Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Soulless wrote:
So what exactly is a "mediocre" game then? Because Shadespire is pretty original with some new mechanics and gameplay that most who have tried it seem to enjoy a lot.
The starter set comes with excellent miniatures, high quality components and seems to be way more balanced then most games will ever be. And the plans for how they will expand and develop the game is overall appreciated by players.

+1. I'm liking GW's forays into the boardgame market, and this game looks like a good step. IMO, There's not enough card-based combat.

I'd argue its a pretty ideal way to experience the Sigmar universe if you're drawn to the models but aren't interested in the game or volume of models required for it. I know I'm way more excited about having some Stormcast and Ironjawz and maybe some Fyreslayers. Get me some Sylvaneth and I'll have a pretty nice dose of models I've drooled over in the past.

Whether it becomes a thing largely depends on how GW supports it, particularly beyond the initial 8 teams planned in the rulebook.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I find that the how AOS and things based on AOS are treated and received much more warmly over in the UK than they are in the States...

Well, Stockholm syndrome for GW would obviously be much stronger in the UK.

Sounds like this is another one of those mediocre games that will be played only by people who only play GW games just because they are GW games and actively ignore the existence of anything else.

Wow, what an arrogant and condescending post.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd argue its a pretty ideal way to experience the Sigmar universe if you're drawn to the models but aren't interested in the game or volume of models required for it. I know I'm way more excited about having some Stormcast and Ironjawz and maybe some Fyreslayers. Get me some Sylvaneth and I'll have a pretty nice dose of models I've drooled over in the past.

Whether it becomes a thing largely depends on how GW supports it, particularly beyond the initial 8 teams planned in the rulebook.

The board is gonna be the killer. if the board never gets new tiles this game will be "Great at first, suck ass later" its already getting boring as hell and we have only had it a few days. I will admit we tend to play our new games a lot (so far 10 games) but this game fast becomes "same ole same old"

 thekingofkings wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd argue its a pretty ideal way to experience the Sigmar universe if you're drawn to the models but aren't interested in the game or volume of models required for it. I know I'm way more excited about having some Stormcast and Ironjawz and maybe some Fyreslayers. Get me some Sylvaneth and I'll have a pretty nice dose of models I've drooled over in the past.

Whether it becomes a thing largely depends on how GW supports it, particularly beyond the initial 8 teams planned in the rulebook.

The board is gonna be the killer. if the board never gets new tiles this game will be "Great at first, suck ass later" its already getting boring as hell and we have only had it a few days. I will admit we tend to play our new games a lot (so far 10 games) but this game fast becomes "same ole same old"

A soft spot in the way they release things, I get why they string stuff out, but.....it does need new boards and factions. However, that aside, I actually like it a lot, our gaming group has been having some round robin nights with it and so far, its been near a 50/50 split for folks on win loss, which to me is a sign that it's ok in the balance department. You want everyone to have a chance in a game, which not all games do well. Sigmar side has been more popular so I've played a fair few more games as Khorne and I'm right at 50/50 with maybe 2/3 of games being decided on turn 3, and several coming down to the last couple activations. Games started to kind of morph when people got over the urge to blindly charge their first guy in and get him slaughtered. Several guys have pulled off tabled victories (not a lot but fishing for objectives is a thing). Overall, I like it. Give us a stack of boards to choose from that have some interesting deployment/LOS on them and 5-6 more warbands and cards and I think we could really use this as a gateway game in our local scene. We've already had one guy decide he wants in to AoS or 40k, he was a card game guy mostly but wandered over to play with us one night and is awakening to Mini games I think. I always look at things in terms of community. ANY game can catch on if your community supports it. But if the guys in a store/club sit around and bad mouth everything and play the same crap they have played for 20 years, the scene, the community and the games just wither on the vine. Something I've always felt UK does better is clubs. We've had mixed success over the years in our club, BUT.....Shadespire is a decent game. We play A LOT of games, but surprisingly not a lot of the GW games because there was a kind of bias over the years (7th was just AIDs in our area, killed so much of the scene), and I would say Shadespire is fun, has some good mechanics, is near as we can tell fairly balanced (especially if you use a 2 out of 3 format because dice can be swingy by their nature) and if given some product support could be a fun niche game that we use for a week night tournament or two and change of pace off AoS and 40k. I don't think it's a game you would play every night, but...more warbands could add that variety...certainly it's a niche game so long as we have the same two warbands over and over. Solid B+ from me, though until we get more stuff, its a once a week game night at best.

Miniature Market sold out of Ironjawz and Sepulchral Guard expansions and sleeves in one day ...

