Encounters: Shadowrun…Order Now!
And here’s the last development post for Encounters: Shadowrun! Why, because it’s now available for order! We always encourage our players to support their local game store–and of course we’ll have piles of copies at Gen Con–but if you won’t be making that convention and don’t have a local game store, feel free to order now!
As for this last development blog, we’ll talk about two things.
First, is the keyword Retain. Now in Encounters: Bravest Warriors, when you use an Item that card automatically discards. For shadowrunners, though (which take the place of Items in this game), you have the option to Retain. Meaning after using a shadowrunner–say like Rao Fang below–you can decide if you want to pay the appropriate Nuyen cost to keep him, or let him go. This creates some great tactics as you have to decide if your shadowrunner is worth spending your hard fought Nuyen on, or whether you’ll let it got and hopefully grab an even better shadowrunner next turn.
Some shadowrunners, however, are just too good and won’t stay with anyone as they know they command the highest price. For example, Arctos (along with Top Shelf and Contrary Mary) have the red Nuyen symbol, which means they cannot Retain. So you have to be very careful about when you decide to use them.
Last but certainly not least, we have the District Cards. Heading into this re-design of the Encounters: Bravest Warriors game for Shadowrun, I knew I had to bring the city of Seattle to life. And not just a single flavor, but really showcase the different elements that come to life as you move throughout the unique districts of the Seattle Sprawl.
We actually went through half a dozen iterations of how to do it in a way that didn’t distrust the game play too much, still brought in the flavor we wanted, while ultimately providing fun game challenges and tactics.
In the game there are five Seattle District cards: The Ork Underground, Dante’s Inferno, Redmond Barrens, Council Island, and Renraku Archology. (They are the size of three cards side-by-side, with two vertical creases so you can bend them easily and stand them up in the playing area like miniature GM screens.)
You shuffle them at the start of the game to create the “front facing” district and then at the start of every runner’s turn, that District’s rules’ apply.
For the Redmond Barrens, above, the rule is: “Unless the Active Player has both Dwarf and Elf Shadowrunners active, the player rolls one less die at the start of their run.” There’s more to the rule (obviously from that text on the card) but it’s just additional clarifications of how the rule applies through various aspects of the game.
So how do you move districts? After a run, if any Encounters include the Seattle Space Needle icon (such as the Ares Rigger Team Encounter below), then you rotate a District at the end of your run. If there are more than one, then you rotate more than one.
However, you can also use your shadowrunners to avoid a districts’ rules by flipping a shadowrunner face down for a turn. Or, you can even discard a shadowrunner completely to pick which Distrcit you’ll face. This could both help you for the cards you have as well as be a way to potentially mess up another player if you think the rule will hurt that player and the District will make it to him before changing.
So many great little twists that provide just enough tactics to make this fun-and-fast push-your-luck dice game have great re-playbility. All while letting you dip your toe into the brilliant Sixth World of Shadowrun.
Don’t forget, if you’re not going to Gen Con or don’t have a local game store, you can order it right now!
Finally, on that link above you can find the complete rules PDF so you can dig in and see all the details to decide if this game is for you. We’ve also got a PDF of tactics and clarifications to increase your fun!
Enjoy!
Randall
