/anrg/ - Android Netrunner General

Did Flashpoint deliver? To me it did well enough.

From the reveals I expected it to be something of a Genesis 2.0. And in some respects that's what it was, and I liked some of the amendments/additions brought and hinted at by the cycle. All the econ play was cool (though I still think the lack of ways to punish runner high liquidity play a bit weird; I understood those could never be strong options, but I definitely would have enjoyed having them), the fact that would-be problem cards and their solutions were released very close together, sometimes in the same data pack, was a good thing - however much some competitive players might seem to think it wasn't, as it "destroyed" decks before they had their time in the spotlight.

Some weird design decisions. I love the theme around Rumor Mill, but I'm still wondering wether it was needed when, in my opinion, Martial Law+Councilman was good enough and better balanced. Power cards gonna power cards I guess.

Sifr is the only big mistake to me.

But overall the game expanded in interesting ways. BoN and it's constant damage tax on running is something new that has interesting implications. AoT forces interesting decisions to runners that would otherwise specialize on a single server, PU's stack exhaustion strategy isn't anything new strictly speaking but the doubling down on net damage changes the dynamic, CtM, as much as I dislike it, opens venues on Link play, NULL is a better core Anarch ID than Noise, Omar introduces very new threatening plays by spreading defense, Smoke is the power house many stealth players had long been waiting for,a dn even Khan, as weird as she is introduces at least interesting new ways to look at running server. Full new rigs for all runner factions.

The emergence of anti heap play started here and we know to be continued later is pretty interesting too.

With the global expansion of the card pool, I find it's harder to properly evaluate cycles though. With all the new builds, and old builds with new cards you want to test I don't think our 20-something strong meta has even seen half of what the cycle had to give.

As of right now, I'm *fucking* hyped for Red Sands.

If Flashpoint looked like Genesis 2.0, what we've seen so far of Red Sands looks like Lunar 2.0. And Lunar is probably my favorite cycle in term of sheer novelty introduced in play (though to this day I remain somewhat uneasy about Currents).

And then of course there's Terminal Directive... everything we've seen of it so far looks pretty promising both as an expansion and as a legacy supplement. Really interested in seeing where things are going.

While I do think crims have been in a weird place, I always found the complaints way overstated, same way I thought the old Anarch complaints were way overstating things.

I guess that's how those things happen though.

Nice self-surprise.

>scan a chapter, maybe 20 double page spreads
>might as well send it, combine it later
>error: file too large
>can't access it again
>have to re-scan
>I don't know what the filesize limit is
>wish I was at Levy or BB's London Library instead of my shitty one

Damn.

Thanks a lot fo your efforts user.

Have a Mister Stone as moral support.

>Mister Stone
I should have realised that's who he was when I saw him he other day.
Looks rad.

Okay, so with the problems earlier and some of my own foolishness, I'm later than I planned to be.

I've gotten up to the low 70's - just finished the Jinteki section.
I'm coming in tomorrow for other reasons, but after I'm done I'll scan the other 200 pages.

It's averaging about a meg a page.

Somewhat disappointed they didn't make him a Damon Stone self insert, I must say.

Damon gets Mason Bellamy I think was the card. Mr. Stone's concept might've already been conceived a way earlier.

I'll say I have a hard time taking that baby tuft hair seriously though.

Kinda reminded me of Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman's part in The Fifth Element).

Only a lot more physically threatening.

It's too bad Subcontract already requires the runner to be tagged... would have offered a cool counterplay to Aaron.

There's actually some interesting design to explore here. Tied cumulative effects to prevent paid abilities from firing.

Success as a way to prevent SMC-clot for one...

...

Yeah, subcontract is cool, but it's very hard to use - I think Consulting visit might help, but then you don't really gain anything - you'd still be using 2 clicks to play 2 operations with Subcontract.

Kind of interestingly, on all 3 corp cards she's on, Monica Singh needs tags - she'll trash anything, blow up multiple things, let you do things efficiently, but you pretty much need to have a bead on the runner

It's always a good day for new full arts

...

In some respects I wonder whether people are overreacting to Aaron.
It definitely impacts some play (and some play I like then) but then I don't really see as worse than Film Critic on that front.

