Category Archives: netrunner

netrunner

Rock Bottom

netrunner

Yesterday saw my FLGS The Hobbit Hole hold their third game night kit for Android Netrunner event.

I’d spent the early morning putting my decks together and filing away the last three data packs. 

My first match up was against John the store owner which saw us both making mistakes in play/decisions and winning a game each. I don’t know about the poor play part but the other match ups also ended up in draws.

My next game was against Jo from the Critical Twits podcast. In our first game where I was playing NBN against Apex we were both pulling off our tricks. Jo took my tags early which meant I was able to play with him! Jo scored first and once I scored an agenda, which was a one pointer I was able to swap that over with him for his higher valued agenda. 

I repeated this later in the game also but with 15 minutes. But this was the fun but I force the swap of agendas giving Jo my scored 15 minutes (one I had been hoping he would score) and taking a three point agenda. I then spent the click to take 15 minutes back and shuffled it back into R&D. Loved that combo. 

I found Apex frustrating. Early on with the tags on Jo who had three cards in hand, I played scorched earth. But due to heartbeat I think it was, or whatever it’s called, he avoided the kill. Plus apocalypse was fired twice. That was annoying and the second time left me exposed and let Jo get the points he needed to win.

It’s fun thinking back on that game that I technically only scored two agenda points, but actually ended up with five due to the tags that landed.

Our next match saw Null getting killed, and giving Jo the clear two nil win.

My final match up was Kar-Fai winner of our first store competition.

Once again I started off as NBN. Kar-Fai did a great job avoiding my attempts to land tags on him. But he did fall for the traps! But eventually my weak ice could no longer delay the inevitable Kar-Fai victory.

Our second game saw me get reminded by Kar-Fai that fortune favours the brave, when I chickened out of a remote server that had been advanced once on his first turn, and then scored it on his next go. I suspected a trap, and instead hit R&D, and archives to pump up Datasucker. 

An early System Outage slowed Kar-Fai down a bit. But he had built a five deep protected scoring server. I just wasn’t finding my Faust or David to be able to start attacking it. I ended up having to do a same old thing to bring back a disguarded Levy AR Lab Access to force a reshuffle of my stack. Which worked I soon hit Faust but it was too late by that time. 

We did have our Doctor Who regeneration moment when I played rebirth. 

So a second loss that put me in last place. Jamie was the winner of today’s tournament, which he rightly deserved. 

My ccg/lcg play has been awful recently. Les hope this bad run ends soon. But despite hitting bottom, I had a blast playing.

Never a truer word said

netrunner, Uncategorized


I just love the above bit from the rules/flavour sheet included with the latest data pack Blood Money from the Flsshpoint cycle.

It appeals to my anarch soul. 

The Android world is so rich. FFG do such a great job bringing it to life with Netrunner, using amazing art (which has Easter eggs hidden in it sometimes), flavour text, and mechanics.

Just love it.

All Change – Again!

Ashes, imperial assault, netrunner, news

Last week seemed the week that FFG and PlaidHat decided they would release errata to their LCG/miniature games.

First up PlaidHat have released an errata for one of the cards from Ashes. Not much of an inconvience for me as I'm not deckbuilding yet (although I need to start pdq). But what I like about this announcement is that although people are going to have to print out the correction, and use sleeves, PlaidHat are looking at ways to make replacement cards available. My suggestion would be to make the updated card available from Drive Thru Cards, it takes the production costs away from PlaidHat. I wish FFG would use something like this, or make the errata'd cards they announce available to buy somehow.

Above: original card on left, errata version middle & right, right OP kit alt art errata version

Naturally the errata'd version of Enhanted Violinist will be the only version allows at the OP event I'm organising in a months time.

PlaidHat have also released “improved” draft rules for Ashes too. I've not played the game in draft format, but they do seem better than the ones in the included rule book.

Oh oh oh, just thought please please PlaidHat could we have another alt art Enchanted Violinist but this time using Lindsey Stirling as the art? It would be soooo uber cool if you did that.

Right FFG have released a LOT of errata and updates. For me this means I have to look at the Imperial Assault (IA) and Netrunner ones. I've not looked at the changes for IA, but would expect to see new tournament legal skirmish maps to include the wave 6 skirmish maps. Plus more cards being “tweaked” so they are not breaking the game any more.

