Shadows Over Camelot - Tips & Strategies

A common endgame situation involves loyal knights desperately trying to complete quests before siege engines overwhelm Camelot. They have a strong lead of white swords versus black swords, but it will not matter if they cannot hold off the invaders.

Often in this situation, you can use the game’s built in timer to your advantage. Assuming you have a lead in white swords, consider ignoring specific quests so that when they fail and add black swords they close out the game faster to ensure victory. Make sure that you will still have batter than half of the swords in your favor, taking into account an unrevealed traitor will cause a four sword swing.

Purposefully ignoring quests, and looking forward to them failing, seems wrong, but it can help you win before you lose for a different reason.

After having played this game a grand total of one time, I feel I am qualified to start dispensing world class game tips… Here goes…
As King Arthur, I find it best stay in Camelot for pretty much the entire game. Use the “Draw 2” ability just about every turn, and of course use your kingly ability to feed cards to your loyal knights who are off vanquishing evil (or looking for grails- whichever). This keeps them at the quests where they can keep making progress, instead of running back and forth wasting time.
As a bonus for being in Camelot (and having a ton of cards), you get to utilize the “Take 1 damage” option for your Evil action, since you are often able to dump 3 identical cards for the heal.
As a second bonus for being in Camelot (and having a ton of cards), you are often able to dump enough cards to get a guaranteed catapult kill to keep the catapult population down.
Both of these secondary benefits means the team has the option of seeing fewer black cards, which is always a good thing!
So the next time you’re the king, act like a king! Sit on your throne all day telling everyone else what to do (while being a great king, and enabling them to do it)!
It should be noted that this strategy works better the more players you have. Also keep in mind that very rarely you may actually have to get up and do some questing. In my game I went to one quest the entire time: after my lackeys fought long and hard for several turns to mostly gain the grail, there was but one empty slot left to finish the quest. So in kingly fashion, I used my acton to go to the grail. Take a damage for the bonus action, play a grail card to complete the quest. *yoink* Take grail and go home. “Thanks for all your hard work, fellas. I’ll take that”. It felt very kingly, walking over the downtrodden backs of my minions to swoop in and claim the prize after all of the hard work had already been done…

Thanks for reading!
Gruns

Playing Shadows over Camelot can frequently feel like a plate spinning contest as problems crop up all over the board. Consequently, it is tempting to send a Knight to each problem area in order to at least “hold down the fort” (my apologies for mixing metaphors). In most instances, however, this has proven to me to be a bad strategy. Instead, whenever possible, concentrate your numbers on one quest so that a quick victory is assured and your team can turn their attention to another quest, rinse, and repeat. In other words, get three, four, or preferably more knights all on one mission so that Excalibur, the Grail, or a Pict/Saxon war can be won quickly. By doing so, far more life points can be gained, cards won/shared, and you stop any traitors from wasting time or cards (such as when they sit at Excalibur and discard valuable card after valuable card b/c they are the only one there).

If you happen to be playing with the Merlin expansion (something I highly recommend), I believe this strategy is even more essential as it is difficult to hop around to different quests and if you can get Merlin to the site (something that is likely with most everyone moving there) you all will get to draw more cards — and these resources are ultimately how you beat this game.

I think some might fear that winning these quests quickly will lead to siege engine trouble but I think that is short sighted. You have to ultimately win these quests anyway, so the quicker the better. Yes, after winning one or two, your best fighter will need to concentrate on defeating siege engines but that is the nature of the game regardless. And again, with more knights on a winning quest you have more life points to sacrifice (thereby avoiding siege engines) and traitors become far less effective (they either become more obivious as they argue they should go off alone or they ultimately can cause less trouble by being forced to join in with the group effort so they aren’t discovered). Likewise, for those that fear a plate dropping (to return to my original metaphor), you are going to have to allow a plate to drop now and then anyway. Besides, no time is really lost (and it seems like it is gained) by everyone finishing one quest and then quickly moving to the most problematic area in order to win again rather than one sole knight slow playing an area by himself.

Finally, concentrated numbers is just more fun because it accents the team cooperation of the game. With everyone spread out, the game can become a little stale as you wait for your turn to come and then play one card that leaves you still miles from victory. In contrast, working as a team and consequently seeing fast results builds team morale, confidence, and ultimately fun (the real reason you were playing the game).

So, for good times and a more effective defense of Camelot, remember that there is strength in concentrated numbers!

It helps a lot to have backup for each group, and the more people you have, the better. Send two to the grail, two to Excalibur, and two in Camelot to handle the random middle build up.

As a rule, you’re not allowed to say explicitly what’s in your hand, but you can talk about it. When you and other players start getting really good at this game and start finding it to be too easy, try this house rule:
Don’t discuss what’s in your hand at all.