Shiny!

Fun one: Ancestral Imager with ICE that makes you discard your whole hand.

Like how devastating rumor mill is supposed to be, yet there are still multiple tourney winning corp decks that feature Caprice/Batty.

Truely, you are a credit to all Runners!

No hurry, take as long as you need.

Such a stupid idea, but I kinda want to arm a Slee with Project Wotan Subroutines.

I understand where they're coming from with Rumor Mill. I'm not sure they're right, but that's basically 10% (55/515) of the card pool that can be neutered at the drop of a hat with basically no recourse on the corp side for a full runner turn. If you played any strategy - and many, if not most, were - that was co-dependent on some of those cards to create a scoring window, it leaves you feeling very helpless for sure, but on top of the high impact there's the breadth of things hit to consider.

Your silly Broadcast Square deck can be hit just as hard as your well oiled glacier deck (a shame given the thematic synergy with Rumor Mill).

That's the Replicating Perfection tree isn't it? Did the other corp IDs that are rotating out got anything as well?

There are situations where Rumor Mill and Film Critic are dead draws since they can't do anything. Aaron is like Beth, he's always good to draw and install, except maybe on match point. Criminals benefit the most ironically because Temujin probably already takes up a lot of influence for non-Crims, so Aaron is usually a 1-of, and 1-ofs are never as reliable.

He's definitely strong, and Criminals are probably the most invincible since ever to tag-n-bag, but he can be played around. Too bad he effectively blanks out Argus though, I hope it gets an errata buff to give two tags, or atleast support cards akin to Dedicated Response Team.

Funny thing is RM is now supposedly far less commonly used compared to Employee Strikes instead (even in Anarchs) due to reasons.

PE/RP/PU are all the same 'tree' essentially, what with being the same megacorp. And it's ironically on an ICE from a different megacorp.

And a 'mere' 6 inf to import tems is still far too low for comfort. It would be a terrible blow to crims if it MWL'ed because of that.

>Too bad he effectively blanks out Argus though,

Thank god for Hunter Seeker, Corporate Town (with an upcoming 2/0), Contract Killer. Not great, but workable.

>There are situations where Rumor Mill and Film Critic are dead draws since they can't do anything.

Film Critic will always be decent if your deck has been built around it (if only Source/NACH support), I'd say the issue (for a change) is more that Aaron is totally build agnostic and self-reliant (compare with, say Gang Sign, which has the same trigger, but demands to be build around). Not to mention the power jump if compared with something like Human First (a darling of mine, but well...).

Collateral damage of rarely used IDs (and a Wayland one no less) is worthwhile if that would make omnipresent breaking news combos that much harder.

Also, he should have been 3+ inf instead. At 2 he is just another crim card that gets looted by other factions.

So does anyone here use third party products for credits and other counters? A bunch of people at my local store are ordering acrylic stuff online, and while I like some of it, I think I'd prefer metal ones. I found some cool options for credits and virus/power tokens, but not anything else like brain damage and tags yet.

Temujin and anarch's MWL means he's a bit less splashable - probably only a 1 of outside of crim.

I'll be so glad when Fall Guy gets rotated - it's a fairly minor card, and I like it in Geist (and the theme is great), but it makes resources, especially ones balanced around self-trashing, so much stronger

I'll be very sad when Fall Guy goes. My connections spam deck is going to be decimated with those cycles gone

The likes of Iain and Leela are likely to have a lot fewer friends

Maybe Red Sand will have a lot of new friends in it.

The interesting part is that the tree in IP Block is the white tree specifically, especially since I didn't think NBN had much of a hand in the debacle besides dissing on Titan.

Argus is arguably a pretty popular 'fun' ID though, you don't see it much in competitive builds but most people liked the ID, instead of being undoubtedly terrible like Stronger Together.

I may or may not try my hand at redesigning the entire cardpool of A:NR, one box or cycle at a time, starting with the core set. I'm thinking of editing/rebalancing existing cards and swapping them around to make for better sets.
Any advice or suggestions?

