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Hey Shannon.
Shadows has engendered a curious response from me. I want to like it alot. I want to love it alot and the first couple games I've played I have. But I can't figure out why. Why did I enjoy this game?
I'm a sucker both for anything Arthurian and innovative game mechanics and Shadows has both of those in spades; but is the game PLAY really that good?
I've certainly had fun and enjoyed it...but I'm not sure why. Ultimately the actual game play is pretty drab. You go on a quest for Excalibur and it plays like this "discard card, move excalibur. discard card, move excalibur. discard card, move excalibur. Uh oh black card, move excalibur back. discard card, move excalibur" You quest against the treacherous Lancelot and it plays like this "play a 3. play a 3. play a 3. play a 5. Oh oh someone played a Lancelot card face down. play a 5. Add a bunch of numbers"
Written like that it hardly seems like a formula for fun. It seems extraordinarily dry and tedious. Yet I've had a blast playing it. I'm worried that that fun will last only until the novelty of the mechanics wears off and that underneath we'll be left with a game that has very little actual zing to it.
The thing that ultimately seems missing to me is the "Killer Move". All successful Euro Style games that I've played live and die by the Killer Move. Because lets face facts, most Euro Games are rather mechanically dry. Place some colored cubes, move a vp marker around. Whether its Ticket to Ride, or Puerto Rico, or Tigris & Euphrates, or Amun Re, or Princes of Florence, or El Grande all of those games have one thing in common. Turn after turn of routine somewhat dry mechanical play punctuated by that one game turn where you pull out the stops, the complection of the whole board changes and you rack up a big score. In Tigris & Euphrates I live for the moments when someone catches the one tile play that will unite two huge empires and trigger a cascade of destruction that leaves them with tons of victory cubes, a treasure, and a firm position in control of the new empire with everyone around the table acknowledging "man, that was a killer move".
I haven't seen this in Shadows. EVERY turn seems to be largely the same routine of play a single card...play a single card...play a single card. Each quest is unique...but ultimately they are all the same...play a single card...play a single card. This is made even worse by the rule that says you can't take two moves in a row of the same type. One game we played where we accidentally neglected that rule there was at least some opportunity for minor killer moves. The knight who waited until Excalibur was 2 away from victory and then burned a life to move it the last 2 spaces and "steal" the sword away from the other players who'd done most of the work. The near suicidal labor of a pair of knights determined to get the grail at all costs burning life every turn to play 2 grail cards at a time to overcome a never ending string of despair. But now, playing with the proper rules, you can't even do that. Play a card...play a card...play a card...
It should be a game of never ending tedious drudgery. But its not. Its hella fun. And I don't know why.
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