Netrunner

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:22 am

Netrunner is assymmetric - one player is a corporation, the other is a hacker, and they play by different rules. There are two main victory conditions (points accumulation and destroying your opponent), but each side has unique loss conditions. Within that, it's a great game - the different factions feel different, the corp feels like a corp, the hacker feels like a hacker (for cyberpunk versions of those terms, anyway.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:32 am

One of the best mechanics in the game is that instead of phases, you get a set number of actions at the beginning of each turn which you can spend - it's a fun parallel currency to bits.

In general, the runner side sets the pace - they can't win the game without hacking the megacorp, but the megacorp has limited ability to take the offensive against the runner. That said, the runner generally needs to take the offensive in the early game, before the megacorp gets it's defenses up, otherwise the megacorp can just turtle behind layers of ICE - but then later on if the runner gets all their gear and programs out, they can bypass pretty much anything the megacorp can set up if they have enough bits.

It's a fun game. Never seen a good multiplayer scenario, though.

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 3:10 am

Netrunner feels like it was a card game made in a universe where Magic never existed. While for literally every other game you can use some parallels to magic - you can't for netrunner.

silva · Post by **silva** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 3:41 pm

My copy of Creation and Control just arrived. And Im in love with "Kit", the transhuman-bioroid-mystic-otaku-like girl. Any recommended strategies for playing her ? What would sinergize better with her inate ability ?

*EDIT*

Hmmm, this card here suggests Kit can speak to Ice or something. That would totally explain his ability of treating Ice as "code gates" - so he can speak to any Ice to allow her passage. Awesome.

Pedantic · Post by **Pedantic** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 3:56 pm

silva wrote:Hmmm, this card here suggests Kit can speak to Ice or something. That would totally explain his ability of treating Ice as "code gates" - so he can speak to any Ice to allow her passage. Awesome.

That is also the in-universe explanation for breaking bioroid subroutines by spending clicks. You can persuade or confuse them in to letting you past by talking to them.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 7:08 pm

DragonChild wrote:Netrunner feels like it was a card game made in a universe where Magic never existed. While for literally every other game you can use some parallels to magic - you can't for netrunner.

Netrunner was designed by Richard Garfield. I have the original version of the game, including a couple of mint starter boxes. It came out after Magic.

He also considers it the best design of any game he ever created.

Ravengm · Post by **Ravengm** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 7:50 pm

silva wrote:My copy of Creation and Control just arrived. And Im in love with "Kit", the transhuman-bioroid-mystic-otaku-like girl. Any recommended strategies for playing her ? What would sinergize better with her inate ability ?

Dinosaurus and Yog.0. Now you're able to break through any ice of strength 5 or less on the outer part of a server for free once a turn.

If you're willing to look into Spin cycle cards, there are a couple that I can think of off the top of my head that work with the strategy.

Omega allows you to get into servers that are 2-ice deep using only a Decoder as your primary breaker.

Paintbrush (which should be released some time this week) makes it easier to break through ice when you're reliant on a specific type of breaker (in this case, Decoders).

That said, you can't rely on her ability exclusively, because it's only 1/turn and it's terrible against someone that installs a Pop-Up Window as the outermost ice on a server. It's a great aggressive tool, though, and forces the corp to stack more ice than they otherwise would.

Ancient History wrote:It's a fun game. Never seen a good multiplayer scenario, though.

One of the stores near me ran a tournament using a variant called The Big Sell Out which seemed to go relatively well. The tournament report is here.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 7:36 am

Could Netrunner be refluffed into something like... medieval fantasy Assassins trying to kill a King?

Or are the mechanics specific to feeling like "Hacking" and wouldn't fit a "stabbing people" game?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 11:23 am

OgreBattle wrote:Could Netrunner be refluffed into something like... medieval fantasy Assassins trying to kill a King?

Or are the mechanics specific to feeling like "Hacking" and wouldn't fit a "stabbing people" game?

My initial thought was "no," but with a second thought I think that such a reskin is possible. The key would be that if you are doing a fantasy assassin vs. king scenario, the king takes the Runner position and the assassin is the Corp.

