Buhallin said:

I agree with this. The old school diehards will be upset no matter what.

But still I have some worries of the game. Like factions not fitting for Runners (Corp factions feel more suitable). Gimme more information.

I could totally see runners with factions, I mean what would you call Anonymous, Legion of Doom, and Masters of Deception?

I just see those runner factions in Android: Netrunner a bit weird. In Netrunner you are just a individual runner. I find it weird some runner couldn't use some great program or hardware another runner could use. Those runner factions (Anarchs, Criminals, Shapers) doesn't really feel a faction for me so much. It feels more like a runner personality. Runner group factions would have worked better and made more sense (like in your example Penfold).

Factions are in here if somebody missed this page: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=207&esem=1

You know, as I re-read it, technically that doesn't actually say that cards have factions. They may not. IDENTITY cards seem to have factions, but nothing in there implies that non-identity cards do.

It's quite possible that there is just a single pool of Corp cards, a single pool of Runner cards, and only the identity cards have factions. Some cards may relate to a faction, but most of them might not.

I don't know if this is how it works or not, but I think we've been making an assumption that hasn't actually been confirmed yet.

dboeren said:

If you look at the preview cards, most if not all of them seem to be marked for a specific faction. Adonis Campaign, for instance, has the HB logo in the lower left corner - presumably for Haas-Bioroid. Others show a large stylized W which I assume is Weyland. Others are a bit harder to pin down exactly which is which, but nearly all the cards seem to be factioned. The only one that stands out as rather obviously not is Private Security Force, which can be seen on the "fan" of cards on the Description page.

So I think it is pretty solidly confirmed that cards are factioned. Also, with 17 cards previewed so far, only one seems to be neutral. I suppose it's possible that the selection of cards for the preview is dramatically unusual in its faction:neutral ratio, but that seems unlikely.

Now what all that means remains to be seen. If it's something like "All cards which don't match your corp identity cost 18 more bits to rez" which would obviously be pretty huge - it might not be an outright restriction, but it could be big enough that it might as well be. On the other end of the scale, it could be dependent for certain effects - rather than "Search your deck for one ICE" it may be "Search your deck for one Jinteki ICE".

Still waiting to see, but the more I consider it the more I'm worried about it. I'd love for FFG to respond to some of the concerns or show us some more info quickly, but that's just not the way they do things. I expect we'll be swinging in the wind until at least GenCon, if we're lucky.

One other thing: The cards seem to be colored by faction, not by type. Compare Hadrians Wall and the Neural Katana. Which seems to me that it indicates a pretty important role for faction. From a design standpoint, big obvious things like color should go to important design elements. If they chose color to be determined by card faction rather than card type… <shrug>

Oh… Hm. I was about to ask what the little blue dots next to the faction symbol were, since I didn't remember anything like that from the original, but I think I just figured it out. I'll bet a starter box to the first taker that it's some form of faction depth requirement, same as Warhammer: Invasion uses, where you can't use that card unless you already have a certain number of cards from that faction.

If that's the case… Wow. I really hope that's not the case.

I haven't played Warhammer: Invasion or any other game with a mechanic like that, so I'm not familiar with what sort of negative effects this might cause. Can you explain the problem?

Yeah, you're probably right about the colors and symbols, I was just looking at the page and thought "you know, it only says that the identity cards have factions, I wonder if we've been jumping to a conclusion?" But, even though not explicitly stated you've pointed out some good evidence that there probably are factions on most cards (even if some neutrals exist).

dboeren said:

Essentially, there are two requirements for playing a card in WH:I. You have to be able to pay the cost, and you have to meet the faction requirements. Each card has a certain number of faction symbols, and generally the stronger the card the more faction symbols it has. Each card in play for a given faction satisfies one of those (including your starting city). So if you want to play an Orc card with 4 symbols, you have to have 4 other Orc cards in play.

In this case, look at Hadrian's Wall - it's a Weyland Consortium card with three dots. If they kept the same system, that means you couldn't play it unless you had 3 other Weyland faction cards already in play. Again assuming they carry the idea over from WH:I, your Identity card will usually provide one of them.

It sounds decent in theory, but in practice it led (at least in the early releases) to rushing with a bunch of weenies. Anything with more than about 2 faction marks was considered unrealistic to play, as the game would often be over before you got enough out to satisfy bigger cards. It meant that your cards in hand had a greater chance to be useless - drawing a high-requirement card in your opening hand was essentially unplayable. WH:I included a mechanic that let you feed your resources with any card, which mitigated this at least a little since you could just use the card that way. Maybe they've included a similar mechanic with the Identity cards - Trash a specific card from your hand for one bit, or something… but I have a hard time seeing other ways it would work.

