Opening Movies Set Review - Corp Cards

Welcome back, true believers, to my second look at Opening Moves and the Corp cards.  I will deliver precious little preamble but if you're suddenly confused by the appearance of a certain much-loved boggle-eyed green puppet then check out my Runner cards analysis for at least some suggestion of where he came from.

Project Ares

I started my Runner analysis by explaining I wasn't easily excited by a card but something in Project Ares keeps drawing out the exciteable part of me and occasionally I have to go for a sit down and take some deep breaths.  I'm pretty certain Project Ares is pretty horrible - the amount of time, money and clicks you have to invest into it to get a decisive impact from overadvancing it simply doesn't warrant taking the risk.  You probably need 7-9 counters on Project Ares before it really hurts the Runner, and to do that you have to leave it out dangling on the table for at least two turns (Fast Advance tricks like Psychographics notwithstanding).  The risk that that Runners comes and steals Project Ares in that time is huge and the amount of tempo you'd lose would be crippling.  I'm sure I won't be able to resist trying to make this card work in a few decks, maybe using Jinteki traps and Trick of Light to persuade the Runner not to check it out before it's too late, but I accept it's probably not a serious card.  Fun times when it works, though.
Kermit Rating: 

NEXT Bronze

Introducing the first NEXT piece of Ice, which the effect of NEXT Bronze suggests will be joined by several more NEXT Ice in future.  Accepting that NEXT Bronze is likely to get better in future I have to say I actually quite like it now as a 2/0 Code Gate that Ends the Run.  If you're a rush-type Corp strategy, which many Haas-Bioroid decks are, then a cheap piece of Ice that keeps the Runner out in the short term is welcome.  Is it as good as Ice Wall?  No, clearly not.  Is it playable as a second bank of cheap ETR Ice?  Yes, definitely.  Time will tell how good NEXT Bronze gets, but right now it's pretty solid anyway.
Kermit Rating:  and maybe  more in future.

Celebrity Gift

A double action to reveal to the opponent up to 5 cards and gain up to 10 credits.  At full strength you've effectively gained something like a double Hedge Fund worth of extra credits at the cost of handing the opponent some information on your hand, which is a not-inconsiderable sum of money.  Let's tackle the two sides of this one at a time: first, you don't have to reveal 5 cards, but as it costs you 3 credits and 2 clicks Celebrity Gift only really makes sense if you're prepared to go all-in and show 4 or 5 cards.  The other side of the equation is what you tell your opponent, and the value of that depends entirely on your deck and your hand - showing your opponent an Agenda and two Snare! is relatively harmless because the Runner has to stay wary of Snare!, but showing them your SEA Source and Scorched Earth could seriously damage your chances of landing the Flatline kill, and showing them the Agendas could just signal open house on HQ.

Importantly, it's cash for Jinteki and Jinteki DESPERATELY needed cash, so it's well-welcome there, and most important is the way Celebrity Gift benefits from being played alongside the standout Corp card from Opening Moves (which we'll discuss soon), Jackson Howard.  Jackson asks Corps to play an Operation-based economy because he will keep a steady supply of economy cards coming, and alongside Hedge Fund, Beanstalk Royalties and Successful Demonstration the Celebrity Gift can be an important part of that style of deck, ensuring a enough high-return economy Operations to give the Corp more cash than Scrooge McDuck
Kermit Rating: 

Himitsu-Bako

Himitsu-Bako is a Barrier.  It really is.  It looks like a Code Gate.  It sounds like a Code Gate (Himitsu-Bako is the Japanese for 'Puzzle Box') but this is one enigma that's a Barrier.  Go figure.  And it's a Barrier that I really, really like.  A 2/2 ETR Barrier is excellent value - similar to the excellent Ice Wall, though obviously you can't do any advancing of the Strength like you can with Ice Wall - and the fact that you've got such a good, solid ETR piece of Ice in Jinteki adds something new to that Corporation.  You'll get very little value from the ability to return Himitsu-Bako to hand, but you'll get a ton of value from the three little words "End the run".
Kermit Rating: 

