Category Archives: netrunner

netrunner

Kick that hornets nest

expansions, imperial assault, netrunner, news, star wars

 

With the arrival of the latest additions to the Star Wars Imperial Assault universe, I thought I'd better finally do the posts for the previous additions. So over the next few days I'll be doing posts looking at those expansions plus the new arrivals.

In the meantime before those posts start taking over this blog, I'd briefly point out that FFG over the holiday period decided they would “tweak” one or two of their games. The two I currently care about are naturally Imperial Assault and Android:Netrunner. X-Wing as a collectable game for me is on hold.

Imperial Assault got off lightly I think with the “tweaks”. The Royal Guard, Rebel Saboteurs, and Imperial Officers have had some of their card text changed. Below I have extracted the changes from the FAQ.

Naturally for the new season of store championships FFG have updated the legal skirmish maps. The legal maps are, the Kuat Space Station, Mos Eisley Cantina and the Training Ground map.

Here is the link to the new FAQ, here is the link to the FFG explanation for changes , new tournament rules

Let's look at the Netrunner changes, or as I like to describe it “kicking the hornets nest”. These changes have been the more controversial from my observations of the two Facebook communities for both games I follow.

So what has caused the hornets in the Netrunner community to swarm? Let's take a look at the FAQ for the two changes:

Here is the kick that stirred folks up.

Link to the new FAQ , link to new Tournament Rules , FFG explain why

My Thoughts on the subject…

FFG spent a lot of time analysing the recent world championships they held, I think they also monitor the meta in other ways too. So they have a very accurate image of the current state of the game. More so than us players.

Which means that they won't have reached the decisions they have on a whim. They will have thought about them, play tested them, and made a decision that would have the least impact on the game to fix the “problem” as they see it based on the data they have.

One of the things I don't like about Magic, Pokemon etc is the banned cards list. I think this is a sloppy, annoying fix. So I'm glad to see the solution that FFG have come up with. At least with the FFG solution I can still play with the cards, I just have to make a compromise or two to my deck to use them.

What I would like to see is a more elegant way of doing the errata for the cards. I'd love to see some stickers made available cheaply to purchase to update the cards with from FFG. I'd also like to think all new printings of these cards are with these changes. Or even better still I'd love to be able to buy corrected cards to replace the existing ones with.

FFG think/hope that these changes will add variety to the meta for the games. That it will encourage players to build a wider variety of decks/teams, which they will see reflected in tournaments.

I've been playing Netrunner for nearly a year now, but from what I can tell certain deck types come and go out of fashion as new data packs/expansions come out. At one point a Weyland deck may have the upper hand, while Criminal decks maybe stronger on the runner side. Then the next Deluxe expansion NBN becomes more popular.

If these changes even that out, I'm happy with what's been done.

 

Boxing Day Butt Kicked

netrunner, online play, star realms
Yesterday I taught Nath how to play Netrunner. We used the core set. Nath played my favourite runner, the anarch Noise. While I played the corp NBN.
This was the first time I've taught the game to anyone, and I was a little nervous about it considering I'm such a noob myself.
While explaining the game to Nath there was little bits I didn't explain, for example the influence cost of cards. That isn't important unless you are building decks. I also used a six sided dice for Nath to track his mmu with. Plus I didn't cover mulligans either. Well for a first game, how would Nath know if he needed to mulligan or not?

Nath drew a medium early, while I was drawing agendas and no ice! Although with two pad campaigns in play my economy was good. Nath hit HQ, scored an agenda for two points. I replied by scoring a one point agenda. Then he hit R&D which I was unable to defend and built up that medium. Nath scores another agenda for two more points on one of his R&D raids. I'm still not hitting ice, and have three agendas in HQ. Then Nath hits a winning three point agenda on a run on R&D that saw him accessing six cards.

