trying to work out how many packsw to pre-order… is it 3 of a kind in a single set? or do u need 3 sets?

To have 3 of every card, you will need 3 sets.

Some cards there are only 1 of.

There's a handy card list on the Netrunner support page, that details the exact card distribution for the whole box, so download that and give it a read. If there's a card only included as a single that you just have to have 3 of, go for it, but 2 should be plenty. In any case, it's all there, so plan away.

Buy two core sets and in the unlikely event you need a third copy of one of the 1x cards, borrow it from a friend. The 1x cards tend to be unique (one copy in play), highly situational or both.

An argument could be made for two boxed sets if you want to really optimize certain builds or strategies, three or more seems only necessary if you want to have multiple decks pre-assembled at a time or you're planning to provide decks for multiple people.

That said, I'd also consider what the first few expansions could do to the game. FFG is designing the different factions and identities around certain themes and strategies. It's quite possible that killer cards and particular builds in the core will be rendered obsolete or ineffective by better cards in the expansions. In addition, because the core set will be (or at least should be) in-production for the duration of the game line's existence, waiting to make a 2x or 3x investment I think is a valid approach, especially if you're on the fence about it.

At GenCon, one of the designers told me only one boxed set per player should be necessary; I find this argument a bit hard to swallow, because there are certain cards from the AGoT core set which were one of that some decks still use two to three of— Golden Tooth Mines in particular, which was a 1x card that is 2-3x in nearly every competitive Lannister deck. (I mentioned this, and was not given an answer.) For Shaper players (at least) I'm already hearing the same about Aesop's Pawnshop— though if it is as robust in the long term as GTM remains to be seen.

I am going to try to build for two players from three core sets, but we'll see.

I am MORE than satisfied with one core set at this point. If, after two or three expansion sets I'm still hankering for more core cards, I'll get those sets then. Each time you buy another set, you're paying more for the cards you want. That is, $40 for 250ish cards, and then $40 for the 100 additional cards, then $40 for 40 additional cards, or whatever the numbers work out to. I'd rather get different cards than more of the same. The decks really are good out of the box.

Oh, and the superfluous counters. Now, if you're running a league or lots of tournaments and lending decks to people… sure, three core sets would be great, but that's a different thing altogether.

I'm a collector and a deck builder, there is no way I will stand for not having a full compliment of cards. Regardless of FFGs lame ass marketing to take advantage of their fans, I will be getting 3 cores. CoC, LoTR and aGoT ALL run much much better with 3 cores, There is no debate here, just wondering what the card distribution is.

From Andrew Lieffring, off BGG:

Some numbers:

Let's assume you're paying MSRP* for a copy of Netrunner, and that you consider an additional card useful only if you don't already have it in triplicate, or it's a player aid or Identity in which case you were fine with it being a singleton. We will also assume that the various tokens, rulebook and boxes are of no value in any quantity.

The first copy of the game you buy has:
252 cards
252 of which are useful
0 of which are extras
The price per useful card is $0.16

The second copy has:
252 cards
66 of which are useful
186 of which are extras
The price per useful card is $0.61
You have a total of 318 useful cards
For which you have paid $0.25/card overall.

The third copy has:
252 cards
11 of which are useful
241of which are extras
The price per useful card is $3.63
You have a total of 329 useful cards
For which you have paid $0.36/card overall.**
You have 427 extra cards overall.

One further note: if we assume the expansion packs will have an MSRP of $14.95 and contain 60 cards, it works out to $0.25 per card, which exactly matches the overall price per useful card from two core sets. Two copies seems like an entirely reasonable buy-in, even without looking at our simplifying assumption for what makes an additional copy of a card useful and realizing it probably isn't the whole story.

*You can, of course, find better deals than MSRP. Doing so will change the numbers, but the ratios will stay the same. Unless you find some weird "bulk" discount that kicks in at a quantity of 3, but I don't think you will.

**This is the number I would use to justify myself if I had the "I will buy nothing if I can't have 3 of everything" attitude. It doesn't look as ridiculous as the $3.63/card of looking at just the 11 cards you're paying $40 for.

booored said:

Having studied the card list in detail, I think that the Android:Netrunner is definitely the best core set yet. The pre-built deck are very good. I will probably get a second set, but only, as others have mentioned because I want to be able to have more pre-built decks ready and because I want more counters.

exactly.. there is a lot of people I think in a similar boat to me and that is I'm the card game guy at my game club… So my collection needs to field decks not just for me but the others..

Anarchosyn said:

What I normally do is get 2x Core and then pick up a cheaper one a month or so latter as ebay fills up with 2nd hand copies getting sold cheap.