Shadowrun Crossfire Prime Runner Edition

I just spent PAX West weekend running demos of this game and Dragonfire. After 20-30 games in one weekend, it was still fun and didn't get to feeling samey. I was able to repeatedly get groups of new players(even those completely unfamiliar with Shadowrun or deck builders) to learn the game within 10 minutes. It's a deck builder set in the Shadowrun universe. There is a good campaign mechanic to build up your character to go after harder mission.

I am a game designer and I love games with a good mix of tactics and luck. I find this to be a very well designed set of rules, it feels very cyberpunk/blade runner, quick to set up and play with high replayability. You can level up your character from so to session, great in 3-4 players, good as solo. This game is an incredible band for your bucks.

Not for the casual gamer. this is a RPG style boardgame which means that it can take several sessions to play. This also means that the rules can be a little complicated and take a bit to learn.

Since this game is just a reprint of Shadowrun Crossfire game that was released a few years ago, I posted my experience with that game Player Background: My taste in solo board/card games is pretty picky. If I cant exercise my mind with tough decisions and do it within 60 minutes. I get bored quick. Board games where you just move a mini and then roll to attack for a hit OR a miss is just plain dumb luck and arent a challenge. I found fan favorites like Thunderstone and Pathfinder to be absolutely horrible games. I pretty much gave up all hope of enjoying a solo game. Then I got my hands on ShadowRun. Instead of going over the rules (go watch some videos instead), I will go over what I think were the game’s high points and low points of the game. Pros: Fast Startup/Teardown : While using stickers on character sheets has been very controversial, it turned out to be very beneficial. All the character progression is found on the player card with the purchased skill stickers already attached when you setup your game. Most other games progression system rely on playing a short campaign and then resetting all your skills after the campaign ends, or keeping all your found items/skills in a neat baggy organized per character (and thus increasing setup time). Shadow Run had zero additional time setup, no matter what level my guys are at. To setup a game takes no more than 5 minutes. All missions start from anew and all character progression skills are attached to the character card. In addition each class will be using the same basic cards every game (unless you have a skill that states otherwise). Player Progression- ShadowRun characters can keep earning karma (xp) well past their 30th mission. Allowing them to buy skills that change the fundamentals of how the game is played. This allowed for some very interesting team combos and variations. While the game only supports 4 characters at once, I am currently switching between 6. Because each one develops their own specialty. Some of the ways you can upgrade your characters are truly amazing and fun to experiment with, and is almost a game in of itself. Some players will try to focus on a race’s strength, while others will try to strengthen their weaknesses. This can allow players to build a team based on the mission requirements. Excitement- This game is tough. And the toughness at times can be very random (more on this later). There were times where I knew I was going to die within the next round. Sure enough I pull 1 card. Not a powerful card, but a useful card. That 1 card can let me other character attack out of turn, by doing so it allows me to discard a card and….*gasp* play an additional card. Oh snap! I drew a heal card. That means I won’t lose this turn and I just dished out a bunch of damage?!! The ability to pull of combos and chain attacks felt so good! There were a good amount of times where I had to pray for a miracle to win. And in the end I pulled a card that lead to a chain reaction of cards being played that I burned my brain in the process calculating the damage and contemplating the rules. And I asked myself “wait…did I just win?”. It was so gratifying. I think I never felt so good after playing a game solo. No Dice- Not that I am not a fan of dice. But I am not a fan of how DICE in games is often used to judge for a fail/succeed. This game falls more in line of using what you have in a certain situation, in the most efficient way possible. There are plenty of randomness going on with event and enemy cards being drawn. To an extreme point where your plans will get ruined, by the next turn. But still each choice matters. Card Art- Gorgeous and creative. Even though it uses art from different artist, all the art on the cards looks amazing. Meh? Classless roles- At first this was a huge turn off for me. There are 4 roles(colors) in the game. At any time any of the roles can buy cards that arent of their color. Races don’t favor any roles. Basically roles only dictate what your starting hand will be. In addition each class doesn’t really grant you any bonuses or entices you to stay true to the class. Buying a hacking program and a magic spell for my warrior kind of sucks out the theme of the game. The only plus side is that I found you can build some very interesting characters and combinations because there is no restriction. Missions- With the expansion and the online missions, you are looking at about 10 missions. I played the Extraction mission and I LOVED it. Basically you got an unstoppable wave of baddies coming after your client round after round. Its your job to keep him alive, so basically you are juggling between killing, taking damage, or letting your client take the damage. It drew me in so much, and the final scene of the game is ALWAYS a nail bitter. Unfortunately, to me, the rest of the missions all play the same. Defeat 3 waves of baddies, 1 at a time. Cons Draw after a turn- This may sound like a weird complaint. But you only draw or purchase cards after your turn. I found this pretty annoying because you will know how things will play out exactly for the next round. Meaning you can see death coming a mile away. And unless you draw or buy a card that lets you play out of turn, NOTHING will change. Crazy Difficulty Swing- This is kind of a big complaint among fans. Each round if you don’t completely kill off all the enemies, you will draw an additional event card. 90% of these cards are just straight bad. And if these cards stack up then negative effects increase DRAMATICALLY!! This game will kick you when you are down. This is done to such an extreme, that I found myself removing about 3 cards from the game. The more enemies and the lower the health, the game will find a way to make you pay for that, and punish you for failing. Theme- To me the ShadowRun world is very interesting. Elves with machineguns, capitalistic greedy mega corps run by dragons, hacker vampires, the possibilities go on and on. I would love to see more video games take advantage of the Shadow Run world. That being said the game doesn’t really suck you in that much. I will admit the baddies are very thematic in their behavior and skills, but overall at times it feels you are just throwing colored cards at them. Conclusion: All in all its an amazing game. I rarely had so much fun or addiction to playing a game solo. It received great reviews by a majority of the people who played it. I just hope the developers release a creative expansion that adds more theme into the game.

There is clearly a known issue with the manufacturing of this product - this is the fault of Catalyst Game Labs, not the sellers here on Amazon, the product in it's current condition is totally borked. Just check any forum and the reviews on here to verify that several key components are just flat out missing (all mission cards, like every single one of them completely missing, major character cards, and HP tracker tokens) not included with the product you are about to spend your money on here. I'm sure it's a fun game designed by talented people, but I wouldn't know as it is literally unplayable in the condition the company who makes this product deliver it to you in due to complete failure in basic quality control and poor manufacturing. Customer service will respond if you're prepared to wait a few weeks for any kind of response, best of luck getting all the missing pieces of the product you paid for in full another month after you receive it though. Normally I could care less about leaving a review for anything and it's not like this thing is even that expensive to be a total waste of money, but people deserve to know when a company's product is trash and I feel compelled to do so here. TL;DR: Would not recommend any packaged products from this company. There's not even a courtesy post with notice of a known issue like this to their community - nothing on their site or social channels either. Appears as though they cut a lot of corners with this product. Stick with PDFs of their books I guess to be safe instead, their packaged goods are not worth the hassle.