How To Play Shadow Era with Physical Cards (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN9x8m5izkQ
Many Shadow Era players are hardened veteran TCG players, but most are probably not. If you find yourself intimidated by the idea of playing Shadow Era with physical cards, you are in the right place you stylish devil! This article explains in detail how to mark a game of Shadow Era efficently. With so many moving stats and effects on so many different cards, I feel that is is important to go into detail what your options are, and which ones are the best for playing Shadow Era with your cardboard gold. Let's get right into it.
First off, protect your cards. Keep your cards in a box or a binder at all times when you aren't using them. Organize them in numerical order, separated by set to that you can always find the cards you need. Cards that are in a deck or that will be shuffled should be kept in protective sleeves at all times, and the sleeves should be replaced when they become too worn. Get yourself a playmat so you can keep your cards clean from table grime and rough surfaces. Here are some links that show the different options available to you:
A beginner's guide to deck protectors.
Troll and Toad: A popular place to buy gaming accessories (and cards!)
Now that your cards are safe, let's talk about the game starting with the most precious resource: life. Hero life totals should always be kept in writing, because dice are clunky and potentially confusing. The best way is with a life counter app on a smartphone. I would like to see a specifically designed Shadow Era app for this at some point in the future, but until that time there are plenty of generic ones out there. If you don't have a smartphone, a small pad of paper and a pen works nearly as well.
Shadow Energy can and should be rolled into the aforementioned SE app, but until it is it can be counted very simply with dice. 2 6-sided dice or a single 10-sided die do the trick well enough. At GenCon I picked up some special d6 that are marked 0-5, so I can leave my dice parked on my hero all game long, as opposed to moving the dice to one side when I have 0 Shadow Energy.
Ally attack and health are best marked with some 6-sided dice. In almost any situation a single d6 can show actual value for either stat, and I prefer to use small dice for the times where multiple dice are required on a single stat, such as a pumped up Ogloth. Simply use no dice at all when the printed values are correct, and if an ally is reduced to 0 attack you can cover the number with a coin, a plastic chip, or a scrap of paper.
Weapons and armor can mark their value and durability using the same strategy as described above for ally stats. There's no real need to use unique colors for this, the same colored dice as on your allies do the job just fine without being confusing.
Lastly are statuses. These are the most difficult things to mark currently because of how many kinds there are. Most people I have seen use many different colored stones or chips to mark the statuses, and they do get the job done. I personally find these to be lacking, so I created an alternative solution designed specifically for Shadow Era, which you can buy on eBay.
Lastly, and most importantly, always be kind and courteous to your opponents. This is a competitive game, but you should never let that ruin your good time, or anyone else's.
That's our guide, and I hope it covered any questions you have about the logistics of playing Shadow Era with real cards. If you have any questions, or if you notice that I left out something important, please leave it in the comments below so it can be added to the next guide. Thanks for reading!