Between our game of Magic and this game of Netrunner I'm not having much luck against Nath. I'm doing much better against him playing Star Realms. Since Nath has joined the online play via the app I've been kicking his butt. Which is funny because since Rich started playing online he's been kicking my butt!

 

Star Wars Lego Advent Day 1

lego minifigs, netrunner, new arrivals

Yep today I can start opening the Star Wars Lego Advent Calandar. After keeping it safe round my Nans for a few weeks now (I would have opened them all by now if I hadn't) it is now TIME!

So today's little bit of Star Wars inspired Lego is a mini Jabba's Barge from the sixth Star Wars movie Return of the Jedi. It's amazing what can be done with eleven bits of Lego.
Finally the click trackers from Team Covenent arrived today. I do like these for tracking clicks while playing Android Netrunner.

These are really nice, I also like their money counters for the game. I'll get some at some point, oh along with the extra click tokens.

The invoice came in a really nice card, and had a Team Covenent sticker inside too. Back of the invoice had really nice gushing text on it thanking for buying etc etc. This was a real great way to present the invoice, it is very stylish, and clever. A very very nice touch.

Running Magic

dice masters, magic, netrunner

While getting some card protectors to protect my restocked Love Letter Batman (I'd given my two copies away, and it is my favourite version), a set of Magic Duel Decks and three booster packs fell into my bag! The owner of the FLGS also kindly gave me a “trial” Magic the Gathering pack as well. These “trial” packs are two thirty card decks given to people thinking of trying the game.

This Christmas is looking like a LCG/CCG holiday. With the Magic stuff today, Epic, Android Netrunner, and Ashes I have plenty of options to play with Nath.

Whilst at the FLGS ok I'm going to name it, it's The Hobbit Hole in Chatteris, the owner said he is looking to start organising Netrunner stuff starting in January. Customers (other than me) had been in asking about the game.

The other bit of gossip I got was that apparently the second D&D Dicemasters set is meant to be hitting stores tomorrow!!!

If this is true, it's madness. The Amazing Spider-Man set only hit about three weeks ago.

I love playing Dicemasters, but I'm glad I jumped off the wagon. Wizkids have a crazy release schedule, that is not only expensive, but doesn't give you much time to play with the sets before another hits.

At least with Netrunner and Magic the release schedules are much less punishing. Giving you time to play and explore the new goodness.

Mind you considering the Dicemasters Teenage Ninja Turtles set will be a self contained set, I may be tempted to part with some cash for it.

Don't forget…

Today is the last day to enter the caption competition to win a copy of Bang the Dice Game.

 

SanSan Cycle Comes To An End

netrunner

Regular readers will know that I received the last data pack in the SanSan Cycle The Universe of Tomorrow last week.

So it's about time I looked at the cards or goodies that make up this cycle. Let's start with the cards that have been added to my beloved Anarchs.

I'm not too impressed with the “Power to the People” event card. I can see its use as an econ card but I can't see it making it into my Windy deck. Now the next two cards “Surfer” and “DDoS” they are different stories.

I love the flavour text of these two cards, especially the “DDoS” card. Plus the art is fabulous. For me “Surfer” is a card I may find myself using. But “DDoS” is going straight into Windy. The card is a constant threat to a Corp player, once trashed if they have been foolish enough to protect their servers with just single ice, I'm hitting them big time. I just love that ability of stopping the corps rezzing the first piece of ice on each of their servers for the whole of my turn. Anarch running havoc, love it.

Criminals get a new identity “Laramy Fisk” and he also has an event card “Fisk Investment Seminar”. It seems to me that this new identity and the event are aimed at getting the corp player to go through their R&D deck quickly, forcing them to discard cards from their hand that they would have otherwise have liked to have kept around. Maybe getting them to hold a handful of agendas in HQ!

