I love Shadowrift and its deck building mechanics. I agree with your point regarding the endgame, but it still doesn’t make it easy as you wait to close the shadowrift. It is much more thematic than other deck builders such as Dominion. I love the use of villagers in the game and the ever changing availability of their skills.
1. If you genuinely get to a point where you're sure of victory but just need to get to the shadowrifts, the intention is that you accelerate your way to them via the Explore card. This is actually the reason sealing rifts is the preferred option for experienced players. You can rush it with Explore. 2. If you're not rushing it with Explore, walls are better than people think. Once you have a few Heroism in your deck you can often buy certain walls very, very cheaply- especially if you've been hoarding seals (discardable for magic resource) and there's no rift available to seal. Not only do walls directly resist the loss condition, not only do they provide a useful ability, but they also do not leave corpses when destroyed. If you play a few more times you may find yourself purchasing Magic Barriers simply because they're not so hard to purchase and because they give magic characters something to do with unneeded Seals... then adding Shrines because they're also not so expensive... then putting your heads together to rush buy the other four walls. 3. There sort of is deck thinning but not in the traditional sense. Prophecy is effectively a deck thinner, as are a few other options. These cards let you do things like examine the top card of your deck and discard it if it is unwanted, speeding how quickly you pass through your deck. Deck thinning plus cantrips essentially breaks games (example, reduce non-cantrips to five, draw a hand of five plus all cantrips found on the way, and draw your entire deck every round), so restricting the game to this limited form is probably best.
@@OneStopCoopShop Cantrip is old former-magic-the-gathering-player lingo for a spell that lets you draw and play another card after you play it. Or, more broadly, any spell that effectively takes up none or essentially none of your card draw or card play resources. Might and Heroism are cantrips, but so also are any card that lets you draw a replacement card, and which doesn't use up or which replaces your epic card play for the round. If your deck consists of your ten starter cards, plus six heroism you've earned, plus four cards that let you draw and play a replacement card when you play them, you will draw and use your entire deck every other round. This is only a viable deck building strategy for focusing on certain cards, but it is a powerful way to exploit them AND to boost wall construction (because in an all cantrip deck you will draw half of your Heroism every turn). Typical base game cantrips are Heroism, Might, Heal (when boosted, draw the two cards yourself to get more Heroism and Heal cards), Revitalize, Prophecy, and I think a few others. I mixed the expansions in a long time ago and forget which cards are base game.
@@patrickhickey4047 ah, I get it now. It's been years since my heavy Magic days :) I see your point. I was usually drawn to buy several different types of cool cards from the market, which is going to slow down your deck no matter how many heroism cards you get!
"Battle for Grayport" is the game referred to when he says "Attack on Grayport" (I wanted to find out about it after it was mentioned). Thanks for the review! I was looking at this one, but I think I'll skip it because of the comments on endgame.
In my opinion, the best deckbuilding game with tower defence is Thunderstone Advance with the Root of Corruption expansion. This has a coop modus in which enemies run against the walls of the village. It's always hard to decide if you use your turn to improve your deck or defeat one of the revealed enemies. Combine this with the epic mode in which you can use all cards to shuffle in specific market buy decks and have access to all heroes....and it indead is epic. You can even create thematic monster decks for level 1-3 monsters like Undeads or Orcs&Goblins and it becomes one of my favourite games.
@@OneStopCoopShop Thunderstone Quest has the Barricades Expansion which adds something similar. But I skipped Thunderstone Quest because 1. I dont like the artwork...I prefer the old generic dark fantasy design over the too colourful and shiny new design. 2. I dont like the new XP and VP being the same. I really like the new options in the village and that the dungeon much more feels like a dungeon but the above mentioned two points made me skip that game.
@@andrethannhauser6302 we did playthroughs of Quest and I did a review. I liked parts of the coop, but they missed the boat wildly with some other choices.
I know Shadowrift is not perfect, but i really like it and always had a soft spot for it. Your points are all valid, but i personally still like it more than Aeons End for example. The villager deck is cool and very thematic. The hero powers are nice and allow for interesting combinations. Player interaction is good. The villains are all unique and the many different factions all play very different. While the game has no culling, the heroism cards and lots of other cards possibly let you draw a lot of cards during your turn. There are a lot of cards that let you use or heal the wounds you take. The swinginess and the endgame are really its weak points... sometimes you just lose whatever you do, sometimes you know that you've won long before that last shadowrift comes up. While i have Archfiends, it's rarely used, because it adds a lot of additional difficulty to the game. Still: If you like deckbuilders, you should give it a try despite the cons.
