#android: netrunner did it better

[corpus-vak]

> I think the *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* set probably came closest to a fruitful reinterpretation of the colours which is a bit sad!

Well the problem is that the lead designer thinks the colour pie is the Magic's secret sauce (probably true) and therefore mechanics and themes have to be carefully doled out according to a very fixed set of perceptions. Sure they've now got a 'council of colours' so it's not just one guy, but as with everything else in Magic design, the innovation is in the margins, and the core ideas are sacrosanct, rather than worthy of investigation and reinvention like they were earlier in the game's lifecycle.

Much like League of Legends, Magic that Gathering qua itself is something I don't really get the appeal of (despite playing it every so often with a deck a friend made for me) and the dedicated communities around it mostly seem either terrifying or awful. But I do very much appreciate it as subsidizing a steady pipeline of stuff I do actually enjoy (okay-to-amazing fantasy art and occasional cool settings and worldbuilding concepts.)

[merge-conflict]

#9 #10 #23 🔫

questions here, ty for the ask right out the gate with asking me about canon you know me so well :3

9. worst part of canon

listen I know it's because I'm in the field and so all the things that annoy me are just background noise to most other people but I really really hate the way hacking and networks and AIs and tech in general is handled in cyberpunk. I don't think it should be perfectly realistic or exactly what we have in real life. I do think it should have some internal consistency when it comes to power leveling and that it should make some sort of sense. cyberpunk worldbuilding is often its weakest feature and that it's a bummer.

and it's not just a matter of tech working basically like magic, but the fact that there seem to be no internal rules so you can never figure out what the consequences of anything might be. why do people not just shut off their bluetooth before getting in a fight with someone who has a netrunner? why does alt not simply archive the engrams instead of imply she's going to eat them in some weird digital cannibalistic fashion? (why not just delete them if she doesn't have the space) are we just adding arbitrary and tragic restrictions on at the ninth hour because it makes it dark and gritty? that's BORING. tell me from the start why I'm fucked because my android soul is incompatible with your apple hardware. maybe johnny's brain which has never dealt with kiroshi's might have vision issues. let's think about those restrictions and why all software sucks instead of doing weak philosophical gotchas at the worst moment because the game has made pains to never discuss anything fundamental about life after death until you have to suddenly make a decision.

you know what would be an interesting idea in this vein? that the AIs made before the fall of the net really did jumpstart all technology and since they've all been banished everything has stagnated because huge world-wide companies having their global communications axed is a huge blow to recover from- not to mention the literal brain drain. What if the reason everything's been getting shittier is because people have been slowly poking holes in software and infrastructure that's no longer maintained? That no one knows how to maintain? That society is doomed to slowly fail because of unsustainable processes and people are going to have to band together to- Oh, what's this? I'm hearing that the actual problem is all the AIs are mad and feral and will drive you mad if you commune with them and take over huge spider robots. Well. That works too.

10. worst part of fanon

I would like to get more fanon honestly. I so rarely see people's actual takes on characters or the game's story or the world. And that's not a dig at OC lore, which I do like. Sometimes my face-blind ass just gets tired of VP where someone is looking into my soul the camera.

Mild annoyance because I also write my own wish fulfillment fic so I'm not saying I'm any better half the time- if it was as easy to be a rebel as just quitting your corpo job with healthcare and a steady salary to become a merc or a hacker or something, then there wouldn't be much to be punk about. You know? The whole point is that life in cyberpunk is a grinding struggle, and you do have to make sacrifices if you want to fight against it. The "we're poor but happy" thing probably isn't going to work out that way.

Actually that's the start of another essay of how interesting Barghest's survival and its recruitment strategy is... and why there are so many powerful gangs in NC. Being independent ain't easy. But I guess that's really just an extension of the game's reality where V can turn into a hero-figure killing machine who no one can beat in terms of skill, isn't it? Probably why the tower ending is the way that it is!

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

Not really? I can't really think of any instances where I've changed my mind about a ship. Characters yes, ships no. I guess maybe silverv, before I finished the game? Johnny hadn't earned enough Felix points for me to care about him. But I think I came pretty willingly when it was time.

[roguedeck]

Solo Marvel Champions is My New Main

I knew I had to jump into Marvel Champions from the beginning.

My all-time favorite game, Android: Netrunner, had just died an ignoble death. So my budget had a bit of an opening for a new LCG. I knew X-Men were coming eventually, and if I didn't jump in at the beginning, I'd need to go back and bulk buy eventually.

So I was one of the first in line for the original core set. And I mostly kept up with the hero packs. My normal game group even played a decent amount of it. It was even fine to play solo. I tended to go two-handed (playing two characters) because it gave me access to more cards, and covered some of the weaknesses a single hero would have.

And the game was... fine? Better than average definitely. Possibly a little too long. A little fiddly. And sometimes hard to keep track of all the rules exceptions. And like a lot of co-op games, you sort of knew the outcome way before the game ended.

I really liked how each hero deck really made you feel like playing that specific hero. But with all the little fiddliness of the game, it never really took over as the main game in our group.