Those do good ear white hat shaper runners also get two cards. A program that helps a little with the economy, allowing the shaper to install a card for free. I'm not sure how useful this would be for a shaper. But it's not a card that I would think about spending influence on. However their other card is something I would consider. “Bookmark” is hardware that when installed allows me to store cards face down from my grip. Then at a time of my choosing spend a click or trash the card put them back in my grip. This is awesome. Instead of discarding cards put them on “Bookmark” and pull them back when you need them.

For me this is far more useful version of the Anarch “Street Peddler” card. However it does continue a trend of runners being able to put cards out without the corp player knowing what they are. Now the runners are getting to have hidden information. Love it, love it.

The neutral “Wireless Net Pavilion” doesn't excite me at all, sorry.

Jinteki gets a new identity “Chronos Protocol”, plus a new agenda “Ancestral Imager” which seem to be meant for each other. Dealing net damage, and allowing the corp player to see the cards in the runners grip before trashing one. That could be very useful in stopping the runner from getting his rig setup, and force them to hunt for another copy of that card, or remove that “DDoS” before it can be played. The “Genetics Pavilion” could also be a thorn in the runners side. It certainly slows down their game when they are drawing trying to find a particular card.

HB get two nice assets, that I could see me spending influence on to use, especially “Team Sponsorship”.

My favourite corp NBN. I can see “Franchise City” making it into my deck. I do also like the neutral agenda “The Future Is Now”, score and get a card you want, very handy.

I like the new Weyland cards, definitely a little push on assets for them. They all work very nicely together.

This has been the first cycle that I have bought as it came out. Well I only started playing earlier in the year, so it it makes sense as this one started up just after I started playing.

I've really enjoyed opening the new data packs, discovering new cards. Looking at new interactions, loving the art work and flavour text.

I'm looking forward to the new Deluxe expansion and the Munbad cycle.

 

Deck Boxes and a Futuristic Fair

expansions, netrunner, new arrivals

Ok so I had some new arrivals this morning. Not the Kickstarter games that are still somewhere in the postal system however. Although on the Kickstarter front backers of the Thunderbirds game had some good news in the past couple of days. The base game is nearly with us. It's hitting the relevant shores and going through customs. Which means by the publishers estimate backers should be getting their grubby hands on the game by mid October.

On the Game of Thrones boardgame front, I got a refund on that. Somehow it got “lost” by myHermes. So the wait for a copy continues.

Right onto today's new arrivals.

First up is two Ultra-Pro Satin Tower Deck Boxes. I bought these to use with Ashes, to hold a deck and its dice. I have to admit these aren't exactly the model I was expecting. However it meets the main requirements I wanted from the model I thought I was buying, space for the deck I've built and the ten dice.

For a really bargain price from that addictive and expensive (only in the sense you spend so much) Facebook board game trading page I got this little card game called Race for the Summit. Which from its box art you can tell is all about climbing.

I've no idea what the game is like, and I'm curious to find out.

The last data pack in the SanSan cycle The Universe of Tomorrow also came today. I'm looking forward to cracking open this data pack and seeing what goodies are inside.

Android:Netrunner News

Yesterday FFG released floor rules for Android:Netrunner. The floor rules are for judges and organisers to help them with decisions that crop up during organised play, like a misplay or cheating.

I think this is great that FFG have done this, it shows that they are serious about organised play and making sure that there is a consistent experience and decisions no matter where you play. This can only be of benefit to the community.

You can get the floor rules from links in the official FFG news story announcing their release HERE

 

Windy Update

netrunner
So after listening to some of the Netrunner podcasts, particularly Terminal 7 I've tweaked my windy deck.
In the current episode of Terminal 7 they were looking at the Old Hollywood data pack, and while looking at the runner side things they mentioned a card interaction between one of the new cards and a card from an earlier cycles data pack. The two cards were Paparazzi (Old Hollywood) and Data Leak Reversal (Future Proof). Paparazzi allows me to tag myself without having to rely on the corp to tag me to kick in the milling ability of Data Leak Reversal.
At the moment I've added one of each, plus a Film Critic (Old Hollywood).
Anyway here is my new Windy deck.

