Beschrijving
Shadow Network
1960. Cold War is upon the world. In the dark shadows, agencies are gathering intelligence on financial institutions, political figures, military installations, and top-secret technology advancements. However, where one agency thinks they exclusive access on intel, leaks within the network cause information to spill around the world. Which agency will be able to gather enough intel on their high profile targets and at what costs? Who will have built the best Shadow Network?
Gameplay
Shadow Network is a worker placement style game where players are deploying their agents around the globe collecting fragments of intel. As the players gather intel from a city, intel is also leaked to other cities thereby potentially helping other agencies. Additional agents can be deployed but at a cost. Furthermore, handlers can assist with exchanging intel thereby giving the agency the leg up.
You’ll be placing agents out in cities to collect intel in the form of briefcase halves. When these different coloured tokens are combined, they make completed briefcases which will earn you influence, the currency in the game, including for the upkeep of your agents. You’ll want to accumulate influence because unspent influence will also constitute your victory points at the end of the game.
At end of four rounds of play, agencies will bribe their high profile targets for more influence. In the end the player with the most influence is the winner.
Summarised
Shadow Network is a medium-weight game, it plays quickly because there’s very little downtime. This is a game where you can focus on building your own ‘engine’ without worrying overly about opponents screwing up your plans. You’re still trying to ensure though that your intel collection doesn’t result in you seeding intel to other locations that help your opponents more than you.
