The Joker

By devil332, in Android: Netrunner The Card Game

What is a good balanced expansion?

Edited by devil332

What do you mean by balanced? Balanced between corps and runner or balance for all seven factions?

Being asymmetrical it is very difficult to balance the entire game. I know a few players who think the fact that there are 3 runner factions and 4 corporation factions creates an advantage to a side however since the corporation is different from the runner and are always against each other I don't see it as an issue.

If you want a corp/runner balance you might take a look at the deluxe expansion packs as they have card lists for playable decks that focus on a single corp faction and a single runner faction. However the main problem with the unequal number of runner factions compared to the corporation factions is that there will be one faction left out of the deluxe expansions and that faction is NBN if you buy all the deluxe expansion sets (Creation and Control, Honor and Profit, Order and Chaos).

True Colors has some good NBN cards and Upstalk has the NBN fast advanced identity Near Earth hub which will give you some good NBN cards. NBN as of the current set is by no means the weakest faction. It is however the hardest to start as you quickly spend the influence to fill in what sets you do not have without a faction dedicated expansion set.

Edited by Marinealver

The core set is fairly balanced between *some* factions. Jinteki stinks on ice out of the core box. Two core sets makes a substantial improvement to a well-rounded card pool.

Once you start adding packs, it gets very swingy, though. Some packs have really good cards for one or more corp factions, some packs have really good packs for one or more runner factions. Add in the fact that some cards are great with some IDs and not good with alternate IDs even within the same faction, and it rapidly becomes a question that just doesn't have an answer. It all depends on what deck you build and what you're good at piloting, much more so than simply which packs or deluxe sets are "balanced." A balanced card in one deck can be either totally OP or total dead weight in a different build.