It also made including cards from other factions almost impossible unless they only required one or, at most, two faction marks. A core faction was hard to build to large numbers; a second faction was nearly impossible, because of the buildup required. At least for your main faction you started with the one mark, and probably had a lot of low-requirement cards. But you start with no marks for that second faction, so need cards for that faction that requires no marks, and rely on those to get into play and build towards the higher requirements.

I honestly can't even imagine how this system would work for Netrunner. For the runner, the relatively limited number of cards you can install would make it difficult at best, and since programs look like they still have memory, that doesn't look to be the case. For the corp, with its heavy emphasis on hidden resources, I honestly don't have a clue. The only thing that makes even a bit of sense would be that the requirement was checked on rez rather than installation, but that would make your entire defensive setup dependent on where the runner decided to go.

I really, REALLY hope I'm wrong, because honestly I think it's one of the worst mechanics I've seen in a very long time, even before you consider the chaos if they try and cram it into Netrunner.

Buhallin said:

I thought it might affect deck building. Like you are allowed to have 20 blue points worth of cards off faction in your deck. But faction agendas doesn't have blue points. So blue points must be something with card costs. I didn't like Warhammer: Invasion system either. It was done poorly and mixing factions was difficult.

I hope it is easy to mix factions in Netrunner. With 7 factions in core box it will take a lot of time until each faction becomes unpredictable. With core set I can see runner thinking many times like "Oh he is playing Jinteki. I know what cards he is playing so I know how to win this game." That is not what Netrunner is about and it makes bluffing harder. That FFG description didn't make me understand yet why Netrunner even needs factions.

Don't forget that in Warhammer : Invasion you can compense the missing loyalty symbols by additionnal resources. Alright, it implies mixing factions is difficult. However it could force building many strategies (at least one per faction) since the pool of common cards is reduced.

Wow, your guys experience with Warhammer was totally different than mine. I find it pretty darn easy to build decks, even in the core set, with a splash of other out of faction cards. Judgment of Verena in a Dwarf deck. Fun times. Because you could always develop a card you could not immediately afford and gain a benefit from it or ramp up your resources to ensure you could play any card in your deck in a turn or two resourcing was rarely a problem, but it did put an interesting twist on my deck construction. I couldn't just toss all the best cards in a deck from the side of Order, I had to actually construct a deck that was balanced and adaptable to ensure that I could put enough power in my Kingdom zone to be able to afford cards. This might mean I was getting hit for two turns while I ignored my draw and/or battlefield zone but once I had the resources necessary my bruisers came out and just overhwelmed the rush that Orcs created. In constructed it was even easier. In the end, loyalty provided an interesting challenge in deck building and strategizing of what to play, where to play it, and when to play it, but never really stopped me from being able to do what I wanted. It also had the added benefit of ensuring a dwarf deck felt like a dwarf deck and an Empire deck felt like an Empire deck, because their cards worked best together, but when other cards supplemented a specific strategy I always had access to them (assuming they were Order) but I needed to adjust my play decisions if I decided to include them.

These kinds of games make the play decisions much richer, versus the deck building decisions richer. I know some people love games that have little player interaction (MtG is one) but if I wanted to play a game that began and essentially ended with building my deck and then just playing every card out as I drew it, I'd play Dominion or Ascension (which I actually do). I play CCG and LCG type games because of the play decisions they afford are SO much more rich.

That said, I doubt this is the way it is in Netrunner. I don't see any easy implementation of this when it comes to how Netrunner is built. Each card does not potentially provide resources for you and this would create an entirely different costing structure of the cards for little return. You know what those blue dots remind me of? The moons on the Blue Moon cards. You could build a deck with any cards, there was no direct limit of how many cards from another race of people you had in your deck that did not match your leaders race, but there was a limit to the number of moons you could have in any deck (I believe it was 30) that did not match your leaders race. I think that would be pretty interesting, I could borrow cards from other factions but only include a certain amount of them based on their power level… which if each faction corresponds to a style of play (tag and bag, deep dig, etc) I would be able to grab some extra stuff to really fill holes or specialize my deck, but I can't just grab all the best cards from the Corp or Runner side and make a deck.

Of course this is all speculation. It may be something else entirely, like how many of that card is in the Starter deck and have no bearing on deck building, or it could be the number of that card that can be used in a deck, or how many of that card you can use if you are not playing that faction.

More information please!?

If they're like the moon symbols in Blue Moon, I'd be totally fine with that as a good way to limit the amount of out-of-faction cards. You'd be able to blend, but not TOO much, and this provides a way to control the cost of out of faction cards on an individual basis.

