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I was incredibly skeptical of Shadespire, but i spent some time playing this weekend with every faction except the Rat People and the Dwarf People, and my personal opinion is that this is pretty fun, and I intend to make it one of the games i play.

Upsides:

Quick games, 20-25 minutes.

No need to collect additional miniatures; in fact it's very easy to get all of the factions

Customization of miniatures is done with cards, not WYSIWYG wargear

Deck customization

Decent tactics for something so quick to play

Good for people who find the scale of 40k, for example, to be too large

Overall miniatures seem to be high quality and look great once assembled

Movement and measurement is done on a hex grid, so it is much faster to move

Alternating activations

Downsides:

Impossible to "split" the starting box with someone

New Dice are stupid (see spoiler)

Snap-Fit miniatures require a bit of work in some cases to make them fit properly (sanding, trimming down)

Tactics a bit lighter than 40k, no psychic/herophase, etc, and focuses on melee combat entirely

No terrain, leaves battles feeling a little less thematic or immersive

Some characters with abilities don't have flavor text

RE: Dice



For those who have never played shadespire:

Its an ok game. The biggest downside in my area is that it took our already thin AOS community and fractured it up even more because if you don't need an actual army to play the game, that is far more appealing to a lot of people.

Eh i dont mind the special dice thing though i do hate that the skaven ones are brown instead of warpstone green. that does bother me.

otherwise its a lot of fun, gets played alot with people waiting for tables or just in the goof off rather than going ham on a full game of whatever.

 auticus wrote:
Its an ok game. The biggest downside in my area is that it took our already thin AOS community and fractured it up even more because if you don't need an actual army to play the game, that is far more appealing to a lot of people.

I could see that... my impression initially was that it was something they created to introduce people into AoS, but they accidentally created a game that is just better than AoS.

It appears in my neck of the woods that AoS is kind of dying. Shadespire and Warhammer quest are far more popular.

 Marmatag wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Its an ok game. The biggest downside in my area is that it took our already thin AOS community and fractured it up even more because if you don't need an actual army to play the game, that is far more appealing to a lot of people.

I could see that... my impression initially was that it was something they created to introduce people into AoS, but they accidentally created a game that is just better than AoS.

It appears in my neck of the woods that AoS is kind of dying. Shadespire and Warhammer quest are far more popular.

Eh i think my area is lucky then as AOS has gotten more popular with shadespire bringing people back into it.

I think that if if shadespire had been introduced in 2009 at the heyday of tournament whfb 7th edition it would have had similar effects though.

It would seem that in many places in the US, that competitive gaming is not only king but emperor over all the land, and a game designed exclusively for competitive players that costs many factors less than the main game would have the bulk of the gaming community for that system exodus out for the cheaper, less models, less hobbying, less narrative, magic the gathering style board game over the tabletop wargame.

If a 40k version of shadespire were put out I'd expect to see something similar as well.

Thats just my intuition though, the proof would depend on something like that happening (and not surprisingly there has been nothing like that for 40k at all)

Caution: Lots of opinion and anecdotal info is contained in this post.

Yeah, Star Wars Destiny is taking off, too, it's essentially what you're describing, booster-box tournament play. It could be that GW is trying to dip its toe into this pool. The idea being that you bring your minis (Orruks, for example), and you get random booster packs (Orruks booster) of cards that go with your dudes. The game is essentially the same, but you get different ploys/equipments/objectives in your pack, which you use in that tournament, for that day, and then afterwords add them to your collection of cards.

FLGS survive on dependable revenue streams, and without FLGS, Games Workshop is done, because if people don't have a place to play, they don't buy minis. I think GW understand that at some level. Talk to any FLGS shop owner. They are going to get their $ from Magic the Gathering, and Star Wars Destiny. Or just look at the calendars, you'll see 40k open play days, but they're in the middle of the week, whereas CCG stuff is Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Sometimes they'll run tournaments, but they'll also run them at the same time as card game events (if they have space), and the entry fees for 40k stuff is also going up (in my area). These guys are also charging to use the gaming tables in a lot of places now.

AoS is a simpler game than 40k, so it would lend itself better to a format like this, because shooting would absolutely ruin Shadespire. The whole idea of separating activations dies immediately when one person can ignore the movement cost, and just sit back shooting. 40k without guns isn't 40k. 40k without psychic powers isn't 40k. Neither of these translate all that well into Shadespire, without some redesign of the Shadespire core rules, which I think are actually quite good for what they're trying to do.