Played two games tonight, both times as Reavers and won both games. In the first game, I thought I had won by a mile. But when we de-briefed, his objective cards proved the game was actually very close. Second game felt tense and, again, the "behind the scenes" objective game was super important, especially as my opponent got to spend more and more actions digging through his objective deck. It wasn't so close as our first game but only because of a few key moments.

This game has some surprises: crits are crucial, the support mechanics create unexpected positioning wrinkles, just slugging it out with the minis is not going to cinch wins. I have no doubt that the importance of crits is going to rub some people the wrong way but it strikes me as a great solution the potential issue of one-shotting models. (Wonder if OP had trouble rolling crits ...) My impression is, there is a lot of juicy, gamey tactical play without losing the tension of luck-driven swinginess.

It's weird to see Shadespire dismissed as mediocre - maybe the novelty wears off with more games? I had a blast tonight and cannot wait to spend more time on this game. FWIW we did not use the extra cards. I wouldn't mind holding off on adding them to the mix because I feel like knowing the starting decks well will make each game even quicker to play and reveal further interesting tactics.

First impressions are important and Shadespire really nailed it for me.

One further thing, until tonight I don't think I really understood the AoS setting. I have played through both Silver Tower and Hammerhal but neither game convinced me the new, more fantastical Realms were a truly worthy successor to the gritty Old World. The Shadespire fluff, however, feels very fresh and makes me hope the next WHQ is set amid the bone dust dunes and shattered pains of shadeglass mirrors.

 Manchu wrote:
Miniature Market sold out of Ironjawz and Sepulchral Guard expansions and sleeves in one day ...

Played two games tonight, both times as Reavers and won both games. In the first game, I thought I had won by a mile. But when we de-briefed, his objective cards proved the game was actually very close. Second game felt tense and, again, the "behind the scenes" objective game was super important, especially as my opponent got to spend more and more actions digging through his objective deck. It wasn't so close as our first game but only because of a few key moments.

This game has some surprises: crits are crucial, the support mechanics create unexpected positioning wrinkles, just slugging it out with the minis is not going to cinch wins. I have no doubt that the importance of crits is going to rub some people the wrong way but it strikes me as a great solution the potential issue of one-shotting models. (Wonder if OP had trouble rolling crits ...) My impression is, there is a lot of juicy, gamey tactical play without losing the tension of luck-driven swinginess.

It's weird to see Shadespire dismissed as mediocre - maybe the novelty wears off with more games? I had a blast tonight and cannot wait to spend more time on this game. FWIW we did not use the extra cards. I wouldn't mind holding off on adding them to the mix because I feel like knowing the starting decks well will make each game even quicker to play and reveal further interesting tactics.

First impressions are important and Shadespire really nailed it for me.

One further thing, until tonight I don't think I really understood the AoS setting. I have played through both Silver Tower and Hammerhal but neither game convinced me the new, more fantastical Realms were a truly worthy successor to the gritty Old World. The Shadespire fluff, however, feels very fresh and makes me hope the next WHQ is set amid the bone dust dunes and shattered pains of shadeglass mirrors.

Mini market usually has about 100 of each thing in stock, so they likely sold out 100 kits in a day.

I don't so much as "dismiss" it as mediocre, I honestly compare it to other board games of its class that I play and it just doesn't IMO stack up favorably. Its not a bad game, but yeah the novelty wore off for us fast. After the 8th game, its just the same. granted more expansions will add more to it, but as it is now, its just mediocre to me. New factions will add something nice, but if its just more stormcast, more khorne, then I know for sure my group will drop it. Our first impression was it was pretty good, gimicky but pretty good, but that went away fast (didnt help that none of us like stormcast or khorne in aos anyhow)

What are you comparing it to? I can see how 8 games of reavers v stormcast in quick succession could feel samey. Is there a game that you could play 8 times in a row, all else being equal, that wouldn't?

If MM sold through even just 100 of the orcs and skellies in a single day of preorders I'd say that bodes well for interest in the game.

So yeah, it's not just more stormcast and khorne guys ... besides orcs and undead, we know skaven and fyreslayers are coming early 2018 along with new warbands for stormcast and the full-on khornate chaos warriors (Blood Warriors I think they're called). Those last two will have different profiles and cards from the core warbands so it's not at all "more of the same."

I wonder if players will be able to build a warband from both the core box stormcast and the upcoming stormcast expansion box ...

Not the way the rules are presented now, no. The warbands are balanced in their entirety, after all - no individual "points costs" to allow you to break them down.

I would be surprised if GW did not use a points system to do the balancing. Maybe that will eventually be published.

The rule book very much talks like Stormcast 2 and Stormcast 1 are as separate as Khorne 1 and the Orks.

Yeah I guess it doesn't look like you can mix and match characters, which in turn further limits deck customization (because some upgrade cards are character-specific). I wonder if the very limited customization will hurt the game's chances of of developing a strong tournament scene.

