The shield will reduce the damage taken by 50% so it can really impact the outcome of the fight.
This enables you to fully test how the game will play with many players connected.
When you receive your components through the post just snap the spin board and a spinner arrow together and voila! Suppose that the map is divided into 100 squares and the players are evenly distributed, this will enable the server to make 100 times less comparisons compared to if it had to compare it to everone on the map.