What is Netrunner? (Gameplay)

This is my second "What is Netrunner" post.  The previous one (found HERE) went into the background of the game, and this post will delve a little bit into the general gameplay of the Netrunner LCG.  I wont dive too deep in explaining ALL the rules of Netrunner as the game can be a bit complex.  For those looking for the actual the Netrunner rulebook, they can be found HERE.

TL;DR

Netrunner pits Runners against Corporations as each side attempts to score agendas, or in the case of the Corp, kill the runner.  It features a unique, mechanic that breaks free from the traditional rigid "phases" of other games.  There's also a subtle (and not so subtle) bluffing mechanic player's can utilize that I have yet to find in any other games as well.  Finally, Netrunner is game more about a player's skill and the decisions they make during a game and less about how well they can build a deck.  Unlike other games, there is NO "autopilot" decks found in this game!

Still interested?  Well, I've got a lot more to say!

This Geek's Week...

Some just want to watch the world burn...

Monday

--  Played a handful of games of Mechwarrior Online.

-- I *think* I may have finally come up with a 2,000 pt Eldar list which I'll use as a base to build all my other Eldar lists from as it breaks down pretty easily into 1500 and 1750 pts.  It'll also serve as my "buy" list as well.  I'll admit it though, it's pretty much all theory as I've only had a single game of 6th ed. (i.e. it probably sucks!)

Tuesday

-- Finally beat "A Game of Thrones" on the PS3.  I've been sitting on the final fight for a long time, but just never gotten around to beating it.  I'm a major junkie for the Song of Ice & Fire series.  The gameplay was buggy, and could've been better, but I enjoyed the characters and the story none the less. 

-- Painting my Eldar.  Eldrad is close to being finished.

Wednesday

-- Finished Eldrad.

-- Played 2 games of Sentinels of the Multiverse.  1st game was Legacy, Mr. Fixer, and Fanatic (1st time playing her) vs Omnitron in the waste factory.  Everything seemed to be going fine, then we stalled out, and ended up losing.  It was really close, at one point he only had 11 life left, but ended up springing back to 28 hp, and we couldn't recover.  2nd game was Wraith, Expatriette, and Ra vs Ambuscade.  This guy was such a push over, and barely touched us!

Friday

-- Rebuilt my Crab berserker deck.  I don't really plan on playing or collecting Crab very much anymore, mainly because there's another player in my local L5R group interested in playing Crab more than I am.  Berserkers are also pretty straightforward, big guy, go smash, so I'll probably keep it built as an easy to play demo deck.  My focus will be on my original love, the Scorpion clan.  (Although I plan to tinker around with a Ronin deck at some point)

-- I'm toying around with a new Scorpion Ninja deck.  I'm hoping to build one that combines heavy in-province personality discard with  negative chi.  I lack a lot of the needed cards, but I'm gonna give it a shot as more of a "fun deck" and see if there isn't something there to develop.

Saturday

-- Played a "refresher" game of L5R to re-teach a player how to play. He used my Berserkers, while I tested my new Scorpion Ninja deck.  I think my ninja multi-control idea may show some promise once I get the cards I need.

-- Played 3 games of Netrunner.  Once with my Runner deck and twice with my Weyland.  I played a timely account siphon, stripping the corp player of all his  money, an easily walked over his unrezzed ice to score an agenda.  Next turn I snagged one out of R&D, and after a few following turns I snagged the final one from a remote server.  My 1st Weyland game was against a Gabriel deck.  He got out a crash space and 2 copies of his resource that he can trash to prevent tags early on, so I knew my usual "tag & bag" strategy wasn't going to work, so I switched to the old fashion method of winning via scoring agendas.  For some reason, he didn't really make many runs and worried to much about setting up his side of the board.  By the time he felt ready to start making runs, it was already too late.  The 2nd game was my Weyland vs Noise.  1st turn he ran twice on R&D and scored 2 each agendas, the fact that I also had 2 in my hand meant a shuffle fail on my part.  Once again however, he spent too much time setting up his side of board and not enough time running for the last agendas he needed.  In the end, I flatlined him after a scored "posted bounty" and 2x Scorched Earth.

-- Played 2 quick, friendly games of Smash Up.  Once as Brownies/Mages and once as Robots/Zombies.  Lost both games pretty badly, but no biggie, such is life!

