Android: Netrunner – Fear and Loathing Corp Overview

Let’s get straight into the second half of this pack. The Runner cards are discussed in my last post, but here we are just taking a look at the new Corp cards in Fear and Loathing.

Blue Level Clearance

Let’s talk money. We all know you can spend 1 click for 1cr. When people discuss econ cards in Netrunner, the action of playing the card costs 1cr, because you could have been clicking for that credit instead. Many like to add the draw of the card as 1cr as well, but that doesn’t make too much sense in a Corp deck, since they get free draws at the beginning of their turn. So, using that logic, let’s break down what this card is giving you, and how much you are actually earning. Blue Level Clearance costs 2cr and 2 clicks. You are gaining 5cr and 2 cards. the two cards are cancelling out the click cost, and you are netting 3cr after regarding the play cost. A net of 3 is more than a Beanstalk, Green Level Clearance and sometimes Sweeps Week. So, is this a good money card? Well, yes. You net nice money and you have two new cards in your hand. Should you run this? Only if you are in HB (saving influence) or the Building a Better World (ALL THE TRANSACTIONS). It works. It isn’t amazing, but it is a solid money card that will see just as much play as Green Level Clearance, in my opinion. 3/5

Strongbox

Haas-Bioroid couldn’t have gotten a more synergetic card. Strongbox fits in classic HB very nicely. Bioroid 2.0s are already draining clicks, and this is just going to make those a hell of a lot more annoying. Its trash cost is miserable, painful even, but if you are running a lot of Bioroids and not playing a fast advance deck, this is a pretty obvious include in your deck. It doesn’t really work outside of HB, other than (maybe) Replicating Perfection, and its splash cost is only 2 pips, which isn’t very demanding at all. This card does exactly what it should do, and where it should do it. 4/5

Toshiyuki Sakai

It is hard to be too excited over a new Jinteki trap when we just got a bunch of Honour and Profit spoilers, but Toshiyuki Sakai isn’t as worthless as you may have read elsewhere. Jinteki is generally played by those who want to cripple you from the inside, and this does that exceptionally. Nothing is quite as frightening as a well advanced Jinteki card. And if it fails, seasoned Jinteki players know that it can be easily rectified with Trick of Light. With that said, Toshiyuki is not nearly as faction-defining as cards like Snare and Shock, so I’ll score it accordingly. 3/5

Yagura

This is a good card. This is a really, really good card. Early game ICE requires the runner to fetch their breakers, speeding up the game’s pacing. However, Yagura places no rush on the runner, allowing you to sit back and protect R&D efficiently for only 1cr. Pop a few of these consecutively and you have 2cr per card once they do have that Decoder in the rig. Some are complaining that it is in Yog’s range, but truthfully, if this cheap and effective piece of ICE costed the runner 5 credits and a tutor, that is really not a downside at all. Once they have that Yog, go ahead and prep your later-game Code Gates. Not to mention that this thing does Net damage on top of protecting R&D. All for 1 cr. 4/5

Restoring Face

This is a silly card. I don’t really understand its purpose. Sure, it can clear some bad pubs, but can’t we already do that? Can’t Jinteki specifically do that decently already? I just can’t imagine this is worth its deck slot when there are assets and agendas that do this so much more efficiently.Do you really want to build a Jinteki deck with a laundry list of requirements to get rid of some bad pubs when you can just do it via agendas? No. You don’t. 1/5

Market Research

Market Research is a card that made me double-take. It has the potential to be a 4-3 agenda, yet every time it is stolen, it is worth a measly 2 points. That alone should justify this card’s slots in NBN tag decks. If your deck tags efficiently, then Market Research is more than you have ever asked for. If your deck doesn’t, then don’t run it. It is so good at what it does, there is just no other way to put it. 5/5

Wraparound

More amazing early game Ice in Fear and Loathing. This time it is a Barrier. Wraparound is a cheap early game barrier that slows down AI focused decks drastically. It is really a shame that it couldn’t boost to 8, out of Knight’s range, but it is such a good denial card for so, so cheap. Decks running this and swordsman are Atman and Crypsis’ worst nightmare. I love it, and like most amazing NBN cards, its such a good splash. 5/5