As for AoS itself, it competes with too many things. It competes with 40k, which is just a better overall game on the same kind of scale (army vs army), and anyone not tied to the GW universe in any way will look at other games that offer a better ruleset, and with more balance, in a fantasy setting or not. It also doesn't help that AoS has this awkward mixture of old models and new models. I think stepping down the road of sunsetting the old stuff entirely is the right move for AoS, and focus on releasing new sculpts and kits for the factions. This will also alienate the current playerbase, but that playerbase already seems to be dwindling, not growing. When we made the decision to go into a GW game, we looked at AoS and 40k. AoS seemed like it really didn't have its gak together. We looked up models but they were old fantasy models, some kits were new, it just seemed weird. 40k had a consistent model line, so we went down that road. Also we like guns.

But disregarding all of that, Shadespire is a good game. And if GW can get the transition into cards and card collections right, it would be pretty profitable for them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It would be neat to see an RPG kind of element to shadespire. preserve the core rules, just adapt it in some aspects (for example, length) to a narrative style play. Auticus if anyone can write this it is you!

I appreciate the sentiment

 auticus wrote:
I appreciate the sentiment

I mean I don't want to force your arm but it would be neat.

Right now I'm working on an interactive adventure campaign book for Malign Portents which also mods Warhammer Quest. That'll take me out to September or so. WHo knows what will follow that!

 auticus wrote:
Right now I'm working on an interactive adventure campaign book for Malign Portents which also mods Warhammer Quest. That'll take me out to September or so. WHo knows what will follow that!

Are you creating a warhammer quest version where you could have people playing without a dungeon master? Regardless i'd like to see it.

There is a primary quest chain which is the players playing the AOS battles, and the choose your path goes through that, where actions have consequences in later chapters.

The Warhammer Quest stuff overlays the existing tiles with a death mansion and appropriate flavor text, with the death player being one player and the 2-3 players being the other side.

shadespire was DoA here. its an ok game, but nothing to write home about, being on a board did it no favors here either. that and "oh look MORE stormcast and khorne" AoS was already unpopular here so a perfect storm for this to flop. I bought it and played it, but was not at all impressed with it as a game. the models though needing some love are really cool little warscrolls for AoS though and I have kept the models for that and will buy expansions for solely that reason, unfortunately I have to go to the GW to get it or mail order :(

 Marmatag wrote:
I was incredibly skeptical of Shadespire, but i spent some time playing this weekend with every faction except the Rat People and the Dwarf People, and my personal opinion is that this is pretty fun, and I intend to make it one of the games i play.

Upsides:

Quick games, 20-25 minutes.

No need to collect additional miniatures; in fact it's very easy to get all of the factions

Customization of miniatures is done with cards, not WYSIWYG wargear

Deck customization

Decent tactics for something so quick to play

Good for people who find the scale of 40k, for example, to be too large

Overall miniatures seem to be high quality and look great once assembled

Movement and measurement is done on a hex grid, so it is much faster to move

Alternating activations

Downsides:

Impossible to "split" the starting box with someone

New Dice are stupid (see spoiler)

Snap-Fit miniatures require a bit of work in some cases to make them fit properly (sanding, trimming down)

Tactics a bit lighter than 40k, no psychic/herophase, etc, and focuses on melee combat entirely

No terrain, leaves battles feeling a little less thematic or immersive

Some characters with abilities don't have flavor text

RE: Dice

Spoiler:

They could have just used standard 6 siders with the following breakdown:

A roll of 6 is always a critical action
Crossed Swords = Hitting on 5+
Hammers = Hitting on 4+
Hitting on Swords & Hammers = Hitting on 3+
Do you have 1 more support than your adversary? +1 to roll
Do you have 2 more support than your adversary? +2 to roll

And on defense
A roll of 6 is always a critical action
Arrow symbol = Avoiding damage on 5+
Shield = Avoiding damage on a 4+
Guarding = Avoiding damage on a 3+
Do you have 1 more support than your adversary? +1 to roll
Do you have 2 more support than your adversary? +2 to roll

And a 6 is needed to cancel a 6.

Boom, now everyone's dice work with the game, and if you don't buy the starter kit you can still use your D6 without buying new dice.

In our games we started calling the {o and {o} icons side-eye and full-side-eye. If you're going to make new dice they should be better imho. Something really cool and unique. Each kit-box should come with dice themed for those characters. Stormcast box has stormcast dice, Rat People box has Rat People dice, etc. As it stands you've got generic dice, and only 1 pack to share between two people.

The concept of rolling 4 dice and counting the crits to decide who gets to do an action first is wonky. After reading that in the rules we said, "no, we'll just do a d6 rolloff, it is the same chances and will resolve way faster" after we rolled no crits, or 1 crit, tying each other and rerolling, for like 10 rolls straight.

For those who have never played shadespire:

Spoiler:

For those of you who don't know how Shadespire plays, essentially you have 4 activations per turn, and players take turn activating one character in their army. The game ends at the end of turn 3. You score objective points as the game goes on - getting kills - or for achieving objectives from your hand - end of turn. As you get points, you can spend them to equip wargear (cards) onto your characters. For instance, I put an equipment on my hammer-guy so that when he crit, it caused a lightning explosing and did 1 damage to all enemies adjacent to the target.

