Shadows Over Camelot
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Wikipedia-Article "Shadows Over Camelot"
| Shadows Over Camelot | |
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| Players | 3–7 |
| Age range | |
| Setup time | |
| Playing time | 90 minutes |
| Rules complexity | |
| Strategy depth | |
| Random chance | |
| Skills required | Cooperation Bluffing |
Shadows Over Camelot is a medieval-themed boardgame designed by Serge Laget and Bruno Cathala. The game was also published in French as Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Players take on the roles of Knights of the Round Table (with the possibility that one player takes the role of traitor) and play the game by fulfilling quests. The game is cooperative in that either the traitor wins and everyone else loses, or else the traitor loses and everyone else wins.
The game was unveiled by the publishers, Days of Wonder, at the 2005 American International Toy Fair and was more widely released in May and June of 2005.
The Knights of the Round Table in the game are:
Additionally, an additional character is available as a promotional item: Sir Bedivere has been distributed in games trade magazines and at conventions.
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Gameplay
Shadows over Camelot is a classic Cooperative board game, a fairly rare genre in which players work together in order to try and defeat a game system which itself is moving the game toward defeat for all the players.
The board of Shadows over Camelot depicts a number of locations, each with an associated quest. At the start of the game, they are: Camelot; the War against the Picts; the War against the Saxons; the tournament against the Black Knight; the quest for Excalibur; the quest for Lancelot's Armor; and the Grail Quest.
Each turn a player must first suffer the "progression of evil". They either: decrease their health; add a catapult to those besieging Camelot; or draw a black card which will usually make one of the quests harder to complete.
Then each player takes a heroic action, typically moving to a quest location or else moving a quest toward completion. The success in all quests is determined by the playing of cards, mostly in various sets. For example, Grail cards are used to complete the Grail quest, a set of 1-2-3-4-5 in Fight is needed to complete the wars; two pair of Fight are needed to complete the Tournament; etc. These cards are drawn while in Camelot and players have very limited abilities to exchange them.
Eventually quests are completed either by the knights succeeding, in which case white swords are added to the Round Table, or by the black cards overcoming them, which results in black swords being added to the table.
The game ends when 12 siege engines surround Camelot (in which case the forces of good fall) or the Round Table is filled with 12 swords (in which case victory is determined by whether there is a majority of white or black). A well coordinated white force can usually beat the game system.
The catch is that one of the players may be traitor who is secretly plotting for the players to fail. Players can accuse each other, which can result in white or black swords being added to the Round Table depending on the truth of an accusation. Further, if the traitor is not unmasked by the end of the game, two white swords are flipped to black at the end, usually resulting in defeat. The existence of the traitor turns a fairly simple game system into a hotbed of paranoia and accusation. The one exception to this rule is if there are fewer than a certain number of knights (three), because the traitor would be needlessly complicated in a game which will already be hard enough.
Strategy
Strategy broadly falls into two categories: strategy for the "good" knights and strategy for the traitor.
Good Knight Strategy
The ultimate object of the good knights is to ensure that there are at least 7 white swords on the Round Table and that the number of siege engines around Camelot remains less than 12. Following are some of the optimal strategies; some players may consider some of these out of character with the game.
Cooperative Knights. There is no type of individual victory in Shadows over Camelot except for the traitor. Ultimately this means that there is no incentive for knights to do anything but cooperate with maximal efficiency. The rules try and restrict this slightly by restricting certain types of table talk but still knights can do a lot to cooperate. The best way to do this is for the knights to choose quests one at a time and work at them en masse. This works best for the Grail Quest and the Excalibur Quest, as with other quests knights are more likely to get fouled up by not having the right cards to help out. The best quest to win first is the Excalibur Quest, because Excalibur can be lost very quickly with enough black cards and the sword itself adds bonuses to fight cards (helpful for destroying seige engines especially).
Incompetent Knights. Late in the game, if knights already have 9 white swords without a traitor revelation or 7 white swords with a traitor revelation it actually becomes useful to fail at quests, because this can often be done faster than succeeding at quests, and ultimately fills the Round Table with the swords necessary to reach game end. This can stave off otherwise certain doom if siege engines are building too quickly.
Traitor Strategy
The traitor just has to get 6 black swords on the Round Table or else surround Camelot with siege engines in order to win.
The Warlike Traitor. The strategy of placing one siege engine every turn is a potentially degenerate one for the traitor; in fact errata has been produced for the 3-player game to ensure that this doesn't happen too fast. This strategy is less efficient the more players there are, as there will be more people to combat siege engines.
The Inefficient Traitor. A traitor can do a lot of damage just by being inefficient. By heading back and forth to various quests, but taking a long time to complete them, the traitor can really slow down the knight efficiency in the game. This is a delicate balance because if the traitor does too much he'll be found out.
The Wasteful Traitor. Traitors can easily make the game harder just by wasting useful cards. This is best done on the Excalibur Quest where a traitor can constantly discard great white cards, and since they're all face down no one else ever gets to see them.
The Quiet Traitor. A traitor can win by staying quiet, because if he's never found out he gets to flip two white swords to black at the end of the game. This means that he wins if there are 8 white swords or less on the board. The worse the knights are doing, the more the traitor should help them, as a result.