Critical Shift

I'm back playing Shadowfist, but not maintaining Web pages. I recommend Stefan Vincent's page very highly. You could also do much worse than The Hub for a good deck builder. The Chimpshack is my card database of choice. There's a copy of the pages that used to live here elsewhere, which really flatters me -- it's not so often that pages that dated are popular enough to stick around.

My opinion on the current state of the game is pretty dated. I think Z-Man did an awesome job on card design, but I'm not familiar with post-Z-Man sets. I think that the game was damaged by several rulings and errata made at the beginning of the Z-Man era; in particular, I think the new end of turn ruling was a mistake and I think Pocket Demon should have been left alone. On the other hand, it's still a fun, playable game.

For the curious, my Old School Shadowfist Ten Commandments are as follows. This format was used for a tournament at Kublacon with good results.

1. Vivisectors are Suicidal

Vivisectors can sacrifice themselves.

2. End Means End

You can respond to the declaration of end of turn without giving anyone a chance to restart the turn.

3. Nothing's Free

Amulet of the Turtle costs 1, and excess damage to the Amulet does not bleed over onto the character.

4. Except Demons and Abominations

Pocket Demon, Violet Meditation, and Scrounging do not suffer a reduction in power gain equal to the number of sites you have burned for victory. When you play Dangerous Experiment, the opponent to your left can only toast a card you control.

5. There Can Be More Than One

You may play more than one of a given Unique Feng Shui site, and the Uniqueness auction triggers when two of your Uniques are face up at the same time.

6. Especially Fox Pass

Fox Pass is Limited.

7. Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

Cards that are sacrificed are also smoked.

8. You Can Go Home Again

Family Home is a triggered effect; in other words, you can get the benefit of the damned thing even if it was face down at the start of your turn.

9. More Power

Burn for Victory, gain 5 power. NEXT!

10. Who Are You, Anyhow?

Masculine and feminine forms of the same English word match. Adjectival forms of the same English word match. Hey! Queen is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as 'the wife of a king'! I guess it's not the feminine form of King, huh? Geeze. Oh, yeah, and compound words can be split any which way, but it's not a compound word unless the components are words, y'know? Buro is a word. So is Arcano.

If you want my old pages, they're available in two formats:

• The innocence Shadowfist pages as a tar.gz file
• The innocence Shadowfist pages as a zip file

The creative work defined by the collection of Web pages collected in the two files linked above and this Web page are hereby licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Individual Web pages from the two files linked above which were written by Bryant Durrell are also licensed under the same license. Other material from the two files linked above belongs to the authors and/or trademark holders. In particular, please note:

The Shadowfist Trading Card Game ©1999-2001 Z-Man Games, Inc., distributed under license from Loch Ness Games, Inc. (LNG). All rights reserved. The trading card game, Shadowfist, is copyrighted 1995-2000 by LNG. The world of Shadowfist is owned and copyrighted 1995-2000 by Robin D. Laws. Ting Ting and any likeness of her is copyrighted 1995 by Brian Snöddy. Shadowfist, Netherworld, Flashpoint, Combat in Kowloon, Year of the Dragon and Throne War are trademarks of LNG.