Key to the whole system is that the Corp needs to advance their plans and the Runner needs to attack those plans before they reach fruition. So however you skin it, one team has to be cultivating and protecting something, while the other team is attacking those things. So you could have the corp be played by revolutionaries (cultivating plots to overthrow the government) and the hacker played by a dictator (trying to uncover and quash those plots). Or the corp could be played by Dwarvish miners (trying to get treasures back to the vault) and the runner by Orcish raiders (trying to seize the goods in transit). But the corp deck doesn't make sense as something or someone that you could meaningfully simply walk over and kill. The corp deck doesn't have hit points. It can only be meaningfully attacked through the vulnerabilities it makes for itself by putting itself in harm's way.

-Username17

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:35 pm

Ogre, I think a premise of medieval thieves would suit the game better than your assassins-based one. Even then, you would have to do some heavy modification, because the current assumption is that infiltration is virtual and so rarely the runner meat is really in the harms way. In other words, no. I dont think you can re-skin the game like that.

And I dont like Frank idea, because making the infiltrator take the corps place would lose all sense of infiltration in the first place.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:12 pm

If it's reskinned, it's reskinned so even the idea of 'infiltrator' would be reflavored (Investigator, Spy Network, royal assassins, etc.)

And yeah I didn't mean for a reskin to be a "one guy stabs another" but more like "one organization vs another". Reskinned Western card games have been hits in China so I wonder if a 3 Kingdoms/Rebels vs Emperor reskin could work.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:04 pm

Reskinning mechanics is one of the many things that silva does not understand. For a "plots against the emperor" skin, your "runner" deck would be flavored as the might of the empire, and your "corp" deck would be flavored as the conspirators. The asymmetry is still there, but it goes the other way. The "runner" cannot use brute force because the "corp" is an unknown number of people who meet in secret. To win, the empire has to investigate the conspiracy and catch conspirators in the act. Alternately, for the conspiracy to win, they have to keep their plots secret and lavish them with resources until they come to fruition. The alternate win condition for the corp of simply killing the runner outright could stay - if the Emperor dies it doesn't matter how far along the plot is. The alternate win condition for the runner of putting enough black marks on the public record of the corp could also stay - if the conspiracy becomes too unpopular with the people they simply lose support.

-Username17

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:11 pm

Nah, still not convinced. Netrunner is one of the more thematic games Ive seen. Almost a DitV analogue in this sense. Why not just translate it to chinese ? It would be much easier and uncomplicated.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 6:10 am

I downloaded OCTGN and had a couple matches last night. Its awesome! THere is always some players online to play with, and there is the whole set of cards released until now. Also, it accepts decks from cardgamedb site so its super easy to set up decks (in fact, I just browse the most famous decks and go with them).

If anyone wants to play, let me know. A community of Netrunner Denners would be cool.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 5:11 am

After 6 games, I had my first victory ! I was Jinteki and flatlined the runner with a snare ! YEAHHH! :laser:

Come one guys, lets try some games! Im starting to get good at this.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:51 pm

silva wrote:My copy of Creation and Control just arrived. And Im in love with "Kit", the transhuman-bioroid-mystic-otaku-like girl. Any recommended strategies for playing her ? What would sinergize better with her inate ability ?

*EDIT*

Hmmm, this card here suggests Kit can speak to Ice or something. That would totally explain his ability of treating Ice as "code gates" - so he can speak to any Ice to allow her passage. Awesome.

I know this late, but I just want to say that this card is awesome sheerly because it is a reference to the guy who created the Cybermen.

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 9:42 pm

Thats cool. There are lots of references in Netrunner. Weyland is a reference to the corporation in Aliens series, and Haas Bioroids is a nod to the Maas Biolabs company in Neuromancer.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:39 am

Just have an awesome victory with Rielle. The corp was swimming in money all the time (it had 32 creds when the game ended) while I was poor. I built my rig vagarously, bit by bit, then finish it. I couldnt believe the corp managed to lost with all that money.

Come on guys, lets play this!