The Bioroid could theoretically also be doing it for work, or to get revenge on the megacorps. Does seem less likely, and I kinda agree with your initial analysis, but I’m hopeful they’ll do more interesting things. We already have Kit for some of the Bioroid story if freedom is the goal, and lots of the Criminals do it for work (though in a different way than, say, Elle might). So some variation on the common/obvious tropes would be appreciated, at least to me.
Someone at the trade show today said that he thought the AI-virus had 36 influence and an ability that triggered of installing viruses, a la Noise. Apparently the lighting was really bad in the hall; people couldn’t see the slides properly so he wasn’t certain but he had a better view than most from the front row.
I think that depends on how the idea of “Mini-Factions” pans out. If each independent runner has a limited card pool and can’t grab freely from Shaper / Anarch / Criminal a higher influence might be essential in order to build a working deck…
Yeah, I figured that too. I’m just going on what he said though. We know from elsewhere that influence is “mostly” around the 25 mark, and I guess 25 could look like 36 on a crappy projector in awkward lighting…
Actually not TOO bad a theory. I mean, Jack Weylands new pet project was Gagarin, which we first heard about on… Security Testing!
“She was as good as Mr. Li said. The source machine had been compromised in under 24 hours. If a freelance operative could do that, the server clearly wasn’t ready to endure Gagarin’s legion of corp-owned runners.”
So it is quite clear that Gagarin has a legion of Runners that they employ. It might not be Jack Weyland himself, but I would be quite surprised if it wasn’t one of the Runners that work for him. It would make sense, especially as that kind of person would be much harder to fit into the existing three types.
If it is indeed neutral runners, 36 influence is not really that much. Take any competitve deck and count influence on non-neutral cards and you see that 36 is roughly half of what is used. Or try and build a deck with masque that uses only 25 or 36 influence.
Or if we use some math, 25 is roughly 1/2 influence spent per card in a typical deck. One 2 inf card would force you to have 3 neutral cards in the deck.
I’d also guess that these runners are going to lean heavily on the cards in their minifaction from the box to be able to make reasonable decks @ 25 influence; as Therad points out, 25 is a tight budget! I wonder if we’ll see more minifaction cards in future cycles?
Well, even if they have to spend influence on neutral cards, if there are a good 8-10 non-influence-costing neutrals in the big box that’ll expand their options pretty heavily. I feel like I’ve read somewhere that minifaction cards aren’t coming in future cycles? But then also I don’t recall who said it or where so that could be bad intel.
I do feel like it’s unlikely that they won’t be mostly contained to the box, though, at least in the immediate sense. There are lots of ways that FFG can use the minifactions’ own influence to provide them with solutions (even better ones, maybe, than already exist) that cost too much influence to normally be worth it.
Like, a Clone Chip that is a Virtual Resource and can also bring back Hardware and/or Virtual Resources, say, maybe it costs one more to install and is 4-5 influence. Amazing card, makes sure the ID has a lot of power, but haaard to splash even if some decks might want to try. But suddenly that’s 6 influence saved on Clone Chip for them if they’re the kind of ID/deck that really wants Clone Chip.
I doubt it’ll be anything quite so simplistic necessarily (though a tutor/recursion method for Virtual Resources seems like a strong possibility to me), but I think 25 could be bigger than people expect, particularly if they get any kinds of influence discounts (Virtual resources free, say, or no cost to splash neutral cards, or both).
That might go a good deal towards saving them influence. If more cards like the Shards, Lucky Find, etc. are printed that they are able to use freely, that will allow FFG to continue to support these runners as time goes on without devoting specific card space to them.
The core rules state explicitly that neutral cards are “not part of any faction”, so the faction rules do not apply to them. If a Runner was neutral, it would also be “not part of any faction” as opposed to “part of the neutral faction”. There might be neutral runners but there cannot be a “neutral faction” unless the core rules are amended.
I highly, highly doubt that anybody is going to be getting free Lucky Finds.
Why would a Sentient Virus get free access to Lucky Find anyway? it doesn’t make any sense mechanically or thematically.