Character Assassination

How much does NBN need a 4/2 Agenda?  About as much as I need a hole in the head seeing as they've already got two excellent 3/2 Agendas in the shape of Astroscript Pilot Program and Project Beale, and the neutral Private Security Force that fits nicely with NBN's tagging strategy.  How much does NBN need the ability to destroy a resource?  Only slightly more than I need a hole in the head seeing as NBN has all the tagging it needs to destroy resources anyway, including the ability to basically replicate the effect of Character Assassination by using Breaking News and a click.  It's not bad, per se, it's just not needed much in NBN.
Kermit Rating: 

Jackson Howard

Printing Jackson Howard changes the game of Netrunner.  Everything about this card has been deliberately priced to make it relatively painless for you to add this card into your deck:

• He only costs 1 Influence so any Corp can add him.
• He costs 0 to play, so you don't need to be rich
• He has trash cost so the worst that happens is the Runner pays 3, so you don't even need to protect him to gain value.

And what do you gain for playing with Jackson Howard?  Jackson helps you in two very different ways, the most obvious of which is that he turns your 'Click: Draw a Card' into 'Click: Draw two cards'.  This ability alone is powerful enough to change a lot about how you want to build Corp decks.  Suddenly one-shot effects like Beanstalk Royalties or Hedge Fund are going to turn up twice as often, reducing the Corp's need to rely on other Assets for long-term economy benefits.  Suddenly your efforts to assemble 'combos' of cards like SEA Source/Scorched Earth or Trick of Light/Archived Memories will come together twice as rapidly.  Suddenly you can keep a hand full of cards to reduce the Runner's odds of hitting Agendas in HQ.  Suddenly you will see Agendas twice as often!

Not impressed yet?  How about the second thing Jackson Howard does - he shuffles your best cards back into R&D so you can draw them again.  Say whaaaat!?!?  Were you playing three copies of Hedge Fund?  Well how about shuffling them back into your deck six times to effectively play nine copies?  Playing a Fast Advance deck with Trick of Light?  How would you like do it more than once?  One of the killer offensive applications for this is Snare!, which you can shuffle back into R&D later in the game to increase the density of traps in your deck and frustrate the Runner.  

Still not convinced?  How about using Jackson Howard to draw extra cards then discarding the unwanted Agendas into Archives to reduce the chance of your opponent hitting Agendas from HQ, then trashing Jackson Howard to shuffle the Agendas back into R&D if the runner decides to check the Archives?  Jackson Howard is effectively a two card combo with himself.

Jackson Howard.  He's quite good.
Kermit Rating: 

Invasion of Privacy

Invasion of Privacy is a card that seems to promise a lot but, unlike Jackson Howard, has been designed so that it is relatively hard to get full value from it.  The temptation is there to throw Invasion of Privacy out on the first turn and destroy the Runner's opening hand, taking away things like Account Siphon, Sure Gamble or Professional Contacts but Trace2 is low enough that, outside of NBN: Making News, it's hard to use Invasion of Privacy for a devastating first turn that shreds the Runner's hand without making the Corp spend enough credits to set them back a similar amount.  Where Invasion of Privacy really shines is in decks where you're not just hoping to use the discard effect as disruption, but to capitalise on the fact that in Netrunner hand size is equivalent to the Runner's health bar and follow up with a Scorched Earth or Ronin to finish the job.

If Invasion of Privacy is pulling double-duty in your deck as damage or disruption then I think it can be quite exciting, particularly in NBN: Making News, but you're hoping to rip the Runner's hand to pieces simply for the hell of it then you're likely to need a pot of spare cash handy to make it worthwhile.
Kermit Rating: 

Geothermal Fracking

How much does Weyland need a 4/2 Agenda?  About as much as... wait, it does WHAT?  Geothermal Fracking is effectively two Hostile Takeovers that have been stuck together with duct tape and shuffled into your deck.  You don't get the cash immediately that has both good and bad connotations - you have to burn clicks to get your 14 (fourteen!) credits, but you also don't have to give the Runner the Bad Publicity cash until you really want to.  Geothermal Fracking gives you such a huge boost of cash that it has to be serious good times, and with a set of this and a set of Hostile Takeovers Weyland can guarantee a solid flow of cash from it's nefarious undertakings to fund the more expensive things in life.

