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Android: Netrunner - Neuromancer the card game!
Cerberus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Martin sighed, and rubbed the cramps from his shoulders. Tonight was a long shift in the GRNDL IT department, monitoring the channels for activity. He had been doing this job for eight months, and was told he had a knack for it, that foreign intrusions were down to record levels. Truth be told, though, none of it was Martin’s doing. He was good, certainly. But as he leaned back in his chair and eyed the ceiling lazily, he wondered why there would be any foreign intrusions in the first place; GRNDL was a facility strictly focused on energy production, and there was nothing housed on-site that would warrant any undue attention.
He flinched for a second, thinking to himself, that’s not quite true. There was one file, housed deep in the substructure. He was told that it was integral to the facility’s operation, and that no-one had clearance to access it. It was there just to be there, to Martin’s eyes. Every once in a while, his thoughts would idly wander to the file and its contents. What could –
ALERT ALERT ALERT FRINGE SPIKE
Martin shot up at his desk. What the hell? He checked the readouts, half submerged in the Network already as a reflex. The machine wasn’t lying; an AI presence was poking a lot of small holes in the outer walls. At the rate it was going, the barrier would be breached in seconds. “Fuck fuck FUCK FUCK,” was all Martin had time to say before he leapt in completely. If he could get the Archer online, he’d be fine; there were other options, but nothing as low-key as GRNDL would attract the attention of something that could get around Archer. He just needed to get there.
His avatar got to the control panel, and with a flurry of motion, the program lurched to life. As it did, a low rumble behind the avatar got Martin’s attention. The file was opening in response to Archer activating, and Martin got glimpses of…something? Images of weapons, and a space station, and he saw an account…Oh, God, that ACCOUNT, there’s 15 zeroes on that thing-
Before he could think about what that meant, the barrier gave way. A large red mask flew through it, with several small pods in tow behind it. As the Archer began acquisition, the pods arced through the air to land on it. Suddenly the program began to weaken and flicker. Martin panicked, and tried to think of tricks for how to keep the Archer online. There’s gotta be something I can dooooOOOOOP
Suddenly, he was pulled from the Network, back to meatspace. The first thing he saw was a man in a three piece suit, a blur mask on his face. He was attaching himself to the interface.
“Sit back, kid. Watch.”
His eyes glued to the monitors, he saw what the stranger was doing. He saw, but he couldn’t explain it. For every bit siphoned out of the Archer, energy flowed from the stranger back into it. The pods began to wither, and eventually fall off. Before too long, the Archer found its target, and launched a brilliant blue bolt into the mask. It pierced the nose at the bridge, and the mask shattered into pieces.
The stranger left the Network soon after. As he returned, Martin was awash with questions, which he posed to the man. “How did you do that? How’d you get in here? Who are you?”
The man just sighed, and guided Martin to the monitor. “Look here, kid. This’ll answer your questions.” As he looked, the account appeared again, with its impossible balance. Just then, the number flickered, and came back slightly lower, although the slight difference was still several times his salary.
“I solve problems.”
Martin then felt an object pressing against the back of his head. Then he felt nothing anymore.
What is Netrunner?
Android: Netrunner is a living card game that came out in late 2012. In it, players will either take the role of a megacorporation, trying to advance their shadowy agendas of financial control and worldly power, or of a runner, an individual trying to steal the Corp’s agendas to either strike a blow for the people, make a profit, or because fuck it, why not?
The original version of this game, simply titled Netrunner, released in the mid 90's, and despite love from the fans, went into hibernation until Fantasy Flight picked it up and gave it a slight retooling.
How do you play?
The best way to learn that is to read the rules, but the extreme basics are as follows:
The whole game revolves around certain cards the Corp player has, called Agenda cards, with each Agenda being worth a certain number of Agenda Points and having a particular cost. The Corp is looking to play this card, and invest money in it equal to that cost. When they do that, they score the agenda, and get both the Agenda Points, and the usually-sweet benefit associated with it.