You can call Stronger Together undoubtedly terrible as much as you want, but boosting all your bioroid ICE by 1 taxes the runner even more that Spark Agency. Suddently ICE out of Yog reach, subtly making the Runner lose entire turns just Running through a piece of ICE, going Glacier made it really taxing. It was my go-to ID during Spin Cycle and half Lunar.

Anyone know how to get an Excel table of all the core set card data easily? It would speed this up a lot.

What data?
Are you ?

You can get lists with str/inf/cost etc, but an excel table is unlikely - you'll just have to make it yourself.

If so, it really depends on your goals - some would say Yog and Mimic would be better at 2, while others say a significant portion of code gates and sentries need to be at 3 to keep yog and Mimic relevant.

On the whole, early assets were way too easy to trash.

Some cards (Wydside, Blackmail etc.) only really get broken in conjunction with others: Blackmail without Val is pretty fine, Blackmail with Val should have some limiting factor, like "remove 1 bad pub" as a cost

>What data?
I want to create a table with columns like name, card text, set number, influence (and maybe install/play cost, and so on, but those can be incorporated into card text).

Basically, I want to export netrunnerdb.com/en/set/core but with card text included.

>Are you (You) ?
Yes.

Thank you for your contribution, I'll try to keep it in mind.

This is going to take a while. I have to manually copy in card text and some other values.

ST is pretty taxing yes, but even then it often has issues paying for all the bioroids in the first place. AoT is arguably more taxing (despite -3 inf), because it can sorta afford more bioroids to begin with.

Pay attention to trace value and str of tracers in the beginning of the game and as they exist now.

They were too conservative with them early on.

Yeah, one of the first specific changes I want to make is reducing Kate's link to 0. Her ability already makes her credits, and Rabbit Hole is both in faction and easier to install for her.
Whether I raise the base trace strength will depend on the trace. I'll probably leave Ichi as is, for example.

The really great thing about ST for me was that I only included 1 or 2 really strong ICE, and just filled the rest with Viktor 1.0, Ichi 1.0 and Eli. Relatively cheap ICE for the tax they produce. The Braintaping Warehouse at the beginning of SanSan almost made me want to go back to HB decks to rez those for free, but I already started to work my way through a series of Weyland Rush decks and didn't want to stop.

Experimented with that and it was pretty fun actually.

During Mumbad, someone here toyed with a Surat City Grid version that was pretty cool. The face on that Val/Blackmail player when he basically rezzed a whole server ex nihilo for almost nothing made it worth it in my opinion.

Experimented with that and it was pretty fun actually.

During Mumbad, someone here toyed with a Surat City Grid version that was pretty cool. The face on that Val/Blackmail player when he basically rezzed a whole server ex nihilo for almost nothing made it worth it in my opinion.

Keep in mind that Rabbit Hole and Kate's ability in core was made so that she could reach trace 3 with relatively ease (she's shaper after all, and only 2 rabbit holes were included in the core set) and then Access to GlobalSec as seen fit to go over that. The rest of the factions only had access to "Access to GlobalSec" to deal with those traces.

This Trace 3 was important because NO TRACE in the core set was over that value. It was this way so the Shaper and the Corp started with te same minimal value before the trace started (barring extra GlobalSec) while the rest of the factions had to spend more resources for it.

Notice that Criminals, who had the Killers, Crash Space, and Decoys, never bothered with traces, which mostly just tagged you. And the Anarchs NEVER EVEN CARE about getting tagged, they played harder and were exposed to more risks. This is part of the reason why anarchs had a card like Disrupter during Genesis, just in case they found a trace they really cared, while ignoring the rest.

If I were to redo the coreset I'd pay special attention to how the game was supposed to be played for each faction, and how the the characteristics of certain cards affect the rest of the cards in the box.

>Kate's ability
I meant Kate's link.

I am incapable of even conceiving the idea of a core set with less than a full playset of everything. I twill not be one of my considerations.

I think about that point FFG just considered it was more important for new players to easily build the decks (mashing neutrals+factions) and start playing right away over having the whole playset of cards and then spend 10 minutes to build your decks from a suggested list.
I mean, the rulebook was already bad enough to understand.

Easily solved by separating the suggested deck parts and the spare playset ones.

Touche, I mean, it's probably an added production cost to do that, but if the cards are printed in sets of 3, then where did the rest of those went?