SPOILER FREE book review: Free Fall

Android: Free Fall

By William H. Keith

From the back of the book:

  When an influential lawyer is murdered miles above Earth's surface, Captain of Detectives Rick Harrison reluctantly accepts the case.  Harrison quickly finds himself at the center of a deepening conspiracy.  Why did the killer use a mining laser, an unwieldy weapon?  What is the connection between the victim and the powerful anti-android lobby?  And the toughest question Harrison never expected to ask: what defines humanity?

This Geek's Week...

Tuesday

-- Finished painting the remnants of my leftover Eldar Pathfinders.

-- Worked on painting Eldrad, worked on putting together my Wraithguard, and D-Cannon.

Wednesday

-- Started priming my Wraithguard till I ran out of primer.  

-- Finished putting together the D-Cannon.

-- Played a game of X-Wing.  I LOVE the game, but the dice gods hate me in that one for sure!

-- Played my 1st game of "Dominant Species".  It wasn't too bad, but man the game took FOREVER!  It took a couple of turns for me to get a handle on figuring up the count for who controlled a space, but it wasn't too bad.  Jury's still out on it though.  It comes down time vs fun.  Is it fun enough to warrant the several hours it takes to play through a game?  I could get in several games in the time it took for just 1 of Dominant Species.

Thursday

-- Worked on painting my Eldar a bit more.  Eldrad is only a few steps away from being finished.

Sunday

--  Working on an Eldar list, so I know what to buy next.

-- Finally updated and patched Mechwarrior Online.  I'm hoping to step back in the ol' mech-cockpit tomorrow or the next day.

What is Netrunner? (The background)

I've been enjoying Netrunner a lot lately, and as the game is still pretty new, I figured I'd take this time to talk a little bit about what exactly Netrunner is.  The rules can be pretty extensive, so I don't plan to touch on the rules too much, other than in a basic sense wherever it may apply.  This post will go into the background of the game, taken directly from the rule book, and in a future post I'll go into the gameplay and what I think sets this game apart from other ones currently on the market.  That said, on with the show!

The Setting:

It is the future. Humanity has spread itself across the solar system with varying degrees of success.  The Moon and Mars are colonized. On Earth, a massive space elevator has been built on the equator, stretching up into low orbit, most people refer to it as the "beanstalk."

Computers have continued to advance along with discoveries in the field of neurobiology.  This has led to "brain-mapping", a method by which a human mind can be stored within sophisticated mind-machine devices.  The physical mouse and keyboard are archaic relics, elite users can now "jack in", plugging the computer directly into their brains.

Megacorporations (Corps) influence every facet of daily life: food, 3D, music, career choices.  Jinteki and Haas-Bioroid redefine life itself, making clones and androids with brain-taped, artificially-intelligent minds.  The Weyland Consortium owns a piece of everything that goes up and down the beanstalk, and EVERYTHING goes up and down the beanstalk!  Finally, NBN shapes what you think and dream, with the most extensive media network ever conceived on Earth under their control.

This Geek's Week...

A look at the gaming and other geeky stuff I accomplished this week...

Wednesday

-- Tweaked my Runner Deck. Dismantled my Haas-Bioroid deck and built a Weyland deck.

-- Played 4 games of Netrunner. 3 as a Runner, once as a Corp.  I ended up winning my games as the Runner, but losing my game as the Corp.  I'm pretty pleased with where my Runner deck is at at the moment, it feel's like a "basic criminal deck", but it seemed to work pretty well that night.  I'll put up a decklist for it at some point.  Not sure about the Corp deck though, as 1 game isn't enough to tell one way or another what I need to do with it.

-- Played 2 games of "Smash Up".  1st one was just a 2 player game, everything went fine, was a close game at 15 to 14.  The 2nd game however was a 4 player game, and was anything but pleasant.  Myself and 1 other guy had played the game before, while 2 other had not, and one of the new guys got pretty upset and cranky at me during the game.  I honestly have no clue why, but he seemed rather butthurt over something for most of the game, he may just not be pleasant person to game with (it was my 1st game with him)  I don't know if he couldn't grasp the nature of the game, couldn't grasp my strategy of staying within 1-2 points of the lead for a final push to cap and that's what really frustrated him, or if he's just a sore loser.  Either way, getting upset, cranky, and being rude over a GAME, let emphasize that again, A GAME that is meant to be FUN, is a huge pet peeve of mine!  Needless to say, unless he apologizes, (doubtful, I know) or shows that his behavior during that game isn't the norm, (which sadly, I think it may be) I'm thinking I may have found a spot for him on my "never play games with again" list.