You can choose:
- your warband, which is non-customizable
- power cards, limited by character-specific and faction-specific
- objective cards, limited as above
- which board of X boards you will play on, where there are (currently) only 4 choices

I wonder if faction-specific cards distinguish between warbands, so liberators and hunters cannot use each others cards at all.

The rulebook states the cards in a way that says "this symbol" = "this warband" and nothing faction related, which to me implies cards are warband specific and not faction.

Mostly what it limits is online min/max discussing, though a significant number of generic cards will facilitate that well enough. I actually think the game will become really interesting once players start really adapting and optimizing their objective deck.

I'm very interested for the meta shifts. There's a limited cardbase, sure, but already you can see the difference between a board/objective based deck, a "kill everything" deck, and decks that want to play tricky. Four fairly different warbands with a variety of decks will lead to a lot of building and counterbuilding.

Can you give an example of the difference between an objective-focused Liberator configuration versus a "kill everything" one? I mean, in terms of how many cards (per each deck) we're talking about to shift between them?

The core set is a complete game for sure, but it offers very little variety to how you can customise your warbands. If youre playing several games of it it will definitely feel samy and monotone, its like playing 10 games with only the AoS starter box, it will feel the same at that point.

Come weekend we get two new warbands and each of those boxes comes with 30 new universal cards aside from the warband specific for the box.
Thats gonna stir things up and let the game settle into its real self. After that is when we will see if it has enough to carry on for a long time.

I have to say though, the game does need more different hex tiles or separate terrain hex pieces. More variety in the board layout would really help the game imo.

Generic cards are spread out through the expansions.
So to compete you will need to buy everything.

Also there is an Armor Relic, 1 part in each expansion, 1 part does nothing each after the first increases power.

Again having to buy everything.

Enjoy

Lfseeney wrote:
Also there is an Armor Relic, 1 part in each expansion, 1 part does nothing each after the first increases power.

Again having to buy everything.

Enjoy

I might just be completely exhausted but I don't understand what you mean here.

Each expansion has a single Katophranes Relic card. It's a upgrade. Putting one of them on your character has no effect. Put two on, you get to re-roll defense rolls; three and you get to re-roll defense and attack rolls; four and re-rolling defense and attack plus draw two power cards after fighters action; nothing for five; six and all the below plus gain 4 glory as an action.

Ah. I see now. Sounds ok. Planning on buying everything so not a deal breaker. Seems like it would eat up a lot of slots to try and go for the complete set.

So there's a bonus for buying all the expansions but it's still not required? Seems fine to me.

 Manchu wrote:
Each expansion has a single Katophranes Relic card. It's a upgrade. Putting one of them on your character has no effect. Put two on, you get to re-roll defense rolls; three and you get to re-roll defense and attack rolls; four and re-rolling defense and attack plus draw two power cards after fighters action; nothing for five; six and all the below plus gain 4 glory as an action.

So they imitated exodia?

6 upgrades on a single model is pretty hilarious. I'm not sure I've ever put 6 upgrades down in a game. Given you only have 10 in your deck, its definitely not something I would consider a competitive win condition, but its a fun side game to play.

Yeah but if you get it off, whoo baby that model is gonna run rampage.

It's so completely non-competitive. If my opponent managed to pull it off, I'd be happy for him to win. Of course, just getting 2 on paints a target on a character's back. Good thing he can re-roll defense, I guess.

Yeah totally, I think if my opponent manages to stack the whole thing I'll just laugh and let him do it. Wouldn't bring it to a tournament tho.

After having played a few games this evening, I must say I am impressed with Shadespire. We've had very close and enjoyable games so far! Now I just need to get them Sepulchral Guard asap

Got to play two games with my starter, both as Khornites. Lost 4-5 and 5-7, but got early glory on both games and they were exiting right down to last end phase scoring.

Play time, with new players in both games, 45min, with some explaining.

Seems like excellent skirmish-tabletop -hybrid with deck building elements. I wonder if decks being "highlander" makes it harder to focus a deck even with slight increase in universal cards. Makes balancing (with GW..... novel) easier at least. I guess we will find out soon. Ordered Sepulcher Guard already!

Timmon

Highlander format certainly limits deck building - but keep in mind the context is very small decks (exactly 12 objective, at least 20 power) in a very short game. OTOH lots of hand management options. Wonder if we will see milling? Or recovering crda from the discard pile?

The highlander format matters more in the sense that once a card is played it can't be played again, so once they've burned their sidestep you're good. There's not a lot of need for multiples of cards in terms of draw consistency since if you mulligan the opening hand you draw half your deck before the first turn. If you really, really need a card its pretty easy to fish for.