Go on then, I'll wheel Scrooge back out for another dip, because it's well-deserved...

Kermit Rating: 

Swarm

One of the things Weyland loves to do with its piles of duck cash is invest in some big pieces of Ice (I'm looking at you, Hadrian's Wall) and Swarm joins those ranks as a piece of Ice that can be pretty terrifying once it's advanced.  However Swarm is one of those pieces of Ice that really only shines when you've invested a couple of turns in advancing it, at which point you're often signalling to the Runner what you're looking at.  In a Weyland deck that advances Ice a lot - Ice Wall, Shadow, Hadrian's Wall - the Swarm adds an important element in being a piece of Ice where the advancement counters actually hurt the Runner instead of simply making your passive Ice harder to break.  With Swarm I think most decks will be put off by the amount you have to invest in using the card, but for the decks which can use Swarm properly it's going to be a gamewinner.
Kermit Rating: 

Cyberdex Trial

Cyberdex Trial is very simple - it compresses an effect that all Corps can get from three clicks (purging Virus counters) into single Operation, and a single click.  With Noise and Datasucker decks at the height of their powers right now a lot of people are turning to Cyberdex Trial as a specific answer to their metagame but I feel that, ultimately, it's a card that doesn't do enough to justify inclusion in most decks, particularly well players can always purge virus counters now if they really need to.  Will purging Virus counters for one click make a difference in some games?  Yes, definitely.  Will it happen often enough to justify having a dead card in hand for the other 60% of games where the Runner isn't smashing you with Viruses?  I doubt it.
Kermit Rating: 

Grim

Grim is an imposing guard dog of a piece of Ice, with two good points balanced by two bad points.  In the Pros column is that Grim trashes a Program, which is one of the strongest things a piece of Ice can do, permanently hurting the Runner's ability to run.  Also on the plus side is the impressive strength of 5 for a rez cost of only 5, although being Strength 5 rather than 4 doesn't actually make too much difference on a Sentry - Mimic either has a Datasucker for company and can break it, or doesn't, Ninja jumps straight to Strength 5 anyway, and the Criminal decks using Crypsis or Faerie only have to spend a little more cash to get there anyway.

Where Grim really shines is against a half-assembled Atman deck that has an Atman set at 4 and no Datasucker tokens.  How often does that happen against a half-competent opponent?  Not very often.

On Grim's downside is that he doesn't End the run, making him useless in the early game when the Runner hasn't any programs installed and is free-running against your servers, and that you hand the Runner a Bad Publicity token when he is rezed.  The Bad Publicity means you really need to sting the Runner badly when you first rez Grim because from there on in Grim is likely to be working against you.

Will he be played?  I think you'll see one or two copies cropping up in decks relatively often a surprise blow to spring on the Runner mid-game, but I doubt you'll see many players bringing the full set of three copies.
Kermit Rating: 


Wrapping Up

Overall I like the Corporation cards from Opening Moves a lot better than the Runner cards, but that just goes to reset some of the imbalance we found in Creation & Control, where the Runner got all-star cards like Atman, Professional Contacts and Self-Modifying Code while the Corp got very little.  Undoubtedly the best cards are in the Corp; particularly Jackson Howard, Himitsu-Bako and Geothermal Fracking, but there are promising signs for the Runner and we've yet to see if the Caissa turn out to be a whole deck that is being drip-fed into the metagame.

I'm going to enjoy exploring Opening Moves, and trying to blow up the world with Project Ares.  My question to you - what's your favourite card from Opening Moves, and what have I got completely wrong?

