Shadespire: First Look
My copy of Shadespire arrived in the mail today, so I’ve opened it up for a quick look. No painting or gameplay time just yet, so these are just my first impressions of the box contents.
It’s a nice compact box – around half the footprint of big-box titles like Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, which seems about right for a game aimed at quick casual matches and easy portability. The box is pretty solid, but the card insert is not – mine arrived already torn, but I’ll probably add some foam inserts to carry the miniatures as soon as they get painted.
There are two double-sided boards inside: enough for a couple of options in gameplay, but I was hoping to find more after reading early convention reviews about how there would be “lots of board options” available. Still, they’re high quality card and artwork, and the hinged fold helps to keep the whole game compact. There are also three sheets of card tokens: wound markers, victory points, objectives and that sort of thing.
Changing course
I started this blog with high hopes for porting across lots of the content I’ve previously worked on for painting and modelling diaries, starting with the River Dock project. That’s still my aim, but the PhotoBucket debacle has left me with hundreds of forum pages full of dead image links, and very little desire to wade through all the mess.
However, I’ve just ordered a copy of GW’s new skirmish game Shadespire, and it’s dragging me back into this painting and gaming hobby all over again. I like what I’ve seen so far, from the fixed lineup of each faction (paint one “set” and move on to something different), to the fast, tactical gameplay and the ability to vary tactics based on the objective and power cards chosen before each game.
So: there’s a new game on the way, which ought to be here before PAX-AUS. With luck, I might even have it out of the box and ready for a few games at the convention. Let’s see how I go…