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Shadows over Camelot is a cooperative Arthurian game by Serge Laget and Bruno Cathala, published by Days of Wonder.
Players: 3-7
Time: 60-90 minutes
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)
The Components
 Shadows over Camelot comes with a large set of high-quality & beautiful components:
- 4 game boards
- 16 swords
- 7 coats of arms
- 8 dice
- 30 miniatures
- 84 white cards
- 76 black cards
- 8 loyalty cards
- 2 rulebooks
Game Boards: The core gameboard is a 4-panel cardboard map which shows the perpetual quests in the game (Camelot, the Tournament against the Black Knight, and the Wars against the Picts and Saxons). In addition there are also three other one-time quest boards: Excalibur, the Quest for Lancelot's Armor, and the Grail Quest (which is actually composed of two pieces which jigsaw together). Each of these latter boards is two-sided, with the flip side showing what happens when the first quest is completed.
Every one of the boards is full-color and linen-textured. They feature very attractive artwork by Julien Delval (though some people find it too busy). Each also has great iconography which generally shows: how to complete each quest; what happens if a quest succeeds; and what happens if a quest fails. The boards are so well put together that you almost never need to consult the rules, despite the large number of different activities possible in the game.
Swords: These 16 swords are placed on the Round Table in Camelot; they're white on one side and black on the other. They're linen-textured cardboard with fine artwork.
Coats of Arms: Each of these cardstock player aids features a knight on the front (with full-color artwork) and the traitor on the back. They helpfully include just about all the rules that a player will need in the game, including a list of the turn order, a listing of artifact special powers, and victory (or loss) conditions. The seven knights are: Percival (white); Palamedes (black); Kay (blue); Gawain (green); Arthur (red); Galahad (yellow); and Tristan (purple).
Dice: Each of the knights has a color-coordinated six-sided die which is used to represent life points. They're wooden with attractive gold or black inking. There's also a plastic eight-sided die, used as a randomizer when fighting siege engines.
Miniatures: These are all good-quality unpainted plastic miniatures. Each of the knights has their own figure with a color-coordinated base. There are also figures for the three artifacts in the game (Excalibur, Grail, Lancelot's Armor) and for all the enemies (12 catapults, 4 Saxons, 4 Picts). These are all very nice and quite detailed, and just begging to be painted.
Cards: The game comes with a total of 168 cards. They're all full-size, full-color, of medium weight, and linen textured. The 8 loyalty cards simply list a knight as loyal or a traitor. The white cards generally help players succeed at quests and the black cards work against them. Each card includes artwork and a good explanation of what the card does. There's somewhere between one and two dozen unique pieces of artwork among the white and black cards, and they're all attractive.
Rulebooks: The game comes with a daunting 2 rulebooks, a 20-page rulebook and a 16-page book of quests. It's somewhat surprising because the game really isn't that complex. I guess they wanted to be thorough. In any case, they're full color and full of examples. The Book of Quests is superb for reference during the game, since it has info on individual quests, individual knights, and individual cards (though honstly, a lot of it is unnecessary).
Box & Tray: The box is a standard large square-box, the same size that Days of Wonder has used for all of their large-box games. It has a great tray with spaces for all the individual elements, though unfortunately one of the boards (the jigsaw Grail Board) doesn't lay in quite right. It still all fits well enough.
Arthurian Mythology: Shadows over Camelot does a moderate to good job as an Arthurian game. You'll find the standard characters here, including the aforementioned knights and others like Morgan, Mordred, and Gwen showing up on various cards. The quests all really feel like Arthurian stories, thanks to their inclusion of both specifics like Excalibur and the Grail and good archetypical tales like the Tournament against the Black Knight. None of the theming is super deep, but it's all dead on and entirely integral to the game.
Days of Wonder continues to set the standard for how a game company should produce their components. They're high-quality, well-produced, entirely beautifuly, and easy to use. When I opened the Shadows over Camelot box I was entirely amazed by the huge amount of stuff inside. It earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Shadows over Camelot is to fulfill quests in order to fill the Round Table with white swords--unless of course you're the Traitor.
Setup: The first thing required in setup is to lay out the prodigious number of boards that come with the game. Some of the miniatures (the Grail, Excalibur and Lancelot's Armor) are set on the board, while the evil stuff (Picts, Saxons, and Siege Engines) is set nearby.
Each player randomly draws a coat of arms, then takes the appropriate die, sets it to "4" life and takes the appropriate miniature and places it in Camelot.
Each player gets a Merlin card and 5 white cards. Each player also gets a loyalty card.
Finally the black cards are shuffled too and put next to the board.
