Wednesday, August 22, 2012

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.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Gen Con 2012 After Action Report

So I just got back from Gen Con 2012, and much like last year, I played a ton of games.  I'll mention some of the ones I enjoyed there.

Games I played

Spartacus



If I recall correctly, the first game we sat down to demo was Spartacus.  I have a fondness for ancient Rome and especially gladiators, but at the same time am kind of turned off by games based on television shows, so it was really going to come down to how the game played. The demo consisted of just one round, but what I can tell you is this: it seems kind of cool.  The parts I like are the first phase where intrigues (event cards) are played and you can share the cost (influence) of playing those cards with other tables. You can make deals however you want to accomplish this, trading money, slaves, and gladiators for a hand in playing your card. However, you can also trade the PROMISE of those things, so a wise bargainer would ask for the goods up front. Even still, after the event is played there is no assurance that it will be played in the agreed upon way, which seems like it could result in a lot of shenanigans.  After the intrigue phase there is a market phase where new gladiators, slaves, and items are bid on, followed by the opportunity to bid on hosting the next fight.  The host of the fight gets to invite players to send their gladiators to their fight and that's where things seem like they might fall apart a bit.

I was kind of underwhelmed by the combat in Spartacus. As it stands the combats are only one on one.  They take place on a hex grid but it seems like the maneuvering is somewhat unimportant, as once gladiators get locked in there is little point to maneuvering unless there's a difference in the speed of the gladiators, at which point the faster gladiator is at a huge advantage because attacks can take place before or after movement. The dice resolution for attacks, defense, damage and initiative are kind of cool, but I think the combat might get a little shallow after a while especially because of the aforementioned limit of single combat.  There's some betting that takes place on the fight which is kind of fun and winning gets you influence which is the key to winning the overall game (there are other ways to get influence too).  All in all it seemed kind of promising, but the one round we played was not enough to convince me of a purchase and I didn't get time to play a longer full game in the event hall.

Relic Knights

This might be my new favorite model from the line. It's bigger than it looks.
I got two demos of Relic Knights, one at the booth which was kind of railroaded but still fun and another more open demo with the designer talking me and another player through the game which was a bit more informative.  Relic Knights is an anime-inspired miniature skirmish game that is characterized by fast action and match-3 inspired gameplay mechanics.  Unlike most wargames, there little emphasis on judging ranges since ranged attacks have an infinite range and models tend to move very quickly across the battlefield.

Gameplay consists of alternating activations where you can move a model's first move distance, do an action, and then move the model's second move distance.  The part where you do the action is where Relic Knights really shines, since there are no basic attacks in Relic Knights.  Instead, every attack is done by playing a combination of power cards out of your hand to activate the ability.  There's six colors of power, and it seems like most factions are focused on two primary colors with an extra third color thrown in to make things more challenging.  Power cards have one major color worth two and one minor color worth one, and an example attack might have an activation cost of two red and one purple, so you could make that attack with any combination of cards in your hand so long as it added up to two red and one purple.  Models are placed in an activation queue that specifies the order in which you'll activate them, so hand management becomes super important because you need to make sure you have the right colors in hand when the next model comes up.  Luckily, the game mechanics allow you to cycle through your hand quickly enough that you won't get "mana-screwed."

There's a kickstarter going for this game right now that looks very promising in terms of value for your dollar. I've been a fan of the models since last year and playing with them at the con cemented my commitment to backing this game.

Alcatraz: The Scapegoat

Alcatraz is a semi cooperative boardgame from Z-Man games that was debuting at the con.  Z-Man runs full demos of their games which is very cool, and it was cool enough for me to buy it.  Expect a full review soon.

Android: Netrunner

Probably the talk of the con, Netrunner is the re-release of the cult classic TCG from the early 90's, dressed up all fancy in Fantasy Flight Game's LCG format.  I played a ton of this over the weekend and will be doing a full review. Great game, even if the Android setting is kind of scraping the bottom of the cyberpunk barrel in my opinion.  It's far more I, Robot staring Will Smith than it is Neuromancer.

Sky Traders


The six regular goods and two special goods in Sky Traders.
Sky Traders is a game of shipping goods and manipulating prices with an airship theme.  Each turn involves buying goods and taking them around to different cities around the map which is made entirely out of hexes.  There are six regular goods and two special goods, and at the end of each turn the six regular goods go up and down in price depending on dice that are assigned by the players.  Each round you roll three dice and each of those dice has the power to change the value of a regular good by one step up or down.  dice results can be traded for other dice and even for goods and money so this seems to be the main meat of the game: making sure you can sell your goods for more than you bought them for and turn a profit.  This might be harder than it sounds because of limited cargo space forcing you to sell goods to make room for better ones and the chance to take damage which can eliminate one or more of your six holds and everything in them.  At the end of the round players have a chance to buy influence, and the game ends once you've reached a certain influence level.  Sky Traders seems like a fun game, but after two rounds I was worried that it might be kind of a one note song.  It's not a bad song by any means, but I didn't sense a whole lot of strategic depth in the game.

Aerotech


My Sai didn't get shot down!
Not a new game by any means, i played in an aerotech event designed to teach new players familiar with Battletech the rules of the game.  All I have to say about aerotech is that it is a totally awesome game for crazy people, and actually far less complicated and ponderous than Battletech. The combats are far more lethal, determining line of sight is much simpler (cause, you know, you're in the air), and the game is an all around blast to play.  I picked up a few Inner Sphere aerospace fighters and the 3039 technical readout so i could get the background stories for all the inner sphere designs that would later fight during the clan invasion. I don't normally like to play clan vs inner sphere, but we were told that the clan have less of an overwhelming advantage in aerotech than they do in battletech, so I'm looking forward to playing that game.

phew, that's enough for one day.  I think I'll save my impressions of the show in general along with some of these reviews for some other time.