I assume this is because players want to have the maximum of 3 cards for a tournament legal deck? I have not read any of the rules yet. Is this correct?

zombipuppy said:

This is correct, It also gives you a lot more deckbuilding opportunities before any packs come out.

I myself am getting 4, and might consider jumping up to 6 if I can generate some real interest in the game. I'm planning to demo the heck out of the game, and when OP starts up, I'm hoping to have the ability to loan out decks if needed. Otherwise, it'll be nice to have several different decks built at the same time… and the added benefit of actively supporting the game so that it hopefully will last a while.

The pre-con decks are great. There is no need to buy more than one core set to play the game at a competitive level. Can you make the absolute best deck? Probably not. Does Netrunner require you to have the absolute best deck to be competitive? Absolutely not!

Multiple sets really accomplish three things:

1) Scratch that OCD-like itch for completionists. Their want is such a part of their psychological profile they mistake it as a need more often than not.

2) Let you have all the possible options of deck building. Determining whether a card in a deck x2 versus x3 or x1 versus x2 truly alters your win/loss ratio is highly debatable, but some deck types may require cards with a higher frequency that in other builds you wouldn't give it serious consideration. Competitive players will generally fall into this category of wanting to be able to build any possible deck, despite the fact they usually will only play a finite number of decks that use similar sets of cards in similar numbers.

3) It allows you to have at least two decks for both Corp and Runner and any time without having to swap the neutral cards back and forth.

These are all VERY legitimate reasons to buy multiple copies of the core set. If one of these describes you don't let anyone tell you that you are doing it wrong. Just acknowledge that the game IS perfectly playable at a high level (right now) with a single core set purchase, but you choose to buy more for other reasons. And enjoy the hell out of it.

I know I don't need multiple. I have my 1 from Gencon but I'm buying another. Option 3 is my main deciding factor, but I won't lie there is more than a little bit of 2 involved (even knowing I will be unlikely to ever put three Aesop's Pawnshops in a deck, if I can dream up of a way to do something awesome with that I want to be able to test it out. 1 is less of an issue for me… but I do kind of like knowing I have everything for my collection… I can't imagine picking up a third copy anytime soon though. I'll probably wait until December and see if I can't grab one with gift cards or on holiday sale.

Penfold said:

3 only stands if you don't cannibalize cards from the respective factions (i.e. get deeply into your #2). 'Course, you could cannibalize from some factions, leaving other intact, but not all Neutral cards come in x3 iterations (e.g. Hunter, a Corp ice, comes in x2).

Thanks for all your replies. I'll stick with just one for now!

Good choice,

Buying a second set is really not worth it. as the price per card that you require significantly goes up.

All those 4th 5th and 6th copy of cards you have are basicaly usless.

Some folks will go and get a third set… so they are basically paying street value for 11 cards(the unique cards)…what?… that's just stupid.

Atraangelis said:

Just because it's not something you would do, it doesn't make it stupid.

I plan on getting a second box, and those 4th, 5th, and 6th copies of cards won't be useless. I plan on putting together multiple decks so that my opponent and I can go straight from one matchup to another without having to spend time in between games scrapping the decks, then remembering which cards went into our second decks to rebuild it. And remember that cards from one corporation/runner can be used in another deck so long as you don't exceed the influence.

They'll become even more useful as expansions are released and you create more and more decks utilizing different themes.

Daedalus said:

If you don't, the additional core set copies won't be of much use later.

For a single player one core set is definitely suffiicent. If you plan to provide the cards for two players, two core sets make sense.

Three core sets is a luxury that doesn't make much sense for anyone, but that's true for most luxury items.

Lets not speak in absolutes. Here's the way I see it:

Reasons to buy 2+ Core Sets: You want to have multiple decks built without resorting and rebuilding according to a deck list, you don't want to trade away cards to get the ones that have less than 3 copies of

Reasons to buy 1 Core Set: You have a limited gaming budget (or you have a diverse list of games to buy), you have an active group to do trading with, you are comfortable sticking with only 1 or 2 factions on each side of the game

In the end, it's your choice how you want to spend your money.

Just my $0.02 from a deckbuilding perspective:

Almost all of the cards you only get 1 or 2 copies of in the set you may not need more of. Beyond drawing them faster by having 3 copies, including a 3rd copy is mostly redundant, wasteful or just too risky to have extra copies of in a deck. For example, Aesop's Pawnshop is unique to begin with, but even if it wasn't, there's not much need for a second copy of it in play.

Of the cards you may want to have up to 3rd copy of, like Account Siphon, Anonymous Tip or Research Station, a 3rd copy may be excessive in light of one's win and lose conditions. A criminal doesn't win by stealing cash but agendas, the tip may only hasten your demise in one way or another, the station may just bog you down while making your HQ a more attactive target.

I admit there are a few cards that seems like it'd be great to have up to 3 copies of but it raises the question: Is it worth buying an extra set to get just a few more cards or even 1 more? For example, I'd love to have an extra copy or two of Corporate Troubleshooter for my Haas-Bioroid deck, but that'd mean buying an entire set just to get 1 card from it each. As people here have pointed out, it's costly. It's not practical for some of us.

Lastly: substitutes. There's easily other cards even in this starter set to fill up a deck. For example, I may only have 1 copy of the Criminal's console, but I can easily use the Shaper's. We can also look to future sets; I may not have a 3rd or even 2nd copy of this card but it's not unlikely for an expansion to easily fill that slot.