Definitely worth keeping in mind. Some early game assumptions that was thrown out the window from the start by the community at large (and has been making a slow comeback to my joy; Persephone will be gathering flowers) was the core idea of inefficient killer, high link compensation. You weren't expected to use Pipeline often.

Local meta was always weird in that we were big on trace/link from the start, and I do think it changes things quite a bit in how we see the game.

I'm absolutely ignoring any and all business and cost considerations with this redesign. It is not as if Netrunner will get rebooted, let alone taking it into account.

Very tangential, but was speaking with friends I'll seeing this week end that basically only pay together and they've been using a custom rule inspired by core I find interesting: unique cards are unique. Can only have one of them in you decks.

I know a player that builds "narrative decks" that does something similar, but never thought about it as a balance thing in itself.

Interesting rule, I think that would need to produce a small boost in the cards power levels to balance the unpredictability of how often you will see a certain card during a series of games.
What I really like about the rule is that it makes room for tutors cards like Jinteki's Recruiting Trip.

I hate it, but it could have worked if it was in the game from the start and/or if many of the current uniques were made "limit 1 x per player" like consoles instead of being unique.

If you have any programming skills, you could use netrunnerdb API to download the card list information and display it in Excel.

I figured something out, I'm now formatting the result to be more useful for my purposes.

What's really interesting me right now, will need to ask tomorrow, is why did they think it necessary in the first place?

>if many of the current uniques were made "limit 1 x per player" like consoles instead of being unique.

Was thinking it offers a weird but cool case with Forger.

Most current unique effects are balanced to only have one instance in play, but a full playset in the deck because you need to find them fast, like Astrolabe.

>need a full playset in the deck because you need to find them fast, like Astrolabe.

As per core, I don't agree with that. There's a *want*. But I don't think I see much of a need.

If anything, I'm thinking they chose that rule *specifically* to curb-stomp efficiency at the deck-building stage. Must level the field for them, being players with a different level of engagement with the game.

There absolutely is a need. Some effects are useless late game, and some strategies hinge on a single, specific card, especially jank. Your proposed houserule would inhibit jank and theme decks like a motherfucker fucks mothers: all the damn time.

To expand: I do think there's some instances where there is an actual need.

You'll have a hard time convincing me Khan wasn't designed to have 3 Temujin, given her rig.
Apex without multiple Heartbeat makes no sense.

But browsing the list of cards, I do think we have more example of cards where people *want* the efficiency rather than straight up *need* it.

Poor Paige Piper.

Alright, alright, let's go.

Right bros, now I've done my actual uni work, I'm scanning again.
Just about to start on the second of the trickiest bits - the big fold out of a Luna dome.

Good luck to both of you.

Best of luck!

It is done. 303 MB, 258 pages: short the first contents page.
Only one bit is a bit bugged, but it's right in the middle, and was one of the fold out bits which are really hard to scan.

Will put up on Mega when I get home, but I've put it on google drive:
drive.google.com/open?id=0Bzy1xzxa-BxyZzNrME9vbmhPMTA

Nice. Thanks in the name of everyone to whom this will prove useful.

Careful about traces.

Honestly I'm getting a little tired of the Sifr thing. I get that people aren't happy about the interaction it introduced, but let's not kid ourselves. Sifr isn't the elephant in the room here. The problem is and always has been Parasite. This is just the latest straw in a heap of obnoxious interactions with it.

What kind of decks do you guys think has an intuitive overall strategy such that you didn't have to consider synergy with other cards to make them work? Basically, what deck is so tactically strong that you could play it without listening to a summary of it? Was thinking of some friends who play casually who might like such a deck, since they prefer figuring out what to do as they go instead of listening to a summary of how the deck works.

The problem with Sifr isn't the power, it's the *cost*.

I'd be perfectly OK at the runner being able make one ICE zero strength at will if it was priced accordingly to the runner.

Reducing your hand size by one for one turn isn't a cost.

>I'd be perfectly OK at the runner being able make one ICE zero strength at will if it was priced accordingly to the runner.
I wouldn't. It still invalidates a core aspect of the game, and enables parasite a bit too easily.

