Android: Netrunner

Back from the dead...

As has been said, I am currently playing one really long game (Agarest) which means no video game analyses for a while. Especially since on top of that I started another - very likely even longer - game, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Agarest is actually on a break now, so... Not to worry, there's more to gaming than digital games. Analog games have not received any mention in this blog since ancient times; now it is time for them to make a comeback. The game I want to talk about is Android: Netrunner, a game I have been getting into lately.

1. A quick introduction

This game right here would be a perfect topic for an entire article or two of its own. It's basically a rerun of an old collectible card game by Richard Garfield, resurrected by Fantasy Flight Games as a living card game. We already know that LCG is one clever concept, and Netrunner is perhaps the most clever of them all. Being strictly a two player game, it pits one lonely hacker against a massive mega corporation. The setting may sound a bit asymmetrical and this is no coincidence, because that is exactly what the game is. The corporation is building servers to advance its agendas while the hacker is constantly trying to breach through security and grab those agendas for themselves. The first player to score seven points from agendas is the winner. The corporation can also win by killing the hacker either through net damage or by more direct means of physical damage while the hacker wins if the corporation runs out of cards to draw.

The asymmetrical setting alone makes Netrunner stand out, but it's just icing on the cake. The cake is a lie - or rather a massive web of deceit. The corporation plays all its cards face-down and only has to pay for them when they are revealed (or rezzed as the game's hacker lingo likes to call it). Cards installed on servers can be rezzed at any time if their conditions are met but protective cards (ICE) can only be rezzed when they are encountered by the hacker. Most of the time the only way for the hacker to find out what's what is to run head first into it. What is the corporation hiding behind three pieces of ICE - and what kind of ICE are those anyway? In short, the corporation's job is to deceive the hacker into wasting resources on wild goose chases while tha hacker tries to figure out what risks are worth taking. Running into really aggravating ICE can literally end the hacker's life and even if all ICE is breached, there might be a trap waiting on the server. It really doesn't help that traps look a lot like agendas. 

There are two factors that drive the game forward: the corporation must draw one card every turn, and in addition to servers, agendas can be stolen from the corporate player's hand, top of their deck and from their discard pile. It is impossible to protect everything, and once agendas start piling up on the corporate player's hand, they have to do something with them - but the means to get those agendas scored are up to the player and their deck's design. Some players may favor stacking ICE after ICE to create the ultimate server to guard their agendas while others may choose to play agendas on unprotected servers - only these "agendas" are as often traps as they are the real thing. What looks like an agenda? Cards that can be advanced while face-down. Advancing costs time and money, both of which are limited, and it is mostly impossible to fully advance an agenda on the same turn it is played. Once advancement tokens start to pile up on it, the hacker knows something is up. 

2. Tricks and deceit

All in all, the game is far more dependent on player skill and turn-to-turn decision making than other popular deck construction games. This is especially true when playing against a deck you have never played against - for instance in a tournament. Although there are some hard counters in the game, most solid decks should be okay against the majority of decks and games are often pretty close. The corp-plays-hidden nature of the game makes it so that cards can have surprising uses and the winner is more often the player who makes the best use of their cards rather than the player who has the better deck. Some cards still feel like garbage but that just happens with every game. Sometimes it matters more what the card looks like than what it actually is. Let's take a quick example.

Most of the traps in game do nothing if they have not been advanced. This means that it is usually more safe for the runner to go for cards that have not been advanced if they feel like they could be facing traps. I do this a lot, especially if it is not too costly to check out a card before it has been advanced. One game I was having some issues and could not afford to play and advance a card on the same turn. I had traps that would win me the game if the runner hit them while they were advanced, but I simply did not have the resources to do that. Instead, I just put one out on a somewhat protected server with no advancement. Against my deck, it is 100% safe to check cards that have not been advanced, so the runner went for it, burning some resources (time and money) on my ICE. Effectively I just bought a lot of time with a useless card. The runner had to check it because if it had been an agenda, I could have very probably scored it on my next turn.

I actually repeated the trick a few turns later and bought more time, and I eventually won the game - on a play with a card I was unable to use properly. All kinds of plays can be made, and the game affords huge swings and comebacks. This basically happens because of the resource system: there are very few resource cards that provide constant benefit (like lands in MtG). Most economy cards are good for limited time, or require the player to spend precious time to get credits. Time can always be exchanged for credits (it's an action) but the economy cards make the ratio more efficient. This makes it much harder to snowball because a few misplays can quickly even the economic scales. If a player is able to buy enough time, they can recover from pretty dire situations.  

