Android: Netrunner

[Bored of Canada]

Okay. I weighed up about starting this thread, since I'm sure it's a bit TOO niche. Technically technology's not the correct place, but it's really where it belongs.
I've recently got super into Board Games after realising that there was actually GOOD board-games that aren't shit and take hours like Risk or Monopoly.
I got into the Resistance: Avalon, which is mainly a game about arguing, manipulating and lying to your friends in quick 20 minute bursts, as you drink and drink and get sneakier and sneakier, learning each others tells and how you all tick and trying to take advantage of that. It's perfect and you should really pick up a copy, especially if you don't give a shit about games.

But I digress, over the past couple months I heard a bit online about Android: Netrunner. It's a two player, competitive asymmetrical card-game, in that you're both playing two separate games against each other. It's all cyberpunk and all that shit with shit purloined from Philip K Dick, the actual Cyberpunk series[nb]Which I only realised recently is an actual series[/nb] and many other things, but still feels very much like it's own world.

You play as either the Corporation, or a Hacker.
You set up your deck before a game, and there's different corporations with different methods of play and you can build your own decks however you like. There's even one called NBN, where you're basically playing News Corp and try and fuck people over by being CyberMurdoch.

The hackers also have different factions with different states of play. And it's clever, since it's all actually very thematically solid. If you play as "The Criminal" faction, it really encourages and simulates plays where you're pulling heists and breaking into their headquarters and stealing money. Whereas the Anarchist one is just about fucking shit up, blowing everything up and doing some kamikaze tactics.

The Corporation plays by setting up their cards face down, which gives them benefits and they can score points with "agenda" cards. And they protect these by setting up protection like firewalls and encryptions and all sorts of stuff.

The Hackers go about hacking into their opponents stuff. Placing their cards face-up, trying to build software and hardware to help them get past firewalls and such. Stealing or destroying their cards if they can make it past their defenses. You can also hack into their discard pile. You can hack into their draw deck. You can even hack into their hand. Like, you literally hack into the cards they're holding and just pluck cards out of their hands.

It's really fucking weird and cool. I never really played Magic the Gathering, but from what I saw of that, and Pokemon, and Hearthstone. They're all really based off the same thing, but this is just an entirely different kind of card-game. Very much it's own thing.

I've only recently picked up the core-set, and I doubt anyone here plays it. But just in case, I thought I'd just post anyway. Because I'd be super interested if anyone's given it a go.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

In this one is success or failure determined by throwing a white cube with black dots painted on each side onto a flat surface?

[Bored of Canada]

NO DICE ALLOWED. Merely cards.
Same with Resistance. No dice. In fact, I've not played a board game with dice in a while now.

[Borboski]

I'd love this, but no-one to play it with..!

[Bored of Canada]

I'd love this, but no-one to play it with..!

I've played quite a few games now. It's really bloody fun. Even losing is fun, since it's really down to skill as opposed to luck.
I've just been wandering down to stores that sell it, which generally have people hanging about to play with. Very humid places and sweaty places but lovely people in my experience.

Good thing about picking up the core-set is that it gives you all the cards you need to play a game. So if you can find a friend/s who'd be interested in playing it, you can just play together with that and alternate between runner and corp. And it doesn't have the added barrier to entry for them of having to pay for anything. You can just learn it together, which would be really good.

I'm surprised by how much this game excites me. Really not my kind of thing, but in my experience, a lot of it's down to mind-games and being a clever bastard, which is immensely satisfying.

[Bored of Canada]

Playing in an annual competition of this tomorrow in a board-game store. Just down the street from me. Haven't played many games, and for a game that is so specifically skill-based, I'm going to be absolutely crushed into the dirt, but it's going to be fun! Playing against a lot of Pros should really teach me a lot.

Especially since I've developed a particuarly nasty deck. Going to end up hurting myself to hurt them a lot, which is risky and means I'm going to either lose hard or win hard, but if I do win, it'll be all the sweeter. Anyway, won't post in here anymore unless other people actually start playing. So have a pleasant day.

[Bored of Canada]

I fell out of this maybe a month after this because I just wasn't in a position to play it regularly for fun.

