Shadow Hunters: Who Am I?

This week I want to talk about Shadow Hunters. Shadow Hunters is a board game designed by Yasutaka Ikeda that was first published in japan in 2005 and then later released in North America in 2008. The game itself has an anime/manga style that gives the game a really cool look.

The game takes place in a small town. Players are secretly given roles each belonging to one of three factions: Shadows, which are supernatural creatures pulled from pop culture like werewolves, vampires, ghosts and the like; Hunters, which are humans attempting to take out all the Shadows; and Neutrals, which are as the name describes. Neutral characters, whom are caught up in the mix, each have their own individual win conditions.

Each player does not know the identity or faction of any other player at the table, and has to use cards, process of elimination, and guesswork to figure out who is on their team and who's working against them. The game ends when one or more players have fulfilled their win conditions, which can be as simple as killing off all the members of the enemy faction for the hunters and shadows, or in the case of the neutrals they vary and are usually more complicated. For example some neutrals simply need to survive while others actually want to die first or collect a certain number of items. At the point a player or players have fulfilled their objectives the game ends and the winners are declared, whether they are part of the same faction or even alive they can still claim victory.

Each character, along with a win condition, has a special power on their card—with the exception of one character in particular—they are all linked to that win condition and are pretty powerful on their own. The game also utilizes three decks of cards: a black deck of graveyard cards filled with mostly offensive items and there are cards that are good for shadows; a white deck of church cards with primarily defensive cards and items useful for the hunters; and lastly the green deck of hermit cards which you read then hand to another player face down, he then reads the card and if it applies to him, he does what it says. Each deck has pros and cons and players should be careful when drawing cards from the opposing factions deck...you might not like what's in there.

The game itself is very simple, you draw and play cards on your turn. Depending on where you are on the map, you can hit anyone around you that you consider an enemy. The really interesting and intricate part of the gameplay is figuring who is your ally and who is trying to kill you, which makes the green cards integral and valuable but you can never be 100% certain because you might be giving cards to the unknown.

The unknown is one of the most interesting and tricky characters of the bunch. He is the only person who is allowed to lie about the results of a green card, allowing him to choose who knows his true identity as one of the shadows. This is one of the most useful powers, allowing him to turn teammates against each other or hide from hunters. The best part is character selection is random so he may or may not even be in the game forcing people to second guess there green cards occasionally.

Shadow Hunters is a great party game, it plays up to eight and the games can take as little as fifteen minutes to as long as an hour to finish. There is little to no setup time either, so it's very pick up and play and addictive as hell. Your players will definitely want to play more than one game to try out the various characters and the expansion adds a ton more playable characters and a couple balancing items to change up the game. If you like board games I could not recommend this game more highly, it's a worthy addition to anyone's shelf.