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Thread: Android: Netrunner

  1. #1
    Medusa0's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Android: Netrunner


    by Medusa0

    ; Background Information
    (First review here on an unusual topic, please don't bite my head off. )
    Being a small-time aficionado of card games, I decide to review one of the more complex examples (not the standard playing card for Black Jack and Solitaire per-say, I meant collectibles like Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokémon TCGs). This game is called Android: Netrunner.

    Android: Netrunner was published in 2012 by Fantasy Flight Games and Wizards of the Coast, as a continuation of the original Netrunner Collectible Card Game by Richard Garfield, the very same person that created Magic: The Gathering in 1996. It takes place in the same universe as the Android adventure board game released in 2008, also by Fantasy Flight Games.

    The game is sold as a core set of 252 cards, with 21 expansion packs which need to be purchased separately, unlike its predecessor however, the re-release is a “Living Card Game” and that the contents of the packs are no longer randomised. As expected of a Wizards of the Coast game, the artworks featured on the cards are incredibly detailed with fascinating flavour texts that provide glimpses into the lore. Most of the plot can conveniently be found in the rulebook/manual.



    ; Story? What story?

    Set in a dystopian future where mega corporations dominate human livelihood, the story of Android: Netrunner will seem clichéd for many, tracing its origin back to the 80s in the Neuromancer novel by William Gibson. The corporations strive for power, each with their own sets of (not-so-nefarious by the card descriptions) agendas and various methods to ensure their successes in controlling the direction in which humanity will evolve, or simply gain more wealth.

    The main source of influence of the corporations is the omnipresent – and arguably omnipotent network, the nexus that stores and transfers all information. The only true oppositions to the faceless corporations are the titular “netrunners”, individual hackers with extraordinary abilities to manipulate the nexus and through it, potentially bringing the mega corporations to their knees.



    ; Setting up

    This game is made for two players only, with the corporations and the runners as the two playable “factions”. Unlike most card games, these two factions follow distinct sets of rules and have the same primary goal centred on gaining agenda points, with two different secondary goals: collapsing the corporation by draining its deck, or killing the runner by draining their hand.

    These two factions are then broken down into sub-factions; the Corporations are Haas-Bioroid, Jinteki, NBN, and Weyland Consortium, while the runners are Anarch, Criminal, and Shaper, the sub-faction dictates the cards that can be used in the decks and ultimately their play style. Players are allowed to use all the cards from their own sub-faction, plus a number of cards from other sub-faction’s pool or a “neutral” pool.

    The basics of deck building are the same for both factions: each deck much have a minimum number of cards – 45 in the core set, and a 15 influence points by default, used for including some cards from other sub-factions. Neutral cards do not cost any influence points and are usually used for gathering credit chips, which are the main resource required to play most cards in-game, and are thus useful for just about any decks.

    While working “pure” decks can be created out of the box with just the cards from a single sub-faction, it may be worth attempting to include cards from other sub-factions to add flexibility to a deck. As a rule of thumb, the inclusion of cards with higher influence costs mean the inclusion of fewer out-of-faction cards, although those cards tend to have more powerful, but more situational effects than others.

    Deck building is quite restrictive for the corporations due to the agenda mechanic – there must be a set number of agenda points in the deck, depending on the size of the deck, which is about 20% of the deck with the options available in the core set. Additional agendas also cannot be drawn from other sub-factions. The main goal of the corporation is then to play the agenda cards, and (slowly) advance them with credits to gain points.

    There is only one way to protect the agendas as they are been advanced, using cards called “Ice” that also requires credits to play. Ice provides the main interaction between the runner and the corporation, in that they have built-in rules that the runner must work with to get through the protections. There are also cards that can force the runner to discard cards from their hand, which if drops under zero, means victory for the corporate player, though that is really a secondary objective, and do not apply to all deck types. In general, building a corporate deck requires finding a balance between protections and generating enough resources to run those protections.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    From left to right, top to bottom: Corporate identity card, Runner identity card, Ice, Ice Breaker, Agenda, Operation, Event, and Hardware. (Courtesy of CardgameDB, http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/...oilers/_/core/)


    Runner decks are decidedly less restrictive to build, though this freedom comes with the difficulty of building functional decks. The basic goal of the runner is to attack the corporation in an attempt to steal and (instantly) score agendas, using “Icebreakers” to defeat protections. Common icebreakers are highly situational, and can only be used on the same corresponding type of ice; they make up for their shortcomings by requiring fewer credits to play. Special icebreakers that can be used on all ice also exist, but they are generally expensive, and are weaker than common icebreakers without spending even more credits to boost their strengths.

    Like the corporate faction, the runner faction also has a secondary objective that can be carried out by some specialised cards in certain sub-factions, by running the corporate player out of cards in their deck to win. To sum up then, runner decks use the same principal in balancing resource and offensive capabilities.



    ; Playing the game

    Onward to the subject of gameplay, each player starts with five cards and five credit chips. The corporation player makes the first move by drawing a card from the deck and then spending three action points which they can use to prepare for the impending attack from the runner. The runner starts second, though they do not automatically draw a card, and have four action points to spend instead of three to prepare for the attack.

    The attack, or in game term a “run” on the corporate player takes only a single action, in which the runner may interact with installed ice, and once broken through, look at cards from the corporate side and decide what to do with them. There a tons of additional mechanics to look-out for while playing, besides those mentioned, though listing them will require much more space than that is to keep this as a review.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    The board will get cluttered, even in the online version. (Image courtesy of Tuism, http://www.tuism.com/octgn-netrunner-fool-proof-guide/)


    After about half a dozen sessions on both sides, I can note a few gameplay issues, namely the extreme asymmetry in the difficulties of achieving the primary object of agenda scoring on the two sides: the runners should be hyper-aggressive, making multiple runs in the same turn to maximise the chance of stealing agendas, with luck the game can be finished within as little as the first two turns – attempting to achieve the same with the corporation is far less enjoyable, except for the NBN sub-faction, advancing agendas take multiple turns, enough time for the runner to break through whatever feeble defences on top of it (anything strong enough will not be playable as there will likely not be enough credits early game).

    For the corporation then, the agendas will feel like dead-weights, and finishing the game by defeating the runner through hand destruction is far faster. Should the runner fail to carry out the primary objective within a short time however, the game devolves into an hours-long slugging match, with each action taking minutes rather than seconds to resolve.



    ; Ratings

    In any cases, the remake is still rather young with room for improvement, and can be re-balanced with the inclusion of expansion packs. If you are looking for an intrinsic, asymmetrical, skill-based yet fairly affordable game with a setting in a cyberpunk dystopian future that can be played with a friend for hours on and on, this is the game for you.

    Gameplay: 7/10
    Aesthetics: 9/10
    Costs: 10/10
    Last edited by Medusa0; September 28, 2014 at 06:30 PM. Reason: Changed the paragraph spacing to make it more readable.

  2. #2
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Android: Netrunner

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