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The Alchemist's Bench: A Profile of Parker Brothers' "Shadowlord!"

History

Shadowlord! was a 1983 release from Parker Brothers. It is a complex design by mass market boardgame standards, but much simpler than any wargame. (It is suggested for players 10 and up.) Play involves of resource management, territorial conquest (on a gridlike stellar map) and battles. The outcome of each conflict is determined by a combination of the strength of the characters involved and how many "spaceships" and "Power Cards" each is carrying. Since these resources are assigned to the characters by the players, a combination of strategy and luck determines the outcome of each battle.

At the start of each game session, each player has three characters: one "Star Master," one Warrior and one Diplomat. The Star Masters are the most powerful characters, but tif a player's Star Master is defeated, that player is out of the game. The Star Masters are elementally themed to Earth, Air, Fire and Water, represented by game components of green, yellow, red and blue.

Each player will have only one Star Master throughout the game. Additional Warriors and Diplomats, as well as Merchants, can be found and recruited as the board is explored. (The characters are represented by small white cardboard disks and matching portrait cards. At the start of play, the disks are distributed face-down throughout the board. As the players send their forces across the board, the disks are turned over and can be recruited. Recruiting a character consists of putting the character's cardbard disk in the center of a "Power Ring" of the recruiting player's color, and claiming the matching portrait.)

Additionally, the Shadows (represented by black disks and black Power Rings, with no matching portraits) comprise a fifth force. These begin the game at the board's center. The players can take turns wielding Shadows against each other in the course of the game, thereby damaging their opponents at no cost to themselves. If no player has defeated the others by the time the game's "Power Card" deck has been used up four times, the Shadowlord is declared the winner.

There are no miniature figures included with Shadowlord!. However, it does come with interesting plastics, consisting of the "Power Rings," tiny pegged "spaceships" that plug into the rings (indicating the character's mobility and counting toward battle strength), a card tray (with a row of holes down its center that serves as a time track counter) and two pegged "power stones" (one which is carried around by a character in place of a spaceship, one to serve as the marking peg in the time track).

Additionally, there's a very nice parts tray that keeps the power rings and spaceships organized. The tray comes with a lid to keep the parts in place between games, and also to serve as "The Battlefield" during play. According to the rules, this is "[a] plane beyond the galaxies upon which all battles are fought." Practically speaking, it's a rectuangular plastic lid with indentations in its top that are designed to hold Power Rings and Power Cards in place when battles are staged. It's certainly a nice touch. Like the rest of Shadowlord!'s design, it creates a sense that the players are participating in something formal and important... something epic... rather than just a game.

Shadowlord! is by no means an adventure boardgame. It has more in common with Risk. However, the space fantasy motif, stylish component art and use of eight-sided dice suggest that Parker Brothers was trying to get the attention of the fantasy fanbase.