Jason’s Board Game Collection — Android: Netrunner
I owned a bit of Netrunner in the 90s, but I don’t think I ever played it. We didn’t have much luck pushing any CCGs that weren’t Magic or Pokemon. I have no idea what happened to my collection.
Even so, I was pretty excited when the LCG was announced. I had only really barely started looking at the various Living Card Games from Fantasy Flight Games. I had been traded a sizable collection of The Game of Thrones LCG from a friend, but hadn’t managed to wrap my head around it enough to get into it. I’d always liked the William Gibson novels like Neuromancer and Burning Chrome, though, and the theme here really intrigued me.
The game is an asymmetrical two-player affair, where one side (The Corporation player) has a lot of hidden information in the form of “servers” which can have several things attached to them. Some cards are defensive, some score points, and others give the corporation player advantages later in the game. The other player (The Runner) has all of their assets visible, but will attack the Corporation’s various assets, and try to score points, and stop the opponent from getting the above-mentioned assets.
We managed to get into a demo of the game at GenCon, and I very much liked the theme. The gameplay was a little hard to get into, as I don’t think the theme was really Jamie’s cup of tea. I still liked it enough to want to pick up a copy, though, as I felt (and still do) that there IS someone who will enjoy playing this with me, from time to time.
I’ve only gotten it to the table once since then, and it wasn’t really Jeff’s cup of tea, either. We’ve discovered that we like Game of Thrones and Warhammer Invasion more, so those are our go-to card games. I love the idea of asymmetrical games, though, and intend to get this to the table again soon. I’m hoping to get a small (or larger) LCG community built in our area, which may allow us to do a bi-weekly evening where various LCGs get some attention.
1 Comment
I like the cyberpunk genre. I played Shadowrun a little bit. Bu tI think I was more lucky in got my wife to play the Sega Shadowrun game. It was a third person scrolling shooter, but the rp elements were strong and character creation and it had classes. One was a Hacker, you broek into a corp and then jacked in and navigated a network of nodes to get tot eh data stores and int eh whole time the Corp eitehr knew you were there or had ICE (Intrusion countermeasures) waiting for you. Black ice was the toughest.
So the old Netrunner was a game I actually got my wife to play in. Granted that game was fresh in her memory and we have too much on our plates to try now, but it was a minor success in gettign her to play.
This new game is a bit different, since they changed the background fluff, I don’t know the corps or the Runners. And I remember meat damage but I dont remember this neural damage componant or the trace stuff (I do think they are good add ons). I played two games with Matt on the suggested starter decks in the box. I had this sense that this is a basic learn the moves. The other decks I thumbed though seemed like some corps were stronger at tracing or meat damage. The Runners had the same thing.
I can get to know the universe, but if we played shadowrun I would hand wave the Hacking, I like the guns and B & E stuff. Sneak in and have a shoot out with the guards. So I like this game, but can understand if the Hacking theme doesnt isnt everyones cup of tea.I totally understand it, but it is ho hum. In the Shadowrun novels each Corp had like a motiff and they had programs that changed the artificial world inside the net to match it. Aztecnology was aztec. So a runner going in there might morph and look like a aztec warrior, and black ice might look like a feathered serpent coming to swallow you up. the video game didnt have that flavor so it can be a dry looking world. Thats the element I think missing here with Netrunner