The first expansion "Archfiends" adds the needed big boss to defeat at the end after closing the Shadowrift or building the walls. It turns the one con to a full pro!
Colin has said the same to me. He loves the game with Archfiends includes. BUT it's out of print. They are selling it on Amazon for $100. I can't find it anywhere else. So it's tough to factor it into the review :)
Shame that the victory condition can be dependent on drawing the right cards. I don't mind that you don't have draw or cull (I actually hate draw mechanisms in deckbuilders without resources as they are almost always a good buy and prolong the player turn). The villager mechanic seems so much more interesting that Aeon's End's Gravenhold dial. Would love to check it out again if there was a new edition that tackles some of the cons.
Agreed, though the last few expansion kickstarters haven't been successful enough to bump a new edition ahead, most likely. Didn't the newest kickstarted Aeon's End expansion have something bringing the town to more life? I agree that's something I'd love to see!
Colin wanted me to note that if you can find a copy of the Archfiends expansion (it's out of print), that does change the endgame to be more "defeat a boss" focused. Wish that had been in the base game though!
I'm currently at a point where I'm trying to decide which game to keep in my collection. This or Xenoshyft. Having everything for both makes me realise that they both fill the same niche to me which is probably why although Aeon's End looks interesting, I've never gotten into it. I think Shadowrift is the one that will stay as I think it is generally more interesting with its mechanics. I love the town deck and how thematic the wound system in the game is. Although I would love to see a variant where there are more defined classes (4 sets of skills/equipment make a class) with players using class decks.
I like the idea of your variant. Between the two games you mentioned, I'd probably go Shadowrift too. Xenoshyft was fun, but felt a little limited. To be fair, though, I was only playing with the base set!
Glad to find somebody else that likes Greyport! One of the first articles I wrote was about this game, I also thought it was okay to good, but it just was not one that made me want to go back and play again. So I am also strange and just cannot get engaged but neons end
@@OneStopCoopShop I did! Just doesn't have a story to it that I can get behind. Feels generic to me. I keep trying. I bought the app but just can't get excited by it
Does anyone know if there's a more modern spin on Mage Knight? Love the idea of walking around a campaign world and getting stronger, but reviews I've seen make it seem very fiddly. I enjoyed Gloomhaven. Co-op/solo is a must.
A lot of people on our Slack find Renegade (designed by Ricky Royal) to give a Mage Knight vibe in a cleaner, much faster design. I personally still like Mage Knight a lot better, but Renegade is fun.
I feel like if you enjoy Gloomhaven, which in my personal opinion is more fiddly and intimidating than Mage Knight, you can probably handle Mage Knight. If you know anyone who has it, or if there's any game groups in your area who might, it's worth it to see if you can get a game or two in to try before buying.
Is there a new edition of this game? It’s an older one for sure. Colin had this on one of his top 10 lists some years back and I bought it on his advice... love this game. There is an expansion that adds a boss. I really need to get that one. One thing that I hear a lot is that building all of the walls is not a viable strategy. I respectfully disagree. While I don’t go into a game intent on doing this, there are a couple of the Walls that I do try to build each play. When I am able to get them into play I find that it lets me adopt a strategy of “managing” the monsters instead of trying to kill all of them before the leave the track where, with the help of said Walls, they can be dispatched. Having certain walls in play helps to sure things up so that “sometimes” you are able to go ahead and just buy all of them for the win.
I agree on some walls being useful for sure. I forget the exact one (mystic temple?), but the one that completely cancels a monster activation for 1 magic is excellent.
Shadowrift 1st edition was a moderately successful Kickstarter some 10 years ago. I remember it had a horrible rulebook. The designer then made Archfiends (the boss expansion) as the only expansion for the first edition. After that, since kickstarter got big until then, he went for a more successful and better second edition and made 3 expansions for it. I just received the last one "Boomtown" featuring traplaying Goblins and a giant Mech as Villains. Unfortunately, he abandonded the idea of boss fights for the second edition. Archfiends is for the first edition and only features bosses for the villains of the base box. It has different artwork and a different card size, but you can play it with second edition too, because the villain factions are the same between the versions and its a completely different deck of cards not to mix with other decks.
Mike said "Attack on Greyport" as the other deck builder but he meant to say "Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport". Colin did a playthrough of this game on this channel. Looks fun and is on my "to buy" list
A straight deck builder!!?? I never once thought this game was straight forward! You have ton(s) of choices each turn on what to buy and even how to attack. Dominion, Ascension, and many others are deck builders I consider to be straight forward. I think people that have been playing games for a while forget what is really more then your average game comparing to others. Sure this game isn’t as deep as mage knight( which can be a 3-7 hour game depending on player count), but this game packs a lot of punch in a 1-2 hour play time( maybe even more in the time frame. And your turns are a lot faster.
