Getting into Netrunner

I’ve never played Netrunner. I’m generally fairly rubbish at competitive card games (including Ashes, though I like it a lot). I have TTS. Should I try it?

(I realise this is a derailment and if there are more than one or two replies I’ll move them all to a separate thread.)

[Later edit: I did.]

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Absolutely! It’s a great game if you bring in a constructed deck and play around. It’s a deep game, and relies on both characters pushing against each other, with the runner dictating the pacing. Newcomers don’t tend to run early enough, which allows the corp to build a fortress.

No other game compares to the dynamics of Netrunner. The corp in a sense is a GM, setting up a series of shell game dungeons for the runner.

The biggest issue is the LCG format and the player dynamics means you need to understand how both sides work. It’s a lot of overhead to get through, bit shouldn’t be an issue for you.

For a first game play HB (build big defensive fortresses) or Jinteki (set lots of traps that are easy to get through for a cost for death by a thousand cuts) against Shaper (general all rounder) or Criminal (lots of tricks for economy and getting around without running every ICE).

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There are lots of ways to play Netrunner without getting too deep into the gaming scene, which is why it’s my hobby game of choice. (Even though I am a competitive player myself.)

I have no idea how much weight my recommendation carries, but we’re releasing a new player set at the end of this year which should cover all of those kinds of “How do I play without buying a collection and then having 12 people tell me I’m doing it wrong?” problems that these games sometimes have.

If you’re ever seriously interested feel free to DM me and I’ll point you in the right direction. (This is an open invitation to literally everybody on this forum.) Until such a point:

Netrunner is great and thematic, and lots of the individual cards also generate a great mirror between mechanics and theme. Sometimes you look at a card name and then when you read the effect you go “That’s exactly what I expected” and that’s the best feeling to have when playing any game.

To that extent: Some of the cards and mechanics in Battle for Rokugan do an excellent job of this. “Bless the Lands” sets a bunch of territories on fire which (given the context) is exactly what you expect it to do. The crab clan have the ability where their tokens (which you generally generate by defending) are worth extra defence points.

I love that gaaaame

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I’m the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I played casually, dropped out just before the SanSan cycle, then filled out just after it folded official distribution for playing the odd game here and there.

It 100% is great for that (aside from the encyclopedic memory needed for deck construction from the crazy card pool). I still get a lot of joy from going on netrunnerdb, pulling together a deck and then seeing how it all plays out. My biggest fear is the loss of the dB in X years time. Half tempted to print a book of 4 or 5 decks for each character for prosperity!

A side question: any recommended TTS mods?

(Particularly since one can back up all the assets to make them still usable even if they’re officially removed.)

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Netrunner is one of the best CCGs ever made. I think it’s officially a crime (though an understandable one) that Magic is the one that everyone still plays and has survived the years, when its immediate siblings Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (nee Jyhad) and Netrunner are much better 3+ player and 2 player games respectively. At least it got a good stretch and long deserved recognition when FFG picked it back up as an LCG.

…that said, I haven’t played the FFG version much because it is strictly a two player game and I don’t have many contexts to play those.

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Yeah, 2 player games are a double edged sword. It’s difficult to get that situation, but when there are 2 people, the only 2p games I like are those specifically designed for two. I see couples who exclusively play 2-4p games at 2p and… I don’t get it. Why are they doing that to themselves?

The TTS Netrunner scene is a little less abundant than others because Jinteki.net is so good. I know there’s people out there who prefer the way TTS works, and I know there are a bunch of Netrunner things for it, but if you’re interested then we can jam on JNet to teach you. (Not this weekend though, sadly.)

@KIR2: We are not going to let NRDB die.

We have plans for it…

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(The plan is mainly “Maintain NRDB as a resource”.)

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Ah, I didn’t know that existed…

I know, but I’m thinking of 30 years time when I’m passing my valuable heirlooms to the grandkids!

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It will never die. :rage:

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It can be a little intimidating, and if you don’t have somebody to talk you through it it might be harder to learn than with actual cards, but considering the current situation is definitely better than like… Getting covid. :eyes:

TTS’s manual handling thing makes it much easier to kind of fudge your way through things even if you get rules wrong. JNet implements a lot of stuff, but not everything. Sometimes that means that you get lost because you’re not sure what exactly is going on, or two cards won’t interact correctly and that’s a bug, but you won’t know that and it might be confusing. :confounded:

But like I said, if you want somebody to talk you through it, hit me up. Failing that I can link to a Discord where I know there are at least a few TTS players lurking about.

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Thanks for all this - I played a couple of games on jinteki this evening with a fellow novice, and I think we were starting to work out the basics of what was going on.

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While we’re talking about Netrunner… Is there an easy way to get the fan cards printed in the UK? I see the US has all kinds of fancy services for printing custom player cards, but I’ve never seen similar in Europe, and shipping prices are CRAZY from the States.

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So if I were going to buy physical cards (in the UK)… which I’m not, not after two games, really, I’ve got it under control, I don’t need another time-sink… eBay?

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Most likely! The difficulty is the market seems to be full of cores on their own, or full sets. You ideally want somewhere in between, which is a bit more of a rarity.

The original core with the first 2 cycles, or the revised core with the latest cycle are considered decent ‘closed system’ card pools if you don’t want to deep dive. Some of the latest cycle are among the rarest packs though, since production dived when the end was announced. The first 2 packs are particularly rare for some reason.

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If you want the NISEI stuff you can get them from our website, www.nisei.net

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You can also use proxynexus. I’ve never personally used it but loads of people do.

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Do any of you know anything about the German translated cards? Because I have this webshop that has a lot of different sets but all in German…