by Bruce Neiger

This article, presented in two parts, with an “intermission” and an afterword, describes the “Mostly Harmless” and Netherworld Return deck types. I have given the Tim Linden’s Netherworld Return deck, published on Stephan’s Shadowfist site, an “honorary” entry into this category as an “unrelated ancestor”. I hope he doesn’t mind.

The Mostly Harmless deck type has taken on several faces at this point, each inspired by the others. The core concept, however is to combine alternate power generation with large hitters and (almost always) with cheap recursion. All except the Netherworld Return deck also combine Red Bat with a large number of free or low cost events, quickly yielding very large Red Bats.

by James Przytulski

At the Origins Final Brawl I played a Dragon/Seven Masters deck I called the Story of the Three Acrobats. I finished third at the Final Brawl with an attendance of around 15-20. This deck is a combat trick deck. This deck attempts to go for an unstoppable or at least difficult to defend against win.

I built this deck on the hypothesis that the best four player decks are the ones that can break through the stalemates that plague multi-player games. The original deck contained one hundred cards with four Wu Bins of Turtle Island, five Scrolls of Incantation, and five Fighting Spirits for search and recursion. The deck would then play a large amount of combat trick events that are notorious to the Dragon faction. Events such as Back for Seconds, Flying Kick, Got My Mojo Working, and Old Hermit’s Gambit are very potent yet very narrow unless you are in the right position. That is why I only play one of each of the trick events. Scroll of Incantation allows me to search out an event, such as Got My Mojo Working, and play it in response to a card such as a Nerve Gas in the same scene. This is because Scroll of Incantation says the event can be played “immediately”. Over time the deck was whittled down to 64 cards. The current incarnation is 64 cards. In the next section I will go over the combat tricks.

In these beleaguered time, where no starter decks are available for purchase anywhere, demo decks are a crucial way to get new people to play our beloved game. If you have always wanted to contribute to the recruiting effort from your collection while cleaning out your closet at the same time, here are a few guidelines for building a decent demo deck.

The Purpose of the Deck

… is obviously to introduce new players to the game. Ideally, the decks should be fun and easy to play, and showcase some of the strengths of Shadowfist. You want lots of characters, and lots of free stuff, so that the new player feels like he can influence the game at all times. You don’t want tricky decks. You don’t want decks that are poorly resourced. And you absolutely don’t want any cards that are hard to understand, or that (even worse) have been errated and don’t do what they claim they do.

Brian's Guide to Drafting

Navigating the Netherworld by the Seat of your Pants

Scramble Suit
State of the Art Tech
Requires: Tech Tech 1
Subject Character cannot be intercepted by Characters controlled by players with cards in their hands. Any player may discard his or her hand when subject turns to attack.

As was pointed out correctly on the forum, this card will usually give you one uninterceptable attacker, but after that you may even be helping the opponents by letting them flush their hands. We should also remember that a character that is uninterceptable is far from unstoppable; denial events and sites can still ruin your day. So, is this a niche card or a killer card?

by Marek Laskowski

“Rise of the NeoBuro” - Online Proving Ground spring 2007 duelling event winner.

5 BuroMil Grunt
5 DNA Mage
4 Test Subjects

3 Arcanowave Researcher
4 Bouncing Benji
2 Johann Bonengel PAP
2 Elsa Winterhagen
2 Dr. Curtis Boatman PAP
2 Arcanotechnician

4 Artillery Strike
3 Dangerous Experiment
2 Imprisoned
2 Neutron Bomb
4 Pocket Demon
2 Paradox Cube
3 Probability Manipulator
5 Rise of the NeoBuro
2 The Rackets
5 Dragon Graveyard
5 Nine Dragon Temple
2 Thousand Sword Mountain
2 Stone Dolmens

