Question of the day

Watched Maw in action, and it looked super fun. A lot better than Sifr in design by miles.

>Question
I'd imagine they'd be the mad scientists of the runner world, experimenting/seeking knowledge without regard for morals or limits. They'd do stuff because they can, though focusing on the process rather than the outcome like Anarchs do. To use the nine morality traits, I'd say they're generally on the Lawful side on the spectrum, with the other half of the trait moving around.

Of the existing runners, Nasir (let out Apex by accident), Kit (freeing ICE?), Jesminder (doing bad stuff to help her sister), and Smoke (everything she does) probably fit the bill, though barely.

It's absolutely a Ninja with slightly better numbers. Worth for using with Mimic to cover the under 3 strength sentries, and this hitting the 4, 5 and 6 strength sentries. Not a terrible prospect I think.

Is it better than Golden though? Golden misses Sherlock 2.0, Flare, Gutenberg, Snoop, Sync BRE, Thoth and Archer without a Sucker token, and despite the 2 to pump to 5 strength ability, it's 2 for 2 sub break means the cost for breaking is (interestingly) actually the same as Lustig.

If you're just looking for an in-faction Killer, Lustig is probably better as it hits more without the sucker support. If you do run sucker however, both are pretty equal, with the only difference being do you want derezzes or bypass.

I like how fitting its flavour text is. Get locked out of the server because you don't have enough credits to get through the sentry... Or just bypass it.

Adept is miles better than Sage just for the 2 initial strength. The 2 to break is kind of a deal breaker though, I'd just splash for Mimic.

There was also the English suggested decklists from the rulebook. Aside from being terrible and probably should never be used (Cambridge gets Aurora for his Fracter) the name for the new Weyland Armored Servers agenda excites me, hope it lives up to the name.

Good thing Skorpios is, in all likelihood, nowhere near as rich as the HB ID. Hard to have enough cash to score stuff, advance ice AND have enough to threaten the traditional tag n bag combo.

>Kit

Encouraging Bioroids to go rogue, especially AP/Destroyers, isn't exactly a good idea.

>Jesminder

More like a main criminal hench(wo)man for a political party who's main manifesto outright screws over the majority of the population.

>Smoke

Eh. Breaking into secure servers and letting out all the corp secrets for laughs seems more Anarch then anything.

Kate, CT, Exile, Hayley seem ???

Reading through the Mars section in WoA, and I really hope they don't make the Clan mechanic an Anarch-only thing. It's so much more than just the "fight against the machine", stereotyping it would be a big waste.

Anarchs do it to offend the corp. Shapers do it to prove they can. Process over outcome.

The rest of the Shapers are pretty tame as netcriminals go, but I do wonder what motivation Hayley has for running.

Most of the fancy one-off mechanics are cross faction so far, thus it would not be surprising to see criminal linked clans about, although it's a bit harder to visualise shaper versions.

Who knows why Shapers do their stuff? Some things remain mysteries.

Glancing at old personal notes on the matter, I'm thinking is not totally off the mark, yet not totally fair. They've certainly been struggling with Bap Pub, but then it's a new mechanic added to the game they've had to experiment with.

Original Bad Publicity was part of the rush side of Weyland: you were trading BPs for a strong speed bump that would cost you down the road (agenda point + econ package all-in-one with Hostile Takeover; a chance to tag the runner during your turn for Posted Bounty).

Spin added new options to every corps , but those were generally mis-balanced (Illicit ICE especially), and several ways to deal with BP. Removal tools to try and pace things - cool things down for the longer run if needs be, ways to diminish the impact (Ireress and program trash really - Bailiff as a way to profit anyway). Or ways to bump the rush up for final push getting rid of cards with no further return on investment (Security Subcontract, Liquidation, Reuse).

Trouble is, few were really interested in any solution but going all the way in on the rush. Locally, only handful of us ever made use of Broadcast Square for one... And I'm thinking, with the options being what they were (and the slight power creep invalidating them further as the designers caught on their mistakes and tried to amend them), it is perfectly understandable.