So called "good stuff" anarch builds? Centered around having strong draw, strong econ, and efficient tools.

Pretty self explanatory in play.

I think it would be ok if, say, the runner's hand size was reduced to zero for one turn.

Yes, it invalidates a core feature, but at a price hefty enough that you have to work around to make it valuable.

It would be no more turning the game on its head than Nasir is. And Nasir does completely changes the value proposition of ICE as taxing.

Nasir can't really be compared, he changes the dynamic, Sifr eliminates it. Big difference.

Which reminds me, oh god: Nasir with the raptor breakers in a London Library/LLDS Processor rig.

You think having to discard your whole hand each time you want to use Sifr wouldn't be enough of a price to balance things?

Even disregarding the potential card trash cost, which you could play around, you're left open to EMP kill. BoN Kill. Any one damage source. Your deck would have to be centered around damage prevention. Or you'd go nowhere.

Well, yeah. Then the card is unusable. Which is also bad.

I don't think it would be unusable, I think it would be exactly what an Anarch card is meant to be, against which competitive players complained to the point that we were led into the current Anarch hyper efficiency mess, it would have been a high risk high reward card.

But you still have to be able to *break* the ICE. In a world without Parasite you would still need a rig set up. Blanking the strength on one piece of ICE is nice in theory, but you're still paying through subs and you still have to deal with on-encounter effects each time. Like who wants this short of Parasite shenanigans? It powers Null's breakers (And to a lesser extent the other fixed strength breakers though they were well supported enough that this isn't going to be the thing that breaks them forever). It makes one piece of ICE cheaper to break each turn. I'm pretty sure a Virus heavy deck still prefers Grimoire for the free counters for the same MU and cheaper install. A more general goodstuff deck I think still wants Obelus for the card draw and built in tag protection. there's *some* reason to run it in some decks but it's not the immediate standout choice.

If you want to splash it out of Anarch... *maaaybe* but it would depend on where your influence goes. Despite the comparisons this does not substitute for Nexus by any stretch of imagination. The decks that run it can power it out early and Nexus allows you to aggressively facecheck even while you're still setting up. Without the ICE melting I don't see it being better than Desperado. I've kind of seen Shapers all over the place with consoles but the main argument I've seen for that is that Shapers can run multiple Clone Chips to abuse the Parasite interaction. Which again comes down to Parasite which we've known was a problem for awhile.

Noble Path bro

Sorry, I don't have the stomach to have that conversation right now. I've been down that rabbit hole way too often recently, and then we're going to have to go back to why it's the timing structure changes with paid ability windows from ONR that is a bad thing.

Only deals with damages done during the run - in the examples given, only BoN.
But then Contract Killer, Ronin, Vulcan Coverup, Dedicated Response Team, Show of Force, Bioethics, Crisis Management/Door to Door, Fumiko Yamamori with a Psi Operation, Georgia Emelyov, Philotic, Punitive... I know I'm forgetting some.

Would Ancestral Imager work?

Also, now that I think of it does Slee get counters from a Parasite-trashed piece of ICE?

GODLY, may the gods of cardluck guide your steps

>now that I think of it does Slee get counters from a Parasite-trashed piece of ICE?
Yes, ICE subs weren't broken. This is like a Chum scenario.

Thought so. Thanks.

I don't see why the paid ability structure would come up. Face it. People wouldn't be flipping out about Sifr nearly as much if it didn't have that Parasite interaction. Even if you couldn't instant speed Parasite, it would still be an issue, but Parasite's been a point of contention for ages now. Beyond that interaction Sifr would be mediocre. It saves you a couple credits a turn since, remember you're only saving on costs to match ICE strength and many commonly played breakers don't start off at 0 strength. It's usually in the 1-3 range.

>I don't see why the paid ability structure would come up.

Because you would have been forced to face/suffer the ICE at least once before it was trashed. Making it a potentially worthwhile transaction for the corp.

>It saves you a couple credits a turn

In a meta that is overly obsessed with gear check ICE? Yes. But then you can now break Archer with a Mongoose for 2 credits. D4V1D has been put on the MWL for a reason. This is a permanent D4V1D that also gives you two MU more for two credit more at only one influence a pop.

