The Black Market deck is the heart of Shadowrun: Crossfire. It’s where you and your fellow runners pick out the tools you’ll need to get the job done. And you won’t be disappointed. Our design philosophy for the Black Market cards was that every one of them should be special. We cut anything that felt like filler and left it to rot in an alley.
You’ll run into some tough decisions when deciding what to buy from the Market. The first one is: do you buy for the long-term, or do you buy for the situation in front of you right now, which is rapidly going downhill? When you buy a card, it goes directly into your hand where you can use it the following turn, so it’s easy to buy tactically based on short-term plans. But if you don’t buy strategically to improve your deck, you’ll curse yourself later on.
The second dilemma is related to the four colors of cards, each of which is best at doing a single kind of damage. If you want to handle tough obstacles on your own, you’ll need the ability to do whatever type of damage is required. However, several Black Market cards reward you in subtle ways for focusing on one color. For example, Deathtouch does more damage when you have more spells in your deck, and Pair Programming requires you to discard another Hacking card to get its most powerful effect.
Finally, there’s the constant question of whether to spend your money now—since time is short and things are looking pretty bad—or save up for something big. The Black Market deck has four real doozies that each cost 9 nuyen, and they’re all game-changers. Odds are, one of them is going to be available . . . do you go for it?
Either way, my contacts in the Market assure me that your satisfaction is guaranteed.
—Sean McCarthy
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