Corp side, why bother with BP removal when you have so few (both in quantity and quality) reasons to accrue BP in the first place?
And the runner side was rare enough that BP removal, even at the height of Valencia Blackmail, wasn't considered a really good option* (not too mention, too silver-bullet-y). Liz Mills still is the solution of choice when there is one..

*: though I have very fond memories of some player's use of Rex Campaign in that context: run that server and allow me to rez, or lose that BP.

>Maybe there's something good for swapping around hardware?

Blockade Runner works I guess.

Thanks OP, wanted to make a thread earlier, still can't seem to create a thread for some reason. Though I can post just fine.

Hey, we had that one right.

Question of the day really brings back something I've been wondering about alll Flashpoint: what difference makes an old white hat like Keung an Anarch while The Professor is Shaper?

Lore wise the clans grew from groups of people from the early colony days that were distributed according to their work load. Mechanically, Shaper clan stuff would ideally deal with this part of life, whether it be railroad management, or mining(?), among others. Criminal clan stuff would probably be the "behind the scenes stuff" like policing within clans or negotiating with the MCA.

Keung is a conspiracy theorist, which would imply actively "fighting" the corps. The Professor just stumbled upon something bad and did good.

Omar was only too happy to indiscriminately disseminate the info Null wanted to pass to someone rather less rash. Technically that could be Shaper, but seeing how destructive that act ended up...

Wonder whatever happened to both of them post-Flashpoint?

>Keung is a conspiracy theorist, which would imply actively "fighting" the corps

Does it? There's nothing pro-active in that process apart from the gathering of data (which in netrunner *is* the defining impetus I guess...).
Fair point otherwise. The Prof sounds more like he was made into a runner by the corp threatening his work while Keung looks more like he choose to be one. Says a lot about faction ethos when you're down to it.

I can't help but think I'm going to be terribly disappointed when Mars Shaper runner ends up not belonging to that Martian sect that abuses G-Mods.
That was such a cool /anrg idea.

There's something we don't know that would matter in defining things: how long he left the corps to amend security before going public seeing nothing was being done.

From a strict modus operandi standpoint, Keung didn't seem to diverge from the usual white hat protocol much.

Imagine the money a crim could have made selling that info.

>Armored Servers agenda excites me, hope it lives up to the name
Yeah, that sounds cool

Also lol at the failure on San San

Did he meddle, assuming no involvement with Adam?

True, though IPO is a TD card too - effectively a Terminal Restructure

Lots of fail in those lists. For instance, stuff like datasucker/MO/Account Siphon are only 2-offs in a single core, so those lists won't work with the 'recommended' single core stuff.

Strange they still haven't fixed them from 4 months back when the German version was spoiled.

The premise of being a conspiracy theorist by itself means "revealing" things the corps want to hide, which is pretty anti-corp. As for Mars Shaper, if we're right and it is Kabonesa Wu, it'd probably be one of the clans that support such a name, namely that landing site for the china shuttle. Don't remember the G-Mod stuff, what part were they from?

Tangentially related, but I misremembered Kabonesa Wu as the name of the Cabot Settlement(?) owner, which will probably be my favourite part of Mars.

Crimson Dust? If they are 'shapers' then things have gotten pretty grim considering their beliefs.
Inb4 DOOM.

>Don't remember the G-Mod stuff, what part were they from?

The Vasanti Smith Cultists (Crimson Dust was it?) who say that life originated on Mars, and are trying to G-Mod themselves into becoming what humanity used to be according to them.

Would make for a cool green ID. Very Shaper, yet very creepy at the same time.

Not many people with knowledge on how Bioroids work outside HB, so it's plausible he may be tangibly involved in Adam being Adam.

Cool to see some non-mandatory upgrades too

She's got to be getting some sort of other MU or program-swapping tricks, I'm thinking. Remember we're also getting Deep Data Mining and that also cares about unused MU.

Little to no hardware MU... given the naming conventions, I suspect Mammon to be either AI or Daemon.

Both at the same time would be interesting... though we already have Baba Yaga that fits the mold, if not the names.

