Shadowrun card game ? Options

[silva]

Updating to say we had our fourth game last weekend, and I won by using a infiltrating deck full of runners weak in combat but good in passing by unnoticed (spells like invisibility and Sleep, chipjacks with skillsofts, and special abilities). My brother played a full-brute force deck composed only of trolls mercenaries and samurai, with assault cannons and heavy armor, and we thought he was the favorite before the game started, but when he saw it, my team of sleek infiltrators was dominating the board.

We played 4 hours straight and didnt want to stop.

This game is awesome.

[Sesix]

I miss this game. It was great for what it was. I use to be a dick I would run this mission "Awakened something" I can't remember, but its special was when ever an awakened obstacle was revealed the mission ended. So, I use to load it with corpse lights, then breeze through it with my own team hehe.

I wish someone would buy the rights and bring it back to life.. I miss it, along with the old MechWarrior TCG.

[silva]

Ive created some cards, inspired by the cancelled expansion that was in line ("Corp Wars", I think) for the game.

What do you guys think? Are they balanced?

http://tinypic.com/r/opp8wl/7

http://tinypic.com/r/nsvw1/7



Obs¹: I took the liberty to use a name from the "Shadowrun Duels" toy-series for the Covert Ops one.

Obs²: and she has a poor man´s recon - you have to pay 2Y for it. I think this is a better thing to do, since putting a normal recon (eg: for free) would deprotagonize the deckers.

[Link]

Your cards look good though I'm out of touch with the game so can't speak to their balance. I recall the coolest cards had some SR flavoured quote which may help jazz up your custom work.

[Still have my box of cards in good nick btw.]

[silva]

Bump

After many plays, my group feels the game has some rough edges that could benefit of house rules, and I would like to know if you guys agree. The mains issues we found are..

1. Interception rule. It makes sense from a 2-players standpoint, but doesnt make sense at all in a 3-4 players game, because if one player realizes a interception on another, the 3rd or 4th player will simply go and get the objective unstopped.

My group is considering eliminate this rule outside of 2-player games, and ruling that in this case, its only possible to go for the objective if it have at least a challenge on it. So, any objectives with no challenges cant be targetted for runs.

2. rep points of certain objectives. We feel the rep points are really unbalanced in relation to the difficult some objectives present. Eg: 35 pts for Fort Knocks (0/+2 for personal challenges) doesnt make sense for us. It doesnt impose a so hard modifier on the challenges, and should reward around 25-30 pts only. This is valid for a lot of other objectives. We think that to fix itm we should re-write the rep pts all over the board.

3. the upkeep on some prime runners seem badly balanced too. Eg: Ghost Who Walks costing 8 plus 2 upkeep makes it one of the worst cards in the game. I think all primes upkeep should be reduced to only 1, except for Lord Torgo, whose stats and abilities are really powerful and justify the hi upkeep.

4. the dice rolling probabilities on some cards seem too low, making these cards not worthy in any situation. Eg: the Brain and the Auto-Doc drones are really expensive and need combinations to work (mainly in the case of the Brain, that needs skillsofts) - it doesnt make sense for the player to roll dice at every time they are used with a probability of 50% (or it would be 66% ?) for them to get trashed.

What you guys think about this?

Thank you.

[Kagetenshi]

1. Interception rule. It makes sense from a 2-players standpoint, but doesnt make sense at all in a 3-4 players game, because if one player realizes a interception on another, the 3rd or 4th player will simply go and get the objective unstopped.

My group is considering eliminate this rule outside of 2-player games, and ruling that in this case, its only possible to go for the objective if it have at least a challenge on it. So, any objectives with no challenges cant be targetted for runs.

Then no one plays any challenges on any objectives, preventing the opposition from even trying. You can't even effectively rule that people must load up challenges if they can, since thy aren't guaranteed to have one at any given time and their hands are hidden.

2. rep points of certain objectives. We feel the rep points are really unbalanced in relation to the difficult some objectives present. Eg: 35 pts for Fort Knocks (0/+2 for personal challenges) doesnt make sense for us. It doesnt impose a so hard modifier on the challenges, and should reward around 25-30 pts only. This is valid for a lot of other objectives. We think that to fix itm we should re-write the rep pts all over the board.

I'd have to look at everything again, but due to the constrained range of rep values this doesn't necessarily seem unbalancing—the objective is made available for all players to aim for.

I'd have to review the cards to comment on the other two proposals.

~J

"Pay X nuyen, kill X elves."

