by Jose Garcia
There's been some talk lately about two player Shadowfist, namely how most people don't enjoy the way it typicaly leads to roll-over victories. I've been playing a lot of two-player Shadowfist these last few weeks including running two 2-player Shadowfist tournaments and have come up with some observations that I'd like to share.
The big problem with 2 player Shadowfist is that most decks that people play with don't have any means of dealing with setbacks. Many players feel that the only way to do so would be by including special "comeback cards" in their decks, cards which are generaly not useable but become extremely useful if you fall behind (like Bite of the Jellyfish). This is an observation that's only half true, the best two player Shadowfist decks rarely contain such cards but they are capable of making comebacks with their bread and butter cards. For the purpose of explaining this better I've seperated these cards into two categories: insurance cards and resilence cards.
Note: The category a card goes in depends on two things: the nature of the card and how you intend to use it. Many cards can go in either category depending on your deck strategy.
Insurance Cards: These are cards which you only use when you fall behind. You put them in your deck reducing your decks effectiveness when things are even or when you're ahead in return for a big payoff when things are bad. Insurance cards work best when there isn't a big oppurtunity cost to playing them. For example Bite of the Jellyfish has a big oppurtunity cost, you may be holding it in your hand all game before you get a chance to use it and your opponent may avoid burning sites if your playing Ascended out of fear of that paticular card. On the other hand Shield of Pure Soul has a very low oppurtunity cost, it doesn't cost any power to play and it just sits there as a contigency against things going wrong.
Resilence Cards: These are cards that are generaly useful but that can help you turn the corner when the chips are down. Examples of Resilence cards include Nerve Gas, Shadowy Mentor and Evil Twin, all three of them are cards with low oppurtunity costs that are helpful in most situations but are paticular helpful when the balance of power in a game is against you.
The big problem with 2 player Shadowfist is that most deck designs aren't very resilent, when the player faces a setback the deck gives him little oppurtunities to recover in which case his chances are pretty grim unless his opponent makes an error they can take advantage of. However all the best 2 player deck designs are resilent, the last few games in the two player tournamets I've run have had a lot of exciting comebacks and turnarounds (more so than what most people typicaly encounter in their two player games). However once players realize that they need to construct two player decks differently than they do multiplayer and that dealing with setbacks and resilency are important things change.
Here's an overview of a number of insurance and resilence cards and how to use them:
Depending on your deck strategy this can either be an insurance card or a resilence card. If you plan on playing a lot of power-generating sites and only plan on using Pocket Demon to deal with setbacks then its just an insurance card and as such its a useful but not a must-have card. However decks that rely on Pocket Demon using a play from behind strategy or using them in combination with Proving Grounds/Monkey House get a lot more mileage out of this card.
(Same goes for Violet Meditation).
A good resilence card, a lower oppurtunity cost than Bite of the Jellyfish and almost as useful if someone burns for power. In addition its generaly useful for situations where your opponent has generated more power than they can spend or is saving power to play events defensively (such as Nerve Gas) in which case you can play Kii-yah before you play any characters, if they have events they can play they'll play them just to prevent you from getting their power but at least you've forced their hand and flushed their nasty defensive events before you've played characters and made your attack.
A resilence card. The most common thing an opponent who is ahead will do is overwhelm you with characters, by paying 1 power you can foil an opponent's attack and take a big chunk out of his power structure in the process, possibly leveling the playing field. Other cards that serve a similar purpose are Final Brawl and Orbital Laser Strike.
A 0-cost insurance card with virtualy no oppurtunity cost. This card won't help you at all if you're ahead but when you're down it gives you a pt of power and lets you fish through your deck for the one card you need to stage a comeback. By doing so Shield of Pure Soul reduces the oppurtunity cost of some insurance events such as Storm of the Just, there's no need for you to hold a Storm of the Just in your hand if you have a Shield out and there's still a Storm in your deck, when the need arises you can fish it out.
Either an insurance or a resilence card. You can hold onto Dangerous Experiment as an insurance policy but the best way to use this card is to incorporate it into your overall deck strategy (keep a minimum of stuff out, use vivisectors to sac your big guys before you get Dangerous, burn for victory) then it totaly rocks (especialy if you can play multiple copies and recycle them). In the latter case you have a deck that is extremely resilent, capable of generating 5-10 power on a turn even when the chips are down, which is more than enough to stage a turnaround.
Golden Comeback is a resilence card. This obviously helps you when you're down and even if things are even its always cheaper to bring out a Golden Gunman with a Golen Comeback than it is to play him conventionaly and if you're behind coming up with 2 power is much easier than coming up with 5. And of course Vivisector+Golden Comeback is a powerful combo in any situation.
A good resilence card. Its easy to build a deck around this guy (lots of low cost characters and use lots of non-feng shui sites to generate power and only keep 1 or 2 feng shui sites in play at a time while you burn the feng shui sites you take for victory). Bronze Sentinel is paticularly effective in the endgame when he gets pretty buff. Design-wise this is one of my favourite resilence cards, you can expect a lot more cards like it in the future.
A resilence card. A lot of people think this card is evil but speed Ascended decks using it fare extremely well at dealing with setbacks because of it.
A resilence card. See Mole Network.
That's about it for now, one of my goals for this year is to beat Shadowfist's bad two-player rap. Largely we're going to do this with the further addition of good resilence cards and by cycling these into Second Edition so that newcomers who don't fully know the score wind up putting them in their decks not because they're hip to the need to deal with setbacks but because they think the cards are cool (and they're in plentiful enough supply that you each untuned starter will contain several of them). Currently there isn't a high enough ratio of resilence cards in the common slot but this will change in Second Edition.
Last modified: June 18, 1997.
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