Pedantic wrote:You've got the action numbers a bit off. Runners have 4 actions, corps only get three, but start their turn with a mandatory draw as a pseudo 4th action.
You are correct, mea culpa.
The Corp
The Corp sets the game in a lot of ways. While the minimum deck size is 45 cards and must contain 18-19 Agenda Points worth of Agenda cards, the maximum size of a Corp's deck is determined by how many Agenda Points worth of Agenda Cards you have in there - so, the bigger your deck, the more AP you need in it. If you focus on small Agendas, that means more card space given over to Agendas and they'll come up more frequently; if you focus on larger Agendas, that means fewer cards in your deck, but each one is worth more - and no matter how many Agenda points' worth of cards are in your deck, generally you only need 7 AP to win the game, whether you're the Corp or the Runner.
Most Agendas also do something else besides award the Corp AP, but these should probably be considered secondary, since your main goal is to score points first.
Yeah, bits are nice, but you need to score 6 more AP.
The Corp starts out with three dataforts: HQ (the cards in your hand), R&D (your deck), and Archives (your discard pile, which is typically face-down). All of these begin completely vulnerable to the Runner, since you have no protections in place. If the Runner makes a run against one of these, they can reveal the topmost card - if it is an Agenda, they score it; if it is a node or upgrade, they can pay the bit cost to trash it, provided they have the bits.
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Pick a card, any card.
You can make as many new dataforts as you want - it costs nothing, only the action to install the node/upgrade/agenda/ICE that represents it. You can have four really heavily defended dataforts or a dozen with no defense at all. Totally your choice. Strategically, the Corp's ability to baffle the Runner in this manner is mainly limited by the number of actions they have, and the amount of bits the Runner has to trash their stuff...
So early on in the game, the Runner has great incentive to do runs - it's a bit like the inverse of counting cards in Blackjack; your odds of scoring an agenda are lower (since there are more cards in hand/deck/discard), but your chances of successfully hacking the Corporation are higher. Later on...
Corps can play an action to install an Agenda, Node, Upgrade, or piece of ICE. This constructs the battlespace - or playspace, whatever you prefer - for the game. You can't install a Node or Agenda in HQ, R&D, or the Archives, but you can upgrade them and put ICE in front of them.
This might be hard to visualized, but basically the ICE is installed horizontally (so that the power/image will face the Runner), and stacked - the more ICE, the more it costs to install. The Nodes/Agenda/Upgrades, crucially, are played vertically
behind the ICE, see? So the Runner knows they have to go through the ICE (in order!) to get to whatever's in the datafort.
All of the Corp's cards are installed face-down. This is one of the great conceits of the game: the Runner knows that the Corp has installed ICE (because it is horizontal) or a node/agenda/upgrade (because it is vertical) - but doesn't know what it is. The Corp advances Nodes and Agendas the same way - spend an Action and a Bit, repeat until you hit the magic number - for Upgrades, they just need to pay the Rez cost (in Bits). For ICE, the Corp chooses whether or not to Rez it (by paying the Rez cost) when the Runner makes a run against the data fort.
Which is to say, that the Runner going up against a datafort doesn't know what's in it. Doesn't know what ICE is protecting it, or if the Corp can rez it (though they can gamble, if the Corp has a low bit bank, that they can't
afford to rez it...or not), doesn't even know if there are any Agendas there to steal or if it might be a trap...and the Corp does have traps. This is the psychological warfare aspect of the game, where it's a cross between what the Corp can do and what the Runner dares to do...good Corp players generally know how to bluff, and also how to take the measure of their opponents. Because of course, the Corp can see all the tools the Runner has when they're about to make a run, and that can determine what ICE they rez...
ICE ranges from speedbumps to nigh-deadly. It comes in three basic flavors: Walls, Code Gates, and Sentries, and costs range from 0 to over a dozen bits.
All ICE has a particular Strength (lower left hand corner) and a number of subroutines. The main benefit of having different types of ICE in your deck is that the Runner can only crack the subtroutines on a piece of ICE if they have the appropriate Icebreaker program; and even then only if the icebreaker has a rating as higher or higher than the ICE.
Well, mostly.
So, a mix of ICE in a deck can be good - if the Runner doesn't have an icebreaker that can break through Walls, a Wall can be a show-stopper. If they draw and play an icebreaker that goes through Walls, suddenly your dataforts are vulnerable. In the early game, the Runner probably has few bits and icebreakers, but the Corp has few bits and little ICE; in the mid-game the advantage generally shifts to the Corp, which can layer ICE, derezzing ineffective ICE to install new ones or just tossing on another layer (if they can afford it) to make heavily defended dataforts; in the late game, however, if the Runner has a full panoply of icebreakers and equipment, they can often waltz through however much ICE you have...if they can pay the price in Bits. There are a few cards that increase the Strength of ICE after it's been rezzed, but not many.
Sentries come in different sub-flavors, like "AP" (deals net damage), "Black ICE" (deals brain damage), or "Hound"/"Hellhound" (dog-themed, usually has a Trace program) - which can all be on the same card. Mostly these are thematic - I mean yes, there is an icebreaker that's more effective against hounds, but the Runner is unlikely to have it in their deck, because what are the odds that you're running a lot of hounds ICE?