Thursday

-- Finished another Arkham Horror book: Dance of The Damned , and it turned out pretty good!  I'll eventually put up a review for it.  Also, just started A Dance with Dragons, after waiting for so long for it to come out in paperback (march, 2013, boooo!) I finally broke down and bought a hardback copy from 1/2 price bookstore.  I'll be working on it for awhile...

-- Got that "40k itch" again all of sudden after watching a review of the chaos codex on 2d6.org.  I'm tempted to start a Red Corsairs army after Christmas, as I've like how they were portrayed in a couple of old short stories and 3rd ed codex.  It's not the 1st time I've thought about starting a Corsairs army, I've just never gotten around to it.  In the meantime, I'll stick to trying to work on what handful of Elder models I have to see if that can "cure the 40k itch" so to speak.

-- Dismantled my Crab Berserker deck.  It worked just fine, but I wanted to give a Crab Honor deck a try for this Saturday's meet up.

Friday

-- Still working on that "40k Itch".  I threw Space Marine into the PS3 messed around with the customization to make an Astral Claws/Red Corsair character and played a couple rounds of "extermination" solo.  Also worked on painting my Elder Pathfinders as well.

Saturday

-- Played 2 games of L5R with my Crab Kaiu Honor deck vs a Phoenix Mil/Honor switch deck, and won both games via honor.  His deck focused on honor and attacking, while mine focused on gaining honor while raising my provence strength to obscene levels. (At one point, I had provence strength 19)  As an added perk, several of the cards that raise my provence strength also add to my honor as well.  Not too sure on how I like the gold scheme in it though...

-- Played 4 games of Netrunner, 3x with my Weyland deck, 1x with my Gabriel deck, winning all 4.  The 1st game I used Gabriel as my Runner vs Haas-Bioroid.  I scored a quick agenda that he tried to bluff all by his lonesome.  From there, I hit R&D and scored an agenda iirc, and the last came from running the corp's hand.  The next two games I played Weyland vs Noise.  I scored a quick 1 point agenda for 7 credits, followed by more and more credit gaining cards like "hedge fund" and "beanstalk royalties", while the runner really seemed to be struggling for money.  In the end, I had a "posted bounty" just waiting to be scored, with a "scorched earth" in hand,  my mandatory draw was an "archived memories".  So, I scored the "posted bounty" giving the runner a tag, played "scorched earth" for 4 damage, "archived memories" to put it back into my hand, and "scorched earth" a second to kill the runner.  Second game went much the same way, waited to get 2x "scorched earth" in my hand, scored the waiting "posted bounty" then double "scorched earth" for the kill.  The final game was Weyland vs Gabriel, it was crazy!  I got hit with 3x "Account Siphon" early on, so I was pretty broke all game while the runner was sitting wealthy!  This one I actually had to win by scoring agendas, despite having 2x "scorched earth" in my hand, I never could get the runner tagged.  All in all, I think I'm pretty pleased with my Weyland deck.

L5R nights 2012 in Olathe KS

Just thought I'd throw this up on here as well.  We've got a small Legends of The Five Rings group that meets up on the 2nd Saturday of every month, and we're always looking to grow!  If you are in the area, and are interested, we meet at 31st Century Games in Olathe, KS.
Directions and such to the store can be found HERE.  The shop stocks plenty of L5R stuff, and I've got some spare decks built as well if anyone in the area would like a demo!

Hopefully I/we can see some new faces and help our L5R group grow!
-WuhSawBe-

LCG's: What they are, and why you should be interested!

First off, let me just say I'm a HUGE fan of Fantasy Flight Games' (FFG) "Living Card Game" (LCG) format.  For the sake of those people whom may not know what exactly an LCG is, this post is for you!

Most gamers out there should be familiar with the standard CCG model from games such as Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-OH, Pokemon, and Legend of The Five Rings to name a few.  Currently, the games that comprise the LCG format are: A Game of Thrones, Call of Cthulhu, Lord of The Rings, Warhammer Invasion, Netrunner, and the soon to be released Star Wars card game.  Both the CCG and LCG  share similarities in the deck building, and competitive gameplay, but it is the financial side of collecting cards where both formats take radically different roads!