3. Factions

The game has factions on each side: three runner types and four corporations, each with their own characteristics. Criminal runners are basically massive dicks who have pretty straightforward gameplay. They can go with early aggression and lay a lot of waste on the corporation's resources. Shapers on the other hand rely more on finesse and table development, eventually coming up with cards to cover every situation and then just go from there. Anarchists are my current favorite - they go for less orthodox tactics, trying to disrupt the game with viruses and other cards that really mess things up. Playing with and against each of these runner factions is a pretty different experience. It sets the premise for the matchup and gives away a bit about what can be expected.

On the corporation side there are two that rely more on having a heavy economy and two that rely more on being crafty. Haas-Bioroid is ideal for players who just want to build an impregnable fortress and eventually win from within its walls. Wayland has brutally efficient economy, but it often comes at the cost of bad publicity which makes it generally easier to run against them - they also have a lot of means to outright kill the runner with meat damage. Jinteki decks often go poor, but they specialize in traps and other sorts of mind games - and often win games through massive net damage from their traps, ICE and other cards. NBN is another corporation that doesn't swim in money, but they have means to score agendas rapidly and control the game by tagging the runner (if the runner is tagged, the corporation can obliterate their resources pretty easily and do other nasty things).

The factions alone give twelve different matchups but on top of that each faction has multiple identities to choose from. Each identity has a special power, and the identity also defines the minimum deck size for the player. It also defines how many influence points the player gets to spend - these points are used in deck-building to include cards from other factions. The influence system means that although you know the identity and faction of your opponent, there will always be cards that are atypical to their faction in the mix. This can cause a ton of nasty surprises which can turn the game around. Of course the effect is gone after playing against the same deck a couple of times but even then you still have to deal with everything.

All in all, there's plenty to choose from, and factions don't have just one playstyle. It is entirely possible to play a more conservative Jinteki deck for instance, protecting cards with ICE like normal people - or you can just go loose and play with a deck that's based on gambit after gambit. It just really depends on what's your cup of tea. I like NBN and Jinteki because they give more room to crafty plays - perhaps with higher risk, but also higher reward. Both factions can easily win in a single turn if the runner makes a mistake - and naturally they have the means to bait out that mistake. Most of the time it leads to wildly unpredictable games which I think is always fun. Sure games of Netrunner are by average pretty unpredictable already, but with these two corporations it just gets way more so.

4. Dynamics and stuff

When all the pieces come together, the design is simply brilliant. The fact that one side plays with hidden information is what truly defines the game for what it is, and it is supplemented by the nature of economy. The basic resource everything comes down to is time, because time can be converted into anything but players can influence the ratio. Cards and credits are pretty straightforward derivatives, but one resource in the game is much harder to evaluate: information. This sits very well with the game's theme: ultimately it's about information being taken from the corporation by the runner. Sometimes risks must be taken simply in order to reveal a few cards. The more knowledge the runner has, the better they can plan the use of their resources.

On the corporation side, the player has to worry about different vectors of attack. It is usually important to protect your R&D (draw deck) because that's the most unpredictable element in the game for the corporation. A lucky runner can win in one turn if they get free access to R&D. Then there's HQ (hand of cards) to worry about, especially if it contains agendas. The corporation should also be able to protect at least one remote server to have at least one place to play agendas. It doesn't help that some runner decks are insanely harrowing to play against because they seem to have ways to deal with everything - these ways will exhaust eventually, but surviving that long can be quite a challenge. In a way the corporation has somewhat more control over the game. It is much easier for corporations to only take risks they can afford while at the same time being able to force the runner to take huge risks.

A lot of times optimal plays also depend on the opponent. Corporations can play pretty balls-y moves against risk-averse runners, like dropping agendas on servers with little or no protection. A card with no protection and no advancement tokens pretty much reeks of waste of time or even a trap. However if it is just left there and it's an agenda that requires three advancement, the corporation can outright score it on their next turn. On the other hand if you are playing against a less timid or downright aggressive runner (that would be me), there's just no way you're getting away with plays like this. As the runner you have to evaluate how huge balls the corp player really has. Misjudgements to either direction can be pretty damn costly.

