Android: Netrunner - Review

Some of the new Android:Netrunner Cards

Based on the beloved 1996 cult classic CCG Netrunner, Android: Netrunner is a relaunch of the game with new and updated rules, new art, and a departure from the randomized boosters of its CCG roots.  The new Netrunner has adopted the LCG format, which is characterized by fixed card sets and non-randomized expansions.  This is great news for people who are interested in CCGs but are wary of the expense of getting into a game like Magic: The Gathering, where rare cards command high prices in the secondary market and drive the cost of top tier tournament decks up into the $500+ range.  Released in limited quantities which quickly sold out at Gen Con this year and due to ship at the end of the month, Android: Netrunner was the talk of the convention. Over the course of numerous games in the event hall I was amazed as people stopped to stare at our copy of the game as though we were not just playing a card game, but were in fact carefully brushing the mane of a tiny unicorn.  They were right to be envious, Android: Netrunner is a pretty good game.

The Basics

So what sets this game apart from the scores of other two player card games in both the CCG and LCG format?  Well, a lot of things, not the least of which is the fact that it's an asymmetrical game where both sides play completely differently.  Without getting too bogged down in details, one player is always the corporation and one player is always the runner. The corporation's job is to advance and protect agendas that they install face down in servers behind layers of ice.  Ice is also installed face down and kept secret from the runner who is trying to steal the agendas. It's only when the runner encounters the ice that the corporation must pay the rez cost of the ice to activate it.  Ice has numerous negative effects on the runner, which are represented by its subroutines, but in general the purpose of ice is to end the run.  The corporation can win if it advances its agendas and scores 7 before the runner can steal that many points.

An agenda worth 2 points.

The runner's job is to steal agendas, which they do by running servers. Central servers are the corporation's hand (HQ) and draw pile (R&D).  Remote servers are places on the table where corporations install agendas and other assets.  To break the ice that the corporation installs in front of its servers the runner must use icebreakers that are capable of doing that. There are a couple of different kinds of ice including sentries, code gates and barriers. Each icebreaker might deal with one or more type of ice, so a runner will need to probe the defenses of each server to see what they're up against, because most of the cards in a server will be face down until the corporation rezzes them.  If the runner can access an agenda in a remote server, they score its value immediately and are one step closer to victory. If they can access a central server like R&D or HQ, then they can look at a card or sometimes multiple cards in that server, possibly trash them, and if they get lucky and reveal agendas they can score agendas that way too.

An icebreaker

A tough piece of ice.

Some Comparisons to Magic: the Gathering

That's the basic gist of the game, and it works totally fine.  I'd like to change gears now and say a little about some other ideas that make Android:Netrunner stick out from the rest of the crowd.  I'll use Magic: The Gathering as a reference point here because it's a game that I'm very familiar with, it's from the same designer, and it's probably the most well known non-traditional card game in existence. In MtG you can do any number of actions per turn so long as you pay for them with mana that is generated from land cards you play each turn. This is one of MtG's most defining attributes and also one of its greatest flaws, because drawing too few or too many lands means that you might just not be able to do anything, and with very few ways to draw more cards some percentage of games will find you either "mana-screwed" or "flooded" with too little or too much mana and no chance to win the game simply because of the luck of the draw.  Android: Netrunner avoids this problem by giving you a limited number of actions per turn.  The corporation receives 3 (but always draws a card at the start of their turn) and the runner receives 4, and with these actions they can draw a card, draw bits (resource), install cards (paying the bit cost, if the runner), advance agendas by paying a bit (if the corp) and more.  The main thing to pay attention to here is that you can always draw more resources or more cards, so you're unlikely to get very far behind if you have a sub optimal draw.

There is a second difference that really makes this game stand out.  That's the idea that you must interact with your opponent. In many other card games it's possible to build decks where your opponent's actions have no effect on how you play.  A classic example of this might be the mono-red burn deck played in the Legacy format of MtG.  Mono red burn actually doesn't care what its opponent does, its goal is to simply spit out as much damage as quickly as possible.  By not playing any creatures, it invalidates a large portion of its opponent's decks and makes those cards "dead" cards.  A deck like this does not seem possible in Android: Netrunner.  For starters, there must be a certain number of agenda points in the corporation deck, so the runner will always have a chance to find them.  The corporation can win by damaging the runner and forcing him to discard past zero cards in hand, but in most cases the runner must be actively doing runs in order to be targetted by the corporation's attacks.  It's also difficult to find out what the corporation has installed in its servers without running them, so the runner must probe the corporations servers to find out if they contain agendas or if they are traps. Yes, the corporation has access to traps that look just like agendas until revealed, and it's awesome.  All that said, interactivity is good and a thing that should be aspired to in games, and Android: Netrunner has a ton of it.  Nothing is worse than sitting down to play a game and feeling like you've lost because of forces completely out of your control. That won't happen here.

One of the corporate factions.

Lastly, Android: Netrunner takes a unique approach to deckbuilding that makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd.  Using MtG again as an example, that game allows you to build your deck using any legal cards so long as there are not more than 4 of each non-land card, and your deck contains a minimum of 60 cards.  Android: Netrunner allows you to build decks containing a minimum of 45 cards so long as there are no more than 3 copies of each cards, the corp deck contains X number of agenda points based on total card count in the deck, and so long as you don't have more than 15 loyalty points worth of off-color cards.  That last bit is important, because in the base set of Android: Netrunner there are 3 runner factions and 4 corp factions that differ by cards available and also sort of a unique static ability that's always on.  Every card has a set loyalty value between 0-5 which is represented by little blue pips on the card, so as long as your deck doesn't have more than 15 pips worth of off-faction cards then you're good to go.  This sounds restrictive, but i think it's the "less is more" kind of restriction that will actually inspire more creativity and a more diverse meta-game than just having totally open deckbuilding.  Additionally, the 45 card deck size with 3 copy limit is great since it maintains the classic ratio set by MtG but requires less cards to do so.

The Bottom Line

Operation with 3 loyalty pips (bottom left)

Phew, that's a lot of Android: Netrunner. I'd like to end by closing on some standard review type stuff.  The cards are high quality, the same as any other LCG or CCG you might be used to.  The art is nice, and the theme is dead-on perfectly represented by the gameplay if that's important to you. There's a number of thick tokens used to track your bits and also various status effects.  The box is big enough to support an additional set, which you'll probably want to buy if you're dead-set on building more competitive decks.  FFG made the mistake of AGAIN including singleton cards in a core set which means you'd really need 3 core sets to build every possible deck but at least it's only a few cards this time, not like it was with Call of Cthulhu the LCG.  They haven't announced any expansions yet, but I've heard they'll have 3 of each card so that's good news for your wallet. The game plays in 30-60 minutes, so it's a bit longer than most card games but it never seems to drag.  I played tons of games with just one set that my friend managed to get his hands on.  I'm ordering two for myself and I suggest you all do as well.