The one I have looked at naturally is the Netrunner updates. I play anarch and NBN and it seems these updates are specifically aimed at nerfing them. On the most wanted list, Faust and David have been added along with Wyldside. Which hits my Noise deck big time. I've got some decisions to make now if I want to keep playing them. I'd just been looking at Mumba Temple for my NEH deck, but hey guess what is now on the list? Things are even tighter on my NEH deck, not sure I can get rid of anything to give me the two influence I'd need. Plus Breaking News has been added to the list. And that really screws me. I may have to review the use of this agenda. But what to replace it with?

Plus we have errata for some cards, these don't hit me, well I'm pretty sure they don't. But the fast advance NEH has had the breaks put on it with the Astroscript Pilot Program being limited to one per deck now.

I do like this approach by FFG and PlaidHat, I wouldn't like a card to be banned. At least this way I can still play the cards. It's just I have to make decisions about how much I really want to play them, and how I can fit them in, whilst working out what has to go to make way for them.

Here is the Ashes ERRATA

Here is the FFG ERRATA

 

Chatteris Drive By

game night, netrunner

Yesterday saw the second Android Netrunner event being held at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. Once again we would be competing over the spoils from the Spring 2016 OP kit.

The decks I'd be playing for the tournament would be my usual NEH with a couple of tweaks on the ice front, plus my janky Criminal deck.

My first match up was against Chris from the store/Warlords. You remember Chris he's the only person I have ever had a turn two win with. I'm just saying that because it makes me feel better that he beat me two nothing today.

Our first match up was my criminal deck against his Jinteki. I swapped from Andromeda to Silouette. With two Gang Signs out, scoring an agenda was going to punish Chris. And this bit of jank worked really well once in place. When Chris scored his second agenda I think it was, he only had two cards in HQ, both agendas! Which caught me up fast. Early on in the match up Chris quite rightly iced up HQ and Archives. Especially after I'd used Archives and Sneakdoor Beta to circumvent his ice on HQ. In the end Chris scored a third agenda to get the win.

My NEH is a tag/kill deck, with little tricks firing off the tags. Chris knew this and played accordingly, avoiding my tags. Which if I'd played my Breaking News better (as I did in my next match up) might have given me a win. Instead I just scored it as quick as possible to keep me in the points race, that this time Chris won.

My second match up was against a new player both to the store and the game. I was facing off against his NEH kill deck first with my Criminal deck. My opponent failed to ice up HQ! So I was picking off agendas, and was happily sitting on five points to one. My jank was working, I was avoiding being tagged. In all rights I should have kept the faith. Instead I did a reclass run on R&D to try and hopefully nab the winning. Instead I took tags, failed to get an agenda, and got murdered!

Our next game was Noise against my NEH. The runner scored a two point agenda Private Security Force. I scored a Chronos Project early in reply taking out about two cards from his heap. However I did land a tag briefly allowing me to play Exchange of Information. Yep I liked swapping our agendas over. Guess what the runner decide to clear the tag then. I had two Scorched Earth in hand. I just needed the credits and a tag to kill the runner. Wait if I played Breaking News properly I would have the tags I needed, and the clicks. I had enough credits to play the two scorched earths, and advance the agenda once, but was short a credit for the plan to work.

I installed Breaking News behind a couple of bits of ice ( that fortunately had been rezzed earlier), I advanced it once, and took a credit. I had the money I needed, I just needed the runner to ignore that server and think it was a trap. The runner did indeed ignore my server on his turn. My turn, murder was ago. Advance and score Breaking News for my first click. Two tags delivered. Click two play one Scorched Earth, click three play second Scorched Earth. Smouldering runner corpse on the floor.

My third and final match up was against the winner of the last OP event. Boy was our first game a long game. My jank was working to the max. I was cash rich, I got Femme Fatale out for free using Test Run and Scavenge. I was exposing cards. The old Gang Sign, Leela Patel combo was making the runner reluctant to score agendas. Leela had returned some ice back to HQ to help me get into servers. We were both sitting on four points each. Drive By, Infiltration and Satelite Uplink had helped me avoid some traps, and trash the odd asset.

But the game was drawing on! I was down to three cards in my stack. There was an installed card that had been advanced and was behind three unrezed ice. The corp had more than enough credits to rez them, I didn't have enough to get through. I used my last same old thing to pull back an Infiltration. Bugger it was an agenda. Game to the corp.

A quick time check, we had less than six minutes to get our second game in!

