--SURE GAMBLE-- A Blog About Android: Netrunner

I won't beat around the bush! Android: Netrunner is not the easiest game in the world to learn. When I am demoing it to a potential fan, I try to be as gentle as possible, but eventually I watch their eyes glaze over when they find out the game is very freeform, and that there's no official order in which to do things. If anything, the biggest initial hurdle of Android: Netrunner is the analysis paralysis that comes with starting out. You can do so much in any order you want, so what is it that you're supposed to do? What do I do with credits? Do I trash ICE after it's broken? Do I trash icebreakers after they're used? Do I put ICE in the server? WAS I SOLD A BILL OF GOODS ON HOW COOL THIS GAME IS!? I WANT TO BELIIIIIIIIEVE!!!!

As someone who's done demos for a good chunk o' people, I am looking to start this blog off with a couple of articles that I hope will make understanding the flow of this game easier to grasp. I have made some teaching decks included at the bottom of this article, since the matchup in the rulebook (vanilla Shaper vs vanilla Jinteki) doesn't really give you a good glimpse of the game as it's currently played. Future articles will be explaining in detail concepts of the game using those decks as a reference. I am going to try to avoid just restating what's in the rulebook verbatim so it is still important to read and familiarize yourself with the rules of the game. For starters, I want to talk about what this game is all about.       

Netrunner, in its most simple form, is all about the Agendas. Agendas represent projects that a Corporation is undertaking in secret. These projects could range anywhere from a new pilot of a cyberTV series, to a hostile takeover of a rival corporation, to hiring a private security force to take permanent care of any unwanted security risks. With enough time and money invested, corporations can pretty much do whatever they want to whomever they want!

As the Corporation player, your primary win condition is to score 7 points worth of agendas by investing time and money in seeing them come into fruition. As the Runner player, your primary win condition is to steal 7 points worth of Agendas by accessing them in Corporate servers. A Corporation has to spend time and money into scoring their Agendas, but doing so gives the Corp extra abilities or boons. A Runner does not get anything special just for stealing an Agenda, but they don't usually have to invest extra time and money to get the points. Runners simply have to make runs, and any agendas they access are scored. To access agendas, a Runner must run. I usually joke with new players that the game is called NetRUNNER, not NetNOTRUNNER. The run is the primary attack of the Runner, hacking into a server in order to access the juicy information inside. Running is absolutely essential and core to what the Runner wants to be doing, because without running, the Runner can't steal the agendas they need to win. It is the Corporation's job to protect their servers, in order to keep the Runner from running roughshod all over their secrets. 

In order for an Agenda to be scored by the Corporation, it must be placed into a remote server, where it can be developed into fruition. As the shadier dealings of a Corporation are always done behind closed doors and away from the public eye, every Corp card that is laid on the table (in game lingo, installed) is placed FACE DOWN. This is in contrast to every Runner card, which is installed face up. A Runner doesn't know at first what cards are being placed, and must run to find out. Of course a Corp doesn't want to leave all their information easily available to just any stooge with a set of scripts, so it's up to them to protect their servers with powerful defenses called ICE.

ICE is the primary method in which the Corp defends themselves from annoying runners probing them for info. Each piece of ICE has a set of instructions called Subroutines that make life inconvenient for the Runner. As the Runner encounters an ICE, the Corp resolves each Subroutine in order, moving down the card. Sometimes these can be relatively benign, such as a sturdy wall of data which simply keeps the Runner out. Other ICE can be far more destructive, destroying Runner Programs or even doing harm to the Runner themselves. ICE comes in mostly three flavors: Barrier, Code Gate, and Sentry. Barriers mostly exist to end the run, while Sentries mostly exist to impede or harm the Runner. Code Gates usually fall somewhere in between both when it comes to stopping or hurting Runners. ICE is a great way to protect servers, and Corps would love for it to be as ABSOLUTELY IMPENETRABLE as they advertise, but Runners have developed tools to run straight through these defenses. Runners have programs to avoid suffering the subroutines on ICE, programs fittingly called Icebreakers. They come in flavors matching ICE: Fracters are used to break Barriers, Decoders are used to break Code Gates, and Killers are used to break Sentries. When the strength of the Icebreaker at least matches the strength of the ICE being encountered, it can then be used to break subroutines on that piece of ice. Breaking all the subs on a piece of ICE doesn't get rid of (in game lingo: trash) that piece of ICE, nor does it normally trash the Icebreaker being used. All subroutines that were not broken fire, and if the run hasn't been ended by a piece of ICE, the runner can elect to continue the run and approach the next piece of ice or jack out, ending the run themselves. If all the ICE is passed, then the runner can choose to access the server. Agendas that the runner accesses are scored. Here's the TL;DR for the basic motivations of the Corp and the Runner. The Runner and the Corp both need Agendas to win the game. The Runner steals Agendas, but the Corp scores them, so... Corps install Agendas in servers to score them, but... Runners run on servers to steal those Agendas, so.... Corps install ICE on servers to protect Agendas but... Runners install Icebreakers to break ICE keeping them out of servers so... ...so that's the basic premise of the game. This article is primarily interested in the WHY of the game, but future articles will go into the HOW of the game. For now, find a friend, thumb through the rules, build these decks out of your Core Sets, and try to get through a game or two from the rulebook. We'll chat about Clicks, Credits and what to do with em next time. Keep running! --DECKS-- -CORP-

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future (Core Set)

Agenda (9) 3x Accelerated Beta Test (Core Set) 3x Priority Requisition (Core Set) 3x Private Security Force (Core Set)