With all this going on, the game is just really dynamic. Although decks are typically built around one strategy, players should always be prepared to adapt their play style on a game-to-game basis. Both sides can make it impossible for their opponent to play their strategy, but this usually opens up other opportunities. Recognizing and capitalizing these opportunities is an important skill.

Conclusion

Android: Netrunner is not your typical deck construction game. Its asymmetrical nature, reliance on hidden information and resource system keep the game interesting to play - as opposed to some other games where the real game is deck-building and actually playing the game is just a formality (a bit polarized view admittedly, but the difference between e.g. MtG and Netrunner is just huge honestly). As a game it simply allows way more opportunities for the player to shine. All the mind games and unpredictability mean that games are almost never over before the end conditions have been met. It can literally take just one mistake to make or break a game - and not taking risks can be a mistake in itself.  

I have not yet played enough to really tell how balanced the game is. There are some runner cards that do feel pretty overpowered and playing against them is really frustrating. They are still manageable but do put quite a strain on corporation deck-building. A definite con is the price. Although I guess it is possible to not buy every single expansion, I'd still say it's not the cheapest game to play. I think at the moment it's my second or third most expensive game, but I do have all or most of the expansions (the leader is by far Lord of the Rings living card game).

So, play it if you get the chance. 

Lord of the Rings Living Card Game

Now that we got the LCG concept out of the way, it's time to dig into my current favorite. The new LotR LCG does a lot of interesting things. Let's take a look.

1. Co-operative play with constructed decks made possible

This I find a rather interesting combination. Usually co-op games are pretty tightly tuned packages to ensure a certain level of challenge, although they do differ quite a lot in randomness (usually there's lots of it, to retain replay value). The interesting twist in Lord of the Rings is that players play with constructed decks just like in any other LCG (or CCG for that matter). But wait, doesn't this mean that balance gets thrown out of the window? In short, yes, in many ways it does. However, there is not just one game, but as of writing there are 7 different quests available. Three quests are in the basic sets, and each expansion pack has its own.

These quests have different grades of difficulty. The most difficult quests are in fact designed to be tough enough to actually require quite optimized decks. Especially the notorious Escape from Dol Guldur, the toughest quest of the basic set, is pretty much impossible to beat without customized decks. There is enough freedom left for quest designers, which means that the challenge provided by each quest is not only of varying difficulty, it is also of different kind. A deck optimized against one quest may fail miserably in another. In the end, when each player has a very good deck and they all play together nicely, the quests do become kind of easy though.

The fact that they can keep releasing new quests is what I think keeps the game alive and interesting. Just like expansions keep traditional games fresh, but more often. Although I do think they should definitely make them harder and harder with each expansion, because players are piling up more customization options and playing experience. In a way the experience is actually quite similar to certain types of computer roleplaying games. Players make character builds (= decks), and test them against the game's challenges. New expansions come with new build options and new challenges.

Of course, since it is an analog game people play with their friends, nothing stops them from making it more difficult if their hypercustomized decks breeze through every challenge. Looking for good ideas myself.

2. Interesting solo play

Another curious thing about the game is that it's the first analog game I have greatly enjoyed playing just by myself. Tuning my deck so that it can beat all the quests solo without any changes is surprisingly satisfying. For the record, at least as of now, most quests are in fact much harder solo than with 2 or more players, especially, again, the notorious Escape from Dol Guldur. This is actually an interesting side effect of co-operative play because one downside of living/collectible card games has always been deck testing. The only way to really test a deck is to find a lot of opponents who play different decks. The nature of LotR makes deck testing easy because all the possible challenges are always available to be tested against.

3. Multidimensional challenge

The game is out to get you in many ways. There are always two main sources of trouble: on the one hand, encounter cards on the staging area make it difficult to progress in the game; on the other hand, engaging enemies is troublesome as they need to be defended against, or risk taking damage. Every conflict in the game, be it questing or combat, has an element of uncertainty. For example, in combat, enemies have shadow cards dealt to them. Often these do nothing, but they can have highly devastating effects, especially if the attack goes undefended. For this reason it's usually best to defend against all attacks, but defending exhausts characters. A lot of things in this game does, which means that players have to carefully consider what to do with each character.