>Little to no hardware MU

In that sample deck list I meant

That would be cool for a shaper, though pretty dark considering how much those guys mess about with genetics and terrorism - someone whose 'creative' with those is someone you want to watch out for

I think it would fit so perfectly: there's the dedication to research and progress but of a kind so fringe as to demanding disbelief, a form of folklore-borne faith familiar in its content and structure but twisted into an alien (pun intended) political process that breeds violence, both inward and outward inflicted... and mechanically, G--modding is kinda a faction thing already (going with SanSan).

Would allow to visit the darker side of the shaper faction too, for once.

...

>When the runner is Val and you find Mills in the first couple of turns

Always a lovely feeling.

>Be me, Argus cybersecurity executive
>Some journalist trying to smear our name with bad publicity
>Passes that information on to noted labour movement hit-man
>Call in Mills (her ""demolition"" teams were already on standby in HQ), exploitable leaks closed, no-one who can be blackmailed left
>Other teams in position, one since we first got wind of the original journalist, another arrived later and set up covertly
>Some assets deployed, taken out with little result, traps remained untripped, but the museum that our archives management has been subcontracted to is protected
>Oaktown docks project launched publicly - plenty of digital eyes on the server, observe-and-report ice in place
>As is to be expected the runner calls on his human first contacts to call a strike at the site
>Doesn't know about the teams waiting in the wings

Another DRT victory

...

They are more like computer science enthusiasts who want to see how far they can go and boast about their hacking skills for nerd cred.

...

I think it's a bit of both, depending on the Shaper.

Same as the other factions. It's hard to lump Valencia in with Noise and Maxx

>GOOD NEWS EVERYONE

Yeah, they're just assholes as people, she's a journalist, that's much worse

Weyland: Money & Violence™

This is super pretty. Is this an actual alt-art card?

Blackmailers don't stay long in that line of business without an extensive rolodex of 'contacts'. That kid she 'helped' shouldn't be surprised if she oh-so-nicely asked him for favours that could very well make him regret ever meeting her.

I didn't mean to say she was a good person, just that her approach is pretty different to say, Maxx. If anything, she's closer to Crim

Fan made.

I do think she's a better better than Noise. Not like it's anything difficult.

Being Anarch doesn't necessarily mean being violent or unlikable as a person. Valencia is probably one of the nicer people in Android I'd reckon, despite Blackmail Val being a thing.

This one's all too official...

Was browsing for images to make custom sleeves with, and found this, which made me want to make an Argus deck and use this image on the sleeves. Maybe modify the Skorpios deck from previous threads and throw in DRT and Mr. Stone, or go for something non-tag punishment related?

/anrg/ how familiar are you with sealed format? Picking up some packs soon and sealed will be the main way we'll be playing for a while. Just two of us so we'll be sharing a collection. Got everything up to breaker bay, any suggestions for other packs that support sealed well?

Exile strikes me as shady. Man goes scavenging for who knows what kind of dumpsters; not sanitary. I bet you'd catch something nasty or something like that if you shook his hand. Don't leave food unattended around him. Wouldn't be surprised if he smelled like mouldy cheese.

Play it occasionally - last time this week end. Can't say I'm familiar enough to know if there some "must have"packs. I'd say one of the points of sealed *is* being able to play with incomplete card pools. I certainly think so given the one cool thing it dos for me *is* playing with non-optimized decks.

Will try to ask some of the more involved players around with that side of the game next I see them.

Also, you shut your whore mouth about Exile, he had a hard life - and it's been getting worse and worse.

One can find an awful lot of valuable crap in the most unlikely of dumpsters. It's actually rather srs business.

...

It would be fun if future expansions focused on the mini-faction runners, although having to have their big box alongside the single core is rather more complicated compared to just Core TD.

Always did wonder why there aren't any fluff that explores his presumed past life at HB(?) or other corp entity?

Honestly wondering what's the game plan for Skorpios. Unless they got some unrevealed tagging stuff (Lynn?), those scorched earths aren't blowing up anybody, and the ice doesn't seem scary enough to a set up runner (via breakers or bypass).

At least Seidr game plans look typical enough for a HB ID.

It's seemingly not all that important to who he is now as a runner, which makes some sense - he did purge all his old work, after all

That's a good point - who exiled him, anyway? And for what crime?

