Shadowfist

[gabado]

I resently got into shadowfist. For those of you who don't know, shadowfist is one of, if not the best card game I have ever played. I'm hooked. This is a forum for disscussing the game, sharing stories of epic Kung Fu battles, and just generally enjoying a great card game.

If you want you can also discuss the role playing verision of the game, I have not as such played the game, although I hope to sometime in the near future.

I gues I'll start this off by asking what your favorite deck composition/faction is?

[Dragero]

Could you give us some more info on this game? I've never heard of it, but I'd like to learn more.

What games are similar to it? MtG? Yugioh? Can you give us some basic links to good info sources?

[Arbane]

Could you give us some more info on this game? I've never heard of it, but I'd like to learn more.

What games are similar to it? MtG? Yugioh? Can you give us some basic links to good info sources?

It's a bit like Magic. It's based on Hong Kong action movies - One Upon a Time in China, Chinese Ghost Story, Kung Fu Cult Master, The Killer, most of Jackie Chan's career...

The basic idea of the plot is that there's a secret war going on for control of Feng Shui sites - places of great mystical power. The faction that controls the most of them can change the course of history! And since the factions come from different time-periods, that's quite literal. At least two factions have now had history yanked out from under them thanks to transtemporal sabotage.

(The game doesn't do anything too weird with the time-travel - it's just a plot device to having ancient sorcerers, modern-day gunmen, and futuristic cyborgs all fighting each other.)

I'm not sure what this site's policies are on blatant plugs, but there is a Shadowfist.com you can look at for more info.

The mechanics of the game are (in my opinion), pretty elegant - the sites you control generate power, which you can save up from turn to turn to play big cards. The cards you've already played give you 'resources', which you need to play most of the advanced cards. You refill your hand at the start of every turn, so chucking what you can't use immediately is a very important skill. (So having the strongest card in your deck show up in your opening hand is usually a BAD thing, and you won't be able to play it.)

And any game where you can end up with a Cyborg Flying Monkey attacking a bunch of Walking Corpses in a Sports Car is OK by me.

Any players in the Boulder/Denver area? I'm currently trying to get a monthly Shadowfist tournament/general get-together going.

The RPG, Feng Shui is a bit aged now, but back in 2000 is was a pretty big deal. It quite deliberately throws any pretense of 'realism' out the window in favor of "what looks good". It's also the first game I know of to reward (or at least, not punish) wild stunts done just for the sake of looking cool - Exalted took this to the next step by actively rewarding players who tried to show off while describing their actions.

[Arbane]

Argh, double-post. Sorry...

[gabado]

It's kinda old but it's a lot like mtg. The major difference is that it's based on a 50's style Kung Fu action flick. Like in magic the game is based on land (in this game known as sites). There are two kinds of sites, normal ones and feing shue sites, to win you need to posses 5 feing shue sites, the fifth one you collect must be stollen from someone else. Sites, both feing shue and normal typicaly give you 1 point of power. You use these points like mana, to summon/play characters, effects etc. onto the field. Like mtg you gain power points at the start of your turn. Unlike In magic, these points do not go away at the end of your turn, in stead they are retained for later use, stacking with the points you will recieve on the following turn. Play down a site you must pay a number of power points equal to the number of sites you currently have on the field. If you have no sites on the field you instead gain a Power point for putting down a site. The combat works like magic except that there is only 1 combat stat known as the fighting value. In a combat each character simultaneously deals their fighting to the opponent's fighting. When your fighting is reduced to 0 the character is smoked. Being smoked is like being put in the grave yard except that the character still adds their power types to the power pool. These power types are like typed mana in magic except that they do not count as normal power points and do not go away when used they are not power points for the purposes of summoning characters. In short they are criteria for building a force.
I probably did a kinda crappy job explaining so here is a link to the shadowfist homepage. http://http://www.shadowfist.com/
It's an awesome game.

[Bliss Authority]

God, Shadowfist and Feng Shui.

I'm actually running a Feng Shui game every other week; it is a lot of fun and a good game for GM's who prefer to improvise. The fact that it's silly doesn't hurt.

I used to very much enjoy a Guiding Hand deck. They're Shaolin monks and other assorted Confucian bastards that can pretty much shut down anyone using Magic or Tech pretty well.