Windy

 

Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire (Core Set)

 

Event (10)

3x Déjà Vu (Core Set)

2x I've Had Worse (Order and Chaos)

2x Infiltration (Core Set)

1x Surge (Humanity's Shadow)

2x Test Run (Cyber Exodus) ····· ·

 

Hardware (5)

2x Cyberfeeder (Core Set)

1x Grimoire (Core Set)

2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)

 

Resource (14)

2x Aesop's Pawnshop (Core Set) ····

2x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set)

1x Data Leak Reversal (Future Proof)

1x Duggar's (First Contact)

2x Earthrise Hotel (The Source)

1x Film Critic (Old Hollywood) ·

1x Hades Shard (First Contact) ·

1x Kati Jones (Humanity's Shadow)

1x Paparazzi (Old Hollywood)

2x Virus Breeding Ground (Order and Chaos)

 

Icebreaker (2)

2x Crypsis (Core Set)

 

Program (15)

2x Datasucker (Core Set)

2x Djinn (Core Set)

2x Hivemind (Order and Chaos)

2x Imp (What Lies Ahead)

1x Incubator (The Source)

3x Parasite (Core Set)

2x Progenitor (Order and Chaos)

1x Scheherazade (Second Thoughts)

 

Cards in deck: 46 (min 45)

12/15 influence used

Cards up to Old Hollywood

 

Deck built with Net Deck http://appstore.com/netdeck

So that's my current thinking, what do you think? All I need to do now is test it!

 

Bank holiday gaming

lords of waterdeep, netrunner
This afternoon Alison, Jamie and myself became shadowy figures pulling the invisible strings of power as we took on the roles of the Lords of Waterdeep.
Above photo courtesy of Jamie
Our game of Lords of Waterdeep this afternoon also used the Scoundrels of Skullport (SoS) expansion. Which was a first for me. Well this was only my second time playing the physical game, so it was bound to be.
The SoS expansion isn't a single expansion but in reality two expansions for the price of one. Between the two expansions they add three small boards to sit alongside the original playing board. Two of the boards add new actions for you to select from with your minions out doing your bidding. While the third is a corruption board that homes the corruption tokens that players get for doing some of the new actions, and tracking how many negative victory points those corruption tokens will be worth at the end of the game. Yes corruption tokens are negative victory points if you have them sitting in your tavern at the end of the game.
As I pursued a tactic of playing intrigue cards, getting lucky to have an intrigue card that protected me from intrigue attack cards and intrigue compulsory quests early on, I was able to secure a victory of 143 points I think it was in the end. I think I built one building in the end, that allowed as its action the ability to remove two corruption tokens from your tavern. Which once I had got rid of the four corruption counters I had accrued using this building and an intrigue card that also removed up to three corruption counters, using an intrigue card I had I was able to remove the building and replace it with another one for free. This stopped Jamie and Alison from getting rid of their corruption tokens.
I did play a shed load of intrigue cards. Which also gave me lots more actions than Jamie and Alison. On the last three rounds I also started amassing lots of coins, I ended the game with thirty five coins worth seventeen victory points, and twelve cubes, only five victory points from building, four completed scoring quests that got me six points per one, and three none scoring completed quests.
I was surprised how effective this tactic was. It felt like an aggressive tactic.
I really did enjoy playing Lords of Waterdeep with the SoS expansion. This will definitely be going on the wish list on bgg, and be high up on my priority list. In the meantime I will get the expansions for the iOS app, although they are two separate purchases.
Afterwards it was a “quick” game of Netrunner (yes I took my decks with me on the off chance, I had tweaked them – details on tweaks to follow in another post).
The first game was Noise up against Jamie's Jinteki. I lost this match up due to net damage wiping me out. I had three servers to choose from, I went with the middle one that was a trap. If I had gone either side I would have scored an agenda.
Second game was NBN taking on Kate. I won this when Jamie did two runs on R&D hitting two snares! On the trot and wiping himself out with net damage. The first time he hit the snare! I only had three credits so couldn't pull the trigger. But second time the pop up window guarding R&D gave me that fourth credit I needed to do the net damage and the win.
Thanks Jamie and Alison for a great afternoon gaming.

