Sell me on Shadespire

[Kramer]

Hi all, 

from all the reactions, enthousiasme and positivity around Shadespire you must be the people to ask:

How good of a game is Shadespire?

And I don't mean the ties to AoS, or the models, or the lore or all that. But just as a game. How good are the mechanics? Is it an easy game to play with a friend or is it very hard too learn? Basically the reason i'm asking is, at every Sinterklaas (we dutchies get an extra christmas at the start of december) my mom gifts me a boardgame (because me and my girl love playing them with friends) but my girl has no interest in the AoS aspect of the game. So how good of a board game is Shadespire? 

(if it helps, crowd favourites in my house are: Ticket to ride, pandemic, Machiavelli)

[tom_gore]

I'd say Shadespire falls into the category of "easy to learn, hard to master" board games. It's deceptively quick and simple to pick up and get games going, yet the deck building and the gameplay itself (with the setup and all) offers enough options to keep learning new tricks every game.

I would recommend playing in a group with more players though, or the very least picking up a couple warbands per player if it's just two players to keep games feeling fresh longer (and to offer even more options to deck building).

 

[CJPT]

It's a very good competitive strategy game, but it's a much shorter experience per round than the games you mention. The core set supports two players, so you'd need two sets to play with more people. It's also pretty deep: someone who has played quite a lot has a substantial advantage over someone who is just picking it up. That's true of other games too, but I think it's quite pronounced with Shadespire.

Don't get me wrong: I really love the game, but I'm not sure it's the right fit for the situation you're describing. Think of it as an LCG like Netrunner but with a board strategy element. I also play a lot of board games with friends, but I'd be pretty unlikely to pull out a LCG at a party.

[Killax]

2 hours ago, Kramer said:

How good of a game is Shadespire?

And I don't mean the ties to AoS, or the models, or the lore or all that. But just as a game. How good are the mechanics? Is it an easy game to play with a friend or is it very hard too learn? Basically the reason i'm asking is, at every Sinterklaas (we dutchies get an extra christmas at the start of december) my mom gifts me a boardgame (because me and my girl love playing them with friends) but my girl has no interest in the AoS aspect of the game. So how good of a board game is Shadespire? 

(if it helps, crowd favourites in my house are: Ticket to ride, pandemic, Machiavelli)

The game itself is very good, easy an 8/10. The reason why it's not higher isn't because of it's mechanics but because of two appearing issues.
1. The wording on the cards isn't always clear and consistent.
2. We have seen several different cuts and colour prints and it basically means you need opaque sleeves for the game.

Other than that the mechanics are fantastic and the game is very well thought through. It's an easy game to play with a friend and quite easy to learn. It's the moment you see the Power and Objective cards that you see there are so many routes to victory your almost playing Warhammer Chess. The game is a perfect gift for friends who are into boardgames and like tactical and competitive aspects the game really shines in. It's really about trying to disrupt your opponents plans so he cannot score Objectives and thus one comes out on top. Combat is an important aspect but has be chosen wisely.

The game isn't like Pandemic, there are some hints of Machiavelli in it (but more on playing around each other cards type of thing, nothing too extreme) and it has some hints of Ticket to Ride...
However I turn it though Warhammer Underworlds is a great game on it's own and doesn't have a direct comparison. It's an arena combat skirmish that has Objectives in it and that combination is quite new. In addition to that everybody is ensured to have a grip of cards to negate the actions of your opponent at the same time.

It's not difficult to learn, fast and thrilling. Sometimes you want to play defensively but you can't and other times you want to play offensively and you miss attacks. What makes it so awesome is that you can really influence your strategy with cards and models  but at the end of it there is still luck involved (board placement, objective randomisation and dice rolls). It's more of a tactics game as luck though. I'd say 70/30 and I say this because you can affect rolls too and mulligan/draw hands to ensure you see all your cards in a game. 

 

[Wallack]

Is also very fast to set up and then clean the table after the game even tho it looks like it would take time with the tokens and cards and stuff. To me is 3 min to prepare, 3 min to store. Even less!

[Sleboda]

Killax is spot on in what he posted, but one note - if you are with good people (OP+Girl and friends) then you won't need opaque sleeves.  With a little trust and friendliness,  the card variance issue never becomes a problem.

It's a really fun game completely independent of its ties to AoS. It plays very quickly, so it's a great "waiting for the bread to rise" sort of game.

[Kramer]

6 hours ago, Sleboda said:

It's a really fun game completely independent of its ties to AoS. It plays very quickly, so it's a great "waiting for the bread to rise" sort of game.

Well I do like baking my own bread.... 

 

Thanks all! Good to hear it's a good game on its own, separate of it's ties to AoS. 

[Goblin-King]

Just chipping in with my personal experience teaching this to new players - a couple of non-tabletop-nerd-fanatics as well.

Every. Single. Person. understood all the mechanics after round one. That's how easy it is to learn.

On the enthusiasm scale everyone scored "liked it pretty well" to "loved it".