1.) Insta-parasite doesn't fizzle on-encounter effects
2.) This is, for the third time, an interaction with Parasite. An interaction I would point out already existed, just with a few more moving parts, and those themselves have gotten their fair share of complaints about them. Sifr, as a standalone card does what it does. It's still a fairly powerful effect, but not so much that it displaces other consoles.
3.) This is absolutely not D4v1d. D4v1d breaks subs *for free* and isn't limited to a single encounter. In particular with the rising number of multisub ICE, zeroing out the strength of one of them isn't going to suddenly bring about the End Times.

>Insta-parasite doesn't fizzle on-encounter effects

But it fizzle subroutines. Granted, the ONR timing wouldn't have allowedf for SMC or Clone Chip upon rez either. Personally find it better, but your mileage may vary.

>This is, for the third time, an interaction with Parasite

This is what you're making it out to be, while I'm saying it's only a part of it. Obviously we're not going to see eye to eye.

>This is absolutely not D4v1d. D4v1d breaks subs *for free* and isn't limited to a single encounter

D4V1D breaks *three* subs for three. Sifr allows you to make one ICE strength insignificant per turn. Per your following point on the rise of multi-sub ICE, that makes Sifr even worse than D4V1D, as it's more versatile. Also to underline: ONE influence. At four influence a pop ON the MWL people still played D4V1D out of faction.

>In particular with the rising number of multisub ICE

Which has been a huge issue in itself for a while now - but I think is in itself only symptomatic. There's been an arm race in high subroutine ICE to keep up as str was made less and less insignificant - which is what Sifr appears to be a culmination of. There's little big ICE play nowadays because there's no perceived value in it.

And of course, obviously, yes, in that context, Parasite is an even worse offender.

>But it fizzle subroutines. Granted, the ONR timing wouldn't have allowedf for SMC or Clone Chip upon rez either. Personally find it better, but your mileage may vary.

Might have gotten a bit off topic on that one. Insta-Parasite isn't anything new and has been a long-standing gripe about the game for ages now and consequently loops back to Parasite being the problem card here, not Sifr. Sifr still forces you to deal with the ICE in question, albeit for a discounted cost.

>This is what you're making it out to be, while I'm saying it's only a part of it. Obviously we're not going to see eye to eye.

How am I "making it out" to be an interaction with Parasite? What could you possibly find subjective about that statement? What other cards in the game than Parasite trash an ICE for having 0 strength?

>D4V1D breaks *three* subs for three. Sifr allows you to make one ICE strength insignificant per turn. Per your following point on the rise of multi-sub ICE, that makes Sifr even worse than D4V1D, as it's more versatile. Also to underline: ONE influence. At four influence a pop ON the MWL people still played D4V1D out of faction.

D4V1D didn't get MWL'd because other Runners were playing it out of faction. It got MWL'd to deny Dumblefork more of its out of faction silver bullets, like multiple Clone Chips. At 4 dots a pop most of the decks that splashed D4V1D only played it as a one-of, and for those that did splash more than one or those who played it in-faction in Anarch, D4V1D is a *non-unique* *program*. Given that it's more often a singleton the program aspect is more relevant, but let's review what that means: There are several ways to tutor it up and recur it. Much more than a console. Case in point out of Shaper it wasn't uncommon to Test Run out your one D4V1D, run through a server, topdeck the spent program, reinstall it next turn, run again, sell it to Aesop's, Clone Chip or Test Run it again, etc. And smart players rationed their D4V1D counters depending on the ICE layout. That's far more versatility than a Console that's less reliable to have right away. That's hardly a comparison to make.

>Which has been a huge issue in itself for a while now - but I think is in itself only symptomatic. There's been an arm race in high subroutine ICE to keep up as str was made less and less insignificant - which is what Sifr appears to be a culmination of. There's little big ICE play nowadays because there's no perceived value in it.

Now *this* is where we get into subjectivity. How are we defining "Big" ICE strength-wise? Because I still see plenty of DNA trackers and Fairchildren of the Third Edition, Archers on and off, and a good few Hiemdalls.Tollbooth and Data Ward are still making their rounds as well. I'd consider those on the bigger side.