Shadows over Camelot

In this cooperative board game, you take on the role of one of the knights of Camelot and are working together with the other players to earn white swords by winning quests.  Every turn, you must “progress evil” and then do a “heroic action.”  The progression of evil is the game taking its turn against you: you usually draw cards during this phase, and things will happen to hurt you or hinder you on your quests.  Then you do something good, such a making progress on a quest.  There are rewards for winning quests, such as white swords, but also penalties for losing them (black swords and/or siege engines).  You win when there are at least 12 swords on the round table and the majority of them are white.  You lose when there are 7 or more black swords on the table, when 12 siege engines have been placed, or when all of the knights are dead.

Most quests are completed by playing cards.  Explained simply, there are fight cards, with a value of 1-5, and grail cards.  There are wars, which are won by playing a straight (1-5, but only one card can be played at a time), and there are some quests where you fight by playing pairs or three of a kind.  And then Excalibur requires you to simply throw cards away, while the grail requires you to place a certain number of grail cards down.

The twist in the game is that there is the possibility of a traitor.  At the beginning of the game every player is given a loyalty card, which may tell them that they are “loyal” or the “traitor.”  It’s also possible for there to be no traitor.  The traitor plays hidden for at least the first half of the game, so it’s tricky for them to appear good buy actually hinder the group.  About halfway through the game knights can make accusations, which are rewarded for correct guesses and penalized for wrong ones as to who the traitor is.  If the traitor has been accused or reveals himself with the use of the “Fate” card, he can then play out in the open.  However, if the traitor goes undetected the entire game, then there is an end of game penalty that could very well mean the difference between victory and defeat.

There are some other minor but important rules, but this is the basics for Shadows over Camelot. We’re also doing the expansion, Merlin’s Company, in this review, as we really haven’t played the game without it.  The expansion adds a travel card deck, that requires you to draw a card and do what it says every time you want to move to a different quest.

3-7 players (8 with expansion).  Approximately 90 minutes.  Merlin’s Company expansion available.  Medium learning curve.

Becky says:

If you know me, you probably know that this is my favorite board game.  I love it for a million reasons.  I’m not sure I’ve ever had a bad time playing Shadows.  It’s always ridiculously fun, even if we lose by a landslide.

I’ll start with the themeing.  The artwork is great.  Even the little knight figurines are well detailed, instead of just wooden tokens or something like that. All of the little details to the legends of King Arthur are wonderful.  Everyone gets to be a specific knight from legend, and many of the cards in the black and white deck reference things from Arthurian legend.  I have to say that playing this game made me much more intrigued about Arthurian legend, to the point where I’ve now done tons of research and am a bit of a “knights of the round table” dork.  I’m even currently working on a children’s novel with a King Arthur theme, and it’s all thanks to this game that I got into it.

But on to the game itself!  It’s cooperative, which I definitely enjoy, because I like working together.  But with the possibility of a traitor, it also creates tons of suspense.  Let me talk about that – the suspense factor in this game, especially if you’re not sure if there’s a traitor and it’s getting towards the end, is huge!  There have been moments where I literally can’t sit in my seat because I’m so on edge about what is going to happen.  Sometimes I have to pace the room.

And the strategy.  I’ve heard a complaint on other reviews that you end up using the same strategy every time after you’ve played it awhile.  I’m not sure why, but for me this couldn’t be further from the truth.  We tend to play with many different people and different amounts of players, so that may be why, but it’s always tough to decide based on your cards where you should go first.  Is it better to win the big quests in the beginning, like the grail or Excalibur?  That gets them out of the way, but then all those black cards turn into siege engines – not good.  Should you stick together as team and all finish a quest, or spread out to hold off the evil in every area?  We do it different ways every time, and no one way seems to be better than the other.  The only thing that seems to be pretty consistent is if you want Lancelot’s armor, you’d better go right in the beginning.  And don’t be surprised if you get some suspicious looks, as the armor is a traitor’s best friend.