A Visit to The Hobbit Hole

Midday saw my first visit to The Hobbit Hole in Chatteris. When I arrived at Chatteris I thought I may have to google the shops location, but it was easier to find than I thought, because I drove right past it on my way into the centre looking for it.

I have to say I liked the friendly helpful owner, who welcomed me to the shop, let me browse and was helpful and gave me info on local gaming groups in the area.

The small band of I'm assuming regulars who were playing the Warhammer Conquest LCG were also friendly and helpful.

I enjoyed my first experience at the shop. I can see myself going back to the shop on a regular basis. Chatteris is roughly a thirty minute drive for me, free parking when I get there. So a lot more convenient for me than Peterborough.

The range of games on sale isn't as comprehensive as other lgs. But that will improve I'm sure.

Yes I may have parted with hard currency while there so let's look at my guilty purchases.

I blame the contents of the photo below on my mate Duncan and his “nagging” to paint my miniatures. Yes I admit I set it as an aim for the year to learn how to paint figures. So ok, you can argue that Duncan was only helping me to meet an aim of mine.

Plus the main reason I made this trip to The Hobbit Hole was to see what painting stuff they had in stock. I have to say the owner and the shops resident painting expert (sorry can't remember his name) were really helpful in advising me in what I needed brush wise as a starter, and initial paints for painting storm troopers and zombies.
The above photo is proof I am a weak willed fool, who has no self control. I swore to myself I was going to skip the Age of Ultron set of Dicemasters, because of the insane release schedule Wizkids have. But heck if I didn't crumble and buy five boosters for this set.
Which now means I'm going to have to buy the starter set, and then the inevitable gravity feed!
The nice thing is that The Hobbit Hole has just got in some of the OP kits, so will be hosting some Dicemasters OP soon. The owner did say that he is easy to beat, that the one or two of his regulars who play have the likes of Gobby.
Easiest way to combat this and even up the playing field is make the OP events draft only. Having played draft at the Games Expo earlier in the year, this is a fun format to play. Ok so you pay a tenner to enter but you are getting ten boosters worth of cards of the latest set.

Out This Week

A once in a random time section to a post that I thought I'd run. It won't be everything coming out but stuff I've been waiting for.

First up according to the Esdevium (Probably the main distributor of games in the UK) weekly coming out newsletter is Machi Koro Millionaires Row. This is the second expansion for the popular card game of city building. The question is how big will the box be?

Valley of the Kings Afterlife is also out this week. A standalone game and can also be used with the original Valley of the Kings game. No new mechanics to learn for players of the original.

Tides of Time have to admit I was confused by this one unless it's a restock because I thought it had come out earlier in August.

 

Last Nights Runs

netrunner

 

So last night Windy and Tag You Are It got to go up against decks from Jamie again.

First up was Windy taking on Jamie's Jinteki deck. My first five cards drew “I've Had Worse” and Trope, but no Aesops or Hive Mind or Virus Breeding Ground, not even a whiff of Djinn. I was really undecided about whether I should mulligan to try and get the Aesops. Although Trope was a card I wanted early also so I could start building up those power tokens to allow me to shuffle back in more cards from the heap back into the stack.

I thought bugger it I'll play this hand and use the “I've Had Worse” to draw three cards in hope of drawing at least an Aesops. But nope that wasn't to be. And my card draw didn't get any better after that either. I did score an agenda from Archives, but I had shuffled my deck too well and everything I really needed just wasn't coming up.

This was a really easy win for Jamie.

