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Shadow Blades box art
2017 Ranked #5,487

Shadow Blades

A spy card game has spymasters draft resources, recruit agents, and build strength to complete missions. Each drafted pile enriches the choices left behind, creating tension between immediate value and future denial.

Bluffing Card Game Open Drafting Hand Management

Players

2-4

Play time

30-45 min

Age

10+

Complexity

1.86/5

Rating

6.76

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.6/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

You are a spymaster. Your mission: Dominate the world of undercover intelligence by deploying agents to complete vital missions.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

You are a spymaster. Your mission: Dominate the world of undercover intelligence by deploying agents to complete vital missions. To complete your mission, you must first build an underground network of highly trained agents from different branches of espionage. In the card game SpyNet, two to four players work alone or with a teammate to gather the information they need to recruit the best agents and disrupt their opponents' plans. With clever play and careful coordination, you can rise to the top of the intelligence community and become a dominant force in the world of covert espionage. In more detail, the deck contains agents, funding, and missions. Players draft cards from a face-down line-up: Look at the first pile and take it or put it back in order to look at the second pile; look at the second pile, etc. After you take a pile, you add one card to empty spot in the line-up as well as each pile that you passed over, thereby enriching the haul for the next player. Players lay down color-coded agents in order to gain strength in four fields: tech, infiltration, counterespionage, and enforcement. Funding can be applied to any agent, and some agents have special powers that take effect when played. A player can complete a mission only when their strength in that mission's field is stronger than all other opponents.

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–4
Best with
2–4
Play time
30–45 min
Age
10+
Complexity
1.9/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Richard Garfield

Artists

2
Ross A. Curtis Daehoon Lee

Publishers

2
Korea Boardgames Z-Man Games

Linked items

No published linked games yet.