I never got a chance to play the original NR, but I enjoy the Android universe (and have a burgeoning interest in the cyberpunk genre) so I set about researching the old game. I am very excited about this reboot as the old game sounded like a lot of fun. Looking forward to GenCon to hopefully try/buy this and start growing its base!

If it's something related to deckbuilding, I could live with that. The thought had occurred to me. But I'm skeptical. The positioning, so close to the faction symbol, implies a strong relationship. FFG also has something of a habit of reusing mechanics in their games.

Believe me, I'd be perfectly happy to be wrong. I guess we'll just have to wait a few months for more details and see.

Would you feel better if I told you that Blue Moon was also published by Fantasy Flight?

Anyway… I'm not going to worry too much about it until we get some actual information. It MIGHT mean a lot of things, good or bad. Maybe for every dot in your deck, a FFG employee will sneak into your house and drop one live spider in your mouth while you're sleeping. Oh, man - I don't want that! However, until I see a rule that actually says it, I'm not going to upgrade my home security or start wearing a mouthguard to bed.

Worst case, if they don't reveal it before then we'll ask the booth guy at Gencon and find out. Time for a hot new Gencon game to be spoiled online usually runs about 15-30 minutes after the dealer hall opens on the first day.

Buhallin said:

Yep. I can't fathom how the W:I faction symbol mechanic could help this game. I never really had a problem working around it, but it still made deck building difficult and boring against old school BT and anything Dwarf. Which is why I played theme. Maybe we'll see a generic blanket penalty for playing non identity cards, or a deck restriction. Even though I'm not versed in this game past what I've read on here, it feels like the runners naturally need more versatility to deal with the looming threat of a megacorp, albeit at a cost.

Surreal said:

Agendas could be locked completely to your faction, or neutrals. So Agendas lacking the dots doesn't necessarily guarantee they're related to card cost.

Your point is well taken, DB - and I'm not going to decide anything without seeing more. But as happy as I am to see this revival, I honestly wish it wasn't Fantasy Flight. So I'll freely admit to a bit of pessimism - but as the saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

isn't this version going to be the same game, as in the same rules? What are we talking about here… what we would "like" hem to change? I mean you can download the rules right now.. this is netrunner… they are nto going to change teh rules (are they)

It's extremely likely that they will implement a limit of 3 cards of the same title in your deck (the original NR had no such limit). It's also speculated that they will change or eliminate the link/trace mechanic. Also it remains to be seen how factioning will be implemented, as the original had no factions. (Well, they had two - runner and corp).

Otherwise I would imagine many rules would stay the same.

Long time Magic player here. I always thought Netrunner was one of the best CCGs ever. I still have a full set of the base set. I've never played an LCG so I am hoping to find it a great new experience. I know I am not the only one looking forward to it at my local gaming store and we are already evangelizing about it. Our store owner is also one of those, and he is already saying he will carry it. Which is a big deal, because as far as I know he's never carried anything by FFG.

There is a chance I will be going to my first GenCon via qualifying for Magic's FNM world champs. So I hope this game will be there. It just gives me another reason to make sure I get there.

Buhallin said:

Or at the end of Bowfinger - "It seems the paranoid are sometimes actually being followed."

I don't know who else I'd prefer to do it. For one thing, nobody else I know of is publishing LCGs and I certainly don't want it in a CCG format.

booored said:

Of course there are rules changes. One of them is that there will be factions, and because of that there will have to be new rules about how you can mix them. We're 99% sure that another change is that there will be a max of 3 copies of a card in your deck rather than an unlimited number. There are also Identity cards, which didn't exist in the old game so there's another rules change. Those are just ones we already know about. There may be more that we don't - FFG hasn't posted that much information yet. There are guesses going around about some of them, such as the theory that the trace mechanism might be changed in some way to streamline it.

It's still going to basically be Netrunner, but that doesn't mean it's going to be identical to the old game in every detail.

Well, at first I was Netrunner?!?!

Then I was Wait, what?! Netrunner with the Android Theme?!

But then I saw the artwork and it'll keep me off from this game.

oDESGOSTO said:

Aww, you're making it sound like the first edition of Glory to Rome or something. ;-P

Big Head Zach said:

I love that game. So much fun.

Big Head Zach said:

Ba-zing!

Seriously though, Glory to Rome does have some terrible art. It looks like a bad Phil Foglio imitation.

The new Netrunner though, I think looks pretty good. Maybe it's just personal taste (apparently there are people that like the Glory to Rome art too), but I don't see the problem. I would rate it second out of the LCGs on art after Call of Cthulhu based on the few samples we've seen so far.