Greetings, I would like to know, why they gave you a copy of this game? Did you asked for it out of interest or did they approach you because they are planning for a reprint/new edition and wanted to see how poeple react to it. I mean, it´s an older game and it´s hard to find, so my actual question is, why NOW? Anyway, Thank you for your helpful and informative review, have a nice day!
Live this game. hardly any card draw? once ur deck gets better u can draw cards like crazy. u just need to know how to build the deck properly. The whole wall thing is non existent tho. I've played this game a bunch and never used the walls to win as its just not logicl to do it as u'll die before u get them out. i have played loads of deck builder and only got this as a kickstarter recently. aeons end is still my fave but i would defo say this is a must buy as its really challenging. moreso than aeons end, which i do find u can beat down the bosses with just a few of the same cards from a few piles.
To clarify, I know might and heroism let you draw cards, but they only replace themselves in your hand. What I would love to see (along with culling) is market cards that do the same, or even let you draw 2 or 3 cards, so you can build huge combo turns. But glad you enjoy the game in any case!
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I love Shadowrift and its deck building mechanics. I agree with your point regarding the endgame, but it still doesn’t make it easy as you wait to close the shadowrift. It is much more thematic than other deck builders such as Dominion. I love the use of villagers in the game and the ever changing availability of their skills.
1. If you genuinely get to a point where you're sure of victory but just need to get to the shadowrifts, the intention is that you accelerate your way to them via the Explore card. This is actually the reason sealing rifts is the preferred option for experienced players. You can rush it with Explore.
2. If you're not rushing it with Explore, walls are better than people think. Once you have a few Heroism in your deck you can often buy certain walls very, very cheaply- especially if you've been hoarding seals (discardable for magic resource) and there's no rift available to seal. Not only do walls directly resist the loss condition, not only do they provide a useful ability, but they also do not leave corpses when destroyed. If you play a few more times you may find yourself purchasing Magic Barriers simply because they're not so hard to purchase and because they give magic characters something to do with unneeded Seals... then adding Shrines because they're also not so expensive... then putting your heads together to rush buy the other four walls.
3. There sort of is deck thinning but not in the traditional sense. Prophecy is effectively a deck thinner, as are a few other options. These cards let you do things like examine the top card of your deck and discard it if it is unwanted, speeding how quickly you pass through your deck. Deck thinning plus cantrips essentially breaks games (example, reduce non-cantrips to five, draw a hand of five plus all cantrips found on the way, and draw your entire deck every round), so restricting the game to this limited form is probably best.
Thanks for the detailed points! Are cantrips something in the base game? I don't remember playing with those.
@@OneStopCoopShop Cantrip is old former-magic-the-gathering-player lingo for a spell that lets you draw and play another card after you play it. Or, more broadly, any spell that effectively takes up none or essentially none of your card draw or card play resources.
Might and Heroism are cantrips, but so also are any card that lets you draw a replacement card, and which doesn't use up or which replaces your epic card play for the round.
If your deck consists of your ten starter cards, plus six heroism you've earned, plus four cards that let you draw and play a replacement card when you play them, you will draw and use your entire deck every other round. This is only a viable deck building strategy for focusing on certain cards, but it is a powerful way to exploit them AND to boost wall construction (because in an all cantrip deck you will draw half of your Heroism every turn).
Typical base game cantrips are Heroism, Might, Heal (when boosted, draw the two cards yourself to get more Heroism and Heal cards), Revitalize, Prophecy, and I think a few others. I mixed the expansions in a long time ago and forget which cards are base game.
@@patrickhickey4047 ah, I get it now. It's been years since my heavy Magic days :) I see your point. I was usually drawn to buy several different types of cool cards from the market, which is going to slow down your deck no matter how many heroism cards you get!
"Battle for Grayport" is the game referred to when he says "Attack on Grayport" (I wanted to find out about it after it was mentioned). Thanks for the review! I was looking at this one, but I think I'll skip it because of the comments on endgame.
Yeah, sorry about the mistake. I always forget which verb that game uses :)
In my opinion, the best deckbuilding game with tower defence is Thunderstone Advance with the Root of Corruption expansion.
This has a coop modus in which enemies run against the walls of the village.
It's always hard to decide if you use your turn to improve your deck or defeat one of the revealed enemies.
