what to expect, and this might seriously turn off non-gamers who get intimidated by card text and minutiae. You might also appreciate the free-form nature of Werewolf more, especially when playing with good friends.

I compare Werewolf to a form of role-playing, where you have to put yourself in the mindset of the mafia, the detective, the nurse etc and know how you want to act to appear innocuous, and to mislead. Shadow Hunters is then a more structured, board-game version of Werewolf, with clean game mechanics that make the game fun, yet don’t detract from the deductive reasoning. And just as some people have the occasional role-playing game itch, and the occasional board-game itch, you might vacillate between Werewolf and Shadow Hunters, depending on what you feel up for, and depending on what kind of people you’re playing with (you’re not forcing D&D on a group of people you just met, for example). If you’re with a bunch of people you aren’t familiar with, yet you know they like Werewolf and its ilk, Shadow Hunters might be a good way to break the ice, and not get bogged down by “stranger weirdness”. The important thing is that Shadow Hunters can fill that niche for you, when you have 5-8 players and want to play a quick, fun filler that has most of the deductive elements in Werewolf, yet doesn’t get bogged down by baseless accusations and sidetracks.

In sum, Shadow Hunters is a well thought-out game, with dice and cards that give a ‘fun’ feel, yet do not detract from the deductive experience. During the game, you can never be 100% sure that a person is who you think she is, until she deliberately flips her identity card over (to use her special ability). That, to me, is a sign of a good deduction game.

Note: There is talk on the forums here that the Shadow characters (specifically a team of Vampire and Werewolf) are too powerful, and destroy the need for deduction in the game, because they can just reveal themselves and abuse their special abilities repeatedly. I haven’t noticed this. If this becomes a problem, play with 5 or more players, as this introduces neutral characters into the mix, and they will often help the weaker side. This should remove most of the problem. Playing with 4 doesn’t even seem fun anyway, because of the omission of the very multi-dimensional neutral characters.

Note: Thanks Agape for giving me permission to use his pictures!