I would like to see him get a card that's really 'his' though - some program that maybe works from the heap and says 'this was cludged together by some dumpster-diving tech-savvy, street-savvy outsider with a salvaged optical hard drive, a homemade processor and a handful of second-hand Q-chips'

That list is only a shitty sample, looking at Cambridge's list and the San San fuckup

That said, Skorpios seems like it'll have a strong lockout game, with the ID, sentries, secretary and hunter-seeker

Which corp is the least evil?

Melange, probably.

Depends on your views of evil, and how you balance it (best total good/total bad vs simply lowest bad), but they're pretty much all contenders, with Weyland and Jinteki falling on the former end and HB and NBN on the latter.

They are the predominant users of the Henry line, in bed with the unions and are war profiteers, they're run by a ruthless Russian gangster and iirc they're implicated in quite a few murders (definitely recall their men shooting at Detective Harrison in Free Fall)

But yeah, singular interests and all, so quite possibly

Both sac cons will probably be in the runner list (Steve or Bios) if Skorpios is going to be played, so hunter killer is a bit less of a trump card vs important programs.

They are also pretty much have very close links to the US FedGov considering how they were supported during the hostile takeovers of rival national companies. Wouldn't be surprised if they were the canonical federalist rats in NA.

I personally doubt that last bit, they are the ones benefitting least from direct federal intervention, not only mechanically but the inserts and lore we've seen puts them really against the US Government.
(For reference, iirc they gain credits at the end of a round if the threat doesn't go up more than 2 during the resolution phase)

He could have exiled himself for whatever reason, probably to get out of dodge before being 'retired' in all likelihood. Doesn't seem to have any particular hard feelings towards any corp entity though.

Bit strange for their leadership to end up running a company that should, by most indications, be essentially a shell company for FedGov interests.

I have a feeling the real danger of Hunter Seeker in TD is going to be the ability of suppressing campaign cards with which the runner should/would want to end the game with.

Judging from the runner objectives from the launch event, the only 'important' campaign cards the runner cares about should be those fancy 3/2 agendas, which 'seekers can't touch (though they ironically do get triggered from).

Still leaves the mysterious 2-3 missing cards from the suggested crappy deck lists, so one hopes those aren't *that* important to the health and wellbeing of the runners.

But then from the German reveal we know the campaign only cards include at least one sorta-blank Connection.

Have to be there for something.

I think he means the super-sekrit/OP cards from the campaign packs.

Like maybe crim gets an amazing breaker if when you play as Cambridge you pick 'predator' or whatever it was.

It might be bad if that got rfg'd, depending on how you get to keep your decks

It would be nice to know what are the rewards/consequences for each choices before picking them, although doing it blind does have its appeal.

Also, it would be rather sad if the only decent crim breakers turn out to be campaign only.

Unless the corp can H-K that connection and win in the same turn, you can probably reinstall that blank(?) connection before going for the hopeful win or unfortunate loss.

Unless the corp can H-K that connection and win in the same turn, you can probably reinstall

Isn't preventing this what Skorpios' all about?

(Also sorta blank because it seems to do nothing, but is one of those cards that would get a sticker later on, apparently)

Unrelated to anything, but gotta love how joyfully smiling the maw seems to be.

If its presence is that important, every runner should be keeping spares in their grip for that sort of situation.

Besides, recursion is limited to 2 Deja Vu, though whether the 4 inf is needed depends to be seen.

>If its presence is that important, every runner should be keeping spares in their grip for that sort of situation.

a) IF they have them. we're not even certain there'll be several copies, and if so more than two.
b) I'll be surprised if TD doesn't bring some form of recursion to the table (Cambridge notwithstanding - though that offers an interesting choice now that I think of it). Would be weird to have an ID whose sole point is anti-recursion when there only two cards at best that can do it, even if one of those happen to be an ID.

>It would be nice to know what are the rewards/consequences for each choices before picking them
Hopefully they follow the AHLCG template of letting you choose based on the story development and not give personality quiz level choices.

Which I still for the life of me can't figure out why they thought was okay to print on a non-rotating identity.

