It’s a crew round-up post! With this, the fourth demo crew is complete despite accidentally painting models for an initial crew that had some superfluous equipment and didn’t do what I thought it would. Thankfully, a bit of reworking was pretty simple, and with the addition of some very expensive equipment, the Shadows were ready to go!

The Crew and Equipment

So here’s the reworked Shadows crew, as well as what extra equipment they’re bringing to get to the correct doubloon cost.

• Leader: Whisperer
• Deckhand: Reaver
  • Equipment: Shadow portal
• Deckhand: Dark Drifter
  • Equipment: Shadow portal
• Specialist: Scarecrow
  • Equipment: Shroud
• Crew Equipment
  • Equipment: Dark cloud
  • Equipment: Dimensional portal
  • Equipment: Portal deviator
• Shadow Force: 3

As you might see, there’s a lot going on with equipment for this crew, so I do not recommend them for someone who doesn’t love overly complex movement and equipment shenanigans.

Playing the Shadows

This list is designed to show off all of the unique mechanics that the Shadows have access to. Since there’s a lot of mechanics involved in this, here’s a quick rundown of what they get to use:

• Shadow Force: Can be used to pay for added effects or extra traits for individual models, as well as before taking the Initiative test to improve the testing model’s Morale on a 1-for-1 basis, to a maximum of 9.
• Shadow Portals: These link to one another – a member of the crew can step through one and appear at the other. While models cannot charge through them or perform complex movement actions that include attacks, this does greatly increase their mobility.
• Wisps and merging: When models with the Vaporization trait are taken out of action, they are replaced by a Wisp. These Wisps can merge together to bring a model back into play: two Wisps can merge to reform any model that’s already been taken out of action.
• Crew Equipment: Shadows have some unique Crew Equipment that aren’t carried by specific models, but which can improve or change how they play.
  • Portal Deviator: Shadow portals can be set up within 20 cm of the carrying character, rather than in base-to-base contact with them.
  • Dimensional Portal: The crew receives an extra point of Shadow Force at the end of each turn so long as they have at least one Shadow Portal deployed on the field.
  • Dark cloud: The crew gets 5 extra points of Shadow Force, which can only be used for Shadow Missile attacks.

To start, let’s break down Shadow Force and how the crew generates it. They start the game with 3 points of Shadow Force for general use, as well as 5 that can only be used to pay for attacks with the Shadow Missile trait. At the end of each turn, the crew also generates additional points of Shadow force:

• 2 points for their initial hire fee of 300 doubloons.
• 1 point for Dimensional rift if Whisperer is in play.
• 1 point if at least one Dimensional Portal is deployed on the field.

They also gain points immediate as soon as a model is Vaporized and as soon as they take an opposing model out of action, but that’s an in-game thing that will happen over time. In general, however, anyone playing the crew can plan around having 3-4 points of Shadow Force generated per turn so long as everything is there.

The general strategy with this crew is to first get the Shadow Portals set up to speed up the rest of the crew – the Dark Drifter can make its way forward and expect to survive most weaker hits so long as it remains in cover, so that’s going to be the advancing piece, whereas the Reaver can make use of the spare Shadow Force from the Dark Cloud to provide ranged support in the first couple of turns. The Portal Deviator also allows the crew to advance much faster than they usually could – they can fairly easily gain about 30 cm of ‘movement’ through clever use of the portals, which is a pretty impressive advance across the board.

The main offensive miniature is Scarecrow. With the Shroud, it has an added layer of defense that can reflect some of the damage it takes, and considering you can spend Shadow Force to increase its toughness, this makes it very survivable. Additionally, thanks to the power of Shadow Construct, it’s remarkably easy to return to play: you just need to get a Wisp next to a piece of bric-a-brac to merge it, and while that will give your opponent some Glory Points in a scenario that uses them, 35 points is a lot better than the 90 points they’d get for keeping it out of action. That’s the other reason Scarecrow is coming with this crew: it shows off the merging mechanic while making it a lot easier for players to perform, as you only need a single Wisp to do so.

The Whisperer is there to provide support and throw off your opponent’s plans: Shadowrun lets him approach for a devastating sneak attack if your opponent is hiding near scenery – essentially, this character teleports from one piece of scenery to another that is within twice its MOV in cm away. By spending an extra point of Shadow Force, the Whisperer can execute a Bribery action after the Shadowrun, which is huge – considering that Bribery’s range is 30 cm with the recent errata, that puts pretty much the entire board in range of such an action, as it’s an effective range of 50 cm. Try to go for a Deckhand with a ranged weapon that requires reloading, or spend an extra point of Shadow Force to force them to leave cover.

Managing Shadow Force is really important to the health and success of this crew: try to spend it when it will be impactful. You have a lot of different ways to spend it, and while it may seem great to spend 3 points from your general pool to get a long-range powered-up shot from your Reaver, that’s 3 points you can’t use to keep Scarecrow alive or let the Whisperer bribe an opposing Deckhand.

This is a complicated crew to play, but I expect players will have a lot of fun with it. Thankfully, this crew also conveys all of the main weird abilities of the Shadows, so for a complicated crew, they’re a great taster for the overall impression of Shadows.

Hobby Progress

The Shadows are all painted and based! That’s 4/10 demonstration crews painted and ready for play, which is a great milestone. Admittedly, two of them are very complex to play, but that just means I’ve got a lot more options to paint for the next sets of crews.

I’m working on finishing up the Brotherhood crew right now, along with my sculpting project to recreate Casimeere Flynn, which should be posted up here soon.