GRNDL: Power Unleashed

10cr before the first click of the game can have an astronomical effect on the game. This is coming from someone who has been hit by a Sweeps Week or two on turn 1 while playing Andromeda. It is just so important that you have that early money for razzing. The one bad pub is vicious, but Weyland Consortium is no stranger to bad publicity, so I think this identity has a real shot at a viable competitive tourney deck. However, that 10 influence is just too low. And the deck is probably losing money between the loss of influence and the loss of the transaction ability. So maybe it will balance out. I haven’t tried this one yet, so I am going to give it a very uncertain mid-score. I wouldn’t be too surprised if this thing kicks ass though. 3/5

Vulcan Coverup

Weyland has enough 3-1 agendas that are working quite nice in their tag n bag decks, but Vulcan Coverup is a healthy addition. I’ve heard people refer to it as Weyland’s Ronin; saving the “score” for later, when it will be more devastating. It doesn’t take a click to score this thing once the advancement tokens are there, so a double scorched will make this card a pretty big deal. I like it. I don’t like the bad pub though. 3/5

GRNDL Refinery

So much money. Just….so much money. Forget the math and the runner’s incentive to run this for just a moment. Imagine having one nice server. Install, advance, advance. Advance, Advance, trash. 16 credits. At once. It is a beautiful thing. Of course you won’t net that much, but who cares. It is just so much money.

What is more likely is that you will instal and advance it once. And the next turn you will advance twice and trash it. But the flexibility is there, all it needs is one good server. Can you do that in Weyland? Yes. How about in HB? Yes. Even behind some Tollbooths in NBN. This card is great, and that splash cost makes it oh-so-splashable. 4/5

EDIT: I can’t math at 5am in the morning. In that initial scenario, 16 credits is what you earn, not 20. Still a huge burst of economy, and still something that can be advanced over multiple turns slowly if that doesn’t do it for you.

Subliminal Messaging

I truthfully can’t tell you if this card is going to work the way it should. Subliminal Messaging is weird, and if you draw this turn 01, it has the potential to be an untrashable PAD Campaign. However, later in the game it won’t nearly be as effective. More importantly, drawing any more than one is a painfully dead draw. Do you run one of these and hope it shows up early? Or do you just run better drip-econ cards like PAD Campaign? Additionally, do you really want to be pressuring the runner into running more? 1/5

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There you have it. Fear and Loathing has finally been leaked. Now that you have read what I think, I’d love to know what you think. Feel free to argue in the comments.

Android: Netrunner – Fear and Loathing Runner Overview

The penultimate data pack in the Spin Cycle is being released this week, and with it comes some highly anticipated cards. I figured that I’d contribute to the discussion and post my very own data pack review. Here are the spoiled runner cards, and my initial impressions! Go ahead and comment if you agree/disagree!

Anyone who has returned to the site probably knows that I don’t really like placing an arbitrary “score” in my reviews, but that seems to be the tradition in these card review posts, so I’ll use a x/5 scale.

Quest Completed

The first Anarch card in the pack is called Quest Completed. The spoiled picture cuts off the 2 influence pips. Its a 0 cost event that is very similar to Notoriety, however, you access 1 installed card instead of gain one agenda point. I am personally surprised that these central server cards are more than a one-of, given  how little I have seen Notoriety played, but I guess a deck is starting to shape up with those new central-only breakers in Honour and Profit. Still, it is a card that requires a sitting agenda and 3 successful runs. I don’t think this has much value, but an early game or absolute surprise Quest Completed might work occasionally. 2/5

Hemorrhage

Hemorrhage is a great virus card and has high influence (especially for an efficient Anarch program). It can be tutored by Djinn, it activates Noises ability, it gains counters so easily, and has an ability actually worthwhile. At the right time, Hemorrhage will break combos or trash economy. Two consecutive Hemorrhage hits will probably be more of a significant blow than most people are giving it credit for. However, it is a click to use the ability each time, it is not very splashable, and will the counters will probably be wiped before any devastating use of them. Its great in Noise, but not much else. Still, its a solid Anarch card, and one that I think will see some play. 3/5

Tallie Perrault

Tallie Perrault represents a deck type that I just haven’t seen take off. The tag-me, bad pub shoving, resource Anarch is just not viable yet. Looking at Tallie’s 4-line conditional, you have to take a tag in order to give a bad pub. We have seen that mechanic before, but without the need of something as potentially frightening as Scorched Earth being played first. And, as everyone loves to mention, it can easily be trashed without NACH or another tag-evasive manoeuvres. I just have never understood how that can work without the stars aligning. It can be trashed for a nice draw engine, and against Weyland you will be able to draw quite a bit, assumably. However, against Weyland is probably not where you want that condition to be met (I can’t be the only one nervous playing against tag and bag decks). Tallie has a purpose, she has a deck slot in the right deck, it is just that the deck isn’t worth the risk right now. It’s probably pretty fun to play though, especially with Blackmail coming out. 2/5

