Sure the Street Samurai can deal a ton of damage—it’s one of the top damage dealing roles in the game. But the role also has many other tools it puts at your disposal.
So how do you deal damage as the Sammy? By playing Katanas with other weapon cards. A simple combo that’s fun to play. Katanas also stack with each other, so buy lots of them if they show up.
The problem is that your damage is all black and colorless and there are very few obstacles you can defeat with just that type of damage. This color-focus is the Street Samurai’s weakness, but you can do something about it and still stay in your color.
The Sniper Rifle doesn’t care what colors are left on the damage track. It clears the bottom two levels of the damage track regardless of what those symbols are. BAM! Headshot!
You can always buy cards of other colors as well. Shadowrun: Crossfire has many cards that work well in other colors, so don’t be shy about buying them. Of course, that means the other runners will be buying your color of cards, too. The game works well with a little diversity in your deck.
Another main focus of the Street Samurai role is taunting obstacles so they will face you. You do this by playing Monofilament Whip.
As you can see, it’s even better when you play another Weapon card: you move an obstacle to face you and then it deals no damage to you. This is one of the best ways to keep your teammates going, but you have to watch out. You can’t use the Whip on your own obstacles, so next turn you’ll likely have a lot of trouble facing you. . . .
. . . which is the perfect time to use the Remington Roomsweeper!
It does its damage to ALL the obstacles (and bosses!) facing a runner. So whip ’em good, then Roomsweeper them! Note that if you use this combo with a Katana, the extra damage from the Katana applies to each obstacle that you damaged with the Roomsweeper, giving you major damage!
Healing in Shadowrun: Crossfire is scarce. But Black does have one healing card in its color: Covering Fire.
When you play it on your turn, you can heal a runner . . . but not yourself, so be careful when whipping obstacles to you! It also has one of the most powerful assist abilities.
You can only play assists on another runner’s turn to help them out. In the case of Covering Fire, it completely prevents the damage done by one obstacle. If that isn’t enough, it also provides a damage. The assist on Covering Fire is very powerful, so you might have to think twice about using its normal ability. And don’t be upset if someone else buys this card. It’s great for anyone’s deck!
And finally, there’s the rare Aztechnology Striker.
This is the biggest, baddest Weapon there is! So everyone will want it, even though it costs so much. It does a base of and 2 damage. But its real power comes from being able to move a bunch of obstacles to face you and have them all deal no damage. It’s one of the best ways to recover from a losing situation, and it can single-handedly allow your team to successfully abort, if the run has gone really sour.
So there you have it. The arsenal available to the Street Samurai is powerful and simple to use. Have fun blasting and slicing your way through the streets!
-Conan E. Chamberlain