A tactical error and the runners lucky draw cost me the game. I had agendas in hand, so I put both my ice in front of HQ leaving R&D open! Should have put one on each. The runner naturally ran R&D, scored a two point agenda. I quickly scored out a one point agenda. I hit the runner twice with News Team traps on remote servers. Both were cleared and getting the runner nine credits in the bargain! Bugger. That was time and I'd lost. I had done well to be able to compensate for the initial tactile error, sadly my opponent had an answer in hand. A great intense, second game. Wow the pressure of time.

So in the end I ended up fourth in the tournament. I had a blast with my criminal deck. I got such a kick when the jank paid off. It was a fun deck to play. I've got it out of my system and can now return back to my true runner home, Anarchs. It was cool when I got the NEH murder in also. I need to master this deck and how I should be playing it. At the moment I'm making silly tactical decisions that are costing me games.

Such a great day playing Netrunner. Great, friendly competitors. Just great fun.

Drive By

chatteris warlords, game night, netrunner, Uncategorized

At last nights Warlords weekly meet up I got a chance to test drive my first attempt at a Criminal deck. 

I’m an Anarch at heart, I love playing Noise (although the leaked/spoiled Anarch id null from the next data cycle may tempt me away) especially with Faust/David/Street Magic/Wylde Side/Pancakes – which has most people online raging against them (this might be gutted with the first update to the most wanted list due to drop any day now).

So playing a faction I don’t usually play is a big thing.

However I was tempted to come up with this deck after the Run Last Click guys mentioned the Drive By card in the live broadcast they did at the UK Games Expo.

In my hunting online to find out just what the good ice breakers are for Criminal, I stumbled across a card combo that would install Femme Fatale for free! It was out of faction but had to be used a nine cost ice breaker is way way too expensive.

The main thing I wanted to play with in this deck was the Drive By, Gang Sign and Rebirth.

My starting id for this deck is Andromeda giving me an initial massive nine card draw. If that doesn’t give me rebirth, it should allow me to fish for it using some of the card draw or planned assault. 

Once I get rebirth I can then swap to a Criminal id more suitable for the matchup I’m facing.

From what I can tell Criminal is all about the central servers particularly HQ. 

This deck is running a lot of events for me , giving economy, exposing cards, making the hit on HQ more painful for the Corp, and finding cards.

Running one copy of my breakers may seem recless but with the events I can get to them quickly if need be.

Window I added because how many times after losing has the card you really needed been on the bottom of the stack? 


In the game last night I mulliganed, in the second hand I drew I got two sure gambles. A cash rich start. Ben iced up HQ quickly. So a Sneakdoor Beta on an unprotected Archives scored me an agenda. Guess who iced up archives then?

Gang sign scored me an agenda when Ben scored his first agenda. I managed to score a third agenda from HQ. I was sitting on six agenda points while Ben had five. 

My biggest problem was having enough credits to drive my ice breakers in the lay stages of the game. Which slowed down my assault on HQ. 

Ben scored the final agenda he needed to get the win.

I liked the way this deck played. The combo worked to get Femme out for free. Drive By did its job a couple of times. Gang Sign got me an agenda. So the little ‘tricks’ worked. 

We followed up our Netrunner game with Firefly Fluxx which Ben won. 

My final game of the evening was a four player game of Epic. The decks were dealt randomly (in the interests of time), and we played it that you could only attack player to your left, with only the two players doing battle able to play events to influence it, however everyone else could play events when the current player tried to end their turn.

I was the first to be knocked out. However I’m pleased with that, considering the random element to the decks, the cards I had drawn were not bad. I could have been dealt worse cards. In the end Ben emerged triumphant again. A clean sweep for him.

Great evening gaming. But now I have to decide if I play this new Criminal deck at Saturday’s comp at my FLGS or stick to my tried and tested, but more importantly familiar Noise.

Here is my deck…

Drive By Swap
Andromeda (Humanity’s Shadow)
Event (28)

3x Drive By (The Underway)

2x Easy Mark (Core Set)

1x Emergency Shutdown (Cyber Exodus)

1x Express Delivery (Honor and Profit)

2x Infiltration (Core Set)

2x Inside Job (Core Set)

1x Lawyer Up (True Colors)

2x Legwork (Honor and Profit)

1x Lucky Find (Double Time) ••

1x Planned Assault (Honor and Profit)

1x Rebirth (The Liberated Mind) •

2x Satellite Uplink (Trace Amount)

2x Scavenge (Creation and Control) ••••

2x Special Order (Core Set)

2x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

2x Test Run (Cyber Exodus) ••••• •

1x Unscheduled Maintenance (The Spaces Between)
Hardware (6)

