SHADOWFIST TOURNAMENT RULES v1.0

©1995 Daedalus Entertainment, Inc.


Two strong men face one another across the rubble of a ruined building. A battlefield of broken bodies lies behind them, witnesses who demand that neither man back down.
"And so, Kar Fei, we finally meet. You have been a determined adversary." Wong Fei Hong adopts a stance of fluid grace as he speaks.
"Shut up and fight" says Kar Fei, and the battle is on.
 

The official Shadowfist Tournament Rules which follow are designed to help organizers run fair tournaments with a minimum of rules and logistic headaches. Our main concern is to provide a basic platform for solving rules questions, victory tie-breakers, and time limits. We are not providing a standard format for tournament progression, elimination, or the number of players playing in each round. Our experience is that individual tournament organizers prefer to decide these questions themselves - organizers who want help can call our tournament support numbers listed below.
These rules are merely guidelines. Tournament organizers should feel free to use variants of our rules, though we advise that players be notified of variations beforehand. Daedalus won't frown on variant tournaments. In fact, we encourage imaginative variants. Tournaments run with variant rules will still qualify for information and product support.
Please note that some of the rules that follow, such as the rule against card sleeves, exist only to protect tournament players from cheating and are not necessary for casual play among friends.

SIDEBOARDS

No sideboards are allowed in Shadowfist tournaments.

CARD SLEEVES

Card sleeves cannot be used during tournament play.

PROXIES

Proxied cards are not allowed in tournament play. The only exception to this rule occurs when a player is eliminated from a game for extraordinary reasons (see "Forfeiture and Elimination" below). Furthermore, any card that has been written on or altered isn't allowed in tournament play even if a signature from one of the game's artists or designers accompanies the alteration.

SHUFFLING

All players must shuffle their cards thoroughly at the start of the game. We suggest at least 3 riffle shuffles or a dozen cuts as a minimum. When players cut an opponent's deck at the beginning of a game, they may cut it multiple times and they may twist the pile 180 degrees to one another.

SMOKED PILES AND TOASTED PILES

In casual play, we find it convenient to keep the smoked pile face up and the toasted pile face down. But for tournament play, smoked piles and toasted piles should both be face up and clearly separated to ensure that cards from either pile don't mix. Players are allowed to look through any player's smoked or toasted pile. Whenever players remove a card from their smoked pile to return it to their hand, toast it or put it into play, they should show it to their opponents. Likewise, whenever players discard a card from their hand, they should place it face up on the top of their toasted pile.

THE ESTABLISHING SHOT

As the Shadowfist rules specify, no cards can be played or effects generated during any player's establishing shot (unless cards explicitly break this rule). However, in certain cases a player eager to play a card at the beginning of an opponent's main shot will jump the gun and try to play it while an opponent is still drawing or unturning cards. This is clearly illegal. A player's main shot begins after he or she has drawn cards. For tournament purposes, players must wait five seconds after an opponent has drawn cards before playing any cards or generating any effects. If the player whose turn it is plays a card, generates an effect or declares an attack immediately after drawing cards, opponents are released from the five second rule and may respond with their own effects.

ILLEGAL PLAYS

If a player plays a card or generates an effect that is illegal for any reason, and the mistake is noticed on the same turn, that player must take that play back. Any Power he or she spent is returned and any cards he or she has played are returned, etc. For game purposes, the illegal move never happened.
Illegal plays that are only detected on later turns must usually be allowed to pass, unless the players and/or tournament judges can come to a quick and universally satisfactory resolution of the problem. We recommend that players who make two illegal plays that go undetected until later turns forfeit the game.

BUSTED!

Certain illegal plays are grounds for forfeiture the first time.
These are:

PLAYERS' HANDS

Players must keep their hand of cards in plain view at all times. Tucking your cards in your hand or keeping them below the edge of the table aren't permitted. Furthermore, a player may ask an opponent at any time how many cards the opponent has in his or her hand. Players who are asked this question must answer truthfully and hold out their hand so that opponents can count for themselves.

FORFEITURE OR ELIMINATION

If a player leaves a game or is eliminated from a game for any reason, all cards he or she controls are toasted. Any cards he or she own that are controlled by other players or in burned-for-victory piles are returned to them. The players who controlled those cards can choose to create proxies for those cards. This is the only circumstance in tournament play where proxies are allowed. These proxies are toasted if they ever leave play by any means other than being burned for victory.

TIME LIMITS

We leave it to tournament organizers to set a time limit per round. We recommend time limits of 45 minutes for 2 player games, 1 hour for 3 player games and 1 hour and 15 minutes for 4 player games, but these time limits can be made 10 to 15 minutes shorter. Players should not spend more than 2 minutes taking their turn. Any time spent attacking does not count towards this time limit.

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

We would prefer that every game of Shadowfist end in a climactic battle, but the reality of tournament play is some games will have to end prematurely due to time limits. In these cases, use the following criteria to determine the winner. The Tie-Breaker Criteria are listed in order. In the event of tie, eliminate the players who scored lower and use the next tie-breaker on the list to determine the winner.

TIE-BREAKER CRITERIA

  1. Add the number of feng shui sites a player controls to the number of feng shui sites he or she has in his or her burned-for-victory pile. The player with the highest total wins.
  2. Combine the play costs of all cards each player controls (excluding feng shui sites)and combine that with the amount of Power each player currently has in his or her pool. The player with the highest combined total wins.
  3. The player with the highest combined Fighting score amongst characters he or she currently controls wins. (Remember, unless a character has Guts, damage reduces its Fighting score.)
  4. The player with the highest combined Body among Feng Shui sites he or she controls wins.
  5. The player with the highest number of cards remaining in his or her deck wins.

VICTORY

When a player has met the conditions for winning the game he or she must reveal all of his or her face down feng shui sites to verify that they are feng shui sites.

CONVENTION AND TOURNAMENT SUPPORT

If you're organizing a tournament or convention involving Shadowfist, please give us a call. We're interested in helping with support material such as flyers, posters and prizes. You can reach us by phone at (416) 622 9765.

PLAY AS YOU WILL

You'll have noted that there are no banned or restricted cards or minimum deck sizes! We hope that situation will continue. We want everyone who plays in Shadowfist tournaments to have a blast. If a real game-crocking problem develops down the road, we'll move to correct it. But for now, FIST's only deck construction rule is the rule against playing with more than five cards with the same name.

THE GOLDEN RULE

Have fun!

Last modified: September 24, 1998.
Send server comments to durrell@innocence.com.