Of course certain particular cards needed explanation, and I guess the support system is the hardest thing to fully grasp.

As mentioned already, it does indeed fall into the easy to learn/hard to master category. It's a very tactical game and despite using both dice and cards, the better player mostly wins.

 

[Killax]

26 minutes ago, Goblin-King said:

Just chipping in with my personal experience teaching this to new players - a couple of non-tabletop-nerd-fanatics as well.

Every. Single. Person. understood all the mechanics after round one. That's how easy it is to learn.

On the enthusiasm scale everyone scored "liked it pretty well" to "loved it".

Of course certain particular cards needed explanation, and I guess the support system is the hardest thing to fully grasp.

As mentioned already, it does indeed fall into the easy to learn/hard to master category. It's a very tactical game and despite using both dice and cards, the better player mostly wins.

 

Not only do I echo it! My mate's first four games after a quick intro-game where wins for him versus opponents who had the game for a while.

Warhammer Underworlds really rewards tactical insight a lot, from the moment you pick it up. Some also have the 'gift' of being very able to see the field for what it is and not really having to count down the hexes to know exact threat ranges, if you do have that ability the game itself becomes even easier to play and opponent plans can be very hard to follow because they do not reveal any particular move-set beforehand. 

Only downside to the game is that there are some buts and iffs, e.g. initiallty I missed that you can draw a Power card for an Activation, not discard and draw one. Other things I missed initially was that in the End phase you can pick which Power cards or Objective cards to keep and not discard all (or none) and  draw to full. 

Other common things to keep in mind are:

- Drive Back pushes must move a model further away from the attacker, it's not just a push.
- You can indeed play Upgrades the moment you have Glory and only can play Upgrades during an End phase.
- Score Immediatly Objective cards do indeed draw you a new Objective card that cannot be scored from the same 'trigger' and are scored in an Action phase as opposed to End phase.

[muggins]

I wanted to share our review episode here. 

The Combined Arms Podcast Shadespire episode has arrived! We do an in depth review and discuss the components. I also spend some time talking about Fall In. Check it out!

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/combinedarms/episodes/2017-12-01T14_36_22-08_00

Hope this helps. 

[Kramer]

Well you’ve Done it! I’m now the proud owner of a shadespire set. Also the salesman threw in some special edition character cards.. as far as I can tell only difference is the looks. 

 

Looking forward to  playing some games. Did already try the 2 models vs. 2 models with my mother (who gifted it to me) and lost twice. Luckily that improved the odds my very competitive girlfriend might play it  

 

thanks all! 

[Drexel]

Enjoy mate, I am totally sold on Shadespire.  I hope you get as much fun out of this awesome game as I am 

[Killax]

2 hours ago, Kramer said:

Well you’ve Done it! I’m now the proud owner of a shadespire set. Also the salesman threw in some special edition character cards.. as far as I can tell only difference is the looks. 

Looking forward to  playing some games. Did already try the 2 models vs. 2 models with my mother (who gifted it to me) and lost twice. Luckily that improved the odds my very competitive girlfriend might play it  

thanks all! 

Great choice and I am certain you will love it. Because in reality the game is designed very well and nothing so far has lead to a "best build" there are a lot of different build possabilities and all have nice advantages but most certainly also disadvantages and weaknesses.

For example, Stormcast can be build aggressively but this does lead to a fourth activation blank that isn't as ideal as attacking again. Orruks can be build to hold Objectives but then most of their ploys do not create juicy and melee driven advantages. So far however you turn it all games seen on Facebook and locally have different results.One of the best choices the designers also made to create this different game feeling all the time is the max 1 of each card per deck restriction. What this leads to is that even the best of the best cards (e.g. Time Trap, Illusory Fighter or Mighty Swing) lead to different results completely depending on which Round they are drawn, in combination with different cards and Warbands.

I have to say I'm in love with this game and still very impressed with it's design. In terms of easy to learn and hard to master it surpasses both Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40.000 because there is no option to "spam" or better put thake duplicates of the same to ensure succes. Something that has been the driving point to competitive succes for Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40.000 basically since their inception.

Lastly what I also hope is that we will eventually see a city-based Age of Sigmar game akin to Mordheim and indeed Necromunda. The prime reason why I love this idea is because the Age of Sigmar models would lend themselves extremely well for it and this mixed media approach has been a succes for several years now (which can also be seen in Malifaux) for city-board Skirmish games. The way Warhammer Underworlds randomly hands out their Objectives would also be very benificial to a potential city-based Age of Sigmar skirmish and the same applies for the Warband exclusive cards seen in Warhammer Underworlds and Necromunda.

So far all I can say is that everybody who I played Warhammer Underworlds with (even lads who just borrow my stuff) have not been dissapointed by this quick but very exciting game. It's tactical but does not remove random luck elements and that is good because that keeps games very different. My last game ended in a 17 to 17 Glory draw, out of the vast multitude of games Ive played this was a first too.