Netrunner

They currently have slotted for

late November the Electra Hero Pack, and then for October is the Shadowlands Scenario Pack, actually guest designed by Michael Boggs, who is a former designer of Champions and a former designer of Netrunner, who is actually now one of the creators slash designers of Hub World, which we were just talking about.

Wow.

It's just amazing how that happens, isn't it? These things all weave in and out.

it literally will get you nothing.

Or they're playing water.

I mean, and that's actually with Netrunner is a really good example of this, too.

This is kind of fascinating because Netrunner's core thing was I can easily calculate the most efficient breakers in a vacuum.

I remember playing a trading card game with a cyberpunk theme with you before, and you knew it was cyberpunk because it had special names for every draw deck, for every discard pile, for what the different hands were.

I assume that that's a dig at Netrunner, which we've both come to terms with, by the way.

We are now both pro Netrunner.

It's not necessarily pro Netrunner terminology.

I assume cyberpunk, although it has to avoid the trademarked term A tap doesn't engage in too much of that nonsense? No, it does not.

There's only one person I'll allow getting away with naming... draw deck and discard pile something weird and fanciful.

And I probably didn't get the board game bug until, well, I played a bit of Magic when I was, that would have been around like 96, 95, 96.

Played a bit of Magic and I played the next game that Richard Garfield released called Netrunner, the Netrunner CCG.

No spoilers, but we might be talking about that at some point in the future.

I may come back to it later.

So do you know what the hacking mechanics are called in Cyberpunk? You probably do.

Netrunning! Absolutely.

And yeah, before Shadowrun and Cyberpunk as role-playing games, there really wasn't an antecedent for the idea of hacking a computer with your brain.

I would say that this determined a lot of the aesthetic of that, how it's meant to feel.

I think I've played about five or six games of this now using these starter decks that I've been sent.

It's very similar to Netrunner.

It's not a replacement for Netrunner.

It is heavily inspired by Netrunner and you will see that when you start seeing how the game plays.

A lot of people watching this video have probably already backed this game and are waiting for it to be delivered, which will hopefully be nearer the end of this year, I think.

But yeah, I've been playing through this a lot and I've been really enjoying it.

This is a game which tickles that Netrunner itch for me.

But in summary, if you don't know what the game is, imagine Netrunner, but where you are doing the running to try and find your opponent's agents or delving in this game whilst also having your own agents which your opponent is trying to delve.

I'm super encouraged to hear you say that, Nicole, especially as someone who's been playing for a long time because I've kind of been, like, searching my feelings playing it again and maybe a little more this time and, of how I feel about that element because for me, uh, maybe it's just, like, getting older, I think I found myself less wanting to engage with that part of the system.

Like, I deeply respect it and I'm glad it's there and it seems super cool, but it's the difference to me of, like, something like Magic and Netrunner versus, like, Ascension, which, uh, where you d- you're not building...

Like, in, in this game, in theory, you're being encouraged to, like, build your deck before you go into the level.

And again, I'm glad it's there, but it's just, like, not a level that for me I want to engage with, or maybe a little bit.

Wait, what?

What?

I've never once built a deck in Magic or Netrunner, and I had a blast playing those games.

Um-

There were kind of two things that happened.

One thing was that early in our relationship, we met each other at a Netrunner meetup.

And then it was only like a couple weeks later that it was like, hey, there's Netrunner tournaments in Portland and Seattle.

And you were going to go on that road trip.

And I was like, I'm fucking there.

Had we decided to call every single card in the game an annotated leaf and gone thematic in that direction, I would have been heavily against it because in that case it doesn't work.

A lot of people complain about Netrunner for having its own collection of terms they have to learn before you can learn the game.

The most egregious of all.

But some people love the theme of Netrunner and that adds to the game for them.

So there is no right answer.

It's all contextual.