And then Magic's 2022 happened.

2022 was supposed to be the best Magic year ever. We had a killer cyberpunk set coming out. Another Commander Legends set. Revisiting one of my favorite sets (Dominaria) and getting the Phyrexians back in a big way.

I was expecting to go broke on all this amazing content. But then something weird happened. I stopped getting excited about Magic.

I think product fatigue had something to do with it. But so did the abject money grubbing from Wizards. Neon Dynasty was a great set, but I didn't love raising prices on Commander decks. I lived Baldur's Gate more than most, but I didn't even acknowledge that Double Masters released. None of the main sets actually excited me like I expected. And then the 30th Anniversary packs happened.

2022 started as the most excited I'd been about Magic in a long time, and ended up with me barely registering new releases. For the foreseeable future I'm just going to buy a card or two that fit into existing commander decks.

In Walks True Solo Marvel Champions

Into this vacuum came Marvel Champions. X-Men finally hits the shelves with a new box featuring my favorite character (Shadowcat). The encounters are interesting and thematic. I even get a Mojo pack.

I definitely wanted to play some more Champions - but tracking all the nuances of Mojo was mentally taxing for two-handed solo. I had always been a little hesitant to play true-solo (one-handed, one character), but I thought I'd give it a try.

And oh boy is it the absolute best.

I'll still play multi-player Champions (2 or 3 players please), but I've been playing a ton of solo Champions recently. For a game where the designers explicitly state they don't test as a solo game, it's amazing how much gets fixed when you go solo:

There is no downtime between turns. You are always active.

The villain phase doesn't take too long either.

There is still a lot going on, but the amount of abilities and actions onboard never getting too overwhelming like they do with multiple players and encounter cards.

Games are FAST. Solo Champions does not overstay it's welcome.

Games are swingy. Because of the lower thresholds on the main scheme, you can go from in control to absolutely devastated in a single villain phase.

That last point might be a negative for some people, but I think it makes the game significantly better. No more are you simply going through the motions in the final three rounds. You never know what will happen.

Playing true solo has taken this from a game I like, but struggle to get to the table, to a game a love and can't wait to set up immediately after I get smashed by Ultron for the billionth time.

Currently Playing:

Storm Protection - It's Raining Multiple Men Captain America Aggression - Overkill Anonymous Miles Morales Justice - Confuse and Kill Spider-Woman Leadership/Justice - SHIELD Sneak Attack

Regular Villains:

Ultron with Under Attack Mutagen Formula with Sinister Syndicate

[playeroneplayertwo]

Where Are You Going? (Fury of Dracula)

First impressions only. One play with Player Two.

Fury of Dracula (4th ed) Designed by Stephen Hand, Kevin Wilson, Frank Brooks Art by Chris Beck & Samuel Shimota Published by WizKids (née Fantasy Flight Games) 

The Circle Game (Some Background Information)

Fantasy Flight Games has been a major player in the board game industry since its founding in 1995. It’s difficult to talk about well-designed, well-produced, and well-supported games without Fantasy Flight. Android: Netrunner (2012), Cosmic Encounter (2008), Arkham Horror (2005/2018), and X-Wing (2012) are among some of their most well-known games, and their creation of the Living Card Game (LCG) has made an impact on countless gamers, this one included.

While they are a remarkably impactful and influential publisher, to say nothing of prolific, Fantasy Flight is still a relatively small design studio. When you begin to look at their roster of games, you’ll see a lot of the same names among the design and development staff. I imagine it would provide you with a stronger, more reliable bullpen of designers and developers to cross-pollinate across multiple projects. That’s a good thing. On the flip side, it does also mean that you are often building using a lot of the same Legos, so to speak.

For example, X-Wing (2012), Warhammer 40k: Conquest (2014), Star Wars: The Card Game (2012), and Legend of the Five Rings (2017) all include a small dial as a main mechanism of gameplay. To be fair, in Star Wars it’s little more than a tracker, but in each of the others, the dial is a component used in either simultaneous action selection (X-Wing and Conquest), or bidding (Legend of the Five Rings). The feel of using the dial is very similar in each game, even though the games themselves are markedly different. Understandably, the use of the dial is probably due to the fact that it was an easily produceable component that had broad application. And what’s wrong with a little component or even mechanical crossover, you ask? Nothing. Writers, painters, directors, and game designers often re-implement similar mechanisms in game after game; it’s called style.

Okay, so what’s the point? Before I finally get to my first impressions of Fury of Dracula, let me play a short game of connect the dots. The Fury of Dracula (1987) is a hidden movement all-vs-one game published by Games Workshop and originally designed by Stephen Hand. It’s a game about a group of four hunters tracking down and killing Dracula before he meets his own win condition. It was a complicated dice chucker, and I can’t even find the rules for it online anymore. In 2005, Fantasy Flight republished a new 2nd edition of that old classic. The 2nd edition cleaned up some clunkier mechanisms, like player elimination and the second board hidden behind a player screen used to track Dracula’s movements. By all accounts, it was a better game, streamlined by new development work done by Kevin Wilson, a well-known and quietly prolific designer. In 2015, Fury of Dracula (2015) returned with an even more streamlined edition, removing all of those pesky dice and counters and rearranging the turn order. After Fantasy Flight lost the license to Fury of Dracula (2015) in 2018, WizKids brought the game back in its new reprint of the 3rd edition, christened the 4th edition despite having the exact same rules.

