Hello everybody.

I do not own Android:Netrunner but as I 'm thinking of getting my copy of the game, I would like to ask

you some things, as your experience will definitely help!

The thing is that my main gaming partner is my girlfriend.

She is used in playing card games with a more sotilaire feeling(like Glory to Rome, Race for the Galaxy).

So I' m afraid that she may won't stick to the whole deckbuilding concept and create her deck in order to play.


Do you think that A:N is a good Out of Box game?
Is it that balanced so deckbuilding could be avoided?

Thanks a lot!

It's pretty out of the box game. It's a asymmetric game (Runners/Hackers vs. the Corporations) in which the Corps and the Runners never use the same cards. It's a 2 player game that allows a strong degree of variability. The Runners have 3 factions (Anarch, Criminal and Shaper) and 4 different Corporations (or Corps). Each faction has cards specific to their own. They also have gray cards that are factionless and can be used by any Runner faction, and the Corps have their own equivalent. There are guidelines the game uses to customize your deck. You don't have to do that at the start, but as you learn the game and start to "get" how it works, you will want to customize your deck for efficiency. I'm pretty sure that if your girl gets into it as well, she would want to customize her deck as well.

The beauty of the LCG is that you don't have to buy endless amount of boosters to get the cards you need. The Core Set has everything you need. The monthly data packs (3 right now) allow for more customization. Check out the video tutorial found here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=207&esem=4

This will give you a feel for the game.

Hope that helps. I would play with you both if you were local

adomingo said:

TLDR: Yes, A:NR is an amazing game right out of the box. MY GF loves it.

This is the same for me. My main gaming partner right now is my girlfriend. I didn't think she was going to be as interested in it at all, but she ended up really liking it. We started with the starter decks, and you can get a lot of milage out of those, but right away she got competitive and, upon seeing the holes in her own starter deck, asked how she could fix those. I just handed her all the shaper cards and told her to go to town. She ended up doing a great job of patching holes in her deck and after a few more plays she moved on to a different faction and built a deck from scratch.

I don't agree with the other posters here.

The game is great out of he box to learn the basics, but if you do not do any deckbuilding at all and stick only to the pre-built decks, you'll quickly get tired of the game.

Even if there are 7 factions to try overall, each has several weak points that make playing them frustrating (for example, you'll play NBN but won't have anything to do once the runner is tagged; or you'll play Criminal and will struggle against every code gate you encounter).

To really enjoy the game, you need to be willing to deckbuild. You can create pretty fun decks out of a single core set and I'm sure it can provide lasting enjoyment of the game, much more so than only sticking to the pre-built decks.

SICK_Boy has a point.

True, the Core set allows you to learn the basics and play the game out of the box but without customization, you will have to deal with the same ol' thing each time you face a specific faction.

At the same time, there is no such thing as a pre-built deck. There are specific cards affiliated with certain factions, but they don't form a pre-built or default deck, per se. Each side (The Corps and the Runners) even have "gray" or faction-neutral cards that can easily mix with any faction on each side. Working with faction-specific cards alone would leaving your deck lacking in efficiency and effectivity. If you get into the game, both you and your playing partner (i.e. your girlfriend for now) will learn and understand that customizing your deck to make it efficient and effective is the way to go.

I said the very same thing to myself. "Lemme stick to the cards of each faction. Once I get the hang of it and learn the in-and-out of it, lemme learn deckbuilding." You and your playing partner will eventually find yourself in the same situation, even though you started with the "I'll play Netrunner just the way it comes in the box."

Thanks a lot for your answers!
I'll give it a shot!