So
this blog series is now five parts strong and I wanted to give a shout
out to everybody who has read it and those who have supported it on
Twitter with retweets etc. It’s much appreciated.
Hopefully
there will have been a few people who have read these articles who were
unfamiliar with the game, and are now considering picking it up. If so,
this one’s for you – we’re going to take a look at what you get in the
core set.
Android: Netrunner is available for about £30 / $30 and for that you get the following:
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| (Image from Kotaku.com) |
248 game cards, plus 2 reference and 2 click-tracker cards
51 one-credit / advancement tokens
8 five-credit tokens
6 Brain Damage tokens
12 Bad Publicity / Tag tokens
23 generic tokens (used as Agenda, Virus and Power Counters)
Rules of Play
With the
cards you can make decks for 3 runners and 4 corporations, you’ll just
have to swap a few neutral cards between them when needed.
Here are some quick intros to the various factions in the game – provided by Fantasy Flight Games in the Netrunner manual.
Runners
Anarch
Anarchs
have strong contempt for the oligarchs, the whole corrupt system, and
often for society in general. Whatever the exact target of their rage,
their unifying characteristic is their anger. At their best, Anarchs are
tireless champions for the downtrodden and oppressed. They are very
good at breaking things, spreading viruses and trashing Corporation
assets and programs. At their worst, Anarchs just want to watch the
world burn.
Shaper
To
others, Shapers seem like idealistic naïfs. They are not motivated by
rage against the corporate injustice that is a daily fact of life for
the underclass. They are not in it for the money. Many never understand
why Shapers do what they do, but it isn’t actually that complicated.
Shapers are motivated by curiosity and a certain amount of pride. A
Shaper may orchestrate a data raid as underhanded and destructive as the
most frothing Anarch, but his goals are different: the Shaper just
wants to see if he can do it. Shapers are also tinkerers and builders,
and they push their hardware and software beyond their limits.
Criminal
Criminals
are in it for themselves. All runners are technically criminals, at
least if you ask the corps, but these runners embrace it. They make
self-interest an art form and don’t care who gets hurt so long as they
get ahead. Many Criminals engage in more traditional forms of crime as
well, stealing data and money with equal gusto. Criminals are good at
covering their tracks and employing a variety of dirty tricks to attack from an unexpected angle.
Corporations
Weyland Consortium
Aside
from its dramatic and public association with the New Angeles Space
Elevator, better known as “Jack’s Beanstalk” or simply “the Beanstalk”
after designer Jack Weyland, the extent of the Weyland Consortium’s
holdings is little known among the general population. This shadowy
organisation owns or invests in other corporations, leveraging the
enormous assets granted them by the Beanstalk to buy and sell smaller
megacorps at an alarming rate.
Haas-Bioroid
With
headquarters in New Angeles and major branch offices in Chicago,
Cologne, Heinlein, Johannesburg and Sydney, Haas-Bioroid is the world
leader in cybernetics and artificial intelligence. The most iconic and
recognisable products made by Haas-Bioroid are the bioroids themselves,
androids built with cybernetic technology and with
artificially-intelligent minds designed around sophisticated imaging of
human brains.
NBN
The
largest media conglomerate in the world is NBN, which at various times
in the company’s history has stood for Network Broadcast News, Net
Broadcast Network and Near-Earth Broadcast Network. Now simply known as
NBN, the corporation is headquartered right on Broadcast Square in New
Angeles after relocating from SanSan in the early 30s. NBN also has
offices and broadcast equipment along the entire length of the New
Angeles Space Elevator, particularly at Midway Station and the terminal
space station known as the Castle.
Jinteki
Jinteki
owns the patient on the process that creates human-like clones,
biological androids tailor-made by the “genegineers” of Jinteki. As this
controversial technology becomes cheaper and more robust, more and more
humans find themselves replaced in the workforce by cheaper android
labour.
As
is to be expected from Fantasy Flight games, the box and all its
contents - including the 36-page, full -colour rules of play - are of
great quality and the art on the cards is stunning.
Stunning cards, for a stunning game.
So what are you waiting for?
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