Opening Movies Set Review - Runner Cards

Opening Moves has finally arrived in Europe (I believe the US received it last month?) and so the first data pack in Spin Cycle has only just become a reality for me.  You may well have found several other people's views on the cards already but if, like me, you're just getting acquainted with Jackson Howard and John Masanori for the first time then hopefully this will still make for a good read.

But before I get into the Runner cards from Opening Moves a quick word about my approach to card reviews.  I'm not a Kermit, who just gets excited to make new friends and thinks the best of everyone.  I'm more like Statler & Waldorf: the old guys in the balcony from The Muppets who hate everything.  It takes a lot for a card to impress me but if you find me dumping on your favourite card then please don't be disheartened - just consider it a challenge to prove me wrong!

Frame Job

If Frame Job was just a Double Event that gave the Corp a Bad Publicity it would be extremely good – investing a credit and two clicks to get a click back on every run you make is fantastic.  Frame Job requires you to forfeit a stolen Agenda, however, and that’s a real problem for me.  When the Corp plays a card that includes forfeiting an Agenda in the cost (such as Archer) they also have a say in what Agendas are in the deck – they can build an Agenda plan that includes 1-point Agendas they’re happy to lose.  The Runner doesn’t have that luxury and you can’t predict whether you’ll be needing to forfeit Priority Requisition or Gila Hands Arcology.
Kermit Rating: 

Pawn

Pawn lets you find a Caissa and install it.  What’s a Caissa?  A Caissa is a chess piece and chess is the Anarch’s big thing in this set (they’re clearly the sort of anarchs who like to sit in smoky coffee houses and discuss Marxist literature rather than the sort of anarchs who throw Molotov cocktails or squat outside banks).  Pawn’s value is largely dependent on how good the other chess pieces are, and the news is that some of them are sort of ok.  So Pawn is a card that lets you find/recur (a good thing) and install for free (a good thing) something that’s sort of ok (not a great thing) after spending several clicks moving Pawn across the board (a bad thing).   Note that Pawn costs 0MU, though.  That’s a nice little perk, although you’ll have to remember to leave MU spare for the Caissa piece you get with the Pawn.

Kermit Rating: 

Rook

Rook is our first look at a real Caissa and it’s one of the ones that’s actually pretty good, arguably even the best of the bunch.  Once you get through the mountain of text around how Rook moves (short story: it moves like a Rook) you find that what Rook actually DOES is increase the rez cost of Ice on a server by 2.  That’s a pretty big impact and one that resource denial Runner decks will be happy to grab with both hands.

Key elements to remember:

• The ice hosting Rook doesn’t have to be rezed
• Although only one Caissa is allowed per Ice, Rook is not unique so a server can have multiple Rooks increasing the rez cost by 4 or even 6
• The Corp can always choose to overwrite the Ice you have Rook on, destroying the Rook

The 1^st and 3^rd points interact with each other quite importantly.  Maximum use from Rook is to put it on an unrezed piece of Ice so that the hosted Ice also costs 2 more.  That play leaves you open to the Corp simply replacing an unrezed Wall of Static with an unrezed Enigma, killing Rook.  If that’s going to happen you’re going to be really glad of your Pawn’s ability to then return Rook from your Trash to then put it back onto the unrezed Enigma.

Kermit Rating: 

Hostage

Hostage lets you grab a Connection.  What’s a connection?  It’s a subtype of Resource, and most importantly it’s probably either Kati Jones, Mr Li, or Professional Contacts – those are the best Connections currently printed, with Professional Contacts probably the card most likely to be sought after.  It costs two clicks to play Hostage but if you install the Connection right away you get one of the clicks back and that makes Hostage a good tutor effect that helps guarantee seeing your key economy cards early in the game.  Unless there's an Underworld Contacts deck waiting to be found then Hostage doesn’t rewrite many decks, and maybe doesn’t warrant the Influence cost in non-Criminal decks, but considered in isolation this is a cheap and effective way of getting your core economy working.