Combine this with the epic mode in which you can use all cards to shuffle in specific market buy decks and have access to all heroes....and it indead is epic.
You can even create thematic monster decks for level 1-3 monsters like Undeads or Orcs&Goblins and it becomes one of my favourite games.
I played original Thunderstone, and Thunderstone Quest, but I totally missed Advance. Sounds pretty cool!
@@OneStopCoopShop Thunderstone Quest has the Barricades Expansion which adds something similar.
But I skipped Thunderstone Quest because
1. I dont like the artwork...I prefer the old generic dark fantasy design over the too colourful and shiny new design.
2. I dont like the new XP and VP being the same.
I really like the new options in the village and that the dungeon much more feels like a dungeon but the above mentioned two points made me skip that game.
@@andrethannhauser6302 we did playthroughs of Quest and I did a review. I liked parts of the coop, but they missed the boat wildly with some other choices.
I know Shadowrift is not perfect, but i really like it and always had a soft spot for it. Your points are all valid, but i personally still like it more than Aeons End for example. The villager deck is cool and very thematic. The hero powers are nice and allow for interesting combinations. Player interaction is good. The villains are all unique and the many different factions all play very different. While the game has no culling, the heroism cards and lots of other cards possibly let you draw a lot of cards during your turn. There are a lot of cards that let you use or heal the wounds you take. The swinginess and the endgame are really its weak points... sometimes you just lose whatever you do, sometimes you know that you've won long before that last shadowrift comes up. While i have Archfiends, it's rarely used, because it adds a lot of additional difficulty to the game. Still: If you like deckbuilders, you should give it a try despite the cons.
Well said, Dirk! Nice highlighting of the game's strengths.
The first expansion "Archfiends" adds the needed big boss to defeat at the end after closing the Shadowrift or building the walls. It turns the one con to a full pro!
Colin has said the same to me. He loves the game with Archfiends includes.
BUT it's out of print. They are selling it on Amazon for $100. I can't find it anywhere else. So it's tough to factor it into the review :)
Shame that the victory condition can be dependent on drawing the right cards. I don't mind that you don't have draw or cull (I actually hate draw mechanisms in deckbuilders without resources as they are almost always a good buy and prolong the player turn). The villager mechanic seems so much more interesting that Aeon's End's Gravenhold dial. Would love to check it out again if there was a new edition that tackles some of the cons.
Agreed, though the last few expansion kickstarters haven't been successful enough to bump a new edition ahead, most likely.
Didn't the newest kickstarted Aeon's End expansion have something bringing the town to more life? I agree that's something I'd love to see!
I love this format!
Thanks! There's a whole bunch of old reviews for you to peruse through if you like :)
Man that endgame con is really hard to overlook. As always, thanks for the review.
Colin wanted me to note that if you can find a copy of the Archfiends expansion (it's out of print), that does change the endgame to be more "defeat a boss" focused.
Wish that had been in the base game though!
I'm currently at a point where I'm trying to decide which game to keep in my collection. This or Xenoshyft. Having everything for both makes me realise that they both fill the same niche to me which is probably why although Aeon's End looks interesting, I've never gotten into it. I think Shadowrift is the one that will stay as I think it is generally more interesting with its mechanics. I love the town deck and how thematic the wound system in the game is. Although I would love to see a variant where there are more defined classes (4 sets of skills/equipment make a class) with players using class decks.
I like the idea of your variant. Between the two games you mentioned, I'd probably go Shadowrift too. Xenoshyft was fun, but felt a little limited. To be fair, though, I was only playing with the base set!
Glad to find somebody else that likes Greyport!
One of the first articles I wrote was about this game, I also thought it was okay to good, but it just was not one that made me want to go back and play again.
So I am also strange and just cannot get engaged but neons end
Wait, did you say at the end that you do not like Aeon's End? I didn't understand that part :)
@@OneStopCoopShop I did!
Just doesn't have a story to it that I can get behind. Feels generic to me.
I keep trying. I bought the app but just can't get excited by it
I keep expecting to play and be like "Oh I get it now!"
@@HungryGamerReviews Aeon's End isn't an absolute favorite, but I still enjoy it.
Love Shadowrift!
♥One Stop Co-op Shop
Thanks! :)
Does anyone know if there's a more modern spin on Mage Knight? Love the idea of walking around a campaign world and getting stronger, but reviews I've seen make it seem very fiddly. I enjoyed Gloomhaven. Co-op/solo is a must.
A lot of people on our Slack find Renegade (designed by Ricky Royal) to give a Mage Knight vibe in a cleaner, much faster design.