To start off the game each player puts a white card into the center of the table, then everyone decides how to divvy them up.
Finally, play begins.
Order of Play: Each round a player takes two actions plus one optional action:
- Progression of Evil
- Heroic Action
- Optional Additional Heroic Action
Progression of Evil: At the start of each player's turn something bad happens. They choose to: lose 1 life; or place 1 siege engine near Camelot; or draw and play a black card.
The last can result in all kinds of disaster; usually a quest moves toward failure as cards can add Picts or Saxons (to those wars); increase the strength of the Black Knight, Lancelot, or the Dragon; move Excalibur away; or make the Grail harder to attain. There are also a few special black cards which have even worse effects (such as the loss of life or cards or the increase of the number of siege engines).
Heroic Action: Then the knight gets to take a "heroic action". This can include: moving from one location to another (typically from Camelot to a quest); playing a special white card (most of which either give goodies to everyone or selfishly give you alone goodies, your choice); heal yourself by playing three identical cards; accuse a knight (if you're far enough into the game); or perform a quest-related action.
The accusations all have to do with the traitor, of course. Each knight can only accuse once and can only be accused once. If you correctly accuse the traitor, the Round Table gets a shiny new white sword and the traitor is revealed. If you falsely accuse a loyal knight, a white sword is flipped to black(!).
The quests, meanwhile, take a bit more explanation. In each case you can take quest actions, by playing cards (one per turn), when you're at the appropriate location. Two of the quests (the Black Knight & Lancelot's armor) are solo quests, which means that only one player can do each at a time, and if he leaves then all the white cards played are lost. The rest of the quests are multiplayer; knights can come and go as they please.
The Grail Quest. You take a grail action by playing a Grail card on the leftmost free space on the 7-space Grail track; black cards sometimes add Despair or Desolation cards to the right. A black card played on a white card removes both (and vice-versa). The quest is won if you get Grail cards all the way across and lost if Despair and Desolation go across the other way.
The Excalibur. You can discard any white card to move Excalibur closer to the knight's shore while black cards can move it further away. The quest ends when Excalibur gets to one side of the lake or another.
 The Wars. The wars against the Picts and Saxons are won by playing a straight (1-2-3-4-5) of Battle cards and are lost if Saxon, Pict, or Mercenary cards cause 4 of the appropriate enemy to be put down first.
The Tournament Against the Black Knight. Knights can play two pairs of Fight cards here, while up to five numbered Black Knight cards can come from the black deck. When the two pairs or the 5 black cards are played, then each total is summed up, and the higher total wins.
(There's a catch here: a player can play a Black Knight card face up or face down; if he plays it face down he gets to draw a white card. But this also gives a place for a traitor to do mean things, by playing high cards without revealing them. The same rule applies to the Lancelot and Dragon quests.)
The Quest for Lancelot's Armor. Here a knight plays a full house of Fight cards while up to five Lancelot cards are played. Again, the highest total wins.
Fight Against the Dragon. Here knights play three triplets while up to five (powerful) Dragon cards can appear. Highest total wins. (This quest only occurs after Lancelot's quest is completed.)
The Camelot Quests. In Camelot a player can take two different "quest" actions (though I find it confusing calling them such). First, a player can take two cards at the Round Table. Alternatively a player can fight siege engines. He plays any number of Fight cards and then tries to roll under that on the d8. Success results in a siege engine being destroyed, while failure costs 1 life.
Victory of Defeat? Quests can result in victory or defeat. In general, if a quest completes victoriously: white swords are added to the Round Table; and players on the quest get life points and cards. In general, if a quest fails: black swords are added to the Round Table, and players on the quest lose life points.
Three of the quests are for objects as well. Excalibur gives its wielder a +1 in Combat; the Grail lets its wielder save one knight from death; and Lancelot's Armor lets its wielder draw two black cards in the progression of evil phase and then only play one of them (his choice).
The two wars also result in 2 siege engines being added to Camelot if they fail.
Whenever a quest ends, all knights there immediately move back to Camelot.
After a quest ends, one of two things may happen. The Black Knight quest and the two Wars are continuous: when they finish they're reset and available again. The Excalibur and Grail quests are one-time; afterward any black Excalibur and Grail cards simply result in a siege engine being added to Camelot. The Lancelot quest is one-time and is then flipped to the Dragon quest, which is also one-time.
Though the quests are all different, how each works is very clearly explained on the board.
Optional Additional Heroic Action: After taking his first action a player may optionally spend one life to take a second action, as long as it's different than the first. (Usually, a knight will move and take a quest action.)