Kermit Rating: 

Gorman Drip v1

Gorman Drip is best when you have the Corp on its knees and are forcing them to click hard to gain cash.  This is what Criminals are good at and it’s perfectly in keeping with cards like Account Siphon, Crescentus, Forged Activation Orders and Emergency Shutdown that are built around kicking the Corp when they’re down.  Like a lot of those cards Gorman Drip also gets rapidly worse once the Corp is able to stand on its own two feet as they’ll replace the click-for-cash economy with something better (Gila Hands Arcology, Melange Mining Corp, Private Contracts, Government Contracts, or an Operation-based economy).  As an economy card that is slow to return cash and works best when you’re already winning I have to recognise the POTENTIAL for Gorman Drip to deliver a huge return on the 1 credit investment, but advise prospective shareholders to place their hard-earned credits into a more reliable pension fund.

Kermit Rating: 

Lockpick

You get a free credit every turn.  YAY!  You can only spend it on Decoders.  BOO!  And Yog.0 costs 0 to use anyway so realistically we’re only talking about Gordian Blade.  BOOOOO!  At the moment this card is pretty much entirely pointless but it could be the Cloak in a Cloak/Dagger combination we haven’t seen the other half of yet.  That would probably make it just mostly pointless, rather than entirely pointless.

Kermit Rating: 

False Echo

I like Crescentus a lot.  I like Emergency Shutdown a lot.  I like Forged Activation Orders a lot.  I don’t like False Echo.  The value in Crescentus and Emergency Shutdown is that you force the Corp to rez their Ice twice.  The value in Forged Activation Orders is that you permanently destroy a piece of Ice.  False Echo does neither of these things, and even if you get it to work you’re probably only getting parity with the Corp (you installed and paid for False Echo, and they just reinstalled their Ice and paid any cost for the extra Ice layers).  Almost entirely pointless.  Nice picture, though.  Serene.

Kermit Rating: 

Motivation

I think Motivation may be a skill tester card because it seems to suggest that it does something good while actually doing almost nothing - I know players who are very excited by this card, which baffles me. 

The Case For The Defence
Motivation lets you see the top card of your deck at the start of the turn: if it’s good you know you want to spend a click to draw it, and if it’s bad you know you shouldn’t waste the click.  Information is power.

The Case For The Prosecution
Your hand doesn’t have what you need and you want to draw a card to make it better, so most of the time Motivation is competing with drawing blindly from the top of the deck.  If the top card of your deck is good then you were going to draw it anyway, and if the top card of your deck is bad then… you’re never going to draw another card again?  Unless you’ve got a deck full of shuffle effects that will reveal a new card on top you’ve no choice but to draw the card at some point, good or bad.  Worse yet, by drawing Motivation and then spending a click to install it you would actually have drawn two cards and made your hand better – it’s like a reverse Diesel!

Motivation makes your deck worse then may (possibly) slowly make it better over the next ten turns to the point where you’re back where you started.  Or you could just not play Motivation.

Kermit Rating: 

And finally...

John Masanori

The successful Criminal decks get a lot of value by adding incremental benefits onto successful runs, effectively getting multiple clicks worth of value out of a single click of running (using cards like Desperado and Datasucker).  John Masanori supports that sort of strategy quite well, adding a draw to the credits and virus counters already gained.  Mr Masanori is most frequently compared to Mr Li because he's going to appear in Criminal decks most often, and it's a comparison that's not entirely without merit as they're both contacts that draw you cards.  Mr Li is better at digging for specific cards - you see two at once, and can use it multiple times per turn - while John Masanori is all about providing incremental advantages without having to cost you a click.  Getting something for nothing is what marks out a great card but I'm still on the fence about whether there's a deck that really NEEDS what Masanori is selling.  I'm going to hedge my bets and sit on the fence.

Kermit Rating: 

That rounds up the Runner cards from Opening Moves, for me.  There's nothing special in here that I can see, with perhaps Rook the card you're most likely to rebuild a deck to play, but cards like Hostage and John Masanori provide some good routes towards efficient running and gaining an incremental edge over the Corp and I'm sure we'll see them feature in competitive decks at some point.

