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Let’s Play: Warhammer Shadespire
October 19, 2017 by thisisazrael
Justin and Az go head to head in this Warhammer based board game from Games Workshop.
Playing the base game we will see Justin's Bloodreavers face off against Az's Liberators. The guys explain the board layout, the stats on the cards, and how gameplay flows, giving you everything you need to know to get started playing yourselves!
Have you got a copy pre-ordered?
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Great video! Have not seen a full game since this one, and it was fast an easy to watch. I think I know almost how to play only by seen you guys play, sweet ^_^
I will totally pick this one for sure, looks very enjoyable.
Yea, finally got a dice tray 🙂
And the immortal line is spoken “This is me being clever”
I’ll have to check the rules, but I didn’t think you could play upgrade cards until the end phase of the turn, while the ploy cards can indeed be played after every action.
In the latest issue of White Dwarf, they have a battle report for Shadespire. There is a small text box about the power step. It says both players get the chance to play power cards, many will be ploys and you can also play upgrades.
Looks like you can play both during the power step, but you are restricted to only upgrade cards during the end phase.
Probably this is where the instant score objectives are useful, for getting upgrades quickly.
This is 100% correct. Played again on Saturday and Upgrade cards can indeed be played as soon as you have earned the Glory to pay for them.
Several of my earlier games would have gone quite differently…
The leader is away from the action????? What sort of Khornite is he???? Did he graduate from the skaven school of battle ??? …. and I’m putting my leader away from the enemy ….. pah ……Khorne is soiling the skull throne in disgust…
Agree, hiding a Khorne leader at the back is scandalous.
Justin clearly shares the same lack of morals as my buddy whose Darth Vader ran away from my wookie in an Imperial Assault game.
I guess the complete destruction of the Stormcast player would be plenty of bloody for most? I think the inner tactician in Justin took over. Az won’t ask him to RPG a Khorne berserker any time soon. 🙂
Loving the look of this game. Glad I got my pre-order in. The dice rolls can be viciously cruel. What looked like a relatively good move turns out to be a turning point because the hit didn’t come off. That does create tension, but I wonder whether occasionally it will be more frustrating than dramatic. I guess the ploy cards and upgrades improve on those chances all the time. Managing your hand seems more important than positioning tactics to a degree.
Not really an complaint, just an observation. If you don’t like random elements don’t play games with dice in. 🙂
a lot of things I like about shadespire. firstly it’s great to see a game board, it holds so many advantages over a traditional open field. a reasonable number of squares, too many of these new school skirmish board games go with too few squares which limits the tactical movement options. i would have liked to have seen more pieces on the board though. should ideally be between 10-20 pieces depending on troop choices, so essentially a customisable chess set.
it would ideally need a bigger game board to accommodate this. it would need to be closer to two hours with the game time but totally worth it for the depth of gameplay. nothing to stop GW scaling it up over the course of time though so fingers crossed.
now my biggest problem with these new school skirmish board games is the quality of the sculpts, it’s why i play infinity over say imperial assault or mythic battles. i know i know accessibility plug and play and all that. but it upsets me that all too often the best rules sets and sculpts so rarely seem to meet these days. i have no issue with the core sets coming with more basic sculpts but i really need to see a high end option if it’s going to seal the deal for me personally. your 1st edition space hulk lumps of plastic terminators could always be upgraded with the metal terminator boxed set which at the time was as good as it got.
i’m not saying the sculpts are bad, hard plastic mulitpart over PVC all day long, cause those skeletons are real nice. i just want to see an option for the best the industry has to offer.
again totally within GWs power to do so. it would be nice to see some forge world support for this in the same way we’re seeing for blood bowl.
all in all i think this is potentially the best rules set GW have produced in a long time if they support it to the best of their ability and expand the scale.
the game is similar to imperial assault, which is a good thing, but they don’t need to go down the FFG route with regards to cards and how you acquire them.
the thinly veiled attempt to squeeze extra money out of your players is not the way to treat the people supporting your product. i have a feeling that goodwill would give you better results in he long run over a cash grab, just my opinion.
i will be watching to see how the game evolves over the next year to see where they take it.
i would only say my piece like this for companies close to my heart.
This should be the best GW has to offer, i mean it is directly from them. The sculpts are as good as GW makes them, it is just that they are snapfit, but quality wise it is the same as ever (And comparing it to space hulk 1st edition is a little bit unfair as the quality of hard plastic changed a lot since then). GW plastic doesn’t have to hide itself behind the Forgeworld Resin stuff.
Its the same with Blood Bowl, its just that Forgeworld produces additional figures, not better ones. So unless you don’t like the hard plastic this is it.
@dignity Didn’t matter in the end but for awareness reasons: You could have reached the objective with the Khornate ‘youth’ just moving the other way around. 😉
Can totally relate though. We’re simply not used to slipping so closely past fighting models and enemy fighters on top of that.
Shouldn’t Justin have been able to score his ‘take out the leader’ Objective card? The Action Phase covers all four activations, does it not? So, he did achieve this….I think…?
Yes. They confused “Activation Step” and “Action Phase”.