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FIGHTING IN THE DARK
SHADOW HUNTERS
(Deutscher Titel Jäger der Nacht)
Dark and dire creatures like werewolves and vampires walk abroad. They fight each other since a long time ago and this fight goes on till today. In the middle of this conflict humans are caught between a rock and a hard place, they are also victims of this war, too. All three parties follow their own goals to survive!
But before you can set about reaching these goals you must make a few minor preparations. The six locations are distributed randomly to the openings provided for them in the board. Player cards are separated according to their back sides, the stacks are shuffled separately and placed on their intended locations. Players choose a color representing them in the game and receive a figurine and a marker of this color, the figurine is set in the middle of the board and the marker is placed on the lowest level of the damage scale.
The most interesting feature and the core of this game is the fact that nobody knows with which of the three factions the other players are affiliated, as the character cards are assigned to the players randomly and secretly. The character cards are divided into the factions of werewolves, vampires and humans. The number of humans that will participate in the fight is determined by the number of players involved in a particular game. In the case of four people playing there are only two werewolves and two vampires, but no humans, when five are playing there is one human involved and in the case of six people playing two of them will be assigned to the human faction in the game. Each kind of character cards is shuffled separately and dealt according to the number of players, the surplus character cards are set aside without being looked at.
The character card you receive is secret, you can look at it any time, but the other players must never be able to see what character you impersonate. To get acquainted with your character you should read your character card very carefully, because characters, too, have their own private goals to pursue and special abilities which can be of advantage in the fight. Now all that is needed for starting the fight is to choose a starting player.
You are the active player when it is your turn to implement one of your possible actions. All possible actions must be implemented in the order in which they are listed. First, the active player rolls the dice to move his figurine. Second, he implements the instructions of the locations that he has reached with his figurine and, finally, he can – if he wants to do so – begin an attack against another player. This last action is available to players from the start of the second round in the game. After those three possible actions the turn ends and play goes to the next player. For a game of six there is a special rule that a green oracle card is dealt to each player. Each player must look at this card and read its text very carefully before handing the card to his left neighbor. This left neighbor now must implement the instructions listed on the card and then discard the card to the oracle card discard pile.
Let’s take a closer look on these possible actions: To be able to move your figurine you must roll the dice, so you take them and roll them. You add the results on both dice; the result determines the location where you must move your figurine to. An exception to that rule happens when you are already there: In this case you must roll again, because you must change locations in every turn. Should the result of the roll be 7, you can choose any location for placement of your figurine, but of course not the one where you already are.
The second action is implementation of instructions given by the location: All instructions of the new location must be implemented. It must be mentioned, that damage plays a big role in those instructions. Should you be forced to take damage you must move your damage marker one level up on the damage scale. Please note that each character card shows a special individual value for the amount of damage your character can take before it must drop out of the game. The value is given on the card but to save you the trouble to always having to check for the value the damage scale is marked with letters corresponding to the characters to mark the level of damage your character can take.
It must be mentioned here that the instructions of the respective locations can be implemented in a way that best furthers your intention. As you will try by all means to achieve your own goal and to weaken the other players without damaging yourself by doing so you will implement the instructions of the location to your own advantage. All in all there are six locations where players can travel to, each of those locations offer different possibilities to a player to influence the game. Cards are available from three of those six locations; in case of the draw pile being empty you simply shuffle the discard pile for use as the new draw pile
If you roll a two or a three, your figurine will be placed in Oxanas Hut. This location is of the utmost importance to find out who in the current game is a friend/affiliate of a player and who is an enemy/opponent. Because at the start of the game, if you are for instance a vampire, you do not know, who the other vampire is with whom you should cooperate; this can be found out with the help of the oracle cards. If you have reached Oxana’s Hut, you draw a green card, read its instructions, memorize them and hand it to another player. The card does not designate a player; it is your decision who you give the card to. The recipient of the card also carefully reads the instructions and checks whether the text relates to his given character. If the instructions are valid ones for his character he must implement the instructions without giving away anything. When the instructions do not relate to his character he must simply announce “nothing happens” to demonstrate that the oracle card does not relate to his character. Then the oracle card is handed back face-down to the active player, who discards is to the pile. As you know the instructions on the card you might be able to get a clue from this if you have found friend or foe or if the information remains ambiguous or has given you no clue at all.