The Runner, on the other hand, doesn’t care about building stuff up. They just want to...liberate it. If a Runner accesses an Agenda, usually through one of their runs, they just outright steal it. They don’t need to pay the cost located on the card. They also don’t get the ability of it, just the points.
The first player to reach 7 Agenda Points wins the game. Each player also has a unique way they can LOSE the game:
For the Corp, business must go on, despite these intrusions. Spending all your resources to keep out one little script kiddy will make your Corp a laughing stock, and you will be dissolved. If the Corp ever has to draw a card, and they have none left to draw, the Corp has lost.
For the Runner, all of your software (and most of your hardware) is plugged into your head somehow. Electricity and internal organs (the brain, most notably) tend to not get along very well at all. If the Runner ever has to lose a card from his hand, and he has nothing left in his hand to lose, the Runner has FLATLINED, and loses.
The Corp protects their agendas with software called “Ice”, designed to keep out intruders or mess with their equipment. The Runner, naturally, can equip certain programs called “Icebreakers” to help them deal with the barriers in their way. Both players need money to get those programs up and running.
Go on...
There's a number of reasons why A:NR is worth your time and money:
Asymmetrical game play. The two factions in this game, while utilizing similar resources such as credits and “clicks” (actions), use them in radically different ways. The Corp is desperately trying to keep the Runner out of their systems long enough to bring their agendas to fruition, while not going broke in the process. The Runner is constantly attacking and probing the Corp's network, often toying with firewalls capable of destroying their hardware and melting holes in their brain. The key is that the Corp plays everything face down, with secrecy as their ally. @Rorus Raz describes it far better than I can:
The runner won't know kind of ice there is until they are actually going after something and the corporation pays the money to activate it. Even then, the runner doesn't know WHAT the ice is guarding until he or she reaches it. A savvy corporation may have set up three nasty pieces of ice to guard nothing more than a neural bomb designed specifically to make the runner's head explode. On the other hand, the runner can call the corporation's bluff, and it turns out that the ice they have set up is far too expensive for the corporation to activate, and you run past every piece of ice without any resistance.
Excellent usage of theme. I could describe it, but an example works much better:
Let's say that you are representing the Weyland Consortium, and you want your deck to focus not on the protective software to keep your servers secure, but on assets and contacts tailor-made to destroy the Runner and his equipment if you get the slightest whiff of his whereabouts. Well, there's lots of ways you can do that. You can overload his power grid, hoping the surge will fry some of his consoles...
Or perhaps you want to hire a team of professionals to hound him with bullets, making sure he can never rest easy...
Or...you know what? You don't want to think about him today. You're just going to blow up his city block.
Each of the 4 different Corp factions and 3 different Runner factions have loads of different tools and utilities like these. They really make you feel like you are a part of this world, this future.
Growing community. So you want other people to play this with? Well, aside from this lovely little program called OCTGN where you can play it online with all of us lovely folks here (ask @Tayrun for more information), there's a Regional program run by Fantasy Flight, where stores can apply to host a series of tournaments, and which often offer prizes to those that take part. Do well enough in them, and you can get to their World Championship event and get even more cool swag. Or you can just take part because HEART OF THE CARDS, that's fine too.
LCG, not CCG. What this means is that unlike Magic, in which every booster pack you buy contains random cards, all of Netrunner's “datapack” expansions contain the same cards, in equal numbers of copies. This makes deckbuilding less about the terribly boring “I just spent $TEXAS on this one card that'll make you lose”, and more about the interesting “I'm going to take these cards that everyone knows about and assumes to be terrible, and use them in a way that BLOWS MINDS”. Not only that, but if you aren't interested in doing competitions, then there's loads of variety in cards from just the Core set, and you don't even need any datapacks. (Although you'll see some of the cards in them and think OH GOD THAT'S COOL AND WOULD WORK REALLY WELL I COULD USE IT IN MY DECK and grab a few of them anyways.) And, recently announced is a plan to keep card bloat from becoming too much of a thing, although it'll be a while before it actually takes effect.