Yes, it really is 70 cards. It's not a mistake. This deck burns through cards as a resource for both Artillery Strike fodder (damage and reload) as well as reloading Bouncing Benjis. In a pinch it can draw a new hand and still generate power: when you pay the reload cost for the Benji, you can pay it again in response, and thus discard as many cards as you like while reloading a single Benji. If you don't care which cards you discard, Artillery Strike will work the same. Due to the 5 namesake Rise of the NeoBuro's you can also quickly see a big chunk of the deck quite fast. It's really the only card you need to draw, which is why there are five.

by Marek Laskowski

I was asked to write a short article about the dueling deck I fielded in the online Proving Ground league “Who's the Big Man Now!?” tournament that won undefeated. I feel I should outline the, uh, philosophy that went into designing it first. If you are reading this looking for tips like "make sure to discard!" you're looking in the wrong place. There have been many articles better written than this one, discussing the basics quite well. I don't have any hard and fast rules for you either, only observations and opinions gained through experience. The first seven sections of this article are general observations and next week, I'll apply these observations to two sample decks.

by Robin Parmar

It seems that every time I play with someone who uses Faceoffs, questions arise. I suppose the reasons for this are two-fold. Faceoffs are an under-used dynamic. Plus, the rules for them do not appear in any of the rulebooks. This leads to misunderstandings and an underappreciation of what Faceoffs can do.

This article hopes to remedy this situation in three ways. First, I will provide a summary of the Faceoff rules in an easy to understand format. Second, I will elaborate on some of the subtleties and point out how Faceoffs can help you. Finally, I will look at a couple of Faceoff deck archetypes.

200 Guys With Hatchets and Ladders
Edge
Cost: Asc Asc 2
Limited. Smoke all non-Unique Characters you control when this card leaves play. When an opponent plays a Unique Character, you may return up to X 1-cost Characters from your smoked pile to play. X= the Unique Character's cost.

While not a very powerful card on its own, this card from the Seven Masters set screams to be abused. In this week’s article, I will go into some obvious and non-obvious combos for 200 Guys With Hatchets and Ladders (200G from here on) and show how the card can be used to maximum effect.

The first thought that I had when I saw this card was: how much fighting can I squeeze out of this edge? Getting back 4 fighting when an opponent plays Ting Ting is nice, but doesn’t really help an awful lot, so something has to be done to multiply the effect. The most obvious combo is pump cards: Fanaticism, Stand Together, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting, Armies of the Monarch instantly come to mind as ways of getting more than 1 fighting per power spent by the opponent, and there are some characters that can easily be 2 or more damage for 1 power, such as BuroMil Grunt, Manchu Soldiers, Little Grasshopper, Consumer on the Brink, Simian Liberation Army and Fire Woman. The true potential of 200G becomes obvious once you realize that you can merrily sacrifice any character that 200G returns (unlike Inauspicious Return), and most abusive card to combo it with is Thunder Squire. Together with Thunder Captain, you can return to play up to 7 fighting (with Fanaticism and Stand Together) per power the opponent spends. Who, under these circumstances, would want to play a Unique character anymore? Who indeed… and that is where the weakness of a deck built exclusively around 200G comes in: it is extremely easy to play around. In fact, several tournament caliber decks don’t even need to rely on Unique characters any more, leaving you with wasted card slots. So when you build a deck around 200G, you have to take into account that you will likely have to win without it ever going off. You also have to either protect 200G (say, with Manchu Bureaucrat) or have enough Unique characters of your own that losing the 200G doesn’t take you out of the game.

“The power curve” is a term often used to describe the development of power generation under “normal” circumstances in a Shadowfist game. Knowing how power generation will develop is important when you plan out your deck speed, because it answers questions such as: When can I expect my opponents to mount a successful attack? How much power can I expect my opponents to have to resist my own attacks? When am I falling behind the curve, and how much of a disadvantage am I at?

For a regular power curve, assume that a player will play a Feng Shui site (FSS) in every turn until he reaches a self-set limit of n sites, and thereafter produce n power every turn. Until the player stops playing an FSS every turn, he will have 2 power to spend on other things, and then he gains an additional n power a turn. As the table below shows, buying as many FSS as possible will be always worthwhile if you can defend them, because you will catch up to and exceed the total power generated by players who bought fewer FSS.