Lockout, just like Horizontal, Glacier and Kill should be at least something of an option.

Not an amazing one, as it can be a bit of an NPE, but program trashing as a thing is fine as long as, like kill, it can't just come from nowhere, and that it needs interaction - as long as those two things are there as limiting factors it's okay

Are there any cards that would be "must includes" for a Smoke deck? I've been having an itch to play a stealth deck lately.

Net mercur. Switchblade

Post-TD, I feel like there will be either more SacCons floating around, or more 3-ofs of each breaker in every deck. Most decks usually pack 2-of breakers, so targeting the same one with Hunter-Killer twice is pretty legit, even better if they hit program trashers. Who knows though, maybe there's some secret tech in TD we still don't know about. Or everyone could just pack more Film Critics, which is already a solid counter against most Weyland decks.

I sadly don't have switchblade yet. I'll make that pack my next priority to pick up.

Critics are probably going to appear much more often for crim decks, since they have real problems with recursion and can hardly afford all 3 sac cons (except Geist perhaps? but he usually runs Levy so...)

Dagger isn't that terrible if switchblade is not available though, also decent if you need the 2 inf elsewhere.

What I like about Smoke's breakers is that you only need a single stealth per each subtype. This really helps if you are starving for stealth credits.

I think SacCon is a lot more likely over Critic just because of the insane synergy with Tapwrm. Prevent breaker trashes against Skorpios/Weyland, prevent Tapwrm purging against everyone else. Critic will probably still get in as a 1-of for Jinteki matchups though.

Except kill *doesn't* need interaction anymore. 24/7 Scorch Scorch will always be a thing in two different factions that will work with zero Runner interaction. That's more of an aside though.

On top of that, Runner recursion has always been limited use. The only Runner cards that can recur more than one thing are self-exiling and everything else short of the Conspiracy breakers are a one-shot anyway. "Me getting free reign of the board because you have to dig for your backup breaker/clone chip" is a much different creature from "You just don't get to play the game anymore". If they really wanted to make rigshooting more impactful they could just as easily have made it something that taxes recursion rather than shutting it off entirely, like "As an additional cost to install a program from the Heap, the Runner must pay X", for which 2 or 3 credits seems fairly reasonable.

It's not like Corp side recursion where unless you remove multiple pieces entirely they can recur chunks of their deck all day long. If you trash my Fracter twice it's probably going to take me awhile to find my next solution for those etr barriers, be it digging for Levy or Deja Vu or the like but at least I have viable lines to play to keep going.

...

>The only Runner cards that can recur more than one thing are self-exiling
Yuuup, 2+ full Geist decks courtesy of LARLA sure feels fair.

Trope recycling x3 Deja feels good

Sure, taxing the oh-so-rich runners on credits is sure to make a mark

>Except kill *doesn't* need interaction anymore. 24/7 Scorch Scorch will always be a thing in two different factions that will work with zero Runner interaction.

Is that the only kill solution available? Is this the most used one? I'm thinking if you don't concentrate on competitive (and even then, really) the answer is going to be no on both counts.
So yeah, there are stupid marginal card interactions. How is the rest of the game space?

>On top of that, Runner recursion has always been limited use

Doesn't make it any less powerful. The corp that gets repeatedly Account Siphon-ed into submission throughout a game doesn't really care that the runner can "only" play it 12 times (3 AS, 3 SoT, one LARLA).
There's also the way recursion allows to cheat influence away. Shapers could always afford only going with one copy of Parasite because the recursion solutions were so numerous in faction - with the MWL the irony became that playing a dedicated Parasite deck would cost Anarch more influence than Shapers.

I think forcing going several copies, going less hyper efficient and streamlined in deck building -or face the consequence, isn't really a bad thing.
People complain that silver-bullets are less likely Corp-side because of agendas taking space with no strict equivalent runner side. Well this somewhat balances things out a bit I'd say.

So unless that Trope has managed to go 15 turns or so, wouldn't you rather just shuffle in the stuff you'd want to Deja Vu for in a more general sense?