Asset (9) 3x Adonis Campaign (Core Set) 2x Aggressive Secretary (Core Set) 2x Melange Mining Corp. (Core Set) 1x Snare! (Core Set) •• 1x Zaibatsu Loyalty (Core Set) •

Upgrade (2) 1x Corporate Troubleshooter (Core Set) 1x Red Herrings (Core Set) ••

Operation (11) 2x Archived Memories (Core Set) 3x Beanstalk Royalties (Core Set) ••• 3x Biotic Labor (Core Set) 3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)

Barrier (7) 1x Heimdall 1.0 (Core Set) 3x Ice Wall (Core Set) ••• 3x Wall of Static (Core Set)

Code Gate (5) 2x Enigma (Core Set) 1x Tollbooth (Core Set) •• 2x Viktor 1.0 (Core Set)

Sentry (6) 3x Ichi 1.0 (Core Set) 1x Neural Katana (Core Set) •• 2x Rototurret (Core Set) -RUNNER- 

Kate "Mac" McCaffrey: Digital Tinker (Core Set)

Event (19) 3x Diesel (Core Set) 2x Infiltration (Core Set) 2x Modded (Core Set) 3x Special Order (Core Set) ••••• • 3x Sure Gamble (Core Set) 3x The Maker's Eye (Core Set) 3x Tinkering (Core Set)

Hardware (7) 2x Akamatsu Mem Chip (Core Set) 2x Rabbit Hole (Core Set) 2x The Personal Touch (Core Set) 1x The Toolbox (Core Set)

Resource (6) 1x Aesop's Pawnshop (Core Set) 3x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set) 2x Sacrificial Construct (Core Set)

Icebreaker (9) 2x Corroder (Core Set) •••• 2x Crypsis (Core Set) 1x Femme Fatale (Core Set) • 2x Gordian Blade (Core Set) 2x Mimic (Core Set) ••

As a teenager, I really came into my love of science fiction. Blade Runner, Johnny Mnemonic, Hackers, The Matrix. I'd read Shadowrun novels of varying quality. As someone who comes From Anime, There was plenty to intake there too. Ghost In the Shell, Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, even Sin -the movie-. I wasn't some expert, but man, I ended up loving cyberpunk, the idea of the EVIL corporation, the disenfranchised have-nots that were perpetually under their mass-produced boot. and their plucky, improvised, clever plans to stick it right back to The Man. I think it's an easy idea to swallow these days for my generation.

Netrunner certainly doesn't disappoint on that front. The Android universe is set in a far-but-not-SUPER-far future of sprawling megacities, orbital elevators, and omnipresent megacorps that have a not-so-subtle hand over anything and everything, ready to be as firm or gentle as it takes to further their secretive agendas. Bioroids, androids that exist in a nebulous space between human brains with robot bodies and sentient machinations are commonplace, working diligently in every aspect of life. Need a disposable workforce with a little bit more of a.... human touch? No problem! Clones mine He2 from the moon, and fight our wars afar. The human genome can be molded like clay, and genetic modification isn't as exotic as it used to be. In this world, however, there are still frontiers yet to be explored, and the roads to get there are paved with the lives and souls and minds and wallets of people who can expect nothing more than to be a tiny cog in a huge machine. In the midst of all of this, several brave/crazy souls are willing to expose the truth, to challenge these giant hulking masses of brainpower and cash. For what end? Some are altruistic. Some are in it for the money. Some are in it just because the challenge of the hack excites them. Some are in it because fuck everything, I was bored. Netrunner is about that conflict, and the wonderful world building the creative team has done through evocative card art, thematic flavor text, and pack-in narrative in all of their product makes the Android universe easy to get into.

But is Netrunner, the GAME, hard to get into? I see a lot of people who I follow excited about the recent developments in the game, and it's usually followed by a plethora of people saying "I don't know what to buy/where to buy/how to play!" It's admittedly not the easiest for random people to know what to do when it comes to buying into Netrunner. There are buying guides out there, but most of them tend to focus on competitive play. I definitely like to play this game competitively, but I feel like there's a lack of guides or guidance for people who are interested primarily in the thematic aspect, and being competitive lies somewhere between a secondary goal to a completely unimportant one.

This weekend, the weekend of 11/7-9, is the World Championship Weekend at the FFG Event Center. It's a big one, because they announced that they will begin introducing set rotations for all of their Living Card Games, including Netrunner. When they announced this, I started thinking about the reasons for it, namely that it's hard to keep restocking all the product when the game gets incredibly large, and it becomes a pretty daunting buy in for people looking to get current. The Netrunner Core Set will always be part of the card pool for officially sanctioned events, as well as Deluxe Expansions, which contain cards for one Corp and Runner faction. I thought to myself, "that's it! That's the easiest jump in point. A Core Set + a deluxe or two. These cards will always be viable at sanctioned, official events, always be in print, and have enough goodies in them to create decks that will always be thematic, highlight the strengths of the factions in them, and let people have The Netrunner Experience (tm)!"

So I decided I wanted to write about that Netrunner experience. I wanted to explain the rules, gush about how thematic the game is, and help people who are new get into it as easy as possible. I wanted to explore the factions of the game, both on the corporate and runner side, and make decks that someone could just buy a Core Set or buy a Core Set + the faction specific Deluxe, put together, and enjoy. I hope to make an update here at least every month, starting with the basics and then breaking into each faction. This is my first time doing something like this, so if there's any comments about how to make it better or what you have trouble with , please let me know on twitter at @experimilk or here as well.