Overview:
Shadow Hunters is a lite game with lots of player interaction. The game is for 4-8 players and plays in about 30 minutes.
Components:
Shadow Hunters comes in a very sturdy box just a tiny bit larger than Z-Man’s Pandemic box. You get a black game board with a damage track for the characters and three pairs of location spaces, sixteen hefty wooden pawns (in eight different colors), eight sturdy player boards (to hold each player’s hidden character card) in the player colors, two black dice (1d6 and 1d4), five decks of cards (six Location in gold, ten Character in blood red, sixteen green, sixteen white, and [of course] sixteen black), and a large three panel fold out rule sheet (with a black cover) including illustrations and well written rules. As you can tell, the gothic horror theme abounds. The cards are of good quality, but I would advise using card protectors on at least the character cards to prevent wear (this game will see a lot of table time with my group). The cards are full sized and Dragon Scale protectors are the perfect fit.
Theme:
Each player is secretly given a character card at the start of the game. You are a member of one of the three factions in The Great War between Good and Evil. You will either be a creature of Shadow with evil mystic powers, a Hunter defending the world from the onslaught of the Shadow with abilities of your own, or one of the Neutrals caught in between making do with your mundane abilities. You start with no idea what side anyone but yourself is on.
Setup:
Set the board in the center of the table and randomly deal the six locations to the three pairs of spaces on the game board. Give each player a player board and pair of wooden pawns in their color. They place one pawn on the No Damage space of the damage track, and hold the other for now (it is used to mark your location). Shuffle the white, black and green (Hermit) decks and place them on the edge of the game board as marked. Sort the character cards into Hunter, Shadow, and Neutral decks. Shuffle each of these separately. Consult the rule sheet and deal the listed number of each type into a new deck (based on the number of players). Then shuffle that deck and deal one character card to each player. Randomly determine a starting player, and let the war begin!
Game Play:
Each player takes their turn, and then play proceeds clockwise to the next surviving player. On you turn, you MUST move to a location, then you MAY follow the instructions for that location, and finally you MAY attack any player(s) in range.
Movement consists of rolling the two dice (1d6 and 1d4) and totaling the two to generate a number between two and ten. If your total is seven, you can move to the location of your choice (but cannot stay at your current location). Otherwise you must move to the location matching the number you rolled (if that puts you at the same location you roll again). Put your second pawn on the location you now occupy.
Once at a location, you may follow the instructions for that location. Three of the locations let you draw a card of a specific color (Cemetery - black, Hermit’s Cabin - green, or Church - white decks), the Underworld Gate lets you draw from the deck of your choice, the Erstwhile Altar lets you steal an equipment card from any player, and finally the Weird Woods lets you give 2 damage to any player (including yourself) or heal 1 damage to any player (including yourself).
If you draw a black or white card, you must read it aloud and play it. There are two types of black and white cards; single use which you just play when you draw and then place in their respective discard pile, and equipment which you place face up in front of you and gives you special abilities. Green (Hermit) cards work differently. When you draw a green card, you read it secretly to yourself, and then you pick another player and give it to them. They read it secretly to themselves then either say “Nothing Happens” if it doesn’t apply or else follow the instructions if it does. This gives you a clue to that player’s faction, since the applicability depends on which faction they are. Be careful though, one Shadow character is allowed to lie in response to green cards!
Once you know who your enemies are (or not if you just don’t care) you can finish your turn by attacking. Normal attacks let you pick another character in range as a target. Normal range is any other character on your location, or the other location in the location pair on the game board your location is in. Normal damage is done by rolling the two dice (1d6 and 1d4) and dealing the difference of the two as damage. Rolling doubles means your attack fails and does no damage. Some equipment cards can change your attack range; some others can either increase or change your damage (and the dreaded Machine Gun lets you attack all characters in range!)
One last thing, all characters have special abilities. These range from healing yourself by drinking the blood of those you attack, to hurling a lightning bolt as a massive attack once during the game. The catch is that for all but two of them, you have to reveal yourself to use them. This makes you a BIG TARGET for the other factions, or maybe even some on your own!
Winning:
Wining can get complicated. The Shadow players win if all the Hunter players are dead or if 3 Neutral players are dead. The Hunters win if all the Shadow players are dead. Each of the Neutral players has their own victory condition. They range from as simple as be alive when the game ends to as odd as be the first to die! Multiple winners are common, making a solo win a major accomplishment.
High Points:
This game is a ton of fun. You can’t trust anybody, you’re a huge target once revealed, the action is fast and furious, and it is quick enough to play several times in a night. The look on the other guy’s face when you kill him at the last minute when he was certain you weren’t a Shadow is priceless (remember the Shadow character that can lie about green cards!)
Low Points:
The limited character and card mix could get stale over time.
Final Impressions:
Everybody in our group loved this game. After checking on The Geek, I discovered this was a reprint of an earlier game, and there was an expansion done for it. An expansion would be great and would increase the lifespan of the game. Emailing Z-Man about doing an expansion, Zev Shlasinger answered and said an expansion was possible, but there was no firm date for one yet.
Let me take a moment to compliment Z-Man games for an awesome year with Pandemic, Agricola, and Shadow Hunters. After 230 days of Agricola preorder hell, I have to say that Z-Man games and Zev in particular have proven true to their word in the face of great adversity, polite and responsive to relentless customer hounding, and adept at dealing with printers that obviously work for the Shadows. How many game company executives answer customer email themselves? (In my experience, it’s been Zev and Christian Petersen at Fantasy Flight Games).
Posted Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:42 pm
