#shadowruncrossfire

Last year the deck-builder Shadowrun: Crossfire exploded on the scene to a slew of fantastic reviews, critical acclaim, and most importantly, lots of savage tabletop action. 

We’ve gotten a ton of questions on this, and the answer is finally here. Yes, there is an expansion that’s about to head to print (have to wait another month or so before we’ll be able to provide solid details on release month, price and so on). 

You’re tougher. Meaner. Better equipped. You’ve taken on a drekload of challenges the Sixth World has thrown at you, and you’ve survived. Barely, sometimes, but that’s enough. You’re walking with a certain confidence, maybe even a little strut. You’re ready for the next thing the streets are going to throw at you.

At least, you think you are. Now you’re going to find out.

High Caliber Ops is a massive expansion for the award-winning Shadowrun: Crossfire deck-building game. How massive? How does two new character roles, more than a dozen new Black Market cards, fifty new obstacles, and a large bundle of new Karma upgrades sound? On top of that, we’ve got five brand-new missions, and a set of basic cards with new art. Taken together, you have the tools for high-powered, high-risk, high-reward shadowruns. Add High Caliber Ops to your Crossfire game to see just how much danger you can take on!

Another week, another PDF release (this time the full rules of the game!), and another obstacle!

19 days until Gen Con…31 days until a Street Date. It's almost here!

We've been posting a lot of cool stuff surrounding Shadowrun: Crossfire. Including the fact that the Street Date has been announced and if you don't have a local game store, you can order it directly from us now.

However, despite all the fun news, there may be some of you that are relatively new to hearing about Crossfire and would like some more details. For well over a year we've been doling out blogs on shadowruntabletop.com discussing all aspects of Crossfire. 

I thought I'd provide the titles and links to those blogs here as an easy way for people to review everything, or just pick and choose what they're interested in. Starting oldest and flowing to newest at the bottom…enjoy!

Crossfire: Bringing deck-building to the Shadowrun Universe

Shadowrun: Crossfire Overview

Crossfire: Crossing Genres

Caught up in the Crossfire: An interview with Gregory Marques

Crossfire: Cooperating on a Co-op

Crossfire: Buying to Hand

Crossfire: What’s Going to Work? Teamwork!

Crossfire: The Black Market

Crossfire: Damage Tracks

Crossfire: Riding Your Luck until it Explodes: Pacing and Tension

Crossfire: Developing the Metatypes

Crossfire: Taking It To The Next Level

Crossfire: Taking Out The Trash

Crossfire: Why I like to play the Street Samurai: Simplicity with Versatility

Crossfire: Not in the Face!

Crossfire: Decking With Style

Crossfire: Mage in the House

I've posted a fair bit about Shadowrun: Crossfire over the last few months, showing off this great deck-building game that's almost available.

We just ran a great Virtual Run that ultimately lead to a winner that'll get a free copy of the game and unlocked the full Demo Kit files so you can be print them out and be playing right now!

But what IS Shadowrun: Crossfire, for those new here? It's a cooperative-deckbuilding game that moves our abilities to tell fantastic, brutal stories of Shadowrun into a whole new and exciting medium.

Here's a quick rundown of the game play (as found on the back of the Decker Role Card).

Additionally, you can read the full back cover of the box as well as find an excellent review of the game to get more details on Crossfire.

I've been playing the game myself, of course. And I've decided Indentured Otaku is one of my top 5 favorite Obstacles, as it captures the essence of Shadowrun so well, IMO.

First, game-mechanic wise, it's a brutal card with that starting 5 in there. Also, the dual Decker icons, combined with the 2 damage and relatively low payout on the nuyen…just a nice, tough card but you don't get much out of it.

Second, the Otaku element is something so very Shadowrun. Combined with the wonderful, haunted imagery on the card…again, for me, just captures that "trying to survive despite a soulless world endlessly kicking me down" that is why Shadowrun is alive and kicking better than ever 25 years later.

Enjoy the demo of Crossfire…we'll be putting it up for pre-sale and announcing a Street Date very soon!

For those that haven't heard of it yet, Shadowrun: Crossfire is our deck-building game based in the Shadowrun universe.

There's a lot of great deck building games out there; I've played just about every one of them. But for Crossfire, the two things that really set it apart are its cooperative nature and its campaign play.

While I really enjoy deck-building games, I generally dislike games where you're just playing by yourself with very little player interaction. Crossfire is one of the first truly cooperative deck-building games, where the payers must work together or risk losing the game. There are absolutely times when players have to step in front of that bullet or blade or ball of fire to keep a fellow runner from going down and forcing an abort.

The second is the campaign play. Depending upon how players succeed in a given Mission, they'll earn various amounts of Karma. Then after each Mission that Karma can be spent to purchase upgrades via stickers that are applied to the four slots on every Character Card. As you can see from the photo of the stickers below, the first sheet has a lot of nice low-level upgrades, where the sheet above it will require a number of games to grab even one of them. But the rewards will earn you a dangerous edge during any mission.

And it's not just a single character you can progress across time in this fashion. There are 10 Character Cards in the game, and the Character Expansion Pack 1 will release simultaneously with the base game, including 20 more Character Cards. You can then play multiple characters, depending upon your mood and what you'd like to play during a given mission. You could start out with an Elf Mage and across several games focus on those type of sticker upgrades. Then decide you want to try a Troll Decker next time, just to see if you can make it work. Or a Dwarf Street Samurai. And so on. The mean sprawl streets of Crossfire can accommodate all your enthusiasm and imagination as you explore not just the first game, but the hundredth game, always growing and expanding your characters in ways utterly unique to you.

If you're attending the Origins Game Fair, come and play in a demo and win a free, advanced copy of the game!

As mentioned in the first proofs post, sharing some more photos of the printer proofs for Shadowrun: Crossfire.

There are so any photos to share, I'm breaking this up into multiple posts across several days.

I've mentioned this before, but for those not aware of it, when a game/book is printed, the printer will generate digital proofs and physical proofs for the publisher to sign off on. There's several reasons for that (I touch on some of those below), but ultimately it's about protecting the printer as a sign off by the publisher means they saw everything "as is" and "signed off" so errors in the final item are on the publisher not the printer.

First the digital proofs are approved, then physical proofs are generated and shipped to the publisher to review. In the case of books, if you work with a printer a lot and you get say 3 to 5 projects under your belt together and everything works well, then you can move to just approvals on digital proofs and wave the physical proofs stage (which saves on money and time). But for anything with lots of components and cards, it's unwise to skip the physical stage.

The reason there is a physical stage is multi-faceted. First and most importantly, colors can change from the screen to printed materials. Doesn't matter how good the software, screen and eyes are…there can be shifts. So you need to verify the colors all turned out correctly. Second, when you're in the depths of working on something, especially something really complex like Crossfire with so many elements, it's all too easy to not be able to see the trees from the forest. You've seen it all so many times that your brain fills in the little niggles that may be there so that you don't notice. Physical proofs allow you to have had several weeks away and you come back with a complete set of fresh eyes and you can verify that absolutely everything is as it should be. (Doesn't mean everything is caught…but it helps to ensure higher fidelity to that goal of "100% correct.")

With all of that said, here's the first batch of photos for the printer proofs of Shadowrun: Crossfire (all of it was approved so the game is printing away for its full production run; and no, no release date we can yet release beyond "late Summer" until we get closer to it all getting on a ship).

[Note that the photos encompass 3 items: the Crossfire core box, the Demo Box (which will be given to stores that order sufficient quantities, as well at conventions we attend) and the Character Expansion Pack 1.]