Well... probably not a lot. But the possibility exists.
Hounds tend to have "Trace" as an option. Trace is a bidding activity - one of Richard Garfield's favorite little mechanics for Netrunner. The Corp can bid a number of bits on a trace up to its value - the little number attached to it - and the Runner, if they have the appropriate cards, can try to guess how much they need to spend to beat that bid. In the end, they each show how much they've spent and find out if the trace succeeded or failed. A successful trace usually puts a special counter on the Runner - usually a
tag, although other counters are possible - and having a tag means that the Corp can usually play certain cards that directly damage the runner and their stuff.
You're never going to play this card, but there's no kill like overkill!
On the other hand, this is a pretty decent early-game ICE, if you can rez it.
Runners can remove Tags (and other special counters) by taking actions and spending bits, so as with a lot of other aspects of the game, you have to balance the pros and cons. Trace cards tend to be expensive for the Corp - unless the Runner doesn't have any cards to fight against it! - and drain a lot of bits that they can use for rezzing ICE and advancing stuff. They're also fairly easy for the Runner to counter with even basic cards.
Case in point.
The "balance" aspect - not knowing what the Runner is bringing to the table - is part of the reason a lot of Corp deck design tends to "covering your asses." The objective is to win, to win you need to score agendas, to score agendas you need to draw them - so most Corp decks tend to be pretty minimalistic, 45 cards and 18-19 Agenda points worth of Agendas (3-5 cards); and those Agendas tend to be a mix of low- and high-value agendas, so you have more room for ICE, the occasional Node, and Operations. For ICE, you need a mix of different types so that you can stymie the Runner, and you know that you're going to be defending a minimum of 4 forts (HQ, R&D, Archives - okay, not everybody cares about archives, but sometimes you have to trash an agenda in your hand when you run out of space), and you're probably not going to have more than three pieces of ICE per fort - but you want ICE that you can afford to rez.
There's no point on throwing a Liche down if you can't afford to rez it, and there's little point in keeping a piece of ICE that the Runner can breeze through without cost - playing a Chihuahua might be fun on turn one, but as soon as the Runner gets a sentrybreaker you're as good as defenseless. So a lot of decks focus on mid-to-high strength ICE with reasonable rez costs, not the ICE equivalent of legendaries (which are too expensive), or low-cost crappy ICE (which is usually too ineffective).
You're probably not going to play this.
You might well play this, but you're going to rez it once and then trash it.
The ICE vs Icebreaker aspect of the game is part of the whole bluffing/psychological warfare I mentioned earlier. Putting a piece of ICE, face down, in front of a datafort is a challenge - dare the Runner chance if they can rez it? What might it be? - and putting a node/agenda/etc. in an empty, unprotected fort does the same mental gymnastics - is the Corp bluffing? Is it a trap? I've even seen folks put ICE in front of archives just to encourage the Runner to run against it and take a peek, even if there's no Agendas in there.
But ultimately, you don't care about Forts or ICE or Upgrades - you care about scoring Agendas. Or killing the Runner.
Operations are your friend. Sometimes your only friend.
Decks that focus on killing/disabling the runner tend to run fairly trace-heavy/trap-heavy/damage-heavy, but there's a problem: you can't force a Runner to run against your dataforts. Corps running trace/trap decks want the Runner to spend their actions to make runs against the corp so that they can run traces and put tags (or other counters) on the Runner, and then play Operations that fuck with the Runner's shit. If they Runner doesn't run, the corp advances Agendas. So the Runner
has to run...but it's on the Runner's schedule. Ultimately, most trace/trap decks are really just trying to run out the clock the same as any other Corp deck; sure, there's a chance that they can deal enough damage to flatline the runner, and you can cackle with glee when it happens, but most games don't last long enough for that to be a viable alternate win condition.
Most of the time when you're playing Operations (or Forts, etc.), however, you want something that will support your goal of advancing agendas.
Case in point: this Agenda will win the game...for the Corp. It does, however, take four dedicated turns (12 actions) and 12 bits just to rez it. And as the advancement counters pile up, the Runner is going to know
something huge is there. In general, you're better to pursue mid-level agendas that you can rez in 2 turns rather than piddly agendas that you can rez in 1 turn or big agendas that take 3+ turns to rez. The logic being: you have 3 actions per turn, and you have to spend 1 action to install an agenda. No Agenda takes less than 3 actions to advance, so you're really looking at 4 actions total, which means even an Agenda you can score in "one turn" is on the board for the Runner to score. If the Runner is going to get a crack at it anyway, you might as well pursue Agendas that require 4-5 actions to advance, and will be on the board the same length of time but suck less.
Also, there's Bad Publicity, but we'll go into that.
Part of the problem is that, natch, every card is technically
in play - the Runner can rummage your Archives, HQ, and R&D as easily as any data fort you create. You don't have to play a card for it to be vulnerable; you don't even have to see the card to lose it. The Corp generally has a little more advantage than the Runner as far as knowing what they have
and can have in play - but actual play strategies tend to be the same no matter how you trim your deck: a handful of agendas, a fair spectrum of ICE for whatever the player can throw at you, whatever Operations, Forts, and Upgrades you think you can actually play.
Next up: The Runner!