Shadowfist Card Set Overview

This is the place to start if you want to step back and take a look at all the Shadowfist sets as a group. Statistics and tables are current up to and including Critical Shift. Sorry for the slow loading -- I need to make some time to clean up the HTML formatting of these tables to get the size down and fix some of the centering; that's on the to-do list...

• Quick summary of all the sets
• Cheesy statistics
  (what analysis would be complete without cheesy statistics to manipulate?)

Quick summary of all the sets

Eighteen Shadowfist sets have been printed so far (or seventeen, depending on how you count the last Can of Whupass). All Daedalus sets are out of print, but Standard comes up for auction reasonably often on eBay, and Flashpoint sometimes too. The Z-Man sets are all out of print except for Netherworld 2; you can sometimes find Throne War boxes on eBay but other sets come up rarely. The three Shadowfist Games sets are available; their 'extended run' (i.e., reprint) of Red Wedding was done "to order"; there wasn't much extra so it sold through quickly but the reprint of Dark Future still has some available.

* 146, if you don’t count the White Ninja as part of the set
** Combat in Kowloon was announced by Daedalus, but never printed.
*** Critical Shift was announced by Z-Man as a new core set (including starters) but was never printed. A booster set of the same name was later printed by Shadowfist Games.

A quick note about promos and the number of cards in each set: Z-Man and Shadowfist Games print promo cards on the same sheets as their regular sets, but distribute them separately and identify them with a "Promo" symbol. I don’t count Z-Man/SFGames promos as part of the set they are printed with (I consider them to be a distinct "Promo" set). However, I do count the Flashpoint White Ninja as part of Flashpoint, because she has the same symbol as the other Flashpoint cards, and does appear in boosters—rarely, but she does :)

Also, I don't count the Can of Whupass, Old Skool Edition, as a promo since it was printed with its own distinct set symbol.

Cheesy Statistics

Here's what happens when you have the card database in Excel format, and you can easily manipulate it with a Pivot table :) I've pulled out the card distribution by faction and set, and also created a running total so you can see who's getting more cards from a particular set (in case you just like Architects, for instance). The first two tables look only at distinct cards, not reprints or errata, so the totals in these columns won't match the totals in the overview section. The last table includes all cards (reprints and errata) and is best for new players who aren't worried about the distribution of reprints in a set.

Note that I don't count the "extended run" Red Wedding, Dark Future or Seven Masters as separate sets or reprints, so they do not influence the numbers below.

Breakdown by Faction and Set (reprints & errata excluded)

I also broke out the number of Feng Shui Sites (unaligned only; not counting the faction-specific sites), the number of Events, and the number of 0-cost Events. (Why? Long story, but suffice to say that I find Event design to be the hardest thing to do well, so I like to keep track of them :)

Running Total (reprints & errata excluded)

Here's the same data as the last table, except it's in a running total format. The Promos are stuck at the end because that was easiest for me to do.

And for those of you who are graph geeks like me, here's a graph (click it to see a larger version in a new window). I like to look at these things visually. I think it's a residue of a few too many ISO 9001 audits (and if you don't recognize that abbreviation, good for you :)

Breakdown by Faction and Set (including reprints & errata)

And for the newer players, here's the breakdown of all the cards in each set. This will give you a better idea of what to expect from each set, if you don't care that some of the cards are reprints.

Feng Shui Site Body (reprints & errata excluded)

Another thing I like to keep track of, mostly so I know the odds that a particular hitter will be able to take a face-down Site. The averages are subject to a little motion one way or the other because of the variable body Sites. I considered Sites that had a quantifiable maximum bonus to Body (like Tangram Alley, or Jade Valley) to include half of the bonus for this purpose. Two exceptions: Ancestral Tomb I didn't count any of the bonus since it has to be healed before it counts as a Feng Shui Site again, and Peacock Summit I only counted +6, rather than +9, because that's where it's going to be in most decks that stock it. If the bonus doesn't have a maximum, I just made a guess.

The fact that I neglected errata in making this table means that YotD doesn't show Fox Pass as being Unique, so really there are only 15 Limited sites, and 31 Unique ones.

And the obligatory graph, too.

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