By no means are these absolute reasons not to buy extra sets for those extra cards. There are crazy brilliant players out there who defy obvious reason and, in this case, grab that extra 2nd and 3rd seemingly redundant, wasteful, risky card, sometimes even just to draw them early. But for me, I have to be practical with my budget while keeping these in mind. I looked through the card list and thought about it for awhile and I've decided to just get 1 set.

I forgot to mention: Most players will probably make as small a deck as possible as keeping a deck at its minimum size makes it easier to draw and manage its contents. As such, having a 3rd copy of a card may not be necessary in order to draw it early. As this is a game where you can draw up to 4 cards from your deck per turn without using any form of special ability, having a 3rd copy of a card may not be as important as it is in other games.

Except that if you're doing nothing but draw, you're letting the other side get ahead of you, not to mention you're going to trash a lot of cards. Additionally, the corp loses if it must draw and cannot, so that's even less viable for them.

But that's not so much a question of needing that one, specific, single card in your deck as it is deck building and good playing. There are enough cards in the core set to prevent such from happening while the game itself isn't based on a "single answer to a specific threat" kind of gameplay that most games use. And even then, with 45-card minimums as opposed to 50+ and the ability to freely draw, the scenario you describe is a) not as bad as you make it to be and b) much better than in other games with 1 draw per turn natural limitations.

I remain confident that you can get by rather well with just one core set, either running just 1 copy of some cards or using other cards in the set as its "copy".

Khudzlin said:

I had thought that I was just going to stick with one core set.

Then I sat down for a play session with a friend who had some constructed decks. I had made notes for a few constructed decks - what cards come out of the starter, what goes in to replace them - so I thought it'd be easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Before each game, I spent 5 minutes or so deconstructing my deck, consulting my list, building the new deck, and then lots of shuffling because everything was all sorted. The first time I didn't mind. The second time was annoying, and cripes, where are those other two copies of Armitage? The third time I was thinking this was difficult difficult lemon difficult, and that I really wanted another core set.

After the play session, my cards are a mess and I'll have to spend some time resorting everything before playing next time.

Another observation is that I won both times with my Runner decks, in large part because I got a Console into play. Of all the cards that are scarce in the core set, those are the ones I'm likely to want multiple copies in a deck Now, if the early expansions have some cards that let you dig through your stack for hardware, maybe that's less important. But even so, those are likely to be Shaper cards, and do I really want to spend the influence on those with a Criminal or Anarch deck…

I don't have the Core Set yet, but I do intend to buy 3 copies.

It's not a matter of being stupid or having too much money on my hands. As others pointed out, it really is a pure question of personal evaluation of the card's value (which will be heavily influenced by one's budget, I guess). Everyone should feel free to do as they please, and based on other LCG, I'm sure the experience will be just as fun with one Core set as it'll be with multiple.

However, I want to adress Message's arguments. Having a 3rd copy makes a difference. You cannot say you'll have just as much chance to draw the card if you only have 2. We're talking pure maths here: the increase in % may be minimal, but it's there. From a purely competitive point of view, you want to maximize your chances of getting your best cards. Please don't try to argue, against all logic, that having less copies of a card gives you more chance to draw it…

It's true that, given enough expansions, there may be cards that become strickly better than current 1-of or 2-of. But for now, the Core set is all we have, so you can't really claim there are "better" replacements available. There may be choices you deem to be almost equivalent, but they surely are not (otherwise, the card's text would be the same). These type of incremental differences do add up (again, from a purely competitive perspective; a casual group of players probably won't see the difference and will have just as much fun using one card or the other).

SiCK_Boy said:

Having three copies of a card that allow you to search your deck for any card you'd like to have, right now.

The Netrunner CCG had quite a few of them, and what they do is allow you to get away with fewer copies of other cards. Even having only a single copy of a card in your deck makes sense if you have a number of ways to search your deck.

jhaelen said:

That's only part true. It is nice to have 'tutor' cards in a card game such as this, but you have to take into account you're losing an action and probably bits to get to that card.

sinnerfold said:

We call them "credits" now.

PWBrian said:

No, to all of us old timers, they are still actions, bits and data forts.

And you know what's even better than having tutors? Having 3 copies of a card plus 3 copies of a tutor to fetch that card…

Not having a complete set of cards in the core set is one of the few things that annoys me about LCGs. I understand why they do it (it makes it easier for new players, who might not be familiar with the concept of deck-building), but it still makes it annoying.

I prefer that they release an upgrade pack, instead, that has just extra cards in it, so that those of us without complete sets can make them without having to buy two more cores.

As a casual player, I don't spend a huge amount of time on building decks. I'm often the only player with a copy of the game, so I wind up loaning my opponent one of my decks, anyway. However, if I ever became a tournament player, you can bet I would grab those extra cores! So, I guess, for me, the question of whether or not to buy more sets depends upon what level you're playing at.

DeathByLiche said:

Don't forget NODES!!!

SiCK_Boy said:

prune mentioned the consoles earlier as an example of a card you'd like to run multiples of. Doing so does increase your chance of drawing one- but what about the extras in your deck? They're all unique and you can only have 1 console in play anyway. Having more than 1 copy allows you to get it earlier but it means any copies you draw later become dead cards. That's the downside of the extra copy- the greater chance to draw also applies to when you don't need said card.

Of course not all cards are unique that we can only have 1 in play at a time such that the chance of not needing them are as great, but let's be specific here:

What cards are we talking about that we need that 2nd or 3rd copy that the core set doesn't already provide and that we'd have to buy another set just to get?

Personally, for me it'd have to be just Corporate Troubleshooter and the consoles, but the former is specifically for emergency situations while the latter I'm content with Desperado and The Toolbox as my backup. If gameplay demands their early draw, I'll throw in some draw cards.