Executive Wiretaps

Executive Wiretaps reintroduces a mechanic seen not that long ago, if my memory serves me correct. Actually, it was just two packs ago, in Mala Tempora. Strange. Anyway, I like the idea of exposing the entire corp hand, but 2 clicks and 4 credits is a serious cost. Criminals have the money, but that exact cost can be spent on Running Interference.  Running Interference actually works better in a Silhouette/Blackguard deck than this does, despite the flavour. If you really want to do this ability without spending the MU, then this is the card for that, but it is just so unnecessary. 2/5

Blackguard

Full disclosure: I am totally bias when discussing this card. I have been testing  a proxy blackguard/silhouette deck for some time, and it is just devastating. A lot of people have been imagining what devastating things you can do with Satellite Uplink, Infiltration, Snitch, Silhouette, and Lemuria. The truth is, Blackguard doesn’t even need that. It doesn’t need to be a gimmick deck. Silhouette alone can use Blackguard without the help of any additional cards, and it is as devastating as you’d hope it would be. Blackguard is an awesome card, but that is ignoring the elephant in the room. 11 INSTALL COST. Criminals land on their feet. They hit the ground running. A Blackguard deck is slowing down the fastest beast in the game, so use the card carefully. I know many people will argue this score, but I’ve had such a great time testing it, I’ll go ahead and give this card a score that reflects that. 4/5

CyberSolutions Mem Chip

Apparently people aren’t digging this card. I’ve read impressions that complain about its cost, or that it is only for casual use. The truth is this: this thing is going to save you deck slots, and 4 credits in a Shaper deck on Hardware is not slowing down the runner. Mac gets it for 3. 2 MU for 3cr? Yes please. Modded brings it down to a 1 cost for the other Shaper identities. Its a solution for a non-problem, absolutely, but more options isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I know people who will run this. 3/5

Alpha & Omega

I’m going to go ahead and pair these cards up because, frankly, I’m not a fan of either. I get how Omega works nicely with Kit, but 7cr for a drastically limited Crypsis with 1 strength doesn’t make sense to me. If you don’t want use Crypsis because of his counter-condition, then run Atman! This is Shaper we are talking about! Maybe we’ll see someone use these guys nicely, but 7cr is what I would spend on something as efficient as Garrote. Shapers can do this so much more efficiently, and with a 3 splash cost, I don’t see it being played much at all. One is a Kit card and the other is for face checking, but just run Snitch instead, right? 2/5

Blackmail

That’s more like it! Blackmail is what a lot of us have been waiting for, and should live up to the promise of scarier bad pubs. We have seen a lot of bad pubs being thrown around in the spin cycle, but not much the runner can do with it. Well, Blackmail is hopefully only the first card in a series of card types that will punish the corp further for their bad pubs. Blackmail is a game-winning card in the right meta. With illicits, Anarch tag-me’s, and Weyland existing, Blackmail will probably do quite a bit of damage in the general meta right now. I like it. I like it a lot. 4/5

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That wraps up the Runner cards, but that is only half the pack. I’ll post the rest very soon, but for now, feel free to vocally object to my impressions and correct any errors that resulted from posting at 5am.

Android: Netrunner; Why I Love It

Android: Netrunner might be the card game for you. Up until October of 2013, I wasn’t much of a card game person. The TCG format didn’t make too much sense to me, but that wasn’t even my biggest issue. I have several groups of friends who enjoy playing Magic: The Gathering, so last summer I tried to get into it. A bought a started deck at a somewhat-local card shop, and a customer there took the time to explain the game to me. Of course, many of the rules went right over my head, but that didn’t stop me from hanging out with my M:TG group later that night. They gave me a second crash course on the game, and I played a few half-assed matches that night.

Once again, the TCG format never really made sense to me. At the back of my mind, two things were (and still are) present. The first is that I don’t want to buy randomized packs of cards. I’m fine with spending a lot of money on a hobby (God knows how much I’ve spent on comics this Winter), but I can’t really justify spending the money for a chance of useful cards. To me, that doesn’t sound like a satisfying way to spend the little cash I have for this kind of stuff.