The Three Phases of Netrunner

When you start playing anything like a new TCG or LCG it can be really confusing – you’re trying to understand the rulebook with one hand and then taking in new cards you’ve never seen before with the other. 

What does that card say?  What does that mean?  Is it good?  Can I do anything about it?

It’s like being cast adrift on the ocean – unending waves in every direction and no fixed landmarks.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, so long as you’re enjoying the journey and this is how many players experience and enjoy TCG/LCGs.  They break out the cards with no intention of doing anything more than seeing where it takes them.  Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but they enjoy the journey.

One of the key moments in mastering a game, however, is when you stop to take the time to look for the common landmarks unique to that game.  Every time you play the cards will arrive in a different order so it will never be exactly the same but you will find patterns behind the cards that help you to take control.  No longer are you just enjoying the experience of being swept away by the game’s currents: now you’ve got a say in where you want it to take you, and in how you’re going to get there.

So much for my obscure analogy that was primarily an opportunity to use a still from Life of Pi.  Let’s talk about Netrunner…

Netrunner has a pattern to it.  Every game of Netrunner is different, but every game is a duel between and Runner and a Corporation.  Every game of Netrunner is different, but every game sees the Runner and Corporation faced with similar problems that require similar responses.  Recognising the patterns in the game, and where you fit into that pattern, helps you to understand what you need to do.  It can help you when deckbuilding, to put in cards that will work towards a goal rather than working against each other, and it can help you during the game to help you make the right play for that point of the game.

DISCLAIMER: I’m about to make a lot of generalisations about Netrunner games.  Not all of these are true all the time.  There are exceptions.  Games are different, decks are different and aim for different objectives, but these generalisations will be true more often than not.

THE THREE PHASES OF NETRUNNER

1) Early Game – Runner Advantage

The early game in Netrunner is the first few turns and the defining characteristic of this portion of the game is that it puts a huge amount of time pressure onto the Corporation.  The Corp starts the game with a To Do list as long as your arm and simply not enough hours in the day (or clicks in the turn) to do them all:

• Protect HQ
• Protect R&D
• Establish Remote servers
• Protect Remote servers
• Gain the cash needed to pay for all of the above

Typically it will take the Corp three or four turns to do all this and while the Corp is struggling to install some web protection more robust than Norton Antivirus the Runner has a chance to exploit the holes in the Corps defences.  This ties back to my article about the risk/benefits of the Runner being aggressive in the earlygame and explains the common adage “Run Early, Run Often”.  The early game belongs to the Runner because the Corp is starting from zero while the Runner can run from click one.

Corporations often aim to bring the first phase of the game to an end as quickly as possible, which is usually done by playing a suite of cheap Ice that helps you to secure your servers without spending too much cash.  If you rely on Ice that costs 4 or 5 credits as your early defense you CAN rez a piece of Ice on one server but you’ll be struggling to then protect other servers.  Now the key word I used here is ‘secure’ the servers, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as ensuring the Runner can’t access them by using Ice that ends their run.  While the humble Ice Wall is the king of the early game by locking up a server for a single credit you can use other effects like Neural Katana, Hunter, Data Raven etc to secure a server simply by making it too painful for the Runner to run on it.

On the Runner’s side of the equation some Runner decks try to make Phase 1 last as long as possible by disrupting the Corp’s ability to get his basic defences set up.  This is a strategy that you probably associate more with Criminal Runners, who use cards like Account Syphon, Emergency Shutdown, Crescentus and Inside Job to stretch the cash of the Corp to breaking point, while the Anarchs bring some early game pain in the shape of cards like Vamp and Parasite.

2) Midgame – Corp Advantage

The second phase of the game is underway once the Corp has set up his defences to the extent that the Runner now has to spend time and resources going away to build a rig – a mix of economy and Icebreakers that will let the Runner efficiently attack the Corps defences.  It is in this second phase that the Corporation is best able to pursue its goals, relatively safe behind Ice that the Runner doesn’t want to tangle with.