Okay, you mutter with your mouse preparing to close the tab, SO WHAT. Well, in 2013 Fantasy Flight released Eldritch Horror (2013), a game I already talked about here. Eldritch Horror (2013) is, by all accounts, a simplified version of Arkham Horror (2005), a complicated behemoth of a game about investigating a small New England town and fighting ancient evils. Eldritch Horror (2013) was designed by Nikki Valens, based on the Arkham Horror (2005) ruleset. Now, I love Eldritch Horror (2013). The turns are fast and interesting, the encounters lend an air of mystery and excitement to gameplay, and it offers a big, broad, satisfying globetrotting experience in 2-3 hours.

Why am I talking about connect the dots and Eldritch Horror (2013)? Because despite the games being fundamentally different, they actually share a lot, and that’s where the big reveal comes in. Eldritch Horror (2013) is based on Arkham Horror (2005), which is a 2nd edition to an older, even more complicated OG Arkham Horror (1987). When Fantasy Flight decided to updated that beast, they turned to one of their most seasoned hands: Kevin Wilson. Dots: connected. Arkham Horror (2005) and Fury of Dracula (2005) were both updated to streamlined new editions in the same year by the same person. And in 2013, Eldritch Horror was released, a further streamlined and expanded-to-global version of Arkham Horror (2005). Two years later, the most currently streamlined and simplified Fury of Dracula (2015) was released.

Dragula (Comparisons & Impressions)

I love Eldritch Horror. Like I’ve already said, it’s a big, mystery-filled, globe-spanning experience that is–if nothing else–satisfying. That’s what I wanted from Fury of Dracula (2015). Ultimately, Fury of Dracula felt like an incomplete version of Eldritch Horror.

Eldritch offers encounters at the end of your turn, automatically meaning you will investigate something. Why is nothing like this present in Fury of Dracula? Yes, I know you can search a location, but only if you are on the trail. Do you know how many turns there are in the game where you are not on the trail? That leaves you with these actions: rest (heal), supply (take a card), trade (swap goods with another hunter in your location), reserve a ticket (take a train ticket for movement via rails), or take a card action if you are lucky enough to have one. That’s not much. Most of the time, you’ll move and then either take a train ticket or randomly draw a supply card and event card. End of turn. Then Dracula shifts cards down and plays new location and encounter cards. Rinse, repeat.

I was underwhelmed by how little happens on each turn, and I could not remove myself from the similarities I felt between this and Eldritch Horror. Granted, Eldritch has no hidden movement, a core component of this game. But the games share the same basic turn structure (2 actions with a purposefully limited movement followed by the ‘villain phase’), the same geographic board layout (rails, roads, sea), and the same available actions to choose from. The train tickets felt the most immediately and obviously reminiscent of Eldritch, although Fury of Dracula (2015) probably cribbed this from Eldritch Horror (2013) rather than vice versa.

The ‘villain phase’ in Fury of Dracula involves Dracula playing two cards. That’s it. In Eldritch Horror, investigators explore their locations and go through a series of encounters, a chunk of gameplay that simply feels missing from Fury of Dracula. An hour into gameplay, I couldn’t help but wonder, Where’s the beef?

Without an encounter phase, the first hour of a game is a sludge-like crawl across the board, waiting for a break. When you finally get the break by crossing Dracula’s path, the chase is on! But, this is all luck-based for the hunters. There are portions of the board that naturally bottleneck, meaning that Dracula’s initial placement and the hunters’ first two or three turns will mean that the game either accelerates quickly or is going nowhere anytime soon. And if you miss Dracula, you might spend an hour meandering around the board collecting train tickets and items until you get a useful event that may point you in the right direction.

And the chase. Ah, the chase. This is the meat of the game, no? Well, sure. But it is literally going to be an OJ Simpson/Last Jedi slow-mo chase. Unlike Eldritch, Fury does not let you move and use a train ticket on the same turn. Coupled with the fact that tickets are drawn randomly and have different values, they seem almost worthless. So it will turn into Dracula moving one space away, then a hunter moving into that space and “discovering” Dracula anew.

What about combat? All right, combat is cool. It’s a souped up version of rock/paper/scissors played out with basic action cards augmented by those supply cards you’ve spent turn after turn accumulating. And while I generally don’t like the rock/paper/scissors mechanic for combat, this is souped up, remember? so it’s better than other rock/paper games (I’m looking at you, Grimslingers (2015)). The first few times combat occurred, I thought it was excellent. Fast and simple. But while it’s better than other rock/paper systems, it still doesn’t feel like enough to sustain a whole game. So in the event your game devolves into a hunter vs Dracula slugfest, be prepared for combat that becomes repetitive quickly.

