When comparing Freedom - The Underground Railroad vs Shadowrun: Crossfire, the Slant community recommends Shadowrun: Crossfire for most people. In the question“What are the best co-op board games?” Shadowrun: Crossfire is ranked 7th while Freedom - The Underground Railroad is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Shadowrun: Crossfire is:
Crossfire is _very_ cooperative, it’s basically impossible to go solo and win only by fighting your own threats; everyone must rely on each other because otherwise the game is lost. There’s an absolute ton of planning, micromanaging, and socializing as players try to beat the looming threats in front of themselves and each other.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Implements historical education into the gameplay well
The game can be used as a great educational tool and it features plenty of historical moments, locations, and iconic people. Some games can be a bit preachy when they have historical aspects, luckily Freedom finds the right balance, making for a fun game that has plenty of historical components.
Pro Nice aesthetics
The looks of Freedom enhance the gameplay experience a lot. The gameboard is a huge, vintage-looking map of the United States with a newspaper look on the left side where cards and tokens are placed. The event cards feature black and white photos of historical characters, events, and places, as well as some history facts.
Pro Stacks well
Freedom has specific rules and setups for each player count, so it’s going to be a balanced, albeit a little different game for any number of players in the 1 to 4 player amplitude.
Pro Good quality components
The pieces should hold up to multiple plays and they can easily be stored in the game’s box. The components don’t feel cheap. The gameboard itself is huge, quite thick, and foldable, the cubes representing slaves are wooden, all the tokens are made of thick cardboard, and the cards are made of nice and durable cardstock.
Pro The basics are simple
The gameplay gets progressively more difficult as the game progresses, but the basic rules are easy.
The game takes part over 8 rounds, each divided in 5 different phases – slave catcher phase, planning phase, action phase, slave market phase, and lantern phase. The players must move the slaves, raise money to purchase abolition and movement tokens, all while evading slave catchers that move both randomly (by dice roll in the first phase) and in the direction of the slaves if they happen to walk on the path.
To add to this, there are also event cards you can purchase, some of which can help, and others that provide de-buffs. Some cards can be used upon purchase, whereas others provide an effect until removed.
Pro Two difficulties
The “normal mode” of Freedom is already quite hard, but if you’re looking for an extra challenge then you can flip the “slaves lost” card for more difficult requirements – more slaves to free and less room for error.
Pro Abstract components that allow for imagination
The components for the game are somewhat abstract, as there are cubes instead of characters. But this allows for imagination to be used and gives the game a refined look.
Pro Constant player interaction
Crossfire is very cooperative, it’s basically impossible to go solo and win only by fighting your own threats; everyone must rely on each other because otherwise the game is lost. There’s an absolute ton of planning, micromanaging, and socializing as players try to beat the looming threats in front of themselves and each other.
Pro Minimal “quarterbacking”
A player can’t take the reins and control everything in Shadowrun: Crossfire because the players can’t show their cards and can only communicate what they’ll be doing.
Pro Satisfying character progression
A big part of the game revolves around the players’ characters and it’s nice to see their level increase and new abilities unlock. There are characters of multiple races you can choose from – humans, elves, trolls, dwarves, and orks. After that you pick one of four classes – face, decker, mage, and street samurai.
You keep developing your character’s skills via “karma” from either winning or successfully aborting missions. You use “karma” to purchase stickers which you apply on your Runner sheet.
Pro Thematic
The Shadowrun universe is quite vast, and it’s implemented into Crossfire well. The aesthetic design of the components coupled with the gameplay provides a thematic experience that’s just right - it suits both fans of the Shadowrun world and people unfamiliar with it.
The character aspect of the game is immersive - players get attached to their evolving characters over the course of many games. The fact that players can’t just reveal their cards to everyone and must find ways to communicate what they’ll do also adds a lot to the immersion.
Pro Simple rules
The basics of Crossfire are quite easy and the rules are uncomplicated. Before you begin playing, players set up their characters and starting decks and draw cards from the obstacle deck. The win condition varies per mission, but, for example, in the Crossfire mission you must defeat three waves of obstacles to win.
In your turn you play cards, apply damage to obstacles, take damage, draw cards, and buy cards before the next player takes their turn. In the second turn of the game a Crossfire card is drawn that basically causes either continuous, enhancing, or triggered effects that make each round different. After every player has taken their turn, the Crossfire card is replaced with a new one.
Cons
Con Theme may not appeal to everyone
Since the theme is about slavery and escaping through the underground railroad, some people may not want to play as it is a bit on the heavy side. Moreover, it doesn’t really encourage light-hearted socializing between the players.
Con Big gameboard
The map takes up a lot of space, and you need some extra room for the player sheets, so you must either have a big table or spot on the floor. The map is 37.4x18.9 inches (950x480 mm) in size.
Con Quarterbacking issue
A popular issue in cooperative games – the more experienced player might take the reins and tell everyone what the best moves would be. In Freedom nothing is hidden, everyone controls the same units and knows what each other’s special abilities are, so this is particularly prevalent.
Con Quite long
A full game takes roughly 90 minutes, which can be quite difficult to sit through. It’s even more frustrating if you lose at the end. It’s also much too long if you want to, say, use the game as an educational tool in a classroom.
Con Difficult
Freedom is a complex puzzle that can easily drain the players trying to balance movement, money income, purchases, etc. Every action you take can have a lasting effect on the game, and you might not even notice. There’s a limited number of actions you can do before you simply run out of options, so you’ll be trying to figure out what the best move is, while, in fact, none of the moves are good, you’re often looking for the best of the worst.
Con Not very varied
Every game of Freedom can feel kind of alike – the starting scenario is always the same, so the first few turns will usually play out similarly, except for the luck-based elements, such as event cards and slave catcher dice rolls.
Con Sticker feature
As your character gains “karma” (levels) when you win or successfully abort missions, you can get permanent upgrades. They are represented by stickers you put on your Runner sheet.
There’s no way to do a complete reset and just start a new game if, for example, you want to play with a new group. It can be a hassle to physically remove the stickers off the Runner sheet, and it might ruin it in the process. Obviously, you won’t be able to re-use the sticker either, and there’s a limited amount of them available.
Con Repetitive
The base, expansionless game of Shadowrun: Crossfire includes only three missions, so it can get boring to play the same stuff with the only thing that varies being the cards and obstacles you draw.
Moreover, getting levels to progress your character is a really long process – you get 3 points per win and 1 point if you successfully abort the mission. The cheapest upgrades cost 5 karma, whereas the most expensive ones cost 50, so it can take many hours of “grinding” to get something if you don’t introduce house rules that allow you to level up faster.
Con Dependant of the luck of the draw
Even if you’ve planned everything out perfectly, an unlucky draw of a very strong obstacle or an unfortunate Crossfire card can literally make the game unwinnable. This can be especially frustrating if it’s the last wave of obstacles and you’ve already got far.
Furthermore, you are susceptible to luck even if it’s your first time playing the game because the “normal difficulty” deck you draw from includes some enemies that are as strong as the ones in the harder difficulty decks.
Con Not very accessible
Shadowrun: Crossfire is very unforgiving and challenging. While the basic mechanics aren’t difficult, there’s a lot of stuff to micromanage, strategize, and communicate to others, which might be hard for a beginner. There’s little room for error and you can lose simply because you didn’t play completely perfectly.