Shadowrun: Crossfire

EvEvanstar2,5

This is a fun idea for a co-op deckbuilder that's too randomly hard for it's own good. I say randomly hard because it's the randomness of card flips that ends you as opposed to it being a nice puzzle to solve. Part of the problem is we tried having one of each character type, and the elf character just doesn't have enough hit points to make it through act 2 of 3 in the opening quest. The idea is this, each player has a deck of cards. Each round, everybody gets an obstacle card that will hurt them at the end of their turn. Then, an event flips that helps or hurts, and then players play cards from their hand in specific orders to destroy any of the obstacles, even the ones in front of other players. It's a fantastic idea. I just don't see any way to win this. There is a system for "leveling up" that seems really odd. You can keep your character between games. You get 1xp for failing, so when you fail 5 times, you can get a little skill that helps you not lose as much. The skills range in xp cost from 5 to 30. I suspect the secret to enjoying the game is to use these skills at the start and just pretend the characters are higher level, but then how do we balance that so the game doesn't become too easy? The characters didn't stand out to me in this game to me. Everyone has access to all the skills, so it's not like a descent level up tree. I don't understand why the leveling is part of the game design, other than maybe Pathfinder Adventure did it and they wanted to compete with them? :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :star: Clever or interesting mechanisms :star: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :star: Multiple plays stay interesting :nostar: Low or mitigatable luck elements :nostar::nostar::nostar::nostar::nostar: Raw enjoyment

PaPahnstar7,2

Oh boy, is this ever tough. Still, it's a tough that I want to play a lot more of, so it's got that going for it. I may house rule the karma, simply because I don't have anywhere near enough time to play enough to build up at the rules-as-written pace.