A CCG by the now defunct Daedalus Games. Based on wild Hong Kong action movies, such as those featuring Jackie Chan, John Woo, or Chow Yun-Fat. The storyline relates to a secret war between a number of time-travelling factions for control of sites around the world with good feng shui. This sounds like a strange plotline, and it is, but the idea is that one cannot change history without changing control of feng shui sites; if you can wrest control of such sites away from someone else, history will alter in your favor.

No matter how strange the premise, it's fun in that it allows you to have, for example, vat-grown Abominations with Really Big Guns waging war against Hopping Vampires on Motorcycles. The game mechanics are similar to Magic: The Gathering in many ways, with your "creatures" (in Shadowfist, "characters") attacking your opponent's territory, but there is also an added strategic location aspect where characters can only defend nearby locations. Sadly, it is among the many dead CCG's, and may be difficult to find.

Card sets are Limited, Standard, Netherworld, and Flashpoint.

I have to write a more glowing commentary on Shadowfist. I must admit, I've seen relatively few of the movies of the Hong Kong action genre on which the game is based. However, this game is the most fun I've ever had with a card game, and I've played Magic, Jyhad (now Vampire: The Eternal Struggle), Heresy (another really good dead CCG), and a few others. There are two things which distinguish this game: subject matter and play mechanics, which work well together to create an excellent overall flavor.

In the subject matter category, I just need to point out that things can get even weirder than SabreCat described. Sure, it's a war throughout time fought over control of points with massive feng shui in order to control all of history, but that's not THAT strange on its own. Things get sort of bizarre when you take the Ascended, former animals in human shape who are secretly conspiring with the military-industrial complex to rule the world, ally them with the Four Monarchs of the Netherworld, and pit the alliance against the Architects of the Flesh, technological magicians from a future fascist state who went back in time to harvest demons, and then brought them forward in time so that they could mutate them and cybernetically enhance them into abominations--a rather unpleasant fighting force. If you have more players, you might find the Shaolin of the Guiding Hand dropping by to kick some ass (their chi is strong). Add to that the crazy items (SabreCat mentioned the Really Big Gun, which I think is dwarfed in sheer coolness by the Bag Full of Guns or the Probability Manipulator) and wonderfully chaotic events (Who's the Big Man Now? and Tick...Tick...Tick... come to mind), and you've got some serious coolness going on. All of this is just magnified by frequently hilarious flavor text on the cards (for example, "You have the subtle powers of chi manipulation. I have an entire battalion of slavering, bioengineered ogres, howling for blood. Wonder which of us is going to win, hmmm?" on Abominable Wave, or, "Grenades are much more effective in the movies than in real life. This ain't real life," on Grenade Launcher, or even, "Don't ask us; even we don't know," on Mysterious Stranger).

The play mechanics work very well with the theme. Just as the ideas behind the game are completely over-the-top, involving more bizarre premises than you can shake a stick at, so too is the play. The game is littered with crazily overpowered cards, such that the balance of power can change radically in a moment. So many of the events allow players to keep their power hidden until things look as though one of their opponents is about to win, that one never knows what will happen, because the game is pretty good at filling up each person's hand every round. This is very different from many games, and it can cause people to be a little paranoid, but it's an absolute blast if you're in the right mood.

Not a game for everyone or all times, by any means, but if you aren't looking for finely-tuned play balance, but are instead interested in doing lots of cool, fun stuff, it's a fabulous choice.

UPDATE: I wanted to add a link to mcguffins: the big fat lie--it starts out with a pretty good description of what is at stake if you lose the game. :-)

Shadowfist has made a Golden Comeback! Z-Man Games, Inc. acquired ShadowFist and has already released new products based upon this classic! Check them out at http://www.shadowfist.com

Shadowfist followed the grand success of Magic: The Gathering. It easily outdid M:TG in style, and they had a unique approach to the inevitable problems. When the first edition came out they soon realized that the Ascended's ability to steal power from other players was imbalancing, especially in the early stages of one-on-one games. The M:TG response would be to use rule changes to limit the number of Mole Network cards allowed in a deck. But Daedalus fixed the problem with the Netherworlds expansion by introducing Hacker. This scrappy fighter pops out of your hand and into play for free if an opponent tries to steal any of your power. No new rules, no errata, and fun new strategies!

Shadowfist

Medium: Card Game
Publisher: Daedalus Entertainment Inc.


Let me make one thing perfectly clear, I am not a card game fan. When I play card games, I tend to play a conservative game, building my own power base and not attacking much. The rest of my gaming group is the same. This approach, however, is simply inappropriate for Shadowfist, the card-based companion game to Feng Shui. Shadowfist was fun, even in our rather low-key playtest, but I can sense that it would be a lot more fun in the butt-kicking style it was written for.

As card games go, Shadowfist is pretty good. The artwork is attractive and well-rendered, and many of the characters found on the cards also appear in the Feng Shui rulebook. The rules were fairly easy to learn -- unless we were doing something drastically wrong -- and there is a nice range of groups and abilities to work with.

The backstory of Shadowfist is identical to that of Feng Shui: players must compete with various other powers from a variety of time periods who are trying to gain control of the world's mystical power sites. Each player's goal is to accumulate a certain number of feng shui sites (very important -- stack your deck with them), and whoever gets enough first wins.

Each site under your control nets you a certain amount of power each round (make sure you have tokens available to represent this power) which is spent to bring new characters into play, to activate certain events and powers, and to bring more feng shui sites into play. Each feng shui site costs one more point than the last one you brought in. There are also normal sites, which are useful for protecting your feng shui sites, since (as you accumulate them) other people will be trying to destroy them or take them away from you.

In play, the game is fast and fun. Play consists mainly of trying to kick ass on your opponents' characters and feng shui sites while defending your own.

One feature of the cards which definitely deserves imitation is the use of a distinctive mark (a golden imprint of the flying kick logo) on all the expansion-set cards, making it possible to tell them apart from the original cards without having to squint at tiny numbers on the bottom of the card.

First printed in Serendipity's Circle. This work cannot by reprinted without the Author's permission.