I've been a fan of Shadowrun for a long time (in fact I still have the first edition rule book in my box 'o RPGness). I saw the figures at a store this weekend and decided to pick up The Street Deacon for display purposes. The owner asked me if I played and I said no, I'm just a fan of SR and was going to put the figure on display. He said he would give me a 40% discount if I bought all six figures. I declined and he gave me a 20% discount on the single figure.
I browsed through the rulebook anyway, and it seems the whole concept of the game does not fit into the Shadowrun world. What fun is it to have a few figures attack each other? The idea of having swappable equipment is cool, but then just using that equipment to shoot at another Shadowrunner seems, well, not fun. If the theme was that of gladiatorial battle, where you fight in an arena against other Gladiators then it would be cool. It just doesn't work for SR.
Perhaps it doesn't matter in the end, though. The Shadowrun CCG actually fit the theme very well, but that didn't do well (although a friend and I still play every once in a while). I guess once an RPG always ONLY an RPG.

On the other hand you could view it as a very intelligent ploy to get the tens of thousands of existing Mageknight and Heroclix players - who seem to like the art of matching their figures up in endless clicky battles - to take a step towards a specific RPG universe, the SR one, by investing in individual characters that actually draw upon the setting to some extent.

What I'm trying to say is that the RPG community wasn't the main target for the game in the first place.

That being said I'd like to mention that SR: Duels is designed to simulate combat with specific goals rather than just last-man standing gladiatorial fighting and as such doesn't really represent much of a difference between a clash between opposed characters during a standard SR RPG run.

I agree with your point, and the initial release of characters do indeed give a nice example of the flavor found in the SR universe. Hopefully it will get more people interested in SR.
On the surface the game seems rather simplistic (and, as I said, gladiatorial) so I did some more looking into and and maybe I was too hasty. With the addition of skill checks and scenarios the game opens up a bit. Looks like some possibilities worth investigating further.

As you've realized, scenarios are the option of choice. Right now the stuff is new and there aren't a lot of options, but I think it has potential, especially if WizKids maybe made a few "stock" uninteresting-type characters that were significantly cheaper than the others (guards!); not sure if that idea would work out very well, but certainly even with just runners you can make a lot of fun scenarios.


~J

I got to play a demo of this at Comic-con this year. Seemed a lot of fun (although the demoer seemed like it he didn't quite know what he was doing.... but he might have been trying to simplify it even more.)

Yes, Gladatorial does describe it, and I think that would be another Idea for WizKids to look at. Have some classic archtypes do battle an an arena with prizes and such...

Anyway, Duels just kinda focuses on the Combat. But the main game focuses on everything else... I mean, come on... how many of us have house rules that speed up combat anyway.

Maybe if Duels picks up a little, they could do an actual "Gladiator" game.
Although it would be a little like Soul Cailbur with it's mixing of weapons and styles.