The Traitor Revealed: At some point the traitor may be revealed, either through accusation, or through play of a special white card called "Fate". Notably the traitor can't decide to arbitrarily reveal himself (aside from the fact that it's usually a bad idea, unless the traitor is already badly losing).
Afterward the traitor keeps taking his turn, but he no longer gets to take a Heroic Action. Instead he takes the normal Progression of Evil phase and also gets to Taunt the Knights--taking a white card from one of them.
Knights & Special Powers: Before finishing out, it's worth noting that each of the knights has a special power. Arthur can exchange a card with someone; Percival can look at a black card before taking it; Palamedes gets 1 Life at the end of each quest; Kay can add a Fight card to a combat after it ends; Gawain can draw 3 cards while at the Round Table; Galahad can play a Special white card for free each turn; and Tristan can move away from the Round Table for free.
Ending the Game: The game ends badly when there are 12 siege engines at Camelot or when there are 7 black swords on the Round Table. Each of these results in an instant victory for evil.
In addition the game can end when there are 12 or more swords total on the Table. If there is a traitor in the game and he still hasn't been revealed by this point, two white swords immediately flip to black. Then, the forces of good or evil win depending on who has the majority of swords; evil wins all ties.
This means that the loyal knights can win if they have at least 7 white swords and there is no traitor or a revealed traitor. However if there is an unrevealed traitor they need 9 white swords (and this is why a traitor rarely wants to reveal himself).
Relationships to Other Games
Shadows over Camelot is a cooperative board game. Like the other entrants into this category, players work together and either succeed or fail as a whole. Unlike most other cooperative games there's a chance that one player is working against the others. Other notable cooperative games include
Arkham Horror (1987) and
Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings (2000) . It's a pretty rare genre.
Through its traitor, Shadows over Camelot is also a hidden role game. The recent popularity of hidden role games probably originates with the Mafaia / Werewolf game. Other recent releases in the same vein have included Bang (2003) and Saboteur (2005).
Beyond that most of the gameplay of Shadows over Camelot is pretty abstract, largely centering around the playing of numerical cards. As thus it reminds me a lot of various abstract German games, particularly those by Reiner Knizia. This should generally be considered a good thing, and despite the abstractness of these mechanics the theme rises considerably above them.
The Game Design
To start off with, Shadows over Camelot will probably interest readers of RPGnet because it's a pseudo-roleplaying game in board game form. The game is nicely thematic, and this old Pendragon player had a lot of fun with his thees and thous. Anyone looking for a similar roleplaying experience will have a lot of fun with Shadows.
 The cooperative aspect of the game works fairly well, though I have some concerns with a rule which limits your talking about the specifics of cards. Most of the groups I've played with have troubles with this rule, getting too specific and thus creating an underlying tension in the game that shouldn't be there.
The true beauty of the game, however, is in the traitor. The game picks up a considerably notch if you're the traitor, trying to figure out how to foil the other knights without getting caught. Even if you're a loyal knight constantly trying to figure out if there's a traitor and who he might be can keep you on your toes. This aspect entirely makes the game.
(It can also cause some issues, especially if a first-time player is unlucky enough to be traitor, which I've had two different players comment was tough on them. In addition, the rules about the traitor not being able to reveal himself just aren't clear enough. Overall I'd recommend that if you have a single first-time player in your group that he be explicitly freed from the chance of being the traitor; if there's more than one, however, you need to either play without a traitor, which is an option, or else let everyone catch-as-catch-can, as omitting multiple first-time players from traitor duty would offset the balance of the game too much.)
I have some concerns over how easy it might be for experienced knights to win this game, though the rules do include some variants for making things harder that I think I'd adopt if I played too much more. I also have some concerns about various potentially degenerate strategies (such as the traitor always putting out siege engines or the knights always cooperating entirely). However, four games in I'm continuing to enjoy the game quite a bit, and I've seen no evidence of degenerate strategies within any game proper.
Thus, on the whole, I'd rate this game based upon the enjoyment I've had so far and that which I expect to have in the future: it earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Shadows over Camelot is thus far the best and most enjoyable new game that I've played this year. It's innovative, it's thought-provoking, and it's flat-out fun. Roleplayers will especially enjoy it because it really puts you into the mindset of one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table (or else a devious traitor to the same). I'm entirely impressed by Days of Wonder's ability to continue coming out with top-quality games with top-quality parts; this continues their amazing streak of nearly perfect games that includes Ticket to Ride (2004), Memoir '44 (2004), and Ticket to Ride Europe (2005), their previous three games.
I usually offer caveats on my reviews, and I suppose I should say here that if you don't like cooperative games or you want your games to be very serious and strategic, this might not be your cuppa; overall, however, my recommendation is entirely positive.
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