It doesn't stop there either, because quests can have their own unique challenges. One quest has a rather strict timer in the form of an ally that takes damage each round and is quite hard to heal. The game itself has a rather slow timer as well, because each player's threat rises every round by one.

4. Careful with the card design!

Balancing a game like Lord of the Rings is really hard work. The people at FFG have done quite a good job, but they're not quite there yet. The problem is that there is one clear path to victory: a deck that is able to produce a lot of resources and a lot of card draw can pretty much handle everything, regardless of what strategy it plays. No quest so far punishes these types of decks. This is of course a quite standard CCG convention, where more is more. The problem I think is that especially in terms of resources, there is one clearly superior way of getting a big resource boost in the form of one card. Since this card is from one particular sphere of influence (the 'colors' of this game), being able to play cards from this sphere tends to make decks a lot stronger. At least the card is unique which means there can be only one on the table (between all players).

The same is almost true for card draw, but at least here two spheres have quite feasible options for drawing, and all have some means. Fortunately the designers have included fairly feasible ways to include cards from any sphere to any deck, but nevertheless I do feel a little disappointed that to play a solid solo deck, I am pretty much forced to include this one particular card in my deck (and a maximum number of copies of it, of course). However, I think the issue is fixable by including similar acceleration cards (with different mechanics) to other spheres. Although each sphere does have its own thing, I think resource boosting should be available in many forms instead of just one that is clearly superior.

I don't think that resource boosting are card draw should be the "thing" of any particular sphere, because to me these are more like the prerequirements for a functioning solo deck. It's also a bit nasty that in multiplayer, the one and only really good resource boost can only be used by one player. Besides, the sphere that has this card, also has another "thing", buffing the players as a team. So while I'm all for having highly distinctive spheres/whatever in games, it should be not so that one sphere is practically irreplaceable. I'm going to try to make a deck without that one particular card though just to see how it goes.

Conclusion

As a concept, the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game is very clever, and mostly superbly executed. The game is still taking its baby steps with "only" four expansion packs out. It will remain to be seen how the game changes, especially with the upcoming bigger expansion.

Living Card Games

Instead of a particular game, I'll go through a game concept this time. One of the newer innovations of Fantasy Flight Games is the Living Card Game concept. The LCG is a twist in the usual collectible card game concept: instead of selling cards in random content packs, LCG cards come in fixed packages. Usually there's a starter set with all the mandatory cards, tokens etc that are always needed, and some starter decks to get players going. A typical pack includes as many copies of each card as is the number of copies allowed in one deck. Basically it throws out the collectible nature of CCGs and replaces it with traditional style (mini) expansions.

Since I'm not a big fan of CCGs anymore, I find the LCG to be an excellent alternative. There is no card rarity, which means the price of cards will remain low. Since players know what cards will be in a particular pack of cards, they can only buy the ones that have useful cards. The concept allows anyone to create whatever deck they desire without dishing out enormous amounts of money for rare cards. This makes deck-building much smoother as there is no longer a need to agonize over not being able to use a card because it's too hard to get. While players will still spend quite a lot of money if they want to build really good decks, no money ever goes to waste, and there is always a clear upper limit. Once a player possesses all the expansions, there's no need to buy more.

Since it's a deck construction game, useless cards will still pile up. The downside is of course that since the same cards are easily available for anyone, there is not much of a trading element, which means players are stuck with the cards they don't need. I guess some trading is possible between players of different decks, as no one's going to need all the cards from a given pack. Unless making multiple decks of course. Another downside of the format is that there are less different cards than in collectible card games. Because every pack is guaranteed to have exactly the same cards, and multiple copies of each, the number of different cards per pack is quite small. While the developers could push out packs more quickly, there will be a saturation point.

Overall, I think the LCG is a smart design. It appeals to the board gaming audience much more than CCGs do, but nevertheless it retains the fun of deck-building and endless customization. While the card sets are quite small at first, they'll expand over time. It's also important that there is a basic set that on its own provides a fun gameplay experience, for gamers who don't want to bother with deck construction but like the mechanics of the game. It's also good that it's easier for players to control how much money they're spending for the game. This appeals to people who find the CCG business model distasteful.

I started out with this concept post so I can more easily discuss my current favorite LCG next time...

