Tag You Are It

netrunner, tabletop

Today saw me head on over to darkest deepest Peterborough to play some Netrunner with Jamie at an undisclosed location. The location had to remain secret we didn't want the dirty corps crashing in and ruining our runs!

Netrunner

We played two games of Netrunner. The first time was my Noise deck (changed that morning) taking on Jamie's Jenteki deck. Jamie was playing the Jenteki corp id that requires me to do a run on a central server before I can do a run on a remote server. I had a good start, had installed a Hades Shard on turn one on archives, milled a couple of cards, done a run and next turn or maybe it was the first I scored a three point agenda.
My milling was working, I pulled the trigger on the Hades Shard and scored nothing. Jamie was scoring agendas at will. I wasn't doing any runs, so not really applying any pressure on Jamie's servers. I needed my Parasite or Crypsis but was not drawing either. Too late I remember the ability of the Djinn I had installed that allowed me to search the stack for viruses! Bugger that may have cost me the game, or been a contributing factor. Needless to say it was a comfortable win for Jamie.
The next game I played a core set NBN deck against Jamie's Kate deck. I'm still trying to find the corp faction that is me, so until I find that corp, I'm playing the core set decks.
Jamie got an early victory of a couple of agendas that were sitting in my HQ, while I was waiting to get the funds together to protect and advance the one I had in a remote server.
After that I was able to start tagging Jamie, setting a couple of ambushes that Jamie fell into, and start scoring agendas in my scoring remote. I started scoring agendas and eventually got the win.
I really enjoyed playing NBN. I like the theme of NBN, they are the media corp. I can pretend to be bigger then Murdock! So I think I've found my corp. plus in the next big box expansion NBN will be getting some card love too.

Thunderstone Advance: Numenera

Next up was a new game to me, and one that Jamie had only played solo, the deckbuilding game Thunderstone Advance: Numenera.

There was a few times when Jamie seemed to be walking away with the win because he was managing to kill more monsters than me, especially as I was struggling to get enough attack together to take out the monsters. Often falling short by one or two points, and having to settle with making a purchase in the village. After two and a half hours I was narrowly defeated (four points in it).

For me the game lacked immediacy. In the Legendary system (Marvel and Encounters) there is a constant pressure as the villains move through the city and you have to stop them escaping, otherwise something bad happens, plus you have the master strikes and scheme twists, that add to the pressure. Which is a shame because Jamie said this is present in the solo variant of the game, using a similar mechanic as Legendary.

Plus you can only do one thing each turn attack or buy a card, which slows the game down.

Overall I wasn't bowled over with Thunderstone, very meh I think.

Welcome to the Dungeon

Time for a micro game so Jamie introduced me to the bluffing game Welcome to the Dungeon. As Jamie suspected this game isn't really suited for two players and that it is better (I would imagine) with more players. I won the game we played, but would like to play this with the larger number of players (I think max is four) before making a final decision on this game. If I was only going to be able to play this as a two player game I'd avoid this, there are better two player micro experiences out there.

Coin Age

Our final game was another micro game, this time Coin Age. Now I won both games we played. It's a very simple game, a very quick and light experience.

I liked the game, I'd certainly play it again, but I don't think it will make my collection.

So another great day of gaming. I found my corp scum faction! Tried some new games.

 

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