When the result of the dice roll is a four or a five, you move your figurine to the Fountain of Wisdom. At this location the active player may draw a face-down card from one of the three stacks and then implement the instructions on the card. The red and blue card stacks feature two different kinds of cards. One kind of card is an event card, if you draw such a card you must implement a “you must” action immediately, an action without “must” you can implement or relinquish the action. When used, the card is discarded to its proper pile.
The other kind of card offers „equipment“ cards, these cards are laid out in front of their owners. These cards can always be used and can be used from the moment when they are acquired. The equipment cards must be used while a player owns this card. Which kind of card you are dealing with you can check by the “must” phrase in the instructions. If the card features an instruction using the word “can” a player can choose whether he wants to use the card or not. There is no limit for the number of equipment cards you can own, you can have any number that you like and can decide at any point in the game to discard cards that you no longer have any need for. Due to the rising number of equipment cards their effects are getting bigger to, because the effects are cumulative, the values of the cards are simply added. But it can happen as well that effects of cards cancel each other out. So simply choose one of the three cards on offer at that location.
In case that you did roll a six you pay a visit to the chapel. This location gives you the top blue card from the stacks and you must follow the instructions on the card.
If you roll an eight, your move takes you to the cemetary, this location gives you the top red card from the stack.
With a dice result of nine you end your move in the Witch’s Tree. There the active player chooses another player – he can also choose himself – and implements the action of the Witch’s Tree for this player. The action offers him a choice: Either you deal out a damage of two to another player – which probably you will not do to yourself, but against someone else. Or you can heal one damage point and adjust your marker on the scale accordingly, this you will of course use to protect yourself, especially to avoid dropping out of the game.
A value of 10 for the dice roll takes you to the Stone Circle. This location allows the active player to steal an equipment card from another player. You just take the card and place it in front of yourself. Of course it is self-evident that you should only take a card that enhanced the desirable effects of your own cards and not diminish them.
After your visit to one of these locations has been made und the results have been resolved you can start the last action in your turn, to start an attack. An attack can only be directed at a player who is present in the same region with you. A region is a location which is connected to another location by a spider net. The active player chooses a victim and then rolls both dice. You look at the result of both dice and subtract the lower value from the higher value, the difference is the damage the victim has to take. So it is absolutely possibility that no damage is inflicted, when the dice show the same result, the victim has survived the attack without any damage. An attack is strengthened or weakended by using equipment cards, their effects cannot be avoided. Only when no damage is inflicted the equipment cards do not have any effects, either.
If due to an anttack or an event happening at one of the locations the damage points are used up – the marker on the damage scale has reached the letter of your character – you must quit the game. You must reveal your character card and remove your figurine and your marker from the board. Should you have equipment cards on display they go to the player who has defeated you, this player can choose one and only one of these cards. Should you be the one who defeated more than one player at the same time you can all the same only choose one equipment cards.
The game ends as soon as one player has achieved his personal goal on his character card. In this case he reveals his character card and shows it to all other players. This immediately ends the game. The winner is the player who achieved his task. Furthermore, when a vampire wins, all vampires have won. The same goes for the werewolves, if one of them wins, all of them win, even if one or more of them had to quit the game before.
Jäger der Nacht / Shadow Hunters is a very good game which implements the topic of werewolves against vampires very convincingly. The elment of uncertainty makes the game very challenging, because you never are really sure with which faction a player is affiliated. You must slowly and painstakingly try to find out whom you can trust, with whom you can cooperate and who you should fight. The game is an excellent mixture of cooperative play and individual play, only by combining both of those elements you can reach your goal, Jäger der Nacht / Shadow Hunters is a fantastic game for large groups with the advantage of a very acceptable time it takes to play.
Spieler : 3-8
Alter : ages 10 and up
Dauer : ca. 90 min
Autor : Yasutaka Ikeda
Grafik : Yuxi Wan, Gunter Grossholz, Michaela Kienzle
Titel : Shadow Hunters
Preis : ca. 27 Euro
Verlag : Kosmos 2010
Genre : Cooperative deduction game
Zielgruppe : With friends
Mechanismen : Roll dice, use location cards
Kommentar:
German edition of Shadow Hunters
Different characters involved depending on number of players
Attractive details on the task cards
Good for larger groups
You must play without errors
Vergleichbar:
Shadow Hunters, The Werevolves of Miller’s Hollow
Meine Bewertung: 5
Isabella Schranz:
A challenging and ever-changing game where you can never predict who is in the game.
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