You can still talk about what needs to be done, but don’t discuss “I can help at the grail quest or the black knight quest”. Let players have to figure this out on their own. Not knowing what other players are holding makes it much more difficult to know what to do, or what not to do.

This house rule will also help if your gaming group suffers from a solo-player trying to take control of the game and tell everybody what to do. If he doesn’t know what everybody has, he can’t boss them around!

OK, the hardest thing to do with a game is to introduce it to new players, no? Especially those who have never played a cooperative game. And this is a good intro to co-op games.
So, here’s my spiel when explaining Camelot. My jokes are all bad, so be prepared. Here goes:
*I compare most of the quests to poker hands: Black Knight is two pair, Lancelot’s Quest is a full house, and Pict and Saxon Wars are straights.
*I tell first-timers, “If it’s your first time playing, do not go on the Grail Quest, because it’s a boring trench war. We want you to want to play again. The experienced players will take care of that. It’s a quest that we don’t need to win, just one we don’t want to lose.”
*First-timers will often be overwhelmed with all the quests, so I’ll say, “All you have to remember is that it goes ‘Evil Turn, Good Turn, Heroic Sacrifice.'”
*If I’ve got a crowd that wants to play with the traitor mechanic, but we’ve also got a first-timer, then I’ll give the first-timer a Loyal card and say that player can’t accuse.
*When explaining the sharing of hands at the beginning of the game, I either tell the new players to show me their hand or say, “Throw the card in that does not look like the others.”
*The more people at the table, the harder Lancelot’s armor is to get and the less good it does.
*If you want to remember which War figurines are which, remember that PIcts have PIercing weapons and sAXons have AXes.
*My girlfriend’s mother messed up a War because she didn’t see that one of the cards had been laid down already. So from then on, I’ve been turning the Pict and Saxon Fight Cards upside-down so that you can definitely see that there’s a card there instead of having it slip into the camouflage of the board.
*About posthumous wins, I say, “If you die and we win, we erect a statue in your honor.” This helps people unfamiliar with cooperative games.
*Sir Palamdes is a good knight for a first-timer, just because it’s a really easy power to keep track of. If someone gets Sir Palamedes for the first time, I tell them, “His name is Sir Pala-mooch-es and his job is to swoop in at the last moment and mooch off the rewards of the quest. So do so.” I had one new player who wasn’t familiar with cooperative games and she got really mad when someone else “took credit for my work”. I explained to her that it was a cooperative game and that Sir Palamedes is an immigrant and like most immigrants, though he uses resources of our country, he ultimately gives back more than he takes.
*When explaining ties, I tell people, “Evil wins all ties, just like in Florida (in 2000).” (Sorry if that offends you, but it helps people remember it.)

In Shadows Over Camelot, you are certain to lose some quests. It is truly remarkable to never lose a quest (it might be possible, but I doubt it).

Therefore, if your team of knights selects which battles you will lose, then you won’t be wasting turns and cards fighting a losing battle, and you’ll be more likely to win in other quests.

To add to that, you can’t simply say at the start of the game “we always lose this quest”. It definitely depends on everybody’s starting hand. Start by finding out what everybody is good at and where everybody should start questing. From this, you can also identify everybody’s weaknesses and decide from there which quests you should lose. You should pick one or two to not even try for.

I mentioned this for Betrayal at House on the Hill, but it applies to this as well.

A few times when we have played, a new player has become the traitor. Sometimes they do well, and can enjoy it, but often they can become disinterested in the game, especially if they are one of the only new players. A way we have found to get around this is to simply not let them be the traitor.

If they pull the traitor card, they put it back, the cards are shuffled, and they choose again. It helps to have them choose first.

The other option is not to have a traitor. Less fun, but more forgiving for a first time.

While this prevents a “trial-by-fire” initiation, it avoids possible dislike for the game simply from a poor first experience.

With 3 or 4 players, the game can be very difficult for the knights with a traitor. Consider letting players choose their own Coat of Arms at the beginning of the game (not at random) to make sure powerful abilities like Arthur or Galahad are available.

A good opening in a 6-7 player game (maybe in a 5 player game too) is the following:

When all knights came to Camelot, each knight with 2 or more Grail cards give on of them into the round table. Each knight without a Grail should then take one. In the first round each player can normaly draw a black-card, moves to the grail, lose a live and put a grail-card on it. Depends on the black cards drawn, the following players can setup a catapult (not to many) to “save the grail”.

This is an tricky situation for the traitor, since he can’t deny help without a very good excuse.

This strategy depends on the grail-cards draw by the players at startup, but in the last two games i made (in both the knight start with this strategy) the grail was taken in round 2 or 3!

After the grail-quest is done, the next quests depends. Lancelot can be done, if possible, excalibur should be held at least in the game, if it is needed the group can often rush out Pikts/Saxs in one round.