See? Dragula. 

Death is Not the End (A Collection of Caveats)

This is my first impression, and it’s formed by only playing the game once. I was disappointed by Fury of Dracula, but it could be due to a number of factors:

1. This is our first playthrough, and perhaps each of us had awful strategies that exacerbated cracks in Fury’s otherwise [mostly] solid foundation

2. We played a game designed for five with only two people, and while it is agreed that it works with two, maybe it’s not ideal

3. We did something wrong? Hey, maybe we did something wrong!

I want to be clear again, this is just my first impression, and it’s very possible I’ll play it again and love it. I wanted to write up a first impression because I’ve been thinking about it since we played a few nights ago. It was a big experience, and when we block out hours to play a new game with a nigh legendary reputation, I expect a lot. Also, it took hours, so to be fair, I don’t know when we’ll get to schedule a second play.

Have you played Fury of Dracula and you think I’m sniffing glue? Let me know what I’m missing. Does it work with two? Should I just play Letters from Whitechapel (2011), Specter Ops (2015), or Whitehall Mysteries (2017) instead?

[fetalai]

Vote for Netrunner’s first Hall of Fame candidates ⧉ 

[Community leader Scott “Spags” Pagliaroni just launched and opened voting for a new tribute meant to celebrate exemplary members of the Netrunner scene. We’ve given him the space here to introduce the Hall of Fame and explain how this first wave of nominees will be voted in. The King of Servers organizer also shared his personal picks from the initial ballot after the break.]

The idea of an Android: Netrunner (ANR) Hall of Fame (HOF) started as a Slack #general chat folly between Dien Tran and Abram Jopp. It is now becoming a reality. One of the reasons people play the game is to gain the admiration and esteem of one’s peers. Another thing people gain enjoyment from is organizing events, or contributing to the community in a myriad of ways. The ANR HOF is a fan-run idea that will enshrine ANR players past and present, based on votes of their peers, that recognizes them for their contributions and performances.

The ANR HOF will initially induct twelve players from a list of 32. Voters will pick their top 12 in the initial vote. Every six months or so, in the spring, and before Worlds, six more players will be inducted. The list will be added to before being put forward for a vote. Players that do not make it in will remain on the list for the next vote. For the next vote, the community can voice whom they would like to see on the list of nominees. 

The initial list was created by myself, and a number of people on the list itself, who nominated others. These people are known for their past performances and community contributions. Some no longer even play the game, but we felt that they should be at least nominated for their work towards making ANR a better game. You can turn in your ballot here!

Below is my ballot, with some brief words on each:

Aaron Andries

Aaron is my old L5R friend, and ANR sparring partner since the game came out. He has finished in the top 17 at Worlds 3 times, and would’ve had a longer run in 2014 if I would’ve thrown a game to Mihn, and the software and Super Byes didn’t screw him over. One of the nicest players in the game, and an Android Netrunner Players Circuit (ANRPC) founder, as well.

Zach Cavis 

Zach is a strong player, who has contributed a large amount of strong ideas to various top level players throughout the years. His generosity with donating to various tournament prize pools is not to be undervalued.

Jon Dalessandry

This is a bit of a personal pick. Jon is a great guy, closer to my age than most ANRers, and a Detroit Lions fan, so we can both wallow in the ineptitude of our NFL teams’ lack of success over the years. Jon is a strong player who, like a lot of California players, prefers experimentation and jank to Tier 1 Best Decks All The Time. Sometimes, that jank goes his way, and he succeeds wildly.

Dan D'Argenio

What needs to be said about the GOAT? He may be a filthy dicer, and play some degenerate builds, but he’s also run some great Stimhack JNET tourneys, and has been a strong contributor to the ANRPC.

Chris Hinkes

I first played Chris at Worlds 2013. He played Kit and PE then, and has been a successful champion for them throughout the years. Chris’ unique builds have invigorated and changed the community’s thoughts on Jinteki.

Dave Hoyland

One of the best face-to-face players I’ve met. Aggressive, imposing, and just one of the most intuitive players in the game, he’s the first UK player I’d submit to the HOF. I played Dave in the Top 16 of Worlds 2014, when he was at the vanguard of the British Invasion. Glad he convinced so many of his fellow country-people to join him in the future!

Niles Stanley

I first met Niles as part of the DC trio that was at Worlds 2013. All three guys were great, fun players, but the other two noted that Niles was the deck mastermind for them. He had some truly unique builds over the years, as well as some strong ones. 

Dien Tran

Dien is the Canadian representative. He is one of the nicest, coolest kids in the game I know. Consistently tough to beat, Dien has also been is also a long-standing helper of community organizing in the Toronto area.

Minh Tran

One of the toughest people to read I have ever played against, Mihn has two impressive Worlds Top 16 runs. Also, he is the creator and force behind the best online tool for the game, jinteki.net.