I personally still like Mage Knight a lot better, but Renegade is fun.
I feel like if you enjoy Gloomhaven, which in my personal opinion is more fiddly and intimidating than Mage Knight, you can probably handle Mage Knight. If you know anyone who has it, or if there's any game groups in your area who might, it's worth it to see if you can get a game or two in to try before buying.
Is there a new edition of this game? It’s an older one for sure. Colin had this on one of his top 10 lists some years back and I bought it on his advice... love this game. There is an expansion that adds a boss. I really need to get that one. One thing that I hear a lot is that building all of the walls is not a viable strategy. I respectfully disagree. While I don’t go into a game intent on doing this, there are a couple of the Walls that I do try to build each play. When I am able to get them into play I find that it lets me adopt a strategy of “managing” the monsters instead of trying to kill all of them before the leave the track where, with the help of said Walls, they can be dispatched. Having certain walls in play helps to sure things up so that “sometimes” you are able to go ahead and just buy all of them for the win.
I agree on some walls being useful for sure. I forget the exact one (mystic temple?), but the one that completely cancels a monster activation for 1 magic is excellent.
Shadowrift 1st edition was a moderately successful Kickstarter some 10 years ago. I remember it had a horrible rulebook. The designer then made Archfiends (the boss expansion) as the only expansion for the first edition. After that, since kickstarter got big until then, he went for a more successful and better second edition and made 3 expansions for it. I just received the last one "Boomtown" featuring traplaying Goblins and a giant Mech as Villains.
Unfortunately, he abandonded the idea of boss fights for the second edition. Archfiends is for the first edition and only features bosses for the villains of the base box. It has different artwork and a different card size, but you can play it with second edition too, because the villain factions are the same between the versions and its a completely different deck of cards not to mix with other decks.
Dirk Sticher ... That’s a bummer. I have the second edition so no bosses I guess.
@@XHuntinatorX No, no, like i said, if you find archfiends, you can play it with second edition no problems. It makes the game a lot harder, though.
What's the other game besides Aeon's End that you mentioned eclipses Shadowrift?
Mike said "Attack on Greyport" as the other deck builder but he meant to say "Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport". Colin did a playthrough of this game on this channel. Looks fun and is on my "to buy" list
@@EHngelic Thanks, that's why i asked since i couldn't find any videos.
@EHngel thank you! Sorry I misstated the name. We also did a full podcast review episode on it.
Oh, by the way, that playthrough was me (Mike), not Colin ;)
@@OneStopCoopShop Apologies. It appears that memory gaps have affected us both :)
Have you played Aventuria? I love that game
Peter from the podcast has that. I only played it once though, so I don't have a good read on it yet.
A straight deck builder!!?? I never once thought this game was straight forward! You have ton(s) of choices each turn on what to buy and even how to attack. Dominion, Ascension, and many others are deck builders I consider to be straight forward. I think people that have been playing games for a while forget what is really more then your average game comparing to others. Sure this game isn’t as deep as mage knight( which can be a 3-7 hour game depending on player count), but this game packs a lot of punch in a 1-2 hour play time( maybe even more in the time frame. And your turns are a lot faster.
That's a fair point. Maybe I'm so used to these more complex deckbuilders that I forget how really simple they can be :)
Greetings, I would like to know, why they gave you a copy of this game? Did you asked for it out of interest or did they approach you because they are planning for a reprint/new edition and wanted to see how poeple react to it. I mean, it´s an older game and it´s hard to find, so my actual question is, why NOW?
Anyway, Thank you for your helpful and informative review, have a nice day!
It's a totally fair question. They sent it to us for the release of the Boomtown expansion, which delivered fairly recently.
@@OneStopCoopShop THX
Live this game. hardly any card draw? once ur deck gets better u can draw cards like crazy. u just need to know how to build the deck properly. The whole wall thing is non existent tho. I've played this game a bunch and never used the walls to win as its just not logicl to do it as u'll die before u get them out. i have played loads of deck builder and only got this as a kickstarter recently. aeons end is still my fave but i would defo say this is a must buy as its really challenging. moreso than aeons end, which i do find u can beat down the bosses with just a few of the same cards from a few piles.
To clarify, I know might and heroism let you draw cards, but they only replace themselves in your hand. What I would love to see (along with culling) is market cards that do the same, or even let you draw 2 or 3 cards, so you can build huge combo turns.
But glad you enjoy the game in any case!
@@OneStopCoopShop ah gotcha. i dont find it an issue but yeah, a wee card to cull some other cards would be good