A common trap for a Corp player to fall into here is to immediately re-invest in deeper and deeper defences rather than using this window to advance and scoring Agendas.  The incremental advantage you gain from deeper Ice towers WILL make a difference later in the game, but in this stage simply having a Code Gate/Sentry/Barrier that ends the run is keeping the Runner out – you don’t need Chum and Corporate Troubleshooter installed to make sure that happens.  The more you spend time adding redundancy to your Ice layers, the more time you give to the Runner to start making your Ice layers redundant.

While some Corporation decks play cheap Ice to try and force a transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 as early in the game as possible some Corp decks run the opposite strategy and use big expensive-to-break Ice like Tollbooths, Archers, Heimdalls and the like to raise the bar the Runner has to reach before they can really have efficient routes through to the Corps servers.  Whether you’re trying to get into Phase 2 quickly or prolong leaving it, most Corp strategies involve making Phase 2 as long as possible.

For Runners the objective is to set the rig up as quickly as possible and force the game into Phase 3, and if Criminals and Anarchs are the Runners who most frustrate the Corp in Phase 1 it’s Shapers who are the best at assembling a dominant rig in super-fast time to get into Phase 3.  This is where your Self-Modifying Codes and Test Runs help the Shapers to assemble a suite of Icebreakers more quickly than simply having to draw to find them, while Criminals and Anarchs often put their faith in Crypsis to break all types of Ice, but then need to find a strong supply of cash to keep Crypsis fed with credits.

3) Endgame – Advantage Runner

Phase 3 is the endgame.  It’s where the Corp has Ice installed and rezzed and the Runner has Icebreakers installed and fuelled.  It’s a battle between the two economies – the Runner can break through anywhere so long as they have enough cash, and all the Corp can do is make it more and more expensive to do so.  Unfortunately for the Corp it becomes more and more expensive to install extra layers of Ice so the endgame battle is weighted in the favour of the Runner, who doesn’t have to spend their clicks on installing more and more icebreakers.

The Corp needs a plan for the endgame, which is where many of the Fast Advance strategies come in, such as SanSan City Grid or Biotic Labor.  With it becoming increasingly difficult to secure a remote server long enough to advance and score Agendas the ability to install and score in one turn becomes invaluable.  Other approaches are cards that will temporarily keep the Runner at bay for a turn: Corporate Troubleshooter or Ash 2X3ZB9CY are good examples, but without that the Corp has to and distract the Runner and make him use his cash on runs that don’t matter, leaving them short when an Agenda is on the line.

For the Runner the object of the endgame is simply to take advantage of all the hard work you put in while building your rig.  You can focus on Central server assaults with R&D Interface or Medium, or simply build resources and wait for the Corp to give you Agendas to run at in remote servers.  This is your time to shine.  It doesn’t mean the Runner can’t lose a game, especially when the Corp is bringing its Fast Advance tricks, but the odds are now stacked in your favour.

Summing Up

Hopefully this gives you a structure to start thinking about both your deckbuilding, and your games of Netrunner.  If you’re building a Corp how are you planning to expand the second phase of the game – are you going to play cheap Ice or expensive Ice?  How are you planning to squeeze out the last few Agenda points once the game gets into Phase 3? 

If you’re the Runner you have the opposite problem to worry about – are you going to try and extend the early game, or abandon it completely and start planning for the endgame right away?

Trying to do both with one deck is very difficult because it’s likely to make your deck quite inconsistent – you can’t guarantee seeing your early game cards early and your late game cards late, and are likely to get them the wrong way around.  Account Siphon and Vamp are great early on, but drawing it on turn 10 is a lot less impressive when the Corp has a couple of rezzed Ice over HQ already.  The Corp gets this same problem as well – Ice Wall on turn 10 probably costs the Corp more to rez and install than it does the Runner to break past it, and Archer or Tollbooth in your opening hand does little to help you set up.  Does this mean you can’t play Ice Wall and Archer in the same deck?  No.  But you have to weight one way or the other, and particularly if you’re trying to max the early game then Tollbooths and Archers are to be used only sparingly.