Imaginary Cards

This should be in Order and Chaos, it’s a game changer.

Black Bag
Operation 3c, Black Ops

Trace(3) - If successful, do meat damage equal to the number of bad publicity the Corp has. If unsuccessful, take 1 bad publicity.

Flavor: “Did you know Jack Weyland is a magician? He makes people disappear…” -Iain Stirling

This could be an awesome go big or go home card to build around.

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Autoclave seems risky with the second brain damage clause. Without it, it’d be a fun as a single breaker rig. Still gotta watch out for Caprice, though.

No, that would be if it was a “successful trace”, not an unsuccessful one. Here, if the runner doesn’t beat it, your money is actually lost. It’s only if they do that your money isn’t actually used.

I was thinking that, to shutdown combo-y decks that rely too heavily on certain cards (looking at you, Biotic Labor, Accelerated Diagnostics), or simply cards that are too overpowering to your strategy, we might print a card like MTG’s Slaughter Games, but with a significant drawback. Something like:

Runner version: (Neutral or Anarch - 1-2 influence)
Public Scandal
Event - Run - Double
Cost: 6 credits
As an additional cost to play this event, spend Click.
Make a run on R&D. If successful, instead of accessing cards, you may name a non-Agenda card. If you do, force the Corp to search HQ, R&D and Archives for all copies of the named card and remove them from the game, then add this event to your score area as an Agenda worth -2 agenda points which may not be forfeit. The Corp shuffles R&D.

Corp version (Neutral, I think - 1-2 influence)
War on Cyberterrorism
Operation - Double
Cost: 7
As an additional cost to play this operation, spend Click.
Play only if the Runner made an unsuccessful run last turn.
Name a non-Icebreaker card. Force the runner to search his or her grip, stack and heap for all copies of the named card and remove those cards from the game, then add this operation to your score area as an Agenda worth -2 agenda points which may not be forfeit. The runner shuffles his or her stack.

The idea is that you could penalize yourself pretty heavily in credits, clicks and points to get rid of an extremely problematic card (say, Parasite for RP, Account Siphon for anyone, Biotic Labor against CI, Jackson Howard for Noise, SanSan City Grid vs NEH, and Deus X for PE net damage decks). Can’t target Agendas because you could just do this 3 times and the Corp would not have enough points left to win. Can’t target icebreakers, I think, because you might just shut the runner out completly depending on his build, although I was careful that the wording would save installed cards from the purge both for the corp and for the runner. The effect is done by your opponent such as not to reveal information like deck composition, cards in hand and facedown cards in Archives. Both have a condition that must be met (admittedly, the Corp’s is rather more difficult, I feel, but I didn’t want it to be tags)

Thoughts? Too oppressive? Too non-interactive or otherwise not healthy for the game?

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Here are some Runner IDs I came up with today. Sorry, I’m not clever enough to come up with names.

Shaper ID
45/12

Once per turn, when you make a successful run on R&D, you may pay 5 credits to access one additional card.

Criminal ID
45/15

The first time each turn the Corp rezzes a piece of ICE with the sentry subtype, gain a credit.

Anarch ID
45/15

If you are tagged, the Corp must spend one additional credit to trash the first resource each turn.

Sorry, yes you’re right. Total mis-read on my behalf.
face palm

I like Public Scandal and I don’t think it would break the game.

A friend and I were making predictions about what cards will be in the NBN box.

Autopilot Script Program - 3/2 agenda - When you score Autopilot Script Program, place 1 agenda counter on it. Hosted agenda counter: Place 1 advancement token on a card that can be advanced.

NAPD Autoscript Contract - 4/2 agenda - As an additional cost to steal NAPD Autoscript Contract, the runner must pay $4. When you score NAPD Autoscript Contract, place 1 agenda counter on it. Hosted agenda counter: Place 1 advancement token on a card that can be advanced.

Fixing News - 2/1 agenda - When you score Fixing News, give the runner 2 tags.

Fast Biotic Track Labor - $4 operation (4 influence) - Search R&D for an agenda card, reveal it, put it into HQ, then gain [click].

SanSanSan Megalopolis City Grid - $0 rez $10 trash upgrade (5 influence) - The advancement requirement of agendas in this server is lowered by 2. Whenever you score an agenda in this server, if it would have an agenda counter placed on it, place two additional agenda counters on it.

Don’t worry, these cards aren’t broken, merely slightly more powerful than what already exists, which is a natural progression of the game. To balance this, the NBN box will also feature a single runner card:

Worldwide Economy Siphon - $0 event (criminal, 5 influence) - Make a run on HQ. Whether or not the run is successful, you may force the corp to lose any number of credits, gain $4 for each credit lost, gain 100 tags, and the corp cannot have credits in their credit pool for the rest of the game.

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I think your “friend” just gave the expression power creep a new standard.