Be awesome. Play Netrunner.
+2
Posts
Noiseshop – This archetype is a deck built with a lot of viruses to make the most of Noise’s ability, with some recursion (usually Déjà vu) and card draw (usually Wyldside). Most versions use Aesop's Pawnshop to pitch viruses for money. The rest of the influence is either on Sahasrara or Personal Workshop. The Sahasrara version aims to mill the Corp of a critical mass of cards for little to no cost and use Crypsis to get into servers with all the excess cash. The Personal Workshop version is somewhat different. Personal Workshop allows for multiple viruses to be hosted on it, and this gives Noise two great benefits. Firstly it allows for Parasites (and other viruses) to be played part way through a run, allowing for newly rezzed Ice to be killed. Secondly, it allows for an Archives run to be made, and when access is confirmed, it allows for multiple viruses to be installed which then trashes/mills new cards into Archives, which the Corporation player has not seen yet, and therefore doesn’t know if they need to be defended. Both Noiseshops attempt to disrupt the Corp's game plan, particularly if they are dependent upon certain combo cards like Trick of Light, Biotic Labor, SEA Source, etc
The Andromeda Strain – This has been one of the dominant runner archetypes for a long time. It includes standard Criminal events which are very strong, and then uses its influence to import the Anarch fixed strength breaker suite (Yog.0, Mimic) as well as Corroder for its barrier breaker, it combines these with another Anarch card, Datasucker which can be used to lower the strength of Ice and therefore make the fixed strength breaker suite even better. The reason for this being so strong is that the fixed strength breakers are very efficient and therefore the deck is able to run often for very few credits. The remaining influence was originally used for Parasites, which also combine well with Datasucker, but has in later builds been used for R&D Interface to increase the amount of R&D pressure which is otherwise lacking, both are very strong choices.
Aggro Gabe / Ser Gabe – The point of this deck is to be aggressive early, this causes the Corporation a lot of trouble if they have a bad start. Cards such as Sneakdoor Beta mean that all central servers are pressured, and cards such as Inside Job mean that the Corporation cannot play an agenda into a remote until they have at least two Ice and the credits to rez them. Credits are another area that this deck attacks with Account Siphon being a key card to keep the Corporation poor and therefore defenceless, this deck often includes recursion (such as Déjà vu or Same Old Thing) to keep playing these key cards. The Ser Gabe variant is a more recent take on this deck using the Anarch card Knight to allow early access to HQ which enables the use of powerful cards such as Account Siphon and Emergency Shutdown. This is a deck that applies a lot of pressure early but struggles if the game goes late as it often does not have the economy to maintain its aggression.
Anatomy of Anarchy – This deck is largely based around one card which is Account Siphon, the idea is to hit with this early, and then take advantage of the corporations lack of defence. In order to hit with Account Siphon early the deck uses AI breakers such as Knight and Overmind to ensure that even unrezzed Ice can be broken. The deck then uses recursion (such as Déjà vu or Same Old Thing) to keep the corporation poor. Often the deck will not attack R&D until the corp has lost all of their credits to Account Siphon, so that they will have free access, preferably with a Medium installed so they see multiple cards.
Katman – This deck is based around two things, firstly the AI breaker Atman, this is a breaker that can break any Ice but only if it is exactly the same strength as the Atman which comes into play at a variable strength, this combos with the card Datasucker which can reduce the strength of the Ice so it is the same as Atman. Secondly the deck is about efficiency, it uses cards such as Professional Contacts to ensure that whenever it draws cards it is also making credits, and Desperado, so that whenever it is making runs it is also makings credits. This means that regardless of what the deck is doing it is making credits.
