Personally I was quite looking forward to Bullet of Fate for a long while, I’ve been a long time shadowverse fan, having played the digital game many years ago, but I never got to experience the digital release of as it was called ‘Storm over Rivayle’. Cowboy themed card battling with a shadowverse twist? Sign me up.
However, when my pre-order finally arrived and I was able to start splitting packs, I have to admit I was less than impressed with what this set had to offer.
The Cowboy set with no cowboys
Ok, well that’s not quite exactly true, there are *some* cowboys, but the thing that struck me while opening Bullet of Fate packs is just how few cards there are that belong to the ‘wasteland’ archetype, the supposedly western inspired cards, let alone *actually* feel like they are inspired by cowboy fiction. It’s easily 50/50, and it’s more realistic you actually receive much less in a pack of the cards the set was marketed around. The set was introduced on the Evolve website with the tagline ‘best be quick on the draw’, there’s only about 10 characters in the whole set who actually have guns! And two of those are modern rifles not weapons that would make sense in the hands of a cowboy. For a set called bullet of fate, there sure aren’t that many bullets flying here.
The other ‘wasteland’ cards are armed with a variety of medieval style swords, machetes and lances of dubious origin and in one case a crossbow. I don’t suppose there’s anything that could have stopped a cowboy from using a crossbow but it’s hardly synonymous with the genre. If the designers had chosen to eschew guns altogether and go with an uniform alternative such as lassos I would have liked it a lot more, it’s not the lack of guns that puts me off, it’s the lack of coherency.
The Cards
There are at least a few fairly useful cards to be found in Bullet of Fate, ‘Spice Shower’ is an decent card for decks that need a bit of minimal draw power, and there seems to be a lot of good support for dragoncraft with cards like Draconic call. There’s definitely some value to be had here for deck builders, as long as you don’t care too much about the set’s unique mechanics. Unfortunately those who want to make a deck based around ‘Wasteland’ cards, will find themselves in a similar position to people who wanted to do the same with ‘Machina’ in Verdant Steel. There’s just such a limited selection on offer to use that it’s almost impossible to get any degree of flexibility in a deck trying to use the ‘wasteland’ archetype. You pretty much have to use everything your respective craft and the neutral cards have to offer, and even then you’ll probably need a bit of filler from non ‘wasteland’ archetypes. This doesn’t even take into account that a lot of the legendaries in the set, while very cool are near useless, very situational or straight up don’t even have effects until evolved in the case of Bunny and Baron.
The card art is not exactly on par with some of the better shadowverse sets either, Alterchaotica, Cosmic Mythos and Duet of Dawn and Dusk all had a far more consistently high standard of card art than Bullet of Fate seems to. There also seem to be a lot more very scantily clad girls in weird positions in the card art of this set, which shadowverse has always had a few of but bullet of fate has pushed the envelope fully into ‘uncomfortable’ territory as far as i’m concerned.
However there are certainly a few nice looking cards for those who want them. A personal favorite of mine is ‘Maiser, Neighbourhood Hero’, who is pretty much everything I wanted in a shadowverse cowboy card, and I also enjoyed Bunny and Baron, Vincent the Peacekeeper, Georgius and Fulminating Berserker.
The general pack presentation is pretty nice, with good pack design and a very nice booster box, both of which however display the near nonexistent cowboy theming front and centre. Still, they look nice, and feature some of the best card art from the set.
In Conclusion
I can’t exactly say I was pleased with Bullet of Fate, it promised a theme that it barely delivered, and didn’t really have the usefulness to back it up either. There’s something here for those who wish to look for it, but I find myself wondering personally if i’d have had a better time just ordering more Alterchaotica or Dawn and Dusk.
Rating out of 100: 48
Artwork: 3/5
Complexity: 2/5
Replayability: 2/5
Player interaction: 2/5
Component quality: 3/5
Pros:
Some useful cards for those who want to look for them,
Good set presentation,
A few really nice looking cards.
Cons:
Low art quality compared to previous sets,
The main archetype is hard to build around,
There’s hardly any cowboys in the cowboy themed set!