Jesse Vandover

Another DC-area product, Jesse has been performing consistently well for a long time in ANR, from Regional wins, to Worlds placement, to co-winning King of Servers last year. One of the strongest players in the game over the years.

Timmy Wong

The People’s Champion, Timmy is another consistent performer for a long time now. Always a welcome voice when he’s on a podcast or video, he’s also shown how some ‘odd’ deck builds can really shine in the proper meta.

Steven Wooley

Steven is one of the heads of Team Covenant, the premier provider of video content for all of FFG’s monthly subscription products. A chill, cerebral cat who was the brains behind the Whizz resurgence back in early 2015, as well as Anatomy of Anarchy before that.

Don’t forget to submit your own vote here!

Couple notes from Fetal.AI editor Eric Caoili:

Pretty sure someone nominated me for this first wave ballot as a joke -- like I think the person who did it even told me so a while back lol. 😤😤

Spags invited me and others to submit potential nominees, and I regret not taking him up on the offer or participating (aside from complaining about a particular candidate), as this initial ballot does not include any women. A number of women deserve to be in this list, and I’ve talked with Spags about making sure the next wave honors those contributors.

[oblivianclassic]

Card Ramble: Android: Netrunner

Android: Netrunner, produced by Fantasy Flight Games

Author’s plug: if you live in the Greater Toronto Area and want to get in touch with local Netrunner players, you can find us on the Torsaug City Grid facebook group. Netrunner players are a friendly bunch, so don’t be shy! If you let us know you’re a new player ahead of time, someone is guaranteed to bring along a couple of starter decks.

Author’s note: Well, this article is now going up three months or so after I had intended it to. Chalk it up to life getting in the way of actually playing the game I’m writing about.

I’ve become a little obsessed with Android: Netrunner. This is unusual for a number of reasons, not least of which are the facts that I’ve recently moved myself across the country to a place where I have no friends and don’t know the lay of the land. Also unusual is the fact that A:NR is a card game. With physical cards. That you have to buy and shuffle. Manually. With your hands.

Barbaric, I know.

I’m an inveterate inhabitant of the virtual world. A childhood spent convinced that the world was beneath me was followed by an adolescence catching up with social conventions and learning how to actually make friends. The net result is that I had never managed to actually get involved in any IRL gaming until very recently. Perhaps it is all for the best, since I didn’t end up with a Magic: The Gathering addition, even though I did briefly try to acquire one. Nowadays I’m not sure if Magic is the right game for me, though I can appreciate the genius of its design. Netrunner, on the other hand, has got me by the brainstem and refuses to let me jack out. I’ve taken to recommending Android: Netrunner to pretty much anyone on the off chance that they might like it. In fact, if you have a tendency of disliking Trading Card Games and their ilk (for example, say, Hearthstone) I’ll recommend this game to you even more.

This is because Android: Netrunner is guaranteed to be like nothing you’ve ever played. The main (and most obvious) reason I say this is because A:NR is completely asymmetrical. Each of the two players plays using a completely different set of cards and rules. You’d think that this would make A:NR into a solitaire game with only occasional interaction between players, yet I’ve seen few games outside of Poker or Bridge in which each player needs to pay so much attention to what their opponent is doing. Android:Netrunner is a game of skill and getting into the other guy’s head as much as it is a game of having the better deck, and I think it’s down to the fact that it’s a game not about hitting the other person with numbers but instead about either trying to steal the other person’s stuff, or trying to keep the other guy from stealing your stuff. More on that in a few paragraphs.

Magic has a certain, well, magic to its design. It’s approachable and easy to learn, with a fairly low number of options to consider on any given turn. Of course, once you buy a few booster packs the real depth of the game becomes apparent and opens into a bottomless pit, which is why a lot of game stores rely on sales of MtG booster packs and cards to pay the bills. The majority of that depth is in the construction of a deck, which is why acquiring good cards is such an important part of the game. A good deck plays itself, as they say, and a game of Magic can be won or lost from the first few moves. A game of Magic can even be won before the match starts, if the decks are particularly mismatched. Android: Netrunner is a bit trickier to learn than Magic, since mastering the turn-by-turn play of the game is just as important as the construction of a good deck. Nearly every turn is a calculated gamble, a balancing of the known facts and the possibilities, trying to get the person sitting across from you to slip up and tip their hand just one turn earlier or later than they should. Even towards the closing turns a game can be tipped one way or the other, and victory is rarely certain even on the turn when you win.

What’s interesting about A:NR’s design history is the fact that it was designed by none other than Richard Garfield, the designer of possibly the most-imitated TCG design in the world: Magic: The Gathering. Back in the 90’s, after creating the utter genius that was MtG, Mr. Garfield wanted to try designing something that would integrate the kind of information control and bluffing that was such an integral part of poker into a TCG. As he wrote, hidden information means that calculation and optimization can only take you so far before you have to start figuring out what the other person is up to. Your calculation might be flawed because the other person could be misleading you. Being able to read the other player’s loadout and setup would be just as important as a well-constructed deck, and even a bad situation could be turned around with some smart play and bluffing. Netrunner was the result, and was released as a TCG, like Magic, in 1996 and proceeded to get buried under the pile of other TCGs which were trying to copy Magic’s success. It got some cult recognition, people would occasionally say things like “oh, yeah, Netrunner was great, a pity they stopped printing it”, but it ultimately drowned. Today’s article is only possible thanks to Fantasy Flight Games, who bought the rights to Netrunner’s design in 2012, reprinting it with a few rule changes and integrating it into their own Android universe as Android: Netrunner.