Also how rich do you think the Runner is going to stay if they have to keep reinstalling. Geist is kind of an odd corner case where you need to be good at baiting him. Not a lot of experience with the guy for or against but from observation if he gets knocked off his tempo you get some periods to capitalize. Though I also think it's telling that what experience I *do* have against Geist he's very easy to bleed out the first time around.

fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/3/21/customized-secretary/

They put a lot of effort justifying Customized Secretary. They don't say anything that we haven't already.
Seeing Exile so prominently in the article gave me hope they talked about some synergy here.
Nope.
I mean, you could find all those programs with Customized Secretary, and then trash them all. It would be almost like playing Making an Entrance.

The only synergy with Customized Secretary with Exile I can see is Scavenging dead ones for new one, and getting a draw and new programs on it, which I'll be honest and say sounds interesting despite the 2 credit install cost still being expensive. CS really would've been better as a 1 cost, but I bet they were worried about Kate's discount ability making it too cheap.

Looking at Netrunner as a case study for game design though, at the very least I think we can see how badly a card ability with no consequence or interaction (IDs like Kate and EtF, regular cards like Rumor Mill, Jackson, and Caprice, though mostly the IDs) can warp a game and the design behind the cards. Hopefully if they reboot the game there would be less of such cards, especially the ID part, but designing unique cards and interaction is pretty hard, and undoubtedly there will be some of such cards that leak out into the game.

Wait, Scavenging gives you a discount, what am I talking about. Also funny synergy with MKUltra + Scherezade + Tech Trader shenanigans. I can get behind Scavenging MKUltra for a Secretary and getting draw + money I guess, I just have a feeling it'll whiff more than it hits though. Wonder what the optimized amount of programs would be, 15 cards maybe?

Really weird the volume of text dedicated to Customized Secretary.
And I don't think I'm convinced - overdrawing would allow to get rid of supernumerary programs anyway while giving other cards. You lose the most powerful side of SMC, not the tutoring, but the click-less install.

I mean, I'll probably play it, I play everything. But as we said, the card sits in a weird in-between.

>And for Shapers like Kate “Mac” McCaffrey (Core Set, 33) and Exile (Creation and Control, 30), Station One, the second Data Pack in the Red Sand cycle for Android: Netrunner, offers efficient new means for spinning stellar code out of leftover data.

I see what you meant... did I miss something, what's supporting Exile in this data pack? Severnius?

I can see myself mucking around with Custom Secretary in my Exile deck, although that's largely 'cos I want to avoid playing anything close to tier 1

Anyone mind explaining to me why you couldn't move the Caissa programs besides Pawn after installing on Scheherezade? The ruling sounds like an impulsive on the spot decision rather than anything thought out to me, no reason for the other Caissa programs to not work the same way.

To take Knight as an example:

>If already hosted, Knight can be hosted only on ice that is not installed directly before or after the current piece of ice hosting Knight.

The problem is that, if Knight is on Scheherazade, it's *hosted*. But since it's not hosted on a piece of ICE, there is no valid target, no piece of ICE that isn't installed not directly before or after where Knight currently is.

Personally originally went with the reading that since it wasn't hosted on ICE, then any and all ICE was a valid target - which is seemingly the one they chose in the end.

Butcher Shop was and is *absolutely* a thing. It was quite popular for awhile though it's fallen out of favor with the advent of one Aaron Marron.

As for Corps having fewer silver bullets, there are a ton of Corp cards that are more generally powerful anyway. Case in point, the aforementioned Butcher Shop. For the most part you didn't really care who your opponent was or what their game plan was. It was basically "Did you draw Plascrete in time? No? Cool. You're dead." You just rushed out Breaking News and whatever else. Beyond that you could just 24/7 > Scorch > Scorch as soon as you found it (and that only got better once BOOM! came out), but you had ways of executing the plan faster depending on the specific build if the Runner did certain things, and you had a decent Fast Advance plan to fall back on if they found their Plascrete early. Either way though you didn't have to "tech" much of anything in particular and the Runner simply didn't have the option not to play your game once you got that first Breaking News.

Also consider how many matchups are pretty close to auto-lose for Runner decks without those silver bullets. If you run redundant breakers then where, pray tell should that extra space come from?