PPVP Kate – This deck uses the card Prepaid VoicePAD to fuel its economy, the recurring credits can be used to pay for events and so the deck is made up of a lot of events, specifically the economy. Cards such as Sure Gamble, Dirty Laundry and Lucky Find produce many more credits if 1-3 of their cost is paid for using recurring credits. However it is not just the economy cards that benefit, the deck also uses events for card draw (Quality Time) and multi-access (Legwork, Makers Eye) which are also cheaper. Because the deck can gain money so fast once it has the VoicePAD’s in play it can be an extremely fast and aggressive runner, because it also has the ability to search for the cards it needs using Test Run and Self-Modifying Code.
Stimshop (Chaos Theory) - This deck uses the synergy between three cards: Personal Workshop, Self-Modifying Code, and Stimhack. Stimhack gives you money to spend to either bring things off a personal workshop (breakers or, more usually, R&D Interface) or to bring out a breaker via Self-Modifying Code. Usually these decks employ Magnum Opus and try and aggressively attack the Corp via multi-access events like Legwork or Maker's Eyes. Chaos Theory is usually used because of the thinner deck and the built-in memory allows for Opus+3 breakers.
HB Fast Advance – Fast Advance is an archetype that often confuses new players, Fast Advance does not always mean that the deck is fast, instead it is the process of installing and scoring an agenda all in one turn, meaning that it is not in a remote to be stolen on the runners turn. The deck uses agendas that need to be advanced three times before they can be scored and then uses cards such as San San City Grid or Biotic Labor to reduce the amount of advancement tokens needed or to give them the extra click to make the third advancement. Often HB Fast Advance decks will use a lot of End the Run Ice to force the runner to find their breakers before the can gain access and then combine this with Ice that destroy Ice Breakers, meaning that the runner needs to be fully set up before they can safely run, the Corporation uses this time to score.
Red Coats – Another name for this deck type is Glacier, the idea behind this deck type is that it is large taxing Ice with the economy to support it. The deck runs large agendas to reduce the amount in the deck and fit in all the cards it needs. The idea is to make runs too costly for the runner, meaning that they run out of money or cannot run very often. This is a very ‘back to basics’ Corporation deck, where the idea is to make credits in order to rez big Ice and then to score your agendas in a well protected remote server.
Astro Biotics – This is a deck which is focused on the Fast Advance strategy (see HB Fast Advance above). It uses cards such as San San City Grid and Biotic Labor to score agendas in one turn. The reason for this deck being so powerful is because of the agenda Astroscript Pilot Program, as this has an ability when scored, that allows you to put an advancement counter on a card once. This can be used to Fast Advance another agenda, even another Astroscript Pilot Program. Scoring multiples of these agendas is known as getting on the ‘Astrotrain’ as each agenda allows the scoring of another.
Psycho Beale – The idea behind this deck is to build up a lot of credits and/or make agendas difficult to steal, and then when the Runner steals an agenda use the card Midseason Replacements on them to give them a large number of tags, ideally 13. Alternatively, the deck encourages the Runner to give up and just accrue tags through various annoying cards (Data Raven/Shadow/Manhunt/City Surveillance in some builds). Then the deck uses these tags to its advantage, by using the card Psychographics to score an agenda the turn it is played such as Astroscript or, ideally, the agenda Project Beale which is worth more points for every two additional advancement tokens on it. 13 advancements are required to make Project Beale worth 7 points, and therefore it is necessary for the Runner to have 12+ tags. The deck can win in other ways, especially when the Runner is tagged as it can leverage cards such as Closed Accounts into opportunities to score.
Supermodernism – This deck is primarily a rush deck, the idea is to put up cheap End the Run Ice and score agendas behind them early in the game while the Runner is still trying to get their breakers out. The deck also has a back up plan which comes in the form of a flat line victory using the card Scorched Earth, and using cards such as Snare and SEA Source to tag the runner. This is what makes the deck so effective as the Runner must be quick if they want to stop the Corporation scoring lots of agendas in the early game, however if they are reckless they could end up getting flatlined. When playing this deck it is best to think of it as an aggressive deck, you want to take risks to get agendas scored early as it is this pressure that often causes the runner to put themselves in a situation that allows you to flat line them.