I want to take a moment now to appreciate just how cyberpunk a name like Android: Netrunner is. I’m not sure how much more cyberpunk you can get. Say “Android: Netrunner”, and you might think of things like trench coats, cool shades, punk culture, cybernetics, mega-corporations, neural implants, urban sprawl, clones, the ethical dilemmas brought on by the fusion of man and circuitry and rampant capitalism.

So, perhaps in this shiny dystopian future you’d prefer the safety and security up on top of the pile. One of the two players in a game of Android: Netrunner is the Corporation, or Corp. This is your quintessential megacorporation, organizations with control over vast flows of information and the economies of nations at their beck and call. On their turn, the Corp player spends action points, called clicks, to place servers. These face-down cards represent mass marketing campaigns and resource processing operations, traps to punish an unwary intruder, or agenda cards representing the Corp’s plans. Private militaries and corporate takeovers. Psychic clones and putting your logo on the moon. Agenda cards are what win the game. The Corp devotes resources--credits and clicks--to place advancement tokens on their agenda cards. With enough advancement tokens the agenda card can be removed from the table, giving the corp points. If the corp reaches seven points, they win.

This being a cyberpunk world, all of these agendas and assets are accessible through the ‘net. To defend their servers from intrusion, Corporations deploy Intrusion Countermeasures, or Ice. These are nasty bits of software, standing guard against cyberspace intruders. The corp player spends clicks and credits to place Ice cards horizontally in layers in front of their servers. As the game progresses, the Corp uses more and more table space as they set up servers and reinforce their defences. A visual counterpoint to the Corp’s increasing power and influence.

Of course, you may not want to be a mere gear in the vast corporate machine. Maybe you want to show The Man what’s coming. Sitting across from the Corp is the titular Runner, a hacker/cracker who is the reason why the Corp needs all that Ice in the first place. The Runner plays with an entirely different deck, with cards representing their skills and resources instead of agendas and assets. Instead of building an array of servers and defenses, the Runner spends clicks and credits to build their rig, a set of cards which represents the runner’s programs, hardware and other resources such as underworld contacts, jobs, and contracts. Some Runners use the best software and hardware they can build. Some use favors called in to supply them with tools. Some call on blackmailed employees to get them into the system. And, of course, it wouldn’t be cyberpunk without the quintessential Punks with a capital P, taking it to the fat cats armed with the profits from a day job and all the brainpower a nap and an energy drink (Diesel: It gives you flames!) can give them, then running at the Corp using a computer jacked directly into their stimmed-up nervous system.

Once everything is ready or a weakness has been spotted, the Runner hacks into the Corp’s servers. This is called a run, and is quite probably why the game is called Netrunner. In game terms, the Runner chooses a server to run on, then encounters each piece of Ice on that server from the outside in. No matter the archetype, the most important parts of any Runner’s rig are icebreaker programs which allow them to spend resources to avoid the effects of any Ice they encounter while running. Some Ice may simply block access, bouncing the Runner out of the server, but some goes further: destroying software or even zapping the unfortunate intruder’s brain. Some Ice traces the intruder and then simply tags the Runner’s location in meatspace (good old non-virtual real life), which sounds like the softer option. That is, until you realize that the corporation may simply prefer to do things a bit more old-school by contracting some private security to search the runner’s home and make all their contacts disappear. In fact, better to just level the city block (and call it “urban redevelopment”), then freeze all their bank accounts.

Once the Runner gets through the Ice, they get to access the server’s contents. If the server contains an asset, they can spend credits to trash the card, forcing the Corp to discard a resource. If the server contains an agenda card, the Runner gets to steal it and takes the points. No mucking around with advancement tokens or anything like that; if the Runner grabs the agenda, they get the points. Like the Corp, if the Runner reaches seven agenda points they win.

The Corp wins by scoring seven points, and the Runner wins by stealing seven points. Simple, right? Not quite. This is where things get interesting. You see, everything that the Corp plays on the table is initially face-down, which includes their Ice defenses. The Corp doesn’t actually have to pay to rez, or activate, the Ice on a server until it is actually being approached by the Runner. That Ice could be a painful Neural Katana or lethal Archer, or it could just be a harmless Wall of Static. The server’s contents, too, are often a mystery. That face-down card could be a valuable 3-point agenda, or it could be a pad marketing campaign or even a trap that’s been advanced to make it look like an agenda.