You can activate a model to perform 1 action: Move, Fight, Guard, or Charge. Charging prohibits the model from activating again that game turn, but allows it to move and fight. You can also spend an action to draw a card, or swap an objective. In between activations you can play "ploy" or "reaction" cards which have an immediate impact on the game (for example, healing potion to remove wounds from a model).

You are also rewarded for keeping your models adjacent to one another - in a group - because this gives you 'support,' where you start getting effectively a +1 or +2 bonus to your rolls, if you out-support your enemy. In other words, a fighter defending with 2 people next to him, will be more likely to defend than a fighter standing on his own.

So essentially a game is 12 total activations. And, should totally eliminate your opponent, you might still lose, if they score more points - which is neat, because while you can score by eliminating them, disregarding your objectives and going for the throat is generally a bad tactic. And remember, you customize your objective deck before playing, so you build a list of objectives that you can achieve based on your force.

I like the game alright. It's fun to break out for 30-45 minutes here and there. But I really would prefer a 3d table to play it on.

 Marmatag wrote:
If you're going to make new dice they should be better imho. Something really cool and unique. Each kit-box should come with dice themed for those characters. Stormcast box has stormcast dice, Rat People box has Rat People dice, etc. As it stands you've got generic dice, and only 1 pack to share between two people.

The concept of rolling 4 dice and counting the crits to decide who gets to do an action first is wonky. After reading that in the rules we said, "no, we'll just do a d6 rolloff, it is the same chances and will resolve way faster" after we rolled no crits, or 1 crit, tying each other and rerolling, for like 10 rolls straight.
[/spoiler]

The only thing they can do to theme the dice sets is change the colour; if you change the symbols, then you don't generate useable results because the symbols are defined in the rules - you need an errata every time a dice set comes out, for no real benefit. Making them a part of the expansion boxes pushes the cost up unnecessarily, too, and could introduce supply-chain issues. As for the method of determining Initiative, it's done that way to cut down components - no need to include a separate D6 for only one use. Someone else can do the maths to find out how much of an advantage the free Critical result for being the first to finish deploying is.

Nice review Marmatag.

Picking this up with a bud this weekend! Looking forward to getting a few games in.

Make sure to play with the roll off dice errata. It helps substantially.

First tie breaker - Single Support
Second tie breaker - Double Support

This generally resolves the roll off in a single roll and removes the ridiculous reroll fest.

For me, Customization of minis with cards instead of wargear is a downside instead of an upside. "Not your Dudes" and all. This is especially jarring since the game is going to (whether "fair" or not) be compared to Mordheim.

The overall turn structure/system just feels too...hacky/abstract for me. Like, if I want to play a game where I only get "4 moves/turn," and have to do movement manipulation shenanigans, there's Arimaa. If I want to tack on a card game onto a boardgame, there's Knightmare Chess. Shadespire...just doesn't really do it.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Nice review Marmatag.

Picking this up with a bud this weekend! Looking forward to getting a few games in.

Let me know what you think!

At first the tactics will seem really light, and the games will feel very quick. But once you start actually customizing your decks and getting to know the factions (for instance, the Undead and Orruks are the coolest ones IMHO) you'll see that they play very differently, and have fundamentally different strategies.

The variance in building your objective deck actually allows you to play the same army in multiple ways. And position is very critical.

Just bear in mind it's a 20-30 minute game. You could easily play with more turns if you wanted to, but once you get the hang of it, 3 turns seems about right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
If you're going to make new dice they should be better imho. Something really cool and unique. Each kit-box should come with dice themed for those characters. Stormcast box has stormcast dice, Rat People box has Rat People dice, etc. As it stands you've got generic dice, and only 1 pack to share between two people.

The concept of rolling 4 dice and counting the crits to decide who gets to do an action first is wonky. After reading that in the rules we said, "no, we'll just do a d6 rolloff, it is the same chances and will resolve way faster" after we rolled no crits, or 1 crit, tying each other and rerolling, for like 10 rolls straight.
[/spoiler]

The only thing they can do to theme the dice sets is change the colour; if you change the symbols, then you don't generate useable results because the symbols are defined in the rules - you need an errata every time a dice set comes out, for no real benefit. Making them a part of the expansion boxes pushes the cost up unnecessarily, too, and could introduce supply-chain issues. As for the method of determining Initiative, it's done that way to cut down components - no need to include a separate D6 for only one use. Someone else can do the maths to find out how much of an advantage the free Critical result for being the first to finish deploying is.

I totally get it. But the primary argument of having a D6 based game is that everyone has easier access to D6. If you're inventing new dice, why not make a D10 system? Or D8?