1x Desperado (Core Set) ☆

2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)

2x Public Terminal (Honor and Profit)

1x Window (Honor and Profit)
Resource (8)

2x Gang Sign (The Underway)

3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

2x Security Testing (Honor and Profit)

1x Street Magic (Kala Ghoda) •
Icebreaker (4)

1x Aurora (Core Set)

1x Femme Fatale (Core Set)

1x Leviathan (Second Thoughts)

1x Crypsis (Core Set)
Program (2)

1x Sneakdoor Beta (Core Set)

1x Au Revoir (The Source)
48 cards (minimum 45)

14/14 (=15-1☆) influence used

Cards up to The Liberated Mind

Upcoming OP Events

Ashes, imperial assault, netrunner

That I'm taking part in (well planning to) or actually organising.

First up…

A second Spring kit 2016 is being cracked open on the 2/7/16 at The Hobbit Hole. So another chance to get those lovely brain damage tokens. Sadly their is no Worlds of Android book up for grabs this time.

At the end of July, 23/7/16 to be exact, there will be a store kit (not sure which one) being opened and battled over for Imperial Assault. I just need to get some practice games in now.

Finally for this post is an event I've organised…

20/8/16 sees Ashes getting the spot light. I've got two OP kits hopefully on their way over from the US.

You can visit the event page on the Plaid Hat website here that I've set up for this.

So now you know where I will be and what I'll be playing. Hopefully I'll see some of you at these events.

I'd love to get a Star Realms/Epic events organised, but White Wizard and Esdevium have decided to collaborate to make this extremely hard to do if you want to use an official OP kit. Esdevium aren't listing them for my FLGS to order them, and White Wizard are sounding like a broken record direct you to your FLGS and their distributor. And frankly I think this sucks. We have more than enough interest here to run events to both games. Sadly just can't get the support.

 

My first netrunner comp

game night, netrunner, Road to regionals

Yesterday saw The Hobbit Hole run its first Netrunner event. John (the store owner) was using the Spring 2016 store kit. However to make this first event “special” I had donated a copy of Worlds of Android premium edition as the top prize.

So the Spring kit gave the following to use for prizes:

  • A set of acrylic brain damage tokens (first place)
  • Two alt art Leela Patel identity cards (top two)
  • Seventeen alt art Political Operative cards (basically participation prize)

Naturally I wanted first place not for the book (I already have it) but the brain damage tokens.

The combatants were John, Chris, Robert, Kar-Fai and myself. There could have been at least another three players but previous arranged commitments or work stopped them taking part. Robert was the surprise entry after his rage quitting of the game announcement on Tuesday. But somehow he had managed to build a deck Friday night.

My first round match up was with Chris. My Noise ran riot over Chris's Replicating Perfection deck. He romped away with seven unanswered agenda points to get the win. It was then my NEH deck taking on his Kate deck. My NEH is the deck I still think needs work. It's the ice, and more cards to do damage if the runner is tagged. However in this match up it was working nicely. All the little “tricks” were landing such as News Team being taken as a negative agenda point (twice) negating scored one point agendas. Daily Business Show is allowing me to bury agendas at the bottom of my deck. Chris having been wreck less against this deck before, had given me my only ever turn two win. So he was playing much more cautiously against this deck. But still I get the win. Chris isn't happy. His dreams of getting the Android book fading away.

Round two saw me against Kar-Fai. Our match up started off with my Noise against his HB deck (can't remember the id). Kar-Fai started off scoring an early Private Security Force. In reply I scored three agendas worth six points. I was hunting for that final winning agenda, mainly by hitting R&D, and archives. Kar-Fai had been forced to purge virus counters to stop my deep digging of R&D. I had been ignoring a card in his scoring server because I felt it was a trap. During my hunting, I took three tags. Kar-Fai started using the Private Security Force ability of doing meat damage. I had a couple of I've Had Worse in hand that kept me in the game. I should have but didn't get rid of the tags, but then again I had no money, I didn't really need it at this point I thought. After my turn I was left with two cards in hand, hoping this hadn't been noticed. But click one damage, click one damage, click one damage, I'm dead. If I had hit that ignored server I'd have won! Brilliant game.

Our second game saw Gabriel against my NEH. This was a close game also. Kar-Fai was making it hard to keep tags landed on his runner by spending money to clear them. So although I'd prefer to keep the tags on him, it did mean he had to spend clicks and money to clear them. Everytime Kar-Fai hit HQ he kept hitting one of the two Scorched Earths I had in hand and was not able to land. Another reason for him to keep clearing tags. In the end our game went to time, with Kar-Fai getting the win on having more agenda points.

