We’ve had a resurgence of people wanting to play Shadowfist, so here’s a guide to getting started. The tool of choice is LackeyCCG, an ancient 90s program that nevertheless suits our needs.

Step 0.1: Join the community on Facebook and Discord.

1: Download and install LackeyCCG. 2: Run LackeyCCG, navigate to the “plugin” tab, paste the following URL in the AutoUpdate box, and click “Install or Update from URL“: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NoSoup4you/Shadowfist-LackeyCCG/master/updatelist.txt

3: A bunch of stuff will download – card lists, plugin settings, etc. Go ahead and load the plugin when prompted.

4: You might want to go back to the plugin tab and “download all missing images” to speed things up later. Otherwise, they’ll load as needed with a slight delay. While you’re at it, make sure auto updates are enabled, as that’ll simplify things for everyone.

5: Under the “server” tab, connect to the game matching server…

6: Games matching your current plugin will be highlighted. You join one, or host a new one. Theoretically, a red game title means someone’s plugin is out of date, but due to the screwiness of Lackey, this is usually meaningless (more on that later.) You shouldn’t run into any problems.

7: In-game now… Once everyone is present, they should right click the table and roll for seating order (highest = first.)

8: Right click yourself in the left pane, “vacate seat…” Then click “sit here” in the correct slot. If there aren’t enough seats, the host can right click the same area and “add seat.”

9: Now you should load a deck. If you haven’t made one yet, there are pre-existing starters that aren’t bad. Go to the deck editor tab and “browse” at the top… “Choose” one…

10: “Load entire deck to you.” This will take you back to the main game tab with your deck loaded and shuffled. If you load a deck before changing your seat, your zone visibility will be messed up – reload the deck or right click the Hand tab, “reveal to owner,” etc.

11: It’s helpful before doing anything to define where each player is on the table. You may be viewing it from either side, depending on which seat you’re in, and obviously it’s more natural to view your cards as if they’re in front of you. Each player should have an area at the bottom of the table (from their POV.) You can mark spots with the middle mouse button to help communicate (ESC to clear them):

12: From here, you’re ready to play the game. It’ll seem clunky at first, but Lackey is actually pretty intuitive, and once you know some shortcuts, it’ll be about as fast as playing in person. The main functions are in buttons along the bottom-middle of the screen.

HELPFUL SHORTCUTS:

To turn or unturn a card: Double click it.

To move a card to smoked/toasted pile: Drag it from hand or table to the tab.

To flip a site: Right click, flip. Do this in your hand before playing it.

To select multiple cards in hand or on table: Hold shift.

To draw arrows or markings: Middle mouse button. Esc to clear them.

To declare attacks, interrupts etc: Click chat macros above chat box.



To end your turn: Ctrl+T, or click the arrow by your seat on the left. You can change individual turn phases there as well, but it’s more for aiding your memory than something you have to do.





To reveal zones to others (e.g. for Dirty Tricks): Select the relevant player in the dropdown box just above your hand. Right click the tab you need (e.g. Hand), and “reveal to…” “(person who should see it)…” “all.” When done, same process, but reveal none.



To spawn tokens: Upper right menu, “Tokens” tab. Drag to table.

Various keyboard shortcuts:

These can be configured however you want in the preferences tab, and this is what I recommend to start with:

Using, for instance, ctrl+D instead of clicking “Draw” every time will speed things up immensely. In theory, the plugin should come prepackaged this way, but Lackey is screwy and will often replace them upon loading. The best way I’ve found so far is to get your preferences how you want them, close Lackey, and immediately set lackeyccg\plugins\shadowfist\pluginpreferences.txt to “read only.”

Deck editing:

Fairly intuitive, but I’d like to point out this box here:

Make sure to uncheck “Ignoring Doubles,” as several cards have different versions with the same title. Otherwise, some of them will be hidden.

LACKEYCCG PROBLEMS FAQ:

Space bar keeps unturning my cards while I type!: Unbind space bar in the key bindings preferences. It’ll probably come back at some point if you don’t set the file to read-only (see above.)

Games appear red even though my plugin is up to date: Most likely due to different preference files, which won’t affect anything. I could stop including pluginpreferences.txt in the update files, but it’s helpful for getting new players started and insuring everyone has a somewhat similar interface. I compromised and set it to only download the first time, but it’ll still check and see that it’s changed.

Error when launching LackeyCCG on iOS: Go to the LackeyCCG program and show package contents. Navigate to the MacOS folder. Run the LackeyCCG exec file contained within.