The second thing is a sense of “been-there, done-that.” I appreciate Magic’s longevity, considering that the game is literally as old as I am. But as a child, I played multiple trading card games, and many of them run with similar mechanics. The idea of cards having strength/defence numbers as they protect your life points is something I have seen before. In a time of my life where I am constantly experiencing new board games, on a weekly basis, it doesn’t make sense to put so much time and money into something that doesn’t feel all that original. Once again, I am aware of Magic’s longevity, and that it set the traditional format for many game afterwards. It just doesn’t make sense for me to jump onto this bandwagon this late into the game.

So up until October, I was happy to ignore card games entirely. The only card games I played were contained into a single box, and blended its categorization with “board games”. Smash Up is responsible for getting me into this whole craze. Gloom, Love Letter, and Dixit are other examples of how I steered clear of TCGs in 2013.

You can imagine my surprise looking back, as I am currently hundreds of dollars deep into my all-time favourite tabletop game, Android: Netrunner. But this time, things are different. I am getting ahead of myself, so lets dial back the clock to October. At that point, I was visiting Snakes and Lattes (a board game cafe in Toronto) several times a week. I was, and still am, one of the most recognizable locals. One day, in early-to-mid October, I walked in the place like it was any other day. But it wasn’t. Half of the cafe was occupied and reserved for a tournament. Now, I am fully aware that it was the “Plugged-In tour”, and hate myself for not being a part of it, but at the time I was just interested by the crowd. I asked an employee what was going on, and he explained that it was a tournament for Netrunner. I didn’t know a thing about it, other than the fact that the box art was really nice. Other than a few comments throughout the night, I proceeded along the rest of the night as if the rest of my year wasn’t going to be entirely impacted by this.

Throughout the month, the selection of games to pick up and learn was narrowing. Eventually, I decided to grab Netrunner off the shelf and take a crack at its instructions. Things didn’t go well. I spent about an hour and a half trying to understand such a complicated game. The rules and cards were written with so many symbols and specific terminology that it was entirely hopeless. Netrunner was simply too complicated to play that night. So I finally put down the book and put away the game. The art was still really nice, and the lore was very interesting, but it was just too hard.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I won’t take defeat that easily, though. So, despite what would be the wise thing to do, I bought the game anyway. For quite a while, it just sat on my shelf at home, unopened. But during that time, I was watching and reading beginner’s guides on the internet. It took a while, but look at me now.

So, that’s the long, and very unnecessary story of how I got into the game, but why do I love it so much? Well, for the very two reasons that I didn’t love Magic. The first was that it is not a Trading Card Game. Fantasy Flight Games has created their unique format for their card games, called Living Card Games. This means that the game can be played out of the box, and all expansions are contain three of every card, non-randomized. You never have to make a blind purchase with Netrunner. Every month, a “data pack” is released with the same 60 cards for everyone. Isn’t that nice?

For someone who doesn’t mind spending the money, like myself, it isn’t hard to go out and own every card available in the game. For someone who doesn’t want to inherit a small fortune into a card game, all they need is the starter set. If they want a specific card afterwards, they know exactly what to buy.

It just makes sense.

The second reason why I fell in love with this game is the game itself. It is formatted in a way that plays like a board game. First of all, it is asymmetrical. The two players take the side of the “Runner” (an at-risk hacker) or the Corporation. The corporation sets up his or her three central servers; Head Quarters, Research and Development, and the Archives. These are you hand, your draw deck, and your discard. Notice how the theme is absolutely everywhere. Anyway, The corporation places ICE (protective programs) in front of the servers in order to stop the Runner from making successful runs. All of this is in order to protect and score “agenda points”, which can be placed in additional “remote servers”, which should also be protected. Meanwhile, the Runner sets up his ICEbreakers and tries to steal the Corp’s agendas.

Are you still following? Its complicated, and unfortunately, that doesn’t cover the half of it. But it does show you how much the theme really matters. Everything exists around these “runs” on servers, and everything you play revolves around scoring agenda points. Since the Corp always plays face-down, it also becomes a substantial mind-game. Did the Corp just instal an agenda, or a trap? If it is an agenda, why did he leave enough credits (money) to rez (flip over) the ICE in front of HQ (hand)? These scenarios are at the heart of what makes Netrunner so different from other card games.

So the second point I wanted to make was that it is nothing like Magic: The Gathering. It is nothing like Yu-Gi-Oh, or Pokemon. Netrunner is very much its own game, more so than many other games I have seen. That doesn’t make it the great game that it is (I would attribute that to the theme, the bluffing, the strategies, and the feeling you get after setting up an elaborate trap that actually worked out), but it certainly ups the intrigue.

And maybe that justifies why I am on Ebay, spending too much money on alternate art cards and playmats.