The Corp’s ability to hide the true nature of their setup makes every run a calculated gamble, and changes the game from one of simple calculation, i.e. “do I have the right numbers and cards to break through their defenses” to one of information control and bluffing. The Runner doesn’t know what they’re actually running on until they’re already there and facing the consequences. On top of that, the Runner must spend credits to use their icebreakers and get through the Corp’s defenses. On the other side of the table, the Corp can see the Runner’s rig and knows what they’re capable of. One bad run might set the Runner back far enough that the Corp can then score their agendas off the table, safe in the knowledge that it will be a few turns before the Runner can successfully run again.

A bad run might even outright kill the Runner. One of my favorite bits of design in Android: Netrunner is the fact that the Runner’s hand of cards is also their health bar. Ice that deals net damage and hitmen who deal meat damage force the Runner to discard cards. Some Ice even deals permanent brain damage, reducing the Runner’s maximum hand size. If the Runner is forced to discard from an empty hand, they’re flatlined and the Corp wins. The Corp, then, wants to make the Runner overstep their bounds, spend their credits and cards getting into the wrong server at the wrong time, and maybe just end the game right then and there.

On the other hand, rezzing Ice to make it actually do anything takes credits. More powerful Ice takes more credits, and the Runner knows this. A common Runner tactic is to make a run on one server, fooling the Corp into spending their money, and then running again on the real target now that the Corp can’t afford to rez the big guns. In addition, now that the Ice has been revealed the Runner can see exactly what they need to prepare for next time they run. It’s for these reasons that Corp players will sometimes choose not to rez Ice when the Runner is encountering it, preferring to save the money for other things and keeping their defenses secret until it will hurt the Runner the most.

Then again, this might not be enough. In a stroke of design genius, the Corp’s hand, draw pile, and discard pile are also servers that the Runner can decide to run on. These are known in Netrunner parlance as the central servers: HQ, RnD, and Archives. To put it another way: while the Runner has to worry about faceplanting into defenses or traps they weren’t expecting, the Corp has to worry about the Runner looking through the contents of their hand and deck. If they happen to access agenda cards while doing so, these are stolen and scored by the Runner. By running the corp’s HQ and R&D early on, before the Corp gets a chance to set up their heavier defenses, the Runner can get a view of what’s to come and get an early agenda point lead.

Even later on, it’s important for the Corp to defend these three central servers. If too many turns go by without agendas drawn, the Runner will grab them out of RnD (draw pile). If the Corp is keeping them in their HQ (hand), this leaves them with fewer options and creates a massive point of vulnerability. With four clicks every turn, a Runner can potentially steal four agendas with four runs on an HQ full of agendas. If the corp is forced to ditch some of these agendas into their Archives (discard pile) to create some room and give themselves options, this creates yet another point of access that they must dedicate resources to protecting. This can lead to the strange situation where the Runner wins the game by finding all of the corp’s nefarious plans just lying around in the trash bin.

It’s also important to note that a lot of Ice doesn’t actually block access to its server but simply inflicts effects, such as damage, on the runner while still letting them pass through. This means that an intimidating stack of Ice may gut the Runner’s rig and leave them brain-damaged and broke with private security kicking down the door, but if none of the Ice technically ended the run then they’re still alive and accessing the server’s contents. It might be worth blowing everything on a last Hail Mary run if victory or defeat is close enough. The Runner can’t afford to wait too long to run, since the Corp will have already advanced agendas while the Runner was setting up, but Running unprepared has plenty of its own risks as well. This makes the ability to scout out and evaluate your opponent’s strategy just as important as a good running setup, since you definitely don’t want to blow everything you have just to access a decoy server.

Unlike the original Netrunner, Android: Netrunner introduced the concept of factions. A:NR’s factions are similar to the heroes of Hearthstone: a deck is built around a single Identity card, or ID, which determines the minimum number of cards in the deck, available influence points for including out-of-faction cards, and provides some sort of bonus or rule change. These can range from providing simple discounts when playing certain cards all the way to tying the player’s hand size to the number of credits in their bank. Runner ID’s represent individual hackers and belong to one of three runner factions, while corp ID’s represent divisions or branches of one of the four corporate factions.

Each faction is a different flavor of cyberpunk. On the Runner side, the Anarchs are classic punks who play fast and loose and can flat out destroy the Corp’s stuff, whereas Criminals prefer to accumulate money, develop a network of contacts and favors, and pull off the perfect heist by flat out avoiding security measures. Shapers are the geniuses, savants and artists who run because they can, building big, specialized rigs with exactly the right tool for the right job. On the Corp side, Haas-Bioroid are the manufacturers of self-aware robotic labor; making their clicks efficient, plugging artificial brains directly into the ‘net as their Ice, and dealing permanent brain damage to Runners. On the other hand, Jinteki prefers to use clone labor, and positively welcomes people into their servers. Just remember: Japan has rather lenient laws when it comes to net implant feedback and- oh, dear, that Fetal AI doesn’t like being poked. Gomenasai! Weyland (who’s this Yutani person anyways?) is an old-school megacorporation and enjoys lots of money, throwing money at problems, hitmen, and a complete lack of subtlety. NBN are the new media, and they’re watching you so they can give you exactly the content you need. They’re masters of keeping the Runner tagged and exploiting that fact to accelerate their game while keeping the Runner bogged down.