The third and final round was against John. This was my first time ever against John. John was playing core set NBN. Noise did his job, ran amok again and won the first game. I can't remember the core runner or faction John was using. But the “tricks” were working, John was walking into traps. I had scored four one point agendas, I had an unguarded archives with a two point agenda hidden in it (that never got hit), my unguarded PAD Campaign never got trashed. John did keep clearing tags that I landed. In the end our game went to time, giving me the win.

The modified win against John meant I took second instead of drawing first. But Kar-Fai got the well deserved first place. Kar-Fai very generously let me have the brain damage tokens.

Final positions for the competition:

  1. Kar-Fai
  2. Me
  3. Robert (third round buy)
  4. John (first round buy)
  5. Chris

Well done Kar-Fai – a worthy winner. Hope you enjoy the book, and look forward to playing against you soon.

Robert confirmed he is definitely selling up, he just wasn't enjoying the game, and I think may have already have a buyer for his core set and data packs.

I had a great time playing yesterday, can't wait for the next event.

The next Netrunner event (with another Spring 2016 kit) is 2nd July.

 

Running tomorrow

netrunner

Sorry for the lack of updates this week, been busy with work and under the weather hasn't helped. But starting to feel better so will start getting back up to the regular pattern.

Tomorrow starting around 10am is the first Netrunner store tournament at The Hobbit Hole in Chatteris.

Naturally I'm going with my Noise and NEH decks.

I'm hoping it's the above store kit. But I do know the first place prize is even better this time because there is also a copy of Worlds of Android up for grabs. I've donated my spare copy to try and attract players, and build up the community locally.

Looking forward to some great games tomorrow.

 

Frustrated from Chatteris

chatteris warlords, game night, netrunner

Last night I I managed to get a couple of games of Netrunner in. Practice for the coming weekends store comp.

The first game was my Noise against a Weyland deck. The corp took an early lead on the agenda front while I was building up my deck. I was very cash rich at the start, with a David out, Street Magic, Aesops, incubator out in support. Two parasites in hand.

My opponent quickly iced up archives, had a scoring server setup. I did some runs to get targets for the parasites to hit. With a second incubator out I was thinking I'd load up a medium and hit R&D. My parasites were attacking ice protecting archives and the scoring server.

Trashing one of my incubators to take out the ice on archives. Bingo! Five agenda points, back in the game.

Trashed the second incubator taking out the second piece of ice I was attacking with the other parasite. My David steam rolled through the remaining ice to get me the last two points for the win.

In our second game despite some misplays by both of us, I scraped out a win on agenda points.

The rest of the gaming group were playing 7 Wonders with all the expansions. There was some Magic action going on, plus the retro version of Bolt Action, Flint Action.

And while all this gaming goodness was going on Robert was struggling with his inner demons trying to build decks for Netrunner. His frustration almost turning into rage. I've since found out he has quit the game!

 

New Gaming Wing Additions 24Apr16

expansions, love letter, netrunner, new arrivals

First up the mid point in the Mumbad Cycle cycle arrived. Nothing in this data pack really grabbed me as “this has to go in my deck”. So for the time being this is a bought to just keep my card pool upto date. I felt dirty typing that, and even dirtier reading it back.

The first expansions for Ashes that I pre-ordered arrived. It should be hitting the stores real soon. Like the art work the packaging for these expansions is beautiful.
Because I pre-ordered it from PlaidHat themselves I got two promo Phoenixborn. I already had Dimona so not much point putting another photo of her up here. However it is worth putting up the new promo Phoenixborn Lulu Firststone. I also got extra dice that PlaidHat are now selling. And were also up for pre-order at the same time as the expansions. Which technically means I could run a mono dice Phoenixborn!
Dimona will be used most likely as a prize in any Ashes event I organise. If I'm lucky I can get one of the OP kits PlaidHat do that are currently only available to stores and organise something.

 

Can you believe that the UK Games Expo wasn't one of the promo game tiles made for Suburbia by Bezier Games when they did the Game Con Bonus Tiles promos? I know shocking!

The replacement die for Dead of Winter arrived. Which means I'm a happy bunny. But it still eats away what happened to the previous one.
Finally some new additions to the minifig collection.

This time I do really mean finally a replacement Batman Love Letter. I will manage to keep one of these one day.

So that's all the new additions to the new gaming wing being built.