So me and a friend were talking about the various factions, and the topic of expansions came up. How do you think they will handle expansions for each side?

For the Corps, it's tricky as the current Megacorps cover a lot of bases in terms of Corp Strategy, so whilst there's plenty of room to expand up in each Corp, new Corps may struggle in providing an identity.

One idea that came up was a Black Ops focused Corp, one maybe not so direct as Weyland in dealing meat damage, but more focused in foreign affairs and political movements. I could definitely see a military arms Megacorp fulfilling this role. With history of a lunar war and an ongoing civil war on Mars, I can see there being plenty of money in weapons manufacture and trade.

For Runners, this is a little easier, as the factions are really ideologies asking "Why do you Run?". No faction really ties itself down to any one set ability so no doubt we'll see plenty of new Runner identities to choose from within each faction. There's also more scope to expand outwards.

An Ex-Corporate faction could be interesting, relying on a lot of internal resources and prepwork as well as providing an interesting insider's perspective into the above question; do you Run for vengeance? petty greed? to expose the corruption from within?

I expect one more Runner faction, and then for the game to expand up, not out. However, my suspicion is based on a need for symmetry, and this game is inherently asymmetric, so who knows.

Regardless, it's unlike FFG to include too many factions. At most, we've seen something like 8 in their games.

I suspect there might be alternative identity cards for existing corps. FFG is known to print cards with the same name but different function, especially in AGoT. Although I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of new corps and runners.

Corps are currently hamstrung in their Agenda choice.

Even with an additional core, only NBN can change their mix of Agenda in any meaningful way.

The expansions will need to at least increase the depth of that decision.

KafkaTamura said:

Ooh, I hadn't thought of that. I guess there's no reason why there couldn't be multiple facets a corporate identity could employ.

Sure, you can have NBN Studios, Hass-Bioroid Cybernetics, Weyland Shipping, Jinteki Research and Development.

I think we're going to see more powerful abilities on ID cards, on larger minimum deck size requirements, or possibly less influential IDs, or weaker abilities that are more influential. It really could go any way at this point, I hope they don't have another Runner faction to be honest, would rather have more options for the fewer decks, but that's just me .

I think it would also be cool to see identities that feature two corps working together and only those two corps.

(WC)(NBN) Hacker Trackers

Identity: Reality Entertainment

Ability: Runner must pay an addition (CREDIT) to remove tags

Min deck size: 45

Influnce: 0

Flavor: Watch the counter-intrusion forces race against the clock to stop runners before its too late!

When reading the rules book it seems to me that Mars appears quite a lot. I would not be surprised to see a Mars-based Corp at some point. But I guess it also partly depends on the Android world, which I am not familiar with.

I'd love to see a neutral factions for both Runner and Corp. Make them build a much thicker deck, say 60, but bump up the out of faction cards to 30. Tie that in with either no faction ability or something very passive, and I think it would be a viable, if more challenging, build.

I think for Runners they should focus on expanding the card selection and adding new identity cards for the pre-existing factions. From the previews the three factions have most general strategies covered already and thematically they’re broad enough that, say, “criminal” can be a street urchin that learned to hack or a suave ex-corporate espionage agent with a james bond fixation.

The problem is the corps I think. New cards again but I’m trying to figure out how they’d give them new identity cards while still maintaining the theme. I’m sure they’ll think of something. Or rather, I hope since adding a ton of corps would mean a lower amount of variation within each faction since there’s more cards that need to be spread around.

Looks to me that the most likely development will indeed be variations on the identities presented in the core set, with only major releases presenting possible new factions. This would mean things like Subsidiaries or Branch Offices for corps and just new personas for the runners. I also like the point made earlier about possible "joint ventures" IDs, and I could see it working well with low prestige budget, an interesting bonus, and a specific deck build rule for the ID (ie; "Your deck must contain +x points in Agenda", "You must have more Sentry ICE than any other type", etc).

cetiken said: