On the other hand, the runner has to pay every time he wants to break subroutines, while the corp has to pay only once to rez ICE.

stevepop said:

Credits held by a Corporation and Credits held by a Runner do not hold equal value in the game. Although they share the same name and counter, what each buys is vastly different. For the Corporation, credits function more like purchases, whereas for a Runner credits are half purchase and half fees.

Thus, you cannot say that a Runner with 10 credits has an economic advantage over a Corporation who has 5 credits. The Corporation's 5 credits could rez an ICE that will cost the Runner all 10 credits to get past, and as Khudzlin pointed out the Corporation will keep that ICE rezzed and in-play, whereas the Runner will need to spend credits every time they want to to get past it.

I often find as Runner I struggle for credits, because you need the constant supply and are racing the Corporation, whereas when playing Corporation I feel less pressured and more in control of the pace.

Last night I played three games and won all of them:

1. Jinteki (me) vs Kate: I ended up with some 30 cred to spare (due to 'melange mining' from early game) flatlining Kate with an accessed Junebug advanced four times (that was a bit lucky because I needed to trick her into believing that it was a huge agenda), thanks to God my opponent didn't know the cards very well as we were playing with my decks.

2. NBN (me) vs Kate: that one was a close scrape, as Kate was lucky in accessing loads of agendas in early game. Without the player forfeiting one for an effect, he would have won.

3. Noise (me) vs NBN: NBN kept destroying my funds but with some 'demolition runs' , 'Yog 1.0' and 'Medium' I somewhat depleted R&D and found enough agendas in there. Again this could have ended up the other way round because my oponent forgot that 'Yog' just works on Code Gate. I had taken 3 brain damage and just one card in hand when I spent my last click on a run on R&D and stole the last agenda I needed. Apart from the agenda the remains of R&D consisted of two ICE which can't be trashed. As corp had private security force and me tagged during the run ('Data Raven' no way around that tag) it would have been my last turn.

.Zephyr. said:

Just wanted to clarify that the runner gets to peek only at the top card of R&D (and any upgrades). It's Archives that he/she is able to look through all the cards.

We played about 8 games on Friday night, and Corp won at least 6 of those.

The original poster may have gotten some of the rules wrong, but I think there is still a legitimate concern there. If the Corp draws a poor starting hand, he may not have what is needed to protect even just HQ and R&D, and can quickly fall behind as a consequence.

IamSalvation said:

This only reinforces the point: when the advice offered is the equivalent of "just make sure you have good cards in your starting hand", there's a problem.

That is not what was meant. As far as I got it, he/she was speaking of any turn in the game and dealing lots of damage in that turn. He/she gave even alternatives.

Runix said:

I don't agree that this is a problem, as the deck is built by you and there is an opportunity to mulligan. So with two possible draws, if your starting hand is still lousy, then it is probably the player's problem. I don't think it is needed to "make sure you have good cards in your starting hand" but it is needed to "make sure you don't have all bad cards in your starting hand".

That isn't how probability works. I can build a balanced deck with extremely competitive ratios of all needed cards and 10 out of 10 hands still end up with no ice and too many agendas.

Statistically speaking that is not likely, but it can absolutely happen. People talk about statistics and probabilities as if they were these promises the universe was making to them, "If you you play your 45 card deck 15 times I promise that you will see this card at least once in every game." What the universe is saying is actually saying is, "Screw you buddy. That card will come show up some random number of times, which may include zero, but each time you don't see it I'm going to think just a hair harder about letting you see it the next time."

If you do a random set of draws of a 45 card deck and track the results you'll see that the more hands the more you are likely to move towards that predicted outcome, but as you work your way towards a 1000 games you'll find streaks of not running into it at all and running into it far more frequently than you statistically should in a finite amount of hands.

We use probabilities to help guide or decision making process and try to do what we can to control or exert influence on said probabilities, but the reason why this is a card game versus a board game like Chess is because that randomness forces players to be able to adapt tactics and shift strategies to compensate for it. That creates a level of tension, a challenge that when we can beat luck or use it to our advantage we get a sense of enjoyment from it.

Embrace the Chaos.

NOTE: I'm not saying anything that most of you don't know intellectually, but a surprising number of people forget that probabilities are just what is probableand not what is guaranteed.

Early on you have to expect the Runner to, well, have the run of the house. There isn't (generally speaking) enough ice, and enough credits to cover all the bases and they're coming at you bare-brained. The goal of the Corp isn't about stopping the Runner at this point, but damage mitigation and setting up as secure a set of servers that they can as quick as they can. As AnOP noted, after that the Runner has to go on their version of the "defensive" which is to dig deep into their stack for a full set of breakers, while trying to sustain pressure on the Corp. Here's where you bang through as many agenda as you can setting yourself up for the finale, which is a race condition - your (Corp) bits & bluff, vs their bits and bluff. Someone is going to telegraph in there and they are the one to lose.

All that aside, it is possible for the Runner to run an unprotected R&D in the first turn and pluck out a lucky seven, but that is hellishly unlucky (or a cr*p shuffle)…

So here I was, playing NBN and my mulligan resulted in two agendas, a ghost branch, sansan, and chum. So, what did I do? I set a remote server WITHOUT ICE by putting one agenda there and advancing it once and drawing one card. That gives me 5 cards in hand, diluting the chances of getting the other agenda from my hand.

It's called a bluff.

The runner is now wondering if it is an advanced ambush or an advanced agenda. He's also thinking that I have nothing worthwhile in my hand since I didn't protect HQ or R&D. Your mulligan might come out worse than your initial hand. However, the runner DOESN'T KNOW THAT. If you draw five cards and give a sinister smile, perhaps that will be enough to pull things off.

The runner would be a fool to not run on a server with no ICE and a card with one advancement.

One advancement counter RIGHT NOW isn't enough to do serious damage, so he might as well take the bait. That might not hold true forever though.

Everybody ALWAYS says that they should run. However, when push comes to shove, I've NEVER seen someone take such bait. Most aren't willing to take a tag from NBN on the first turn. The flipside of the argument is that putting one Agenda in a remote server lessens the chances that he will run twice on the first round. But what can I say? I consider keeping both agendas on hand without looking for Ice to be the worse outcome. What would you have done with such a hand?

Your move was fine since there isn't much to do. Perhaps advancing twice might deter the runner a bit more though.

catch8088 said:

I see people take the bait frequently. Different playstyles exist.

Malgamus said:

Junebug comes to mind as a reason to be a fool if you don't have 4 cards in hand.

Honestly board situation is such a big component of what to do in any given run. I think you're always considering both the corp and the current rig you're running prior to any run against even unprotected servers.

That's debatable. Depending on their program set-up and deck, running into even a singularly advanced Aggressive Secretary could be devastating.