Terrible Shadow Era review(er)

[shadowwinds]

So this discussion got more interesting since last I read it . A bit late to the party, I know, but the smartest post in the thread is a few pages back by SixDaysShort.

I am absolutely not surprised that the reviewer had a bad impression of the game if he played the physical TCG, because at its core, Shadow Eara is an OK TCG at best - the thing which sets it apart from the pack is* its digital payment model and multi-platform support. The physical TCG market is very, very saturated and dominated (rightly) by the 100lb gorilla in the room which has more than 12 million (yes, million) active players. To stand out in the physical marketplace you need to have some combination of a highly innovative game, particularly good execution or a high profile licence (and the latter is not enough as basically all of Decipher's failed efforts attest - Star Wars, Star Trek and LoTR, you can hardly get 3 better licenses than that). As Shadow Era is a fundamentally not very innovative game, with no licence, and from the sounds of it has poor execution in its physical game, I'm not surprised it reviewed poorly.

I'm still baffled as to why Wulven thought it was a good idea to move into the physical game, other than maybe a personal desire by people at the company to get some physical property. Take a look at this cursory list of failed TcGs:

Star Wars (twice)
Lord of the Rings
Star Trek
Harry Potter
Marvel/DC superheroes
Stargate
X-Men

These are premium licenses, and most of those games were backed by big companies. All of them have failed. As far as I can tell, of the 100+ physical TCGs which have been released in the past 15 years or so, only 4 have any continuing level of success and I think WoW is fading fast. It's a brutal market, with exceptionally harsh network effect barriers that are basically impossible to overcome, and is rapidly being supplanted by the much cheaper to buy into "living card game" format (where you buy a box that has all of the cards for the set and then add to it over time with add-on packs, eg. Dominion and Citadel).

I don't know the extent to which efforts to get the physical game up and running have diverted attention from the online game or contributed to the incredible delay in this expansion, but it certainly seems to have been a questionable move from a business standpoint...

*or at least was, the pack is catching up and technical flaws in the SE platform are frustrating more and more people.

are the four tcgs: vanguard, yugioh, magic, and wow? if not their the only ones I would know that are big ware I am

[Drakkon]

Top selling successful TCGs are...

Yu-Gi-Oh!
Magic: The Gathering
Pokemon
Cardfight!! Vanguard
Weiß Schwarz

[psychobabble]

I was referring to yugioh, mtg, wow and pokemon. Is vanguard mainly a Japanese thing? Or I might just be getting old . Regardless, there's a lot more fails than successes in this market...

[tman507]

I was referring to yugioh, mtg, wow and pokemon. Is vanguard mainly a Japanese thing? Or I might just be getting old . Regardless, there's a lot more fails than successes in this market...

Most likely getting old actually, like myself with this one. It's been here in America (or at least English in general) for a while now. I don't really know anything about how the game works, but am not really motivated to, as it looks a bit too childish for me.

As for the whole thing of successes vs failures in TCGs, I for one think that Wulven kind of jumped into the whole physical card thing a bit too early. I think trying to release a physical set along with the digital one has slowed down the developement and release of new digital sets, since they try to balance it so much beforehand so that they can print the physical cards. I think it would have been better to release physical card sets a bit behind the digital sets, once 2 or 3 digital sets had been released, so that the game would have been slightly more established already. It also would allow for quicker developement of digital sets, as those could be released live more quickly, and have any changes made to them for balance, then have the physical version of that set come out a couple of digital sets later, so that that set has already been set in stone for digital, but would have been released to digital faster to begin with.

[Sea1111]

No. What Wulven needs to do is to MAKE ADVERTS FOR THE GAME! And ship some physical cards to some online stores WORLDWIDE (currently if you type in Amazon.co.uk, Shadow Era nothing pops up. So different on the American one). Cause you have two million players according to your home page? How many even KNOW about the online store? In fact how many even GO TO the forums in the first place? Cause this forum is active but active does not mean we have a lot of people.

And no, I am not bitching about how the UK doesn't have that many cards - I am talking about worldwide. So far a lot of the physical tournaments have been worldwide but they were only played by the fewer numbers of players who come onto the forums and ordered it from the online store or pre-ordered them. But from what I heard, (correct me if I am wrong), a lot of stores look at SW CCG and etc. and look to Shadow Era, then say "Failed TCG...stick to Magic or Pokémon, you freak", which is a shame on such a great TCG like SE but it is true - there have been so many failed TCGs, stores no longer have faith in the TCG market apart from the etc.