[silva]

Then no one plays any challenges on any objectives, preventing the opposition from even trying. You can't even effectively rule that people must load up challenges if they can, since thy aren't guaranteed to have one at any given time and their hands are hidden.

Unless you rule that the players cannot discard challenges from their hands except when there is no more challenge slots to deploy on objectives. ( this forces the players to deploy their challenges, or get theirs hands unplayable/full of challenges only).

But after all this time, just now I realizes I can be playing the game wrongly. Please Kage, say whats the correct way to play..

1) all players play each turn, sucessively, phase after phase ? (Eg: Turn1: all players play credstick phase, then all players play refresh phase, etc)

or

2) each turn only 1 player plays, one at a time ? (eg: Turn 1: player 1 alone plays credstick phase, players 1 alone plays refresh phase, etc)


(Ive been playing option 1) all this time, and I think it can be wrong )

[Kagetenshi]

Unless you rule that the players cannot discard challenges from their hands except when there is no more challenge slots to deploy on objectives. ( this forces the players to deploy their challenges, or get theirs hands unplayable/full of challenges only).

It also removes the ability for players to discard challenges that aren't appropriate for the current set of objectives unless they fill them up first. I'm not sure I see a good way to resolve this dilemma.

But after all this time, just now I realizes I can be playing the game wrongly. Please Kage, say whats the correct way to play..

1) all players play each turn, sucessively, phase after phase ? (Eg: Turn1: all players play credstick phase, then all players play refresh phase, etc)

or

2) each turn only 1 player plays, one at a time ? (eg: Turn 1: player 1 alone plays credstick phase, players 1 alone plays refresh phase, etc)


(Ive been playing option 1) all this time, and I think it can be wrong )

I'll have to dig up a rulebook to be sure, but I'm pretty sure it's option 2.

~J

[silva]

It also removes the ability for players to discard challenges that aren't appropriate for the current set of objectives unless they fill them up first. I'm not sure I see a good way to resolve this dilemma.

Yes, thats true.

I'll have to dig up a rulebook to be sure, but I'm pretty sure it's option 2.

Ive just re-read my rulebook and, wihle it doesnt says it explicitly, it says at various points things like "that player´s turn", which means its really option 2 (and Ive been playing it wrong all this time xD ).

And Kage, whats your opinion on the Rapier bikes ? (trash to go directly on a run or vice-versa). This ability is really good (allowing you to send runners after some challenges are already defeated, or allowing you to retreat from runs), but the fact that it must be discarded once used makes it a hard choice for me. (if we could at least make a test for it not being discarded - maybe adding piloting to increasing success chance - I could see the point, but right now I cant).

[Kagetenshi]

I wouldn't use that as its primary ability, but for 2¥ to get (A1) and that option I don't think it's awful. Whether I'd get around to putting it into a deck if I was working from a wide selection of cards, I'm not sure.

~J

[silva]

How do you guys play/used to play the game? I mean, do you pre-build decks and distribute for the player in the beginning of the game, or each player have his own deck, etc?

My group found the best way is to pre-build various thematic decks, and each player picks one before play begins. Right now we have 7 decks, each build with 70 cards (but trimmed down to 60 by the player who picks it, beforeplay begins)..

1 pure combat-themed
1 pure sleazing-themed
1 combat-sleazing mix/themed
1 shaman-themed
1 rigger-themed
1 gangers-themed
1 lone star-themed

The decks are thematically build even to the challenges level, so for Eg: a Lone Star deck will be mostly composed of "K9 Units" and "Lone Star patrols", "Barney phyphes", etc. while a Rigger deck will have a lot of "Security Drones" and "Sentry guns" and vehicle challenges. But we dont put ALL challenges thematic, just most of it, otherwise it would get too static/predictable (so even a Rigger deck will have its parcel of Manticores and Gargoyles; besides it the player can customize whathe wants when trimming the deck down from 70 to 60 cards).

So, how do you guys play ?

[silva]

Hey folks, another cards that Ive just made for the Corp War unofficial expansion..

http://i54.tinypic.com/2mpfmzm.jpg

http://i56.tinypic.com/k2fh2d.jpg

Notice that I took the liberty to change the text from the leaked expansion list a bit, for sake of simplicity. The original MP Laser involved tracking "ammo tokens", which I found too fiddly for my tastes and really not in spirit of the game. But thats a simple matter of changing the texts on the card. The really difficult part was adjusting the layout and finding a good picture (this one is from the back of New Seattle book for SR 3e).

My aim is to make at least 3 new cards of each category - runners, challenges, objectives, contacts, locations, specials - until next week. And then find copyhouse nearby and get everything nicely printed and ready to play.