We played 3 games of Shadowrun Crossfire the other day and it seems like the game is just impossible to beat. We played the Crossfire encounter all 3 times, trying desperately to finish all the scenes, but we always die. Sometimes we were even beaten by crossfire events on scene 1. We played with 4 runners and even tried adding a free 5-karma item to our characters. We worked together, finishing important obstacles and high-damage obstacles first. We did remember to heal 1 HP at the end of every scene, but it barely made a dent in the damage we took. Losing your hand when you get stumbled is pretty much a death sentence. If you have a 1 card hand, how do you hope to do 5 or 6 damage to get an obstacle down a level?
Are there any rules or strategies that make it possible to beat the scenarios? I can't imagine how hard it would be to beat the harder encounters and dragons. Is it intentional to be so hard, or are we making some critical mistake?