The Gaming Den

Each player has 3 starting runners, and can have up to 4. You can buy new, better runners if they're available in the store. Each runner gives you 1-3 dice (only the starting face character gives you a single die, and it's worthless except to use to negate a single wound, if you roll a success). You can also buy new equipment for those runners (they need to give you at least 1 die corresponding to the equipment type to equip it), which also give you 1-3 more dice with no equipment limit. You can also buy upgrades that give you a single die (one upgrade is wild, one is not) or the ability to take 1 damage without injury (injury=can't use that runner in missions the next round, with a small chance you can have a character die). The other option is to take missions to get more money. Missions consist of rolling all of your dice 3 times (like an extended test in tabletop, except limited to 2 rerolls), trying to get a total of a certain number of successes for each of 2-4 required tasks (each die has 2 success sides, 1 wound side, and 3 blanks; the same as SR4, and probably 5-6). Hopefully, you eventually gain enough dice, and someone completes the "final mission", which is a goal set out at the start of the game, which requires 4 successes of various types of dice.

The last good thing I will say about the game is that the prices are 4 for 1 die, or 6 for a die that is your choice of color. The exception to that is the upgrade for a single die that is not wild.

The first failure point is stores (including missons) do not restock when somebody buys, and have 1 card per player available each round. If you go last, fuck you for wanting to make a choice. The exception to this is the upgrade store, which is limited by number of players-1 being able to buy, and there are the 3 stacks I named earlier available. 5 cards/stack, and each character (of your 4) can have up to 1 from each of the 3 stacks. If you can do basic math, you'll notice that each player can have up to 12 of the available 15 cards, and also that starts to be a constraint if you're playing with more than 1 player (the game plays 2-4).

This brings us to the second issue: the store decks are very thin. We played with 4 players, and ran out of cards in every single deck. Partly we ran out because the final mission required a lot of dice from 3 of the 5 types, including 2 rare types that have fewer cards available, and none of the starting characters have. There is one runner who has 3 dice in magic, two with 2, and three with 1. The same is true of rigging. There are 4-ish pieces of equipment that increase those dice pools. Again, if you can do basic math, there are just not enough potential dice to go around if you're playing with 4 players (3 dice rolled 3 times is pretty bad odds of getting 4 successes), and that's assuming nobody is trying to take extra resources to limit everyone else.

Surely it all balances out, because everyone gets to go first eventually, right? Haha, fuck you. There is also a space on the board that lets you go first. First player does move if nobody chooses that space, and you're limited enough in actions that sometimes nobody chooses it.

The game does have enough resources that 2 players can probably have an enjoyable game, and 3 can have a cutthroat game of trying to get resources before anyone else. 4 players means 2 players probably get into a situation where they cannot win the game, but they are not out of the game (so they get to sit there until someone else finally wins).

We did find a rule that allows you to win if you're already doing well. If you have at least 5 of each die, you can trade in 2 for 1 success. If you can't get 5 dice because there aren't enough resources to go around, you can't do that. Each success is counted for every roll. So for 2 fewer 1/3 chances (with 1/6 chance of taking a wound, which can be negated with 1 success), you get 1 success. For each roll. There are some reasons not to take this deal, like having consumed a lot of lead, or severe head trauma. For comparison, Shadowrun tabletop lets you trade in 4 dice for 1 success, which is slightly more than the 3 dice that give you a success on average, because you also can't roll a failure if it's an auto-success. I assume this was changed, because nobody at Catalyst understands math, but they know they need to change things that work. I'd say it was probably only playtested with 2 players, but it wasn't playtested. You can also trade in 2 successes of any one type for 1 success of the type you actually want, which mitigates lack of a type slightly, if you have a lot more dice of another type than you need (which you may, but not enough for consistent results).

There are also spaces on the board that let you earn money if you're lucky. You can send one character to roll dice for decking or fighting, and they can win 4 money if they get 2 successes. A single character is probably rolling 2-4 dice, so they're also fairly likely to take a wound and not be able to contribute dice to anything the following round. You can also rent out your characters to other players for half of their purchase value, including gear and upgrades (which is listed, because you can sell off characters after you've bought them, but there's no reason to do that.) The other players can injure your character in this way, but it does allow them to roll their dice to succeed at missions if you really want to help them.

The game isn't even bad enough to be angry about. It's just lack of basic math and basic game design. Increase the number of resources available if there are more players. Give people who don't go first some sort of bonus to make up for the lost opportunities. Don't have buying something from a store affect other players, unless you have a good reason to do that. If there is a single way to win, don't give people uneven chances of success. And don't have situations where people have to continue playing the game when they cannot compete. Although that last part can be un-fucked by just having enough resources to go around.

the boat guy leaves the boat entirely rather than finding a hiding spot where he can keep eyes on the boat. You had one job!