Category Archives: netrunner

netrunner

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 ^_^

 

 

Windy My Current Noise Deck

netrunner

In this post I thought I would cover the cards in the latest interation of my Noise deck. For the record I have all the data packs up to the latest one from The SanSan Cycle Old Hollywood (see yesterday's post). The only Deluxe expansion I have is Order and Chaos. I still need to get Creation and Control plus Honor and Profit. In fact I need to make that a priority I think.

So my Noise deck is forty six cards. Uses nine of the possible fifteen influence points. But I know, what have I used to make this deck?

So I have the following in my deck:

So the plan is to mill a lot by installing viruses, cashing them in with Aesop to get some economy. Hopefully get the Hades Shard installed early to allow me to access the corps archives to steal some juicy agendas. It's always a game of chicken with this, just how long do you let that archives pile up before pulling the trigger? Djinn will allow me (as long as I remember it does this) fetch viruses from the stack, while Deja Vu and Trope allow me to get cards out of the heap back into my grip or the stack to go through the cycle once more of install and pawn.

I also have some nice cards there that allow me to beef up the virus cards with virus tokens very quickly. Plus one or two that allow me to install more than my memory allocation will allow. Plus I have card to give me card draw and counter meat and net damage.

Because milling is the main tactic of the deck, I'm calling this deck Windy after Windy Miller from Trumpton ^__^

Top of My Livng Room Cupboards

Well games need storing somewhere, and I'm running out of space!

 

Old Hollywood

netrunner

Old Hollywood the latest data pack from the SanSan cycle has hit the shelves of the stores. I'll give a warning now for those that don't want to know the contents because part of getting a new data pack is the surprise of discovering new cards as they go through the pack, SPOILER ALERT STOP READING NOW!

In a new departure for me I thought I'd do a more indepth look at the contents that make up the data pack. I will give this disclaimer. I'm no expert, I don't know the cards well enough to be an expert.

One of the things I love about Android:Netrunner is the Cyberpunk theme. Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) does such a good job on this. Each data pack comes with a sheet that helps add flavour to the overall theme of that data pack. I love these flavour sheets.

The one that comes with Old Hollywood does not disappoint. Done in the style of “tabloid” celebrity news coverage it sets the tone perfectly.

So let's look at the cards in Old Hollywood for my beloved Runners.

Runners

First up the runner faction that is me, Anarch. Anarch gets two new cards in this data pack, a theme we will see for all the runner factions except the factionless cards.

I can see both of these cards finding a home in my Noise deck. Trope would be a useful card for getting cards from my heap (discard pile for none players) back into the stack (deck). Ideally the card would need to be drawn early so that the power counters can build up.
Spoilers would be useful on the mill side of things, in helping speed that up. But once again needs to be out early to be of any real use.
Now onto Criminal, like Anarch they get two new cards. Both thematically fitting really well with the criminal theme. I don't play Criminal so can't say if they would be good enough for making it into a criminal deck, but for me I can't see myself spending scarce influence points on them to use with Noise.
The last runner faction and once again one I've not played so I'm giving the same get out clause as I did with Criminal. I will have to do some research because although thematic I'm a bit confused about how useful these two cards are. What use is a zero value agenda? Or why would you not want to score an agenda straight away? Are these cards a way of protecting agendas from the corps?
The final runner card is factionless and is a resource. It's an interesting card, take a tag prevent all meat damage. Is this meant to replace Plascrete Carapace when we hit the first card rotation?

Now let's look at those evil corps…

Corp

First to get some Old Hollywood lovin is HB.

Next up is Jinteki and I love the classic line references as the card titles. I can see It's A Trap! getting a bit of play in decks. Don't think I'd like to face a deck with this and Snare! in it. Mind you I think Offer might prove popular too for a cheap score of an agenda point.

We then come to NBN the corp faction I have decided to go with. I like the look of the new corp identity. It appeals to me limiting a runner to only being able to steal a single agenda per turn. That's a good card to help protect the central servers.

I like the two new agendas, they are bitter sweet when stolen. You lose the agenda, but get something back in return.

The other cards I like to. Casting call fits in nicely with the “tag you are it” deck I'm trying to build. Which is basically all about tagging the runner and screwing with them.

The final corp faction is Weyland. Two good cards I think for Weyland, particularly like Back Channels.

Then wrapping up we have a single none faction agenda. Don't know if I'd ever use this agenda. But I love it. The Wizard of Oz reference I think is what makes it for me.

I really enjoy this data pack, the theme is amazing, especially for a TV/film buff/fan like me. Oh wait that is probably why I also like NBN. But there are definitely some cards I want to work into decks.

 

Sleeve that survivor

netrunner, new arrivals, zombicide

The theme of Android:Netrunner is incredibly awesome, the game is amazing, and boy oh boy is the art on the cards out of this world.

Now to sleeve all of the cards in Netrunner would be a tad on the expensive side. Especially if I was to use the official sleeves. A pack of sleeves is usually made up of fifty sleeves and costs between a fiver and eight quid. With a card count that must easily be over two thousand by now if you have everything, you can quickly do the maths, and have a minor heart attack from the shock.

There is a cheaper solution. Just sleeve the cards that make up your current decks for corporate and runner. For my Noise deck I have been using the beautiful looking Snare sleeves from FFG (below right).

Doesn't the art work for Snare look amazing? I love the whole venus flytrap look of it. It captures the theme of the card perfectly. This card is the Android:Netrunner version of a venus flytrap, it sits there waiting for the runner to “fly” into its cunning trap looking for those oh oh so sweet agendas. But just as the runner realises something is wrong it snaps shut.

However this morning I had two more packs of official FFG sleeves arrive. The amazing looking pop up (above middle) and the equally amazing looking Posted Bounty.
What really impresses me is that there are some really abstract ideas within the game, and some how the artists manage to capture that theme/idea in such a beautiful way. Pop up window and Snare manage to do this so so well.
The pop up window sleeves I'll be using with my NBN corp deck that I am building. If I build a third deck I'll use the Posted Bounty for that.
The exciting thing is I think from what I have seen of Ashes Rise of the Pheonix Born that the art in that game may surpass the art of Netrunner!!!!

The dudes a survivor

Finally the Gary character for Zombicide also arrived today.

As you can see the Gary Zombicide character bares a remarkable resemblance to a certain Jeff Lebowski character played by Jeff Bridges from the cult/hip/classic (think that covers all the bases) movie The Big Lebowski.

I got this character for one friend (the same one I did the hipster minifig for) only to play with. He's a big fan of the movie (although I debate that because he hasn't seen the porn parody version) and when we next play Zombicide (we are long over due for a game or two) I'm sure this will be the only character he will want to play with.

I have to say that I think they have captured the character really really well in the sculpt.

Now I just need to track down the Ross survivor which is the John Goodman character from the movie.