Game two was the same match up again. This time I got Aesops early, my economy was working better, the milling was going. I score a one point agenda, Jamie score some agendas. I finally run on Archives with the milled R&D cards sitting there so tempting, waiting for my grubby runner hands to reveal their secrets. I use up all my credits to get through the ice to steal Archives secrets.

OMG jackpot three agendas! I score one, another single agenda point. The other two are three pointers. Bugger both require a Psi Game. No cash. Jamie asks me to how much credits I have. I reply none. Feck Feck Feck. If only I had two credits left. No way I was going to win these two Psi Games.

But I knew what had to be done. It was now a race between me and Jamie. Jamie advanced, advanced a server. I built up credits to enable me to run Archives again the next go, and have some left for the Psi Games.

Advance, rez… Game over. So close!

Third game Tag Your Are It against Jamie's Kate deck. I know where I lost this game. It was the moment I decided to hide an agenda in an unprotected Archives, thinking Jamie wouldn't run it, because who would be so stupid as to hide an agenda in an unprotected server? Obviously the answer is me.

Why did I hide it in Archives? Well I didn't want it sitting in HQ, Jamie had been making runs on there, and I didn't have a protected server for it to be installed on.

So guess which server Jamie ran on and get a cheap, no free agenda? Yep Archives.

This NBN deck has potential I think. As I said in yesterday's post I need to revisit the ice. Maybe look at the economy side also.

 

NBN Tag You Are It Deck

netrunner

Following on from yesterday's post about my “tweaked” Noise deck that I have given the name Windy, here is my first attempt at an evil corp deck.

Please remember when thinking “why hasn't he used/included such and such a card?” I have all the data packs up to the latest one from The SanSan Cycle Old Hollywood. The only Deluxe expansion I have is Order and Chaos. So if the card is from one of the Deluxe expansions I don't have then you know why. If the card is one I have then please let me know in the comments below how I can improve my evil corp deck, along with which card you think it should be replacing.

The identity I am using is the NBN Making News identity.

Making news gives me a minimum deck size of forty five cards and an influence of fifteen to use on out of faction cards. It also gives me two re-occurring credits to use on traces. Which basically means whenever I initiate a trace on a runner it automatically is two stronger before I add anything additional to it.

As I have previously said and as the name I have given this deck suggests, this deck is all about tagging the runner. But it's no good tagging the runner if I am not going to do anything with those tags. This is why I've included operations like Closed Accounts (screws with their economy) or Shoot The Moon (I get to Rez ice for free). Snare! just gives me another way to tag the runner, and trash cards in their grip.

I believe Jackson Howard is a “standard” in corp decks, and gives me some extra card draw, and a way to move some cards from archives (discard pile) back into R&D (deck). Marked Accounts and PAD Campaign (another “standard”) are all about my economy and giving me funds to install and advance stuff.

Primary Transmission Dish is another economy card but this time acting as another mega boost for the traces. Get this out with my identities ability that is plus five to all my traces! Adonis Campaign or Sexy Bot as it is referred to in the TeamWorkCast game commentries pure money in the bank! Breaker Bay Grid is there to help reduce the cost of rezzing ice and assets etc.

We are now coming onto the section of my deck I'm the least confident about. And very very likely needs the most work. It's the ice I'm going to be using to protect my servers.

I think if I was going to spend the remaining influence points that I have it would most likely be to add ice from other factions I think.

Finally we are onto the twenty agenda points I have to have for having a forty eight card deck. Even if I was at the minimum card count of forty five I would still be required to have twenty agenda points.

I have reached the twenty point total with eleven agenda cards. Which means 22.9% of my deck is agendas. Is this too high a ratio?

If the runner leaves the tags on and I score Private Security Force, it could be game over for them. Or if they are tagged when I score Market Research it gets an extra agenda point! So instead of scoring as two it becomes three. That could be a game winning condition.

So forty eight cards, twenty agenda points, and four of my available influence points spent.

Now to play these decks in anger against another player. Which is happening this evening ^_^