Speaking of the traitor, here’s my thoughts on playing that role.  I don’t generally like being the traitor because I hate to be so secretive about everything.  It’s just not in my personality.  I will usually choose to play the traitor in either one of two ways.  1. Be as secretive as possible and do nothing suspicious so that I go undetected the whole game, and then hope that the penalty for not detecting the traitor is enough to turn things my way, or 2.  Once the 6th sword or siege engine gets placed, immediately accuse any random person so they suffer that penalty.  This then leads them to know I’m definitely the traitor and I get accused, but that way I can play out in the open and do more damage.  Of course, even though I don’t usually like being the traitor, I have to admit it felt pretty good that one time when I was able to make a false accusation and then also use the “Fate” card to reveal myself!

Merlin’s company is a good expansion.  Those travel cards can be a pain in the butt, but Merlin’s awfully helpful sometimes.  Some of those travel cards are nasty.  If you’re playing with me you’d better know that you’re sure as heck not traveling anywhere without a pair of fight cards, because if you get charged and have to add that extra black sword I will not be a happy camper.  The expansion also adds the 8^th knight, which can make for some epic 8 player games.

Sorry this was such a long review, but I really love this game.  10 out of 10.  Maybe no game is perfect, but for me Shadows is as close as it comes so it deserves that elite rating.

Jason says:

Shadows is a piece of board game art.  Unlike other games, which convey their entertainment through strategy and competition, Shadows plays perfectly to draw on the power of cooperation and anticipation, then shatters the comfort of cooperation by turning friends and comrades against each other.  In Shadows, you feel the tension in the room as your mind warps every player's moves into acts of treachery and deceit.

I mean it, too, I'm not just trying to be ridiculous.  Art.  This game makes you feel things, and it does it so smartly and skillfully.  To start, I will discuss the mechanics themselves, since this is really the only part of the game to which I can draw comparisons to other, lesser games.

It's a cooperative game, so I'll compare to Pandemic.  In Pandemic, a team doing sufficiently well never has to worry about problems.  In Shadows, completing a big quest adds faster-approaching dangers, so endgame should always be a riveting experience (even moreso with the Merlin's Company expansion).  Furthermore, each player feels like they are contributing to the quest in some way, particularly because they aren't allowed to discuss plans in detail because of the traitor game mechanic.

Yes, the traitor mechanic.  This is how the game turns from a cooperative game into a social experiment on trust and paranoia.  Tension flows through everything because of the traitor.  And most fascinatingly of all, there isn't always a traitor, but because the game incorporates even the chance of a traitor, suspicions often boil over and irreparably rend the team, destroying the forces of good from the inside out.

Last of all, the flow of the game is masterful.  The whole game is sedate in the beginning, but the whole game works slowly, allowing people's suspicions to stew into healthy unfounded accusations.  By the end of the game, everyone is so exasperated that even the most rational person must fight against irrational reflexes.  Finally, when the possible traitor is revealed, the game explodes into a logical race against the machinations of a revealed threat.  Here, people jump out of their seats and furiously count cards, hoping for a ghost of a chance to make up lost ground.  Merlin's Company shines best here, where the travel cards are the element of chance that could mean success and failure.  Wait, did we draw the last Charged! card or might traveling get that last black sword?  Soon, I have to move!  What, Captured!?  We can't deal with this!

Of course, when you can't deal with it, but somehow you come out victorious, those are the best of victories.  Unlike lots of games, Shadows is crafted to supply this last-stand scenario pretty much most of the time, and many times it will end in failure.  This serves to supplement the victories, but it is still fun for me, even if I lose.

The more I thought about this game's review, the more I realized that, either by phenomenal coincidence or by excellent design, this game does everything right for a longer, intense game.  No jokes, no math: 9.9/10 and possibly the highest recommendation I may ever give on this website.