We picked Shadow Hunters up at a local game shop. We were looking for something new to play and asked for a recommendation. Without hesitation the owner said Shadow Hunters. He was so sure we’d like it, he said if we didn’t, he would buy it back from us. We didn’t need to take him up on that because it’s a great game.
The first play through was a little rough. Some of the Hermit Cards can be a little confusing at first, and since you’re supposed to be all secretive about who you are, you can’t really ask questions during game play. Most cards instruct you to do different things depending on what type of character you are. For example, if you’re a Shadow you take 1 damage. That’s pretty straightforward. We got confused on the cards that had more than one option. “If you aren’t X, discard this card,” isn’t written on the card, but that’s what you do. It took us awhile to remember that, which was why we got confused, I think. One player in particular decided that if she didn’t understand what a card wanted her to do, she would just discard it. It made it very difficult to figure out what she was.
Looking at the cards now that I’ve played more, they make perfect sense to me. It’s one of those instances where I wonder why we couldn’t see it before, but it’s probably just a matter of spending time playing the game.
You also have to remember a lot of information. Unless you get the super awesome Hermit Card that just lets you see another player’s character card, you have to remember what you’ve “accused” people of being and how they responded. This also caused a bit of confusion the first time we played. Someone mixed up their information and ended up attacking and killing their ally. Oops!
It gets easier after the first couple times. Luckily for Signing Monkey she got an easy character card for her first time playing.
A play by play doesn’t really do the game justice because we can’t know what Hermit Cards are given, so we don’t really know what the responses mean. In any case, this is what happened: