Warfighter Shadow War M29: Multi-National Soldiers
Warfighter M29 adds 56 cards of American, Israeli and German soldiers to Shadow War for $24.99. Whether that is worth anything to you comes down to one rule in the Warfighter system: a player soldier may only equip gear belonging to their own nation, printed in the card’s top left corner.
That makes this a loadout expansion, not a character expansion. Buy it if your Shadow War roster has started to feel like the same three men with different names. Skip it if what you want is new missions, because there are none here.
Nationality is an equipment gate
Warfighter does not give soldiers named special powers. What nationality does is restrict what a soldier can carry, and that restriction is the entire design of this pack.
A squad drawn from one country is simple to outfit and narrow in what it can bring. A mixed squad opens up three equipment pools at once, but each soldier can still only reach into their own, so the planning problem shifts from “what is the best gear” to “who can actually carry it”. Getting a particular weapon into the mission means bringing the soldier whose flag matches it.
That is a quieter mechanic than it sounds in marketing copy, and it is the honest reason to own this. It does not add a system. It widens an existing constraint by a factor of three.
What is actually in the box
DVG’s product page says only “56 Cards” and describes them as “a mix of US, Israeli, and German Soldiers”. The publisher gives no further breakdown.
A retailer listing itemises those 56 as 18 player soldiers, 12 non-player soldiers and 9 squad soldiers — evenly split, six, four and three per nation respectively — plus 4 weapons, 6 skills, 6 actions and 1 location marker. The numbers sum correctly, which is reassuring, but it is a retailer’s word rather than the publisher’s.
Worth being clear about what that means: this is not 56 soldiers. It is 39 soldier cards and 17 support cards. DVG’s own phrasing is loose.
Three nations, then, not a broad international coalition. Anyone expecting British, French or Australian operators is buying the wrong pack.
The base game problem
M29 needs the Warfighter Modern Shadow War core game, and DVG lists it at $69.99 and out of stock.
That is the single biggest issue with recommending this. The expansion itself is in stock and cheap; the box it plugs into is not currently available from the publisher. DVG does say Shadow War is compatible with all other Warfighter games, but the M29 copy points specifically at Shadow War, and nothing on the site says it works with the $79.99 Warfighter Modern core game that is in stock.
Check the secondhand market for the Shadow War box before buying this, not after.
What Shadow War is
Shadow War is a standalone Warfighter box rather than an expansion of Modern, and its distinguishing feature is covert night missions. Everything else follows the Warfighter pattern: you build a squad, equip it, and work through a mission against hostiles the system controls.
The Universal Rulebook confirms it plays solitaire or cooperatively, with the team winning or losing together. DVG publishes no player count and no playing time — missions are measured in game turns, not minutes, and an example mission in the rulebook runs eighteen turns. Any review quoting you a “30-60 minutes, 1-6 players” figure for this is inventing it.
Expansions like M29 carry no rulebook of their own. They rely on the shared Universal Rulebook and Keywords Reference, which is efficient but means a new buyer needs the core box’s documents to make sense of anything.
What works and what does not
Works well:
- Triples the equipment pool your squad can draw from, via a rule that already exists.
- 39 soldier cards for $24.99 is fair value in cards per dollar.
- Cross-compatible with the rest of the Warfighter line, so the roster keeps growing.
- Suits the solitaire play the system is best at.
Does not:
- The Shadow War core game is sold out at the publisher.
- Three nations only, and no missions, locations or scenarios — one location marker is the extent of it.
- DVG publishes no component breakdown, player count or playing time, which makes it hard to know what you are buying.
- Nationality gating is a constraint rather than a new mechanic, so this deepens Warfighter rather than changing it.
Verdict
7/10. It does exactly one thing and does it cleanly: more soldiers, three equipment pools, a harder loadout puzzle. The card count is honest value and it slots into a collection you already own without new rules to learn.
The score is held down by availability and by how little DVG tells you. A roster expansion whose base game you cannot buy is a hard thing to recommend to anyone who is not already playing Shadow War — and for those who are, this is a straightforward yes.
Deja un comentario