I now work every single day except for one day a fortnight, which has been draining and has left me not playing board games, but luckily, I now work right by a few communities that play it all the time, so I can just swing by after work and start playing with strangers. They're all super lovely and nice, so I've started playing it again! This time I think it's going to stick because I've got such a large pool of people to play with now. 

I think since it's a popular game but still very niche and has an even playing field in terms of cards, as everyone has the same general cards, it just seems to attract a more chilled out player who doesn't mind losing.

I've also started getting a few friends into it so we're also playing there on the few times I have spare.

It's been like a year, has anyone played this yet?

[Chairman Yang]

I picked up the core set and played it a few times with the missus but it's never really clicked with me. The pamphlet is jargonriffic and doesn't do a great job explaining the Whys of anything. We bumbled through a few games, most of which were complete washes for the Hacker and then dropped it.

It seems like you really need to be taught the game by someone with a solid grasp of the shape of a successful mid/long game just to have any clue about how to start. Presumably a good player would have a strategy and a deck to back it up, but the main box seems to just be a pile of expensive 'END RUN' ICE and really crap programs for the hackers.

The tokens are nice and chunky.

[Bored of Canada]

I picked up the core set and played it a few times with the missus but it's never really clicked with me. The pamphlet is jargonriffic and doesn't do a great job explaining the Whys of anything. We bumbled through a few games, most of which were complete washes for the Hacker and then dropped it.

It seems like you really need to be taught the game by someone with a solid grasp of the shape of a successful mid/long game just to have any clue about how to start. Presumably a good player would have a strategy and a deck to back it up, but the main box seems to just be a pile of expensive 'END RUN' ICE and really crap programs for the hackers.

The tokens are nice and chunky.

Yeah, definitely. The rule book is absolute wank and I felt it was arrogant that you have to learn its own lexicon before you can properly play.
But it does make sense down the line for ease of clarity.

Definitely need to have someone to teach you. I'm still unsure the best way to teach people. The barrier to entry is so high, and the core-set chucks so many cards at you that the actual idea of a player having an objective and a strategy is literally not going to happen. You don't really need to buy the expansion decks. You can probably make a really strong deck just out of the core-set that wins you games, but again, figuring out the strategies is hard.

I think from now on, I'm just going to teach people on my decks. I was playing in a place the other day and I didn't have a deck on me, so a guy shared his with me, told me what the basic strategy of it was and we were away. I reckon that might be the best way, as long as it's simple enough for a new player to understand. My current runner deck is super fun and pretty simple strategy that most people would understand after a single game. 

I taught Zomgmouse here how to play in a pub a couple months back just with a coreset, I don't think he's played it since, but it wasn't a good example of how fun the game can be.

My current runner deck is the fastest and most ludicrously silly deck that I built all by myself where I'm either going to win in the first three or four turns or lose super hard. And it's so risky and silly that it just makes me laugh because it's very much a deck built around certain kinds of prerequisites that I have to draw. But I like winning hard or losing hard, because it's funnier that way.

I'm desperately waiting for the new data pack because I'm finally going to be able to create the corp deck I wanted to make from the start, where it's all about giving the opponent brain damage over the course of the game until they're just withered, recently comatose, dead'uns.

[Bored of Canada]

Shut Up and Sit Down did a playthrough of it a while ago, that might actually be a fun way of seeing how it's played and the appeal, as Quinns tries to teach Matt how to play.
http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/v/susd-play-netrunner/

[Jack Shaftoe]

Aha, been looking for a decent playthrough, cheers!

[Bored of Canada]

It's been a decent amount of time now. Is anyone playing this yet here? I've actually been playing this off and on for almost 2 years now and it's still easily the most exciting tabletop game I've played in a long while.

Graham Linehan is big into it now too. He talks about it on this cool podcast here. 

http://runlastclick.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/episode-43-raindrops-on-ronins.html

[Famous Mortimer]

Graham Linehan is big into it now too.

Eurgh

I mentioned this in the board games thread in GB, but my mate Rich is quite heavily into it, organises tournaments, puts up videos where he plays games and talks strategy, and so on. Having never played it and not really having any idea what it's about, his Twitter feed may as well be dispatches from an alien planet.

[Famous Mortimer]

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB6IJtYUlzMxztV5QAaF3Iw

Is my mate's channel. He'll no doubt be delighted if you ask him some arcane questions about the game.