Accelerated Diagnostics Combo – This deck is very much a combo deck, and while there are other combo type decks in Netrunner, this is probably the one that had the most popularity and success for a short period of time. The combo is designed to flat line the Runner, by using a card called Accelerated Diagnostics, this looks at the top 3 cards of your deck and if they are Operations, then you can play them in any order. In order to get the cards that you need onto the top of the deck it uses Power Shutdown to place all cards in the deck into the Archives, then uses Jackson Howard to place the three cards into the deck, this allows the Accelerated Diagnostics to hit the correct cards. The cards in question are SEA Source and Scorched Earth. This combo can all be triggered from hand and hit with two Scorched Earths or if Jackson Howard is already in play, it can hit with all three Scorched Earths as long as a Scorched Earth or SEA Source is in hand.
RP Tax – The idea of this deck is to tax the Runners economy in two ways, firstly, the majority of the Ice the deck runs has a large number of subroutines, this means that they are expensive to break as most Icebreakers must pay credits to break each subroutine, these subroutines also have a negative effect on the Runner if they are not broken, mostly causing damage and so they cannot just be ignored. The other way the deck taxes the Runners economy is by running a lot of Assets, therefore if the runner wants to get stop your economy or other Assets it costs them credits. This is further impacted by the fact that in order to run on these Assets you must have first initiated a run on a central server, this means that you are always losing click, and often credits as well to be able to make these runs.
Cambridge PE – This is a deck focused on flatling the Runner, though it is also capable of winning through agenda points as well, that is not the main focus of the deck. The deck plays very differently to most other corporation decks because it plays what is known as a shell game, putting cards out in remote servers unprotected, some of these will be agendas and some of these will be traps. Cards such as Ronin and Cerebral Overwriter are played as one punishes the runner for running it and the other punishes them for not running it. Even the agendas contribute to killing the runner in many cases with House of Knives doing additional damage and Fetal AI really hurting the runner if stolen.
guess I'll just continue this discussion
yeah and unlike NEH and RP it's a lot harder to punish the runner for letting you have your economy--NEH can either biotic out astros or midseasons you, RP can rez their unaccountably more taxing ice and Caprice
gagarin still just has sea-scorch, which you can really only count on if you're able to score an early Cleaners
Gabriel Santiago: Consummate Professional (Core Set)
Event (20)
2x Account Siphon (Core Set)
3x Apocalypse (Data and Destiny) ••••• ••••
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Employee Strike (Data and Destiny) ••
3x Feint (Honor and Profit)
3x Inside Job (Core Set)
1x Stimhack (Core Set) •
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
Hardware (3)
3x Desperado (Core Set)
Resource (11)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
3x Drug Dealer (Old Hollywood)
2x Kati Jones (Humanity's Shadow)
2x Security Testing (Honor and Profit)
1x Utopia Shard (All That Remains) •
Icebreaker (11)
3x Cerberus "Rex" H2 (All That Remains)
1x Corroder (Core Set) ••
3x Faerie (Future Proof)
1x Ninja (Core Set)
3x Spike (The Valley)
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
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Maybe one day I'll use them for something...
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I don't know why.
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Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Problem is Netrunner is as Quinns put it a 'Lifestyle Game,' and our group is much more prone to dashing around from thing to thing rather than settling on anything for long.
Any news on Fantasy Flight getting any official online play sorted? OCTGN was cool, but (a) a little obtuse in places, and (b) I really want some kind of ranking/match making system.
Honor and Profit holds my 'Teaching Decks' (also serves as an advert for new players down the pub). C&C and O&C are respectively 'runner inbox' and 'corp inbox' where unsorted cards await sorting back into the core set boxes that hold sorted cards.
