Netrunner was an old CCG developed by Richard Garfield, who designed Magic. Garfield actually said he preferred Netrunner to Magic, but Netrunner came out in that dark time of Too Many God Damn CCGs and it bubbled into obscurity.
But now there's a living card game reboot of Netrunner called Android: Netrunner. So, a game that used to cost quite a bit (CCG price model coupled with rarity) is now way cheaper and has players again. This is a good thing.
Let me talk about some of the rad things in Netrunner.
- Asymmetrical sides:This is the really big, really cool one. Netrunner games have two players: a corporation and a runner. They have completely different cards and rules. The Corporation is trying to "advance" agendas by playing them on the field and using actions to place a number of tokens on them. If they do, they get some powerful effect from the agenda. The runner is trying to steal agendas. They can hit them on the field, or in the corps hand, deck, or discard. If they find an agenda, they score it immediately - no actions required. But, they don't get any effect. First to 7 points wins. The Corp tries to stop the Runner getting agendas by playing ICE that impedes their progress. The runner plays Icebreaker programs to get through the ICE. The corp can also be decked. The runner can also be killed. It's two completely different experiences. Tournament play of Netrunner is two players facing off, and then switching sides and playing again.
More open, less algorithmic play:Okay, let me poke the hornets nest a bit. Magic: the Gathering has a lot of skill in play, not just deckbuilding. Yes. This is true. Can I say whether Netrunner has "more" or "less"? Not really, that's a weird question. But, I think it's very fair to say Netrunner is less algorithmic: that is, that if you were to program a robot to play your Magic deck and program a robot to play your Netrunner deck, it would take a lot more code for the Netrunner robot than the Magic robot. That's because a lot of skilled play in Magic is just playing your deck with the one formula that you "baked" in to it (to be clear, programming a robot to play ALL magic decks would take infinity billion more lines of code than programming a robot to play ALL Netrunner decks, even both sides.) Netrunner is different, because your turn is spending clicks (3 clicks for corp, 4 clicks for runner.) You can spend a click to take a credit (analogue to mana.) You can spend a click to draw a card. You can spend a click to play an event. You can spend a click to install a card that'll be around forever. You have a lot more options at any decision-node than most card games, and "what to do" expands out exponentially. It's pretty rad!
Identities and Influence:The deck-building is something FFG changed from the original Netrunner, but I like the change. You play with an "Identity card" that gives you 3 things. The first is a special power that is in play all game. That alone makes decks feel very different. The second is minimum deck limit, which has very interesting implications for deckbuilding. The third is the coolest one though - influence. There are different factions that are like MtG's colors. You can have as many cards as you want from your color and from the neutral cards (aside from very rare Neutral cards with influence costs that EVERYONE has to pay influence to include - currently, the only one is The Source . From the other colors, you can only have your influence worth of cards. Cards have influence values from 1 to 5. So, you know mostly what to expect based on the faction of the opponent - but the out-faction cards could be ANYTHING, because there's no problem of getting the "right mana" or anything. Out-faction cards are used at full effectiveness.
It's cheap:Netrunner is a living card game. No booster packs. Pay about $30 for the core set on amazon, $15 for each non-random expansion. That's it. That's the whole cost. (The one exception is the core set itself - because FFG wanted to have a viable deck's worth of cards for each faction, they couldn't print every core card x3. If you get in to serious tournament play for Netrunner, you'll want 2 cores. It's still way cheaper than magic. :p) The online client for it, OCTGN, is free and pretty good. Horray for money.
So, hopefully you are interested. If you are, here are some resources:
- Netrunner for Magic Players (a good primer to Netrunner for those who have played MtG)
- Android: Netrunner rulebook
- Android: Netrunner FAQ 1.2
- Jargon Guide (if there's a word you don't know, check here first)
- Netrunnercards.info - easily the best database for Netrunner cards. If you hear a card name you don't know, or want to know what's in what pack, look it up.
You need to download the OCTGN client. You can do so here.
Then, when you're in, go to the game manager and install the follow feed: https://www.myget.org/f/octgngamedirectory
Don't open that in browser, it'll just be XML code. Just install that feed. Then, you'll get a list of games to install. Choose Android: Netrunner.
After that, close OCTGN and use this tool to update the card images from the proxies.
You do NOT need to update anything manually when new sets come out, now - you used to have to, and it stunk. All you'll need to do is re-run the image tool once per set.
The gold standard for making Netrunner decks is Meteor decks. Awesome, robust interface, saves the decks for later, easy to link, tracks changes...it's great.
However, sometimes Meteor goes down or lags in adding new sets. Less so than it used to, but as a backup, there's Cardgamedb. They were very recently purchased by Fantasy Flight so it might get better - right now I mostly like it when Meteor's down. It's a little more clunky to use, but serviceable.
Finally, OCTGN also has an internal editor. It's a nightmare to use to make a whole deck, but it's the quickest way to just change 1-2 cards, especially if you know the exact change you want to make.
I love this game and want to play it with you lovely people.