Since every ID and faction has an associated playstyle, simply seeing your opponent’s ID gives you an idea of what to expect from them. An ID’s influence limit helps change that up. Every faction-specific card is worth a certain number of influence points, and a deck can include out-of-faction cards so long as the total influence cost doesn’t exceed the ID card’s maximum. The big question when building a deck is “how do I use my influence?” Some cards are considered to be universally useful, such as the Shapers’ Clone Chip that allows the Runner to install programs from their discard pile, or the NBN executive Jackson Howard (aka Action Jackson, our lord and savior) who increases Corp card draw and rescues lost agendas from the Archives. A more savvy player will seek to combine the strengths of multiple factions. Possibly the best-known combo is the Weyland-NBN “tag-n-bag”, which uses NBN cards to tag the runner, something Weyland lacks, which then enables the use of Weyland’s pyrotechnic methods of retaliation/urban restructuring normally unavailable to NBN. The core set itself comes out of the box with enough cards to make at least one deck for each runner and corp faction, and there’s more than enough combo potential between factions to make for a good few hours of deck building.

As a side note, it’s important to mention that Android: Netrunner is being distributed using Fantasy Flight’s Living Card Game (LCG) system. What this means is that cards are released in fixed, non-random packs, as opposed to randomized booster packs and decks. There are pros and cons to either system. A:NR has no secondary card market, the ongoing cost of maintaining a competitive card collection is fairly low, and finding a desirable card is a simple matter of buying the corresponding pack. However, it’s important to remember that this means there’s also no secondary card market, and the up-front cost of building one’s initial collection is intimidatingly high. The first two “cycles” of expansion packs are going to rotate out of the tournament card pool this year, but this still leaves a new player facing the prospect of buying at least one, probably two core sets, four deluxe expansion boxes, and 5 or 6 cycles of 6 expansion packs each if they want every single tournament-legal card. This is only important if you want a full collection, though. The core set is a self-contained experience and more than enough to play with a friend. If you’re looking to play with others, chances are that a few questions asked on Reddit or at a local play group will give you suggestions for deck building on a budget. I personally recommend starting with the Creation and Control big-box expansion, and the Blood Money data pack from the recent Flashpoint cycle is full of solid all-round cards. (Paperclip is love. Paperclip is life.)

I’d like to close this unhealthily long ramble by quickly pointing out that Android: Netrunner has some fantastic art direction. Oh, the style is consistent and characterful, the artists are well chosen and the cyberspace art is mind-boggling, but that’s not the best part. The best part is that the card art features very little of what I’d refer to as unnecessary fanservice or “ye gods people STILL think sex sells?!” Not only do we have 14 out of 36 Runner ID’s who are female, and who kick ass in reasonable outfits (Khan is amazing, can we just have a Khan appreciation moment here? Actually, let’s just appreciate all of Matt Zeilinger’s work.), we also have Quetzal, who is doing their own non-binary gene-modded thing. It’s refreshing to play a beautifully illustrated game of any kind where the female characters don’t look like strippers by default. On top of that, there’s some great POC representation, what with an array of races and nationalities across the board and an entire card cycle which takes place across cyberpunk India. It’s great stuff all round, and a sign of hope that game culture can be turned into something more accepting and diverse.

Also, yeah, the cyberspace art is kind of insane.

I’ll admit, at the end of all this obsessive nerdlove, that Android: Netrunner can be difficult to get into. It’s got its own vocabulary and an array of mechanics found nowhere else in the gaming world. I wrote all of the above without going into the details about the rules, and that’s because it’s so very easy to get buried in minutiae. Like Chess, A:NR has a lot of moving parts. Familiarizing yourself with how all the pieces move is just the beginning, because then comes the process of learning when to do what move, and why. On top of this, new pieces are released on a regular basis. This constantly gives everyone new options to learn, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a game like no other that offers nearly unparallelled variety of play and consistently tense and engaging matches. Even with an outmatched deck I’m able to surprise my opponent and keep them on their toes. 

But if you like cyberpunk and really engrossing card games, the only advice I can give you is this: grab a friend, split the cost of a core set, get some cool sunglasses, and put on your favorite cyberpunk soundtrack (I recommend the Neotokyo soundtrack, by Ed Harrison or the Frozen Synapse soundtrack, by nervous_testpilot). Array your defenses, pool your funds, and hide the fact you’ve drawn a hand full of agendas. Balance the odds, build your rig, and make one more run.

Tune in next time when Taihus writes something shorter (thank goodness).

-Taihus “tl;dr I like Netrunner a lot and so should you” @raincoastgamer

Android: Netrunner at Fantasy Flight Games

Design Lessons from Poker - Richard Garfield -- ETC Press (a great little article if you’re interested in strategy game design)