Ascension

A non-digital this time. Ascension is a rather fast-paced card game in the vein of Dominion. It's been designed by Magic the Gathering pro-tour champions, and boasts to introduce the MtG experience in compressed form. Surprisingly, this is not that far from the truth. Since this is the first deck-building game analysis, I'll start with that mechanic.

1. Deck-building game

This new trend of card games was pretty much started by Dominion. The core concept in all these games is that players start with a fixed deck of cards, ten in Ascension. These cards are the shittiest cards in the game, giving very little resources. The point of the game is to buy cards from the table and add them to your deck. The experience of playing these games is not unlike getting the experience of building your deck and playing it, only both at the same time. What could be more awesome?

A careful observer might notice that at its core the mechanic is the same as any other game where players spend resources to produce more resources and do other useful things in the future. This is definitely true. The basic mechanic of deck-building games just makes the process really interesting and smooth. On any given turn, you get five cards out of the cards left in your deck. What's the best use for them? What cards should you get to improve your average hand? Turns are usually over fast. Usually, unless some or another killer combo comes up.

The concept of the average hand is highly important in deck-building games. Since hands are always random, mindlessly buying good cards can actually lead into a very bad deck if those cards don't work together well.

It is also typical to deck-building games that not all the cards in the game are available in each game. Quite far from it actually, as usually the cards available are a rather small subset of all the cards in the game, especially since these games spawn expansions like no tomorrow. This pretty much ensures that no two games are ever exactly alike, and new strategies come up even after hundreds of plays. The downside is that once the amount of cards becomes large, the setup gets a bit annoying.

A lot of these games are mostly multiplayer solitaire, although on occasion there's cards that affect other players.

2. Center row & portal deck

Okay, back to Ascension. Unlike a typical deck-building game, Ascension does not feature a storage that is randomized at the beginning of the game (storage is the pool of available cards). Instead it features a center row with six card slots and a portal deck. Cards are drawn from the portal deck to the center row so that it is always filled with six cards. This mechanical change to the norm has two pros.

First, it hugely decreases setup time (although after the first expansion, shuffling the portal deck does become a bit difficult). Second, whereas in other deck-building games I've played strategies are usually cemented at the beginning of the game (if you change mid-game, you are screwed), in Ascension players have to play more flexibly because there is no knowledge of what cards will be available in the future.

The center row also provides some means for players to affect each others' strategies by buying off or banishing cards they think other players might want. This is much harder to do in other deck-building games because the supply of cards is usually sufficient for all the players to get the ones they really want. Denying players of cards is a viable and often necessary strategy to keep opponents in check.

The flipside of this mechanic is that sometimes the center row does introduce more luck of the draw into the game. There are two basic cards that are always available, but they are not comparable in power to cards from the portal deck. Then again, this is why players need to stay flexible, to make use of the cards available to them on their turn.

3. 2-dimensional economy

Ascension has two resources that the players use: runes and power. The former is used to acquire cards (basically money) and the latter is used to defeat enemies. There are really few cards that provide both, so players need to make choices. Focusing entirely on one is a gamble - if the center row does not favor your strategy, you are majorly screwed. Staying balanced on the other hand makes it difficult to get the best cards or defeat the monsters with the biggest rewards.

Building a deck that does both effectively is the holy grail of Ascension, but quite hard to achieve. To get there, players need to acquire cards that improve the deck's infrastructure but these cards don't usually provide any resources. Decisions, decisions.

4. Constructs

Usually cards in deck-building games are only useful on the turn they are played, and then it's off to the discard pile with them (until they come up again once the deck is depleted and the discard pile is shuffled to become the new deck). In Ascension there are constructs that stay in play unless a specific effect discards them. This introduces a new deck type into the game, one that slowly builds these more constant resources (which have weaker effects than heroes) to improve their average turns.

Such a strategy can have huge payoff, but it also poses a big risk if certain effects trigger. It also is blatantly obvious to other players, which makes it easy for them to deny you the cards you need for this strategy.

Conclusion

Ascension differs from most other deck-building games by the portal deck system. None of the game's innovations are new but rather cleverly adapted mechanics from other games. The designers have looked for inspiration outside the deck-building genre and created a highly enjoyable game. Ascension is particularly successful in dealing with the two common problems of deck-building games: setup time and the multiplayer solitaire symptom.