The Glade 4.0

Anybody else interested in Fantasy Flight's revival/reinvention of Netrunner?

Android: Netrunner (the subtitling is apparently both to differentiate FFG's Living Card Game and Wizards of the Coast's '96 Netrunner CCG and to accompany FFG's rebranding the game to fit in with its other cyberpunk board game property, Android) has been getting rave reviews everywhere I can find 'em and has been riding a wave of enthusiasm and attention since GenCon this year, where FFG's booth sold out in about 5 minutes...

The game caught my eye because I was getting out of CCG's back in high school right as Netrunner was coming out. It was bad timing, because it looked really good and had a lot of elements that should have been sure sells for me, but M:tG and Decipher's Star Wars CCGs had taken their toll on my wallet, as it were, and I was just not in a position to start up a new game as I was already done with buying into new expansions for the others.

Now, I've managed to last this long without getting back into any CCGs, and I'd even given FFG's Living Card Game systems a pass for similar reasons. But a LCG format where I won't have to chase rares on blind buys or store markups and the Netrunner themes and mechanics have reeled me back in.

So since my set comes in Friday, I just wanted to see if there was anybody else who'd be giving it a try in case I wanted to talk some shop...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It was fun.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I tried on several separate occasions to try and get into this game. Though the concept was cool, it never became more than a passing interest of mine.

When the game store I used to manage eventually closed, I kept their remaining stock of NR card. Amounted to a full Corp/Runner starter pack and about 20 boosters. I still have them with my few leftover M:TG cards.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Sounds pretty cool but I've got the budget for only one card game and RtR is three weeks away.

Okay, wow. Nice. I picked up my copy on Friday, played about tow games that night since my step-brother was in town. He promptly ordered a set, and then we got in another five or six games over the weekend.

The way the Corp plays cards face down really introduces a lot of bluffing and misdirection opportunities for the Corp player to try to fake out the Runner, and for the Runner to play the man, not the hand, as it were (though the hand has to be there, too, to some extent at least).

In addition, the fact that each side has several actions they can take without cards creates a very impressive strategic element to the way the game *plays* rather than in other games where the strategy is predominantly in how the deck is built, with the play largely determined by how it's drawn.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades