Oh Netrunner, How I've missed you

There was a time when Magic: The Gathering was starting to hit it's stride and I wanted to get into it.  Everything about seemed awesome. It had magic and fantasy and warriors and you were a wizard doing battle with other wizards! But there was a problem. My mom didn't like the game.

The reason for this involves us visiting family friends. One of the children played Magic: The Gathering and my mom asked him about it. She found out about the various colors. Then when she talked to me about it, she told me she didn't want me playing it because white decks always lose. Now before you judge she was operating on the logic of a shitty MtG player. The guy clearly sucked if white decks he played always lost. Now that I am adult I could buy cards and play on my own and my favorite color is white. And I win plenty of games.

In the time before I was able to buy my own MtG, my mom was awesome enough to buy me an alternate card game. That game was Netrunner. Made by the same person who created Magic: The Gathering. It is a 2 player asymmetrical game, meaning the the Runner plays and presents his cards on the table is different from the way the Corporation player does. And the cards were really cool looking to boot. Plus it was cyberpunk, which I am big fan of in general.

Look at that OWL!!! Also, I think owls are cool.

But I never actually managed to play it. I was too young and didn't have anyone interested in playing it, but now FFG has re-imagined the game in Android: Netrunner. And now that I am old enough to appreciate it and play, I thoroughly am enjoying it. From reading sources online the game is largely the same save for a few differences. One of them being that there are Runner and Corporation identities that you build your decks around. As writing this there is only the starter set out which has 3 Runner identities and 4 Corporation identities.

I have only played with my girlfriend, but we both really enjoy the game. Learning things can be a little bit of a challenge, but only about as much as MtG or Legend of the 5 Rings. The starter set comes with lots of cardboard tokens to track how many credits you have (bits in the original game) and if the Runner is tagged and so on.

Also it is Living Card Game, and so far there are 2 Data Packs (card packs) in the pipe line that will add more identities and new strategies to the game. Speaking of which the goal of the game is score 7 agenda points, reduce the Corp's R&D (draw deck) to nothing, kill the Runner by causing meat damage, and reducing the Runner's stack (draw deck) to nothing. But mainly you are aiming for the agenda points. The Corp has the agenda cards which the Runner makes hacking run on their servers to obtain. Corps get agenda points by advancing the agendas a certain amount.

Now to protect them the Corp sets up barriers known as Ice. Runners need Ice breakers to break through. The cool thing about the Corp is that some cards can be advanced that arent agenda cards so the can set up ambushes for the Runner. It's quite exciting and can be tense when making a run on and you don't know what lies within.

As with any FFG it all look very good. From box to the cards and tokens it all looks very good and helps make the cyberpunk feel come alive, along with all the terminology. Though with many FFG, the box could have been made to store things better. It is a minor complaint and I could use little bags to hold things, but gosh darn it I don't want to. But luckily there isn't too much to store and the bits are fine just sitting at the bottom of the box.

In conclusion, if you are fan of the original game, you shouldn't be disappointed. And if you are a fan of living card games or collectable cards games you should check it out.