Great thread, cool ideas guys! :smiley:
I like to design cards and I created about 50 fan cards in the past months… I usually choose a theme and made a set of cards around it, always trying to create balanced cards.
For example, before the announcement of Order and Chaos I designed a set of anarch cards to solve their economy and drawing/tutoring issues (anarchs were behind other runners at the time).
I want to stay true to the spirit of the game and the background of the factions, so I tried to answer this issues in an “anarch” ways… I think is the same spirit used to design Injection! :smiley: (spoiled weeks after the creation of these cards):

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Based on one of the more interesting cards from the ONR thread. Wording might be a bit confusing, we had to shorten things a lot to get it to fit on the one dang card.

Aladdin’s Lamp is a cool idea. It may need to cost a click to install the programs, though. Otherwise you can install stuff while running, which may be too powerful.

I know you can install the programs “on the fly”; when I designed Aladdin’s Lamp I tried to balance the card comparing it with Self-Modifying Code.
Here are the pros:

  • you can choose 3 programs
  • you can install an hosted program paying one more credit instead of 2
  • it has 1 MU cost instead of 2
    and here the cons:
  • you must choose the programs when you instal the card so you have to figure out what you’ll need during the game
  • programs are hosted on the lamp: if the lamp is trashed, you lose the programs too
  • the lamp cost 3 credits instead of 0
  • it’s unique

I was thinking to add the subtype “Artifact” and add the clause “Limit 1 per deck”.
The card is strong but I don’t think it’s overpowered (especially with the limit); obviously a card should be tested in order to be sure :wink:

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And here are some Corp cards:

I don’t know if this card should be played in tournaments, but I think we need a usable card to reorder our servers! :smiley:

what do you think of a serie of strong ICEs that stay in play for a limited time?

this is the first card I designed and still my favourite: I love the theme, but I also think that the ability to damage the runner even when broken and the ability to “born again” are cool! :smiley:

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Both very well designed and playable pieces of ICE!

Shredder - 5c
Hardware - Console
Anarch ***
+1 MU
Whenever a Corporation card is trashed, gain 1c. This includes installed cards, cards from HQ, and cards from R&D.

Feed it, or else.

Maybe too powerful. What do you say? Takes 6 trashes to start netting. Maybe it should cost 4. 3 seems too cheap.

I like Loan Shark because it actually gives a use for a Muresh Body Suit!

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The thing is, you can simply tutor out all three of your breakers and then use the one that you need. It would make anarch way too quick to set up if it drew this. If they had to be non-icebreakers, that would probably work, and that way they’re more like wishes than “I always need this out - this just lets me get it out quicker”.

Besides, both Criminal and Shaper are both more of a tutoring faction - criminals with subtypes (icebreaker, connection, run), and shapers with types (program, hardware). You’d need to make it extremely anarch in some other way to make up for the fact it’s going outside of the color pie. I think making it have to be non-icebreakers would probably be enough, since the theme is also good. Self-modifying code is a faction-definer for shapers, you really shouldn’t be trying to make a card that competes with it in anarch. The factions are meant to have their weakness, and finding breakers is one of anarchs, just like criminals need good icebreakers and shapers need HQ pressure and money.

If I had OCTGN I’d challenge you, but sadly I can’t get it to work on my computer. I’ll put it on my list of cards to playtest if you want, though. I do think it’s a cool concept - just a little non-anarch.

2 Likes

Re: Cosmic Egg
In this one the fact that it’s on-the-fly feels jarring to me, but the rest is great. If you change the ability to click, it’ll be a balanced reusable tutor, which is a hard niche to fill but this does perfectly.

Re: Common Cause
Perfect - maybe make it cost something, I don’t know. Really good design here.

Re: Refactoring
It’s a little similar to interns - I’m not sure how to fix that, but the idea is good.

Re: Flood
Probably needs to cost 3 - an eli that can’t be clicked through, even if it only works three times, is good enough for no influence in NBN.

Re: Phoenix
"If Pheonix has 3 or more power counters on it, you may add it to HQ. If you don’t, do 2 net damage and trash it." would shorten it and create interesting decisions. It hurts the theme, though, so it could go either way.

Re: Shredder
The explanation text is confusing. This is nice in that it gives Noise an alternative console. If you wanted to make it even better for him, you could boost the cost and make it simply “Whenever a card is trashed” Maybe that’s too good, though. As it is, it’s still probably best for noise. If it were simply 1rc for trashing, you can see that would be bad, and imp+demo run don’t show up enough to matter for this. Milling is the easiest way to trigger this - I’m not sure if that way of playing it was the way you intended.

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It already functions as “whenever a card is trashed,” just not for Runner cards. That would be way too good IMO. It was definitely intended to be played with mill, but not exclusively. I’m not sure how the explanation text is confusing at all. I added the second sentence to clarify. Ideally it would read “Whenever a Corporation card is trashed, gain 1c.”

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The second sentence makes it sound like the root’s text, and people will try to come up with the one thing that isn’t included in there. I think just getting rid of the second sentence would actually make it clearer.

Edit: It has just come to my attention that “Whenever a corp card is trashed” would also apply to every time the corp plays an operation. Is that what you intended?