...
(Data pack boxes have been glued together and serve as dividers in the core set boxes)
personally I have so many of the prize deck boxes that I don't see much reason to keep anything else
literally the only thing they've said on the subject is that they don't have any plans for it
so uh
no, not really
Fantasy Flight has only a vague understanding of how computers work, so I wouldn't bet on it.
(Obviously a slight exaggeration, but they don't even create their own list builders or game tool apps at the moment, so official online play is gonna be a long way off.)
but jinteki.net is apparently pretty good now
they just need to secure some better servers
I turned one of mine into a deckbox. A little foam board for an insert and it holds 2 sleeved decks and tokens perfectly. If I actually played I'd probably do the same to another.
I know all the sites tell you to work on deckbuilding by creating a deck and then playing it a bunch, but I am seriously considering just netdecking all of major deck archetypes and playing with those until I get a good handle on all of the strengths and weaknesses of each type. For example, I tend to run into a LOT of NEH Fast Advance so I went ahead and just google'd that deck type, found some examples on NetrunnerDB and plan on playing with them this evening.
In addition, I've started listening to the Terminal7 and The Winning Agenda podcasts, but I went back as far as I could so that I can learn how the meta shifted over time.
Thoughts on this strategy? Any tips? The meta in this game is massive and its quite hard to keep up with. I enjoy playing, but I'd really like to win one game out of 20.
Thanks and stop by my games to say hi if you see me on Jinteki.net.
White: 1721-3651-2720
both are really important for becoming a better player
You absolutely should play your own decks too, but I don't believe that anyone can develop a good handle on why a deck is good or bad without a huge number of games or - the shortcut method - playing good decks and seeing how they work, and taking those lessons into your own deck building.
White: 1721-3651-2720
You shouldn't need to play everything, or necessarily even want to! If you want to get into the land of deck building the best way by far is to just get into one thing and make it your jam. Just skim play some decks, give a few things two or three tries and if it doesn't click, bail. Netrunner is definitely a game of knowing your deck and what to do in every circumstance thrown at you. It is for this reason that someone running a non Tier 1 deck but has devoted hours into that deck will beat someone flitting from popular deck to popular deck.
And then from that framework you can build out. "Hmm, I've been encountering a lot of Jinteki damage decks lately. Let's try to find room for Feedback Filter. What should I cut? Oh I'll try this." Then you play some games and you're like "Oh I'm too poor now, that's not good to cut, let's try to cut something else." Or maybe Feedback Filter isn't your jam and you try Deus X in those spots. And then you've learned something you can carry with you into the future, the pros and cons of those two cards, and when to use them in your deck. Look at this reddit post. When you really know a deck, those are the kind of meaningful decisions you can try making and tinkering with the deck to find how it fits you best.
In a totally unrelated thing: Spark Agency is bruuuuutal.
News Team is fucking brutal. Turnpike is pretty good as well.
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White: 1721-3651-2720
it's good to have answers for that stuff but breaking them with gingerbread is still a bad deal
Best of the bad options for criminals that don't have influence for mimic and datasucker. Faerie won't cut it against some of the trace heavy decks that people are testing out.
Interesting Ichi 1.0, 2.0, Gutenberg, Archangel cost 5 to fully break. Assassin, Caduceus, Viper are 4. Data Raven, Turnpike are 3.
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Crypsis would make so much sense mechanically as anime waifu too. She isn't going to help you if you don't spend any time with her.
EDIT: the most tsuendere of all breakers. Take 1 net damage to break some subs. Like a reverse Faust.
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COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
yeah compare it to data folding
if you have desperado and they have something with no rezzed ice it's a free credit every turn
sec testing makes it three
pretty junk against a glacier i think
You can also use Sunny's console on it as well to pop through a one-ICE server, and then do other things with your clicks.
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