Combining Expansions: Shadows & Spirits

Shadow Duel on its own is already a weird little pressure cooker: two Sensei, two Disciples each, and a hidden Ninja on every side.

Once you start flipping on expansions, things get even spicier. Turn on Spirit’s Breath and suddenly there is an Air Elemental in the center. Turn on Hidden Forms and the card pool now includes special dual movement Sensei cards. Add Wind move cards from Spirit’s Breath and you have turns where a single card can move three different pieces in sequence.

To keep all of that understandable, we had to lock in a simple rule about what the Ninja is, mechanically: The Ninja is a non-Sensei player piece.

It is not neutral, and it is not the Sensei. Any rule that talks about “your pieces” or “non-Sensei pieces” includes the Ninja, unless that rule clearly says otherwise.

Everything below follows from that one decision.

Three kinds of pieces

Under the hood, most combined rules only care about three broad categories:

  • Sensei – your leader and win condition

  • Non-Sensei player pieces – Disciples (and now Ninjas) that belong to a side

  • Neutral pieces – things like the Air Elemental that do not belong to either player

The Ninja lives in the middle group. It has its own stealth and guess-capture rules, but whenever something needs to interact with “any of your pieces that are not the Sensei,” the Ninja is in that group automatically.

That is what lets Shadow Duel stack cleanly with Spirit’s Breath and the Sensei move cards.

Shadow Duel + Spirit’s Breath: Ninjas and the Air Elemental

With Spirit’s Breath turned on, the Air Elemental starts on the center square and can be moved by either player using compatible movement cards.

Its basic rules:

  • It is neutral and cannot be captured

  • No piece can move onto its square

  • It cannot move onto a Sensei

  • When it moves onto a player piece, it swaps with that piece instead of capturing

Once Ninjas exist, that swap rule extends naturally:

  • If the Air Elemental moves onto a Disciple, they swap

  • If it moves onto a Ninja, they also swap

  • When the Elemental swaps with a Ninja, the Ninja is revealed

So in a Shadow Duel with Spirit’s Breath enabled:

  • Pushing the Elemental through “quiet” squares becomes a way to test for Ninjas. If a swap happens and a Ninja appears, you have just turned a guess into certainty.

  • Misplaying the Elemental can drag your own hidden Ninja into a terrible square and leave it exposed for a turn.

  • Deliberate swaps let you pull an enemy Ninja out of hiding at the cost of giving them a known position again.

Because the Ninja is treated exactly like any other non-Sensei player piece here, the combined mode does not need special sub-rules like “the Elemental ignores Ninjas.” If you already know how Spirit’s Breath interacts with Disciples, you basically know how it interacts with Ninjas too. The only extra step is that a swapped Ninja becomes visible.

Shadow Duel + dual movement Sensei cards

The Hidden Forms card set includes special dual movement Sensei cards. Each of these has two grids printed on it:

  • A bottom grid that only the Sensei can use

  • A top grid that every non-Sensei piece uses

In Shadow Duel with Hidden Forms active, the turn works like this when you play one of those cards:

  1. You choose which piece to move first with the card.

  2. If that piece is your Sensei, you use the bottom grid.

  3. If that piece is a Disciple, you use the top grid.

Then, after that visible move, Shadow Duel’s Ninja rule kicks in:

After you use a move card with another piece, you may move your Ninja using the same card.

When you take that optional Ninja move, the Ninja always uses the top grid on the card, no matter what you just did with the first piece.

So a dual movement turn can look like:

  • You move your Sensei using the bottom grid,
    then you move your Ninja using the top grid.

Or:

  • You move a Disciple using the top grid,
    then you move your Ninja using that same top grid.

There is no separate Ninja exception baked into the card itself. The card logic only needs to answer one question for the first move: “Is this the Sensei?” If yes, use the bottom pattern. If no, use the top pattern. The Ninja’s follow-up move is always top-grid-only.

On the board, that keeps things straightforward:

  • The Sensei keeps a distinct movement identity on those dual cards.

  • Disciples and Ninjas both use the top grid when they move with them.

  • The Ninja’s extra move is simple to remember: optional, second, and always using the top pattern, regardless of what the Sensei just did.

Again, the “non-Sensei player piece” idea is doing the work. The Sensei is special; everything else you own, including the Ninja, lives on the top-grid side of those cards.

Shadow Duel + Wind move cards: actually moving three pieces

Wind move cards are the other dual-grid cards that matter here, and they work differently from the Hidden Forms Sensei cards.

A Wind move card has:

  • A top grid used to move one of your pieces

  • A bottom grid used to move the Air Elemental

The basic Spirit’s Breath rule is:

  1. First, you must move one of your pieces using the top grid.

  2. Then, if possible, you move the Air Elemental using one of the moves on the bottom grid.

Hidden Blades adds the Ninja rule on top of that:

After you use a move card with another piece, you may move your Ninja using the same card.

Put those together in a Shadow Duel with Spirit’s Breath and you get a real three-piece sequence from a single Wind card:

  1. Move a visible piece with the top grid

  2. Optionally move your Ninja with that same top-grid pattern

  3. Then you must move the Air Elemental using the bottom grid

If all three moves are legal, one card can affect three different objects in order: a Sensei or Disciple, a Ninja, and the Elemental.

That has some interesting consequences:

  • A “simple” Wind card can suddenly swing a whole position: you step a Disciple into a better square, slide a Ninja into a new hidden lane, then shove the Elemental into a spot that disrupts your opponent’s next turn.

  • Misplaying that sequence can backfire; you might walk a Disciple forward, accidentally park your Ninja somewhere that will be easy to punish once it reveals, and then push the Elemental to a square that helps your opponent more than it helps you.

  • Any time you see a Wind card in your hand during a Shadow Duel, it is worth pausing and asking what all three parts of that move might do, not just the visible piece you were planning to push.

This is the one place where “move three things in a turn” is very real, and it only works cleanly because the Ninja is treated as one more non-Sensei piece for the top grid.

Why this all feels like one system

When Shadow Duel, Spirit’s Breath, Sensei move cards, and Wind cards are all enabled, the board can look pretty wild. There are Ninjas in the dark, an Elemental in the middle, a Sensei with special movement on some cards, and Wind cards that can move three objects at once.

The reason it holds together is that the underlying categories stay simple:

  • The Sensei has its own rules.

  • The Ninja is a non-Sensei player piece, like the Disciples, so any rule that affects “your pieces” applies to it unless stated otherwise.

  • The Air Elemental is neutral and always interacts the same way with any non-Sensei piece it touches.

Once that mental model is in place, stacking expansions stops feeling like bolt-ons and starts feeling like different ways to twist the same shared system.

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