My relationship with Magic and Netrunner runs backwards compared to most people I’ve met who play both games. I have played Netrunner for a couple of years now, and only picked up Magic for the first time in March of this year.
Playing Magic and reading advice about playing Magic has me wondering about how we conceptualize win conditions in Netrunner.
In Magic, a deck’s win condition is often about getting certain cards to stick when played. So you might say a deck that was recently strong in the Standard meta game has as its win condition getting to untap with Scarab God on the table. Victory is won by getting the opponent down to zero life, but the win condition has to do with getting certain cards into play or establishing a certain board status.
In Netrunner, I find my thinking about winning is more on the goal than the win condition. How do I win Netrunner, you might ask me? And I’ll mostly likely talk about getting to 7 points by scoring or stealing agendas. I can talk about some tools that I have to try to help me get there, but I don’t often think in terms of “if I get to this board position” that is my win condition.
Does the idea of “win condition” make sense in Netrunner? Are there ways it is helpful to think about this? Are there ways it is not helpful? Can you give some examples of how you think about that?