So, Wulven, you are doing great job with physical cards, (apart from that pre-order disaster...yes, that kinda ruined a lot), but you need to IMPROVE. Currently I think the USA is the only place selling the cards apart from a few stores, our faithful players have gotten them to sell the cards.

So start out small - advertise on Internet. I saw an unpopular game once, but as soon as they started advertising, BOOM! The numbers piled on top of each other. (Sadly, I wasn't interested in that game.) Maybe Shadow Era can have a similar tale.

[Yussef]

So this discussion got more interesting since last I read it . A bit late to the party, I know, but the smartest post in the thread is a few pages back by SixDaysShort.

I am absolutely not surprised that the reviewer had a bad impression of the game if he played the physical TCG, because at its core, Shadow Eara is an OK TCG at best

I'm not going to pretend to be the expert on other TCGs you are because I'm not. I've played a few but not that much. I don't know about how innovative the game is compared to others, I just know I enjoy it. The problem people had with the review was not that it was negative...it was shallow. He got upset at the rule set and then never gave the game a chance. The points he made were dumb: that Shadow Era is a MTG ripoff because it uses something called resources and hey so does MTG! also they are both fantasy settings, complaints about counters that could have applied equally as well to MTG (but somehow it was ok when MTG did it). If he had given it a negative review making some of the points you did I might have disagreed but I would have respected it.

It's not surprising that the review was shallow either. People keep telling me he's normally a great board game/ card game reviewer, but how on earth do you give a game like Shadow Era, or any game that has some depth to it justice when you put out 3 or 4 reviews a day?

[okonik]

As a long time fan of Shadow Era as well as someone who listens to Tom's Dice Tower podcasts I feel I have a good understanding of both sides. Ultimately, while I think Tom has some valid points about the weaknesses of the physical game, this was still a poor and hypocritical review and I've lost some respect for him from this.

His main problem (apart from the valid issue with the rules) seems to be that SE is too "generic fantasy", has no meaningful theme, and offers nothing new to the genre. This annoys me especially because Tom has stated that he is a fan of Mage Wars and Summoner Wars, both card-based games with generic fantasy themes. At least SE has some kind of back story and setting. Summoner Wars is an awesome game, but the theme is pretty thin but he doesn't go after the guys at Plaid Hat with the same venom.

I think if he'd taken some time to understand the history, story and context of SE, as well as the more tactical aspects of the game he might have formed a different opinion. He clearly couldn't look past his initial impression of the game to see the things that make SE great. It's more accessible than MTG for beginners but has a depth that keep hardcore players hooked and that's what I love about it. Tom obviously couldn't get that far and that makes it a bad review. If you can't be bothered to explore a game because you don't like it, fine, but don't trash it just because YOU didn't take that time to look at it properly.

I watched it. Didn't vote. Essentially the guy looks like he hasn't been laid in about forever. Only valid point he had was about that god awful play mat with rules on the reverse side.

My advice....don't watch it, don't give it any more credence, and be happy in the knowledge that you've definitely had more sex than him (unless you are under 16, in which case it's a close call).

Actually, it might surprise you to hear that Tom's married with about seven kids.

[Gondorian]

As a long time fan of Shadow Era as well as someone who listens to Tom's Dice Tower podcasts I feel I have a good understanding of both sides. Ultimately, while I think Tom has some valid points about the weaknesses of the physical game, this was still a poor and hypocritical review and I've lost some respect for him from this.

His main problem (apart from the valid issue with the rules) seems to be that SE is too "generic fantasy", has no meaningful theme, and offers nothing new to the genre. This annoys me especially because Tom has stated that he is a fan of Mage Wars and Summoner Wars, both card-based games with generic fantasy themes. At least SE has some kind of back story and setting. Summoner Wars is an awesome game, but the theme is pretty thin but he doesn't go after the guys at Plaid Hat with the same venom.

I think if he'd taken some time to understand the history, story and context of SE, as well as the more tactical aspects of the game he might have formed a different opinion. He clearly couldn't look past his initial impression of the game to see the things that make SE great. It's more accessible than MTG for beginners but has a depth that keep hardcore players hooked and that's what I love about it. Tom obviously couldn't get that far and that makes it a bad review. If you can't be bothered to explore a game because you don't like it, fine, but don't trash it just because YOU didn't take that time to look at it properly.

Good place to end the thread, I think.