 Marmatag wrote:

Let me know what you think!

At first the tactics will seem really light, and the games will feel very quick. But once you start actually customizing your decks and getting to know the factions (for instance, the Undead and Orruks are the coolest ones IMHO) you'll see that they play very differently, and have fundamentally different strategies.

The variance in building your objective deck actually allows you to play the same army in multiple ways. And position is very critical.

Just bear in mind it's a 20-30 minute game. You could easily play with more turns if you wanted to, but once you get the hang of it, 3 turns seems about right.

I wish there was an easy way to keep the starter decks intact, as they showcase the game for new players far better than anything else I've tried. Starter games are really the only ones I've felt like you can see the different paths to victory the game has to offer and win by playing to the objectives you're dealt. That doesn't matter once you understand the game, as designing your path to victory is part of the fun, but I've noticed that more than any other deck based game I've played, Shadespire can come across as almost alien if your first game is just picking up someone else's decks and giving it a go.

My hope would be they release different starter packs and expansions of cards down the line, similar to a CCG. I don't know how committed GW is to Shadespire though as its own standalone game.

Assuming the speed at which things seem to be selling out (I couldn't get the rats and dwarves locally or online for like 2-3 weeks) isn't a result of intentional scarcity, I'd hope they're looking to commit to it.

 LunarSol wrote:
Assuming the speed at which things seem to be selling out (I couldn't get the rats and dwarves locally or online for like 2-3 weeks) isn't a result of intentional scarcity, I'd hope they're looking to commit to it.

It would be neat to see GW embrace a game system that would work well and play relatively fast with a multiplayer focus.

 Marmatag wrote:
My hope would be they release different starter packs and expansions of cards down the line, similar to a CCG. I don't know how committed GW is to Shadespire though as its own standalone game.

The theory being after the next two warbands, khorne champions and Sigmar rangers, we’ll see a new Underworlds setting with its own starter that includes new boards and a new list of warbands. Hopefully those remain compatible with the Shadespire setting.

 Marmatag wrote:


Let me know what you think!

At first the tactics will seem really light, and the games will feel very quick. But once you start actually customizing your decks and getting to know the factions (for instance, the Undead and Orruks are the coolest ones IMHO) you'll see that they play very differently, and have fundamentally different strategies.

The variance in building your objective deck actually allows you to play the same army in multiple ways. And position is very critical.

Just bear in mind it's a 20-30 minute game. You could easily play with more turns if you wanted to, but once you get the hang of it, 3 turns seems about right.

Yea I'll let you know no worries.

I've done a fair bit of research and get that the starter decks are just to get you moving initially and that a large part of the game is deck customisation. Looking forward to that aspect the most.

Hopefully later Saturday we'll have played a few games, had a few drinks and I'll be letting you know how we got on.

 AduroT wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
My hope would be they release different starter packs and expansions of cards down the line, similar to a CCG. I don't know how committed GW is to Shadespire though as its own standalone game.

The theory being after the next two warbands, khorne champions and Sigmar rangers, we’ll see a new Underworlds setting with its own starter that includes new boards and a new list of warbands. Hopefully those remain compatible with the Shadespire setting.

I hope that the new board mixes with the previous but adds a new (simple) mechanic like having the LoS blocking tiles replaced with pitfalls or shards - to create a more interactive board.

 AduroT wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
My hope would be they release different starter packs and expansions of cards down the line, similar to a CCG. I don't know how committed GW is to Shadespire though as its own standalone game.

The theory being after the next two warbands, khorne champions and Sigmar rangers, we’ll see a new Underworlds setting with its own starter that includes new boards and a new list of warbands. Hopefully those remain compatible with the Shadespire setting.

Thinking on this a bit, I bet we'll see something akin to a set rotation. Basically, the warbands and their warband specific cards will remain compatible, but the Common cards will become setting specific (perhaps with some grandfathering of the prior set or something). The common card symbol we have now is rather specific to Shadespire, so I can see that symbol replaced with a new common symbol for the next set.

your dice "complaint" makes something simple with symbols so much more complicated and easier to screw up if you dont remember all the modifiers

The special dice make it so much easier for those who arent WH vets or converts

Archonite wrote:
your dice "complaint" makes something simple with symbols so much more complicated and easier to screw up if you dont remember all the modifiers

The special dice make it so much easier for those who arent WH vets or converts

You don't need to put complaint in quotes, it's a legitimate complaint, and i stand by it.

Ultimately you still need to count and figure out the delta to determine who is supported and who isn't. "I have 2 guys.. you have 1... 2 minus 1 is 1... so yeah, side eye." Rather than "2 minus 1 is one, so plus 1."

And, i wouldn't have the complaint if these new dice were cool looking.