Terminal Directive - A Narrative Campaign Expansion for Android: Netrunner The Card Game

Yes, the main thing is that we actually managed to get some real values into this discussion, which should always be welcome. Thanks for getting the ball rolling.

Since I created this to validate, I might as well post the results.

Each percent is the chance of hitting at least one in the given hit count, and mulling for it.

Generic 45 Card ID:
3: 51.5%
6: 77.8%
9: 90.5%

Generic 40 Card ID:
3: 56.2%
6: 82.2%
9: 93.3%

Andy:
3: 74.6%
6: 94.3%
9: 98.9%

Bios:
3: 71.1%
6: 92.4%
9: 98.3%

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In terms of consistency, yes. But Bios is perpetually going to be ~3-4 clicks behind Andy (with some margin for Andy’s discards and Bios’ leftover cards in NVRAM at the end of a given game). Andy’s ability to mull for a power card is no doubt potent, but her explosive start is most of where she shines, I think.

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Let’s not neglect the link either. When cards like Macrophage (and other relevant traces) are around, it’s significant.

Or even trick decks like Nexus Andy. That 1 link goes a long way in a lot of different decks.

Well, there is one big difference between Bios and Andy.

Andy’s death clock has begun, and will be dead and buried in six months.

Bios is eternal.

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Andy has been the go-to “good stuff” crim runner since she came out, so this might reflect a learned lesson that consistency AND a click advantage AND a link adds up to slightly-too-good. Bios gets consistency and some benefits in terms of avoiding card losses due to damage. Maybe the designers have decided that Kate has been the default “good stuff” Shaper for too long, and want to open up the choice of “generic shaper that has an econ boost” or “generic shaper that has a consistency boost.”

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Sure, but the problem is that Kate is not rotating - which means to open up that choice, you need IDs on a power level that is at least similar to hers. I think Smoke is there; people have certainly made a lot of use of Hayley. I don’t see it happening with Bios unless there is some serious synergy with unspoiled cards.

Out of curiosity, did anyone run a sim of her consistency v. Chaos Theory’s? That’s probably a better direct comparison than Kate.

(Hi people, this is my first post on this site, which I’ve been lurking for years. You may have met me on J.net casual room, read my reviews on NRDB or discussed with me on french forum Run4games).

I’ve run a totally non-rigorous sim of setting a NVRAM with the 2 most popular Kate deck on NRDB this last Tuesday, without bothering if they were good or not. What i’ve found is that when all you have to set are copies of your triplet, it feels pointless. Diesel, Dirty Laundry and Daily Casts are real offenders. OTOH, having your Mopus, Beth and Film Critic is great, and it matters less if your best 4th choice is Clone Chip or Sure Gamble.

I have yet to play and maybe those Diesel and Casts in NVRAM are better than they sound, but it makes me think that a Bios deck should refrain to go for the classic economy and drawing engine (3 of Sure Gamble, Dirty Laundry, Diesel, Daily Casts), but could take advantage of single copy cards.

That doesn’t draw any clear game plan, tough.

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I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

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Do you have a specific reference or information, or just speculation?

I have to say, that if FFG announced a rotation policy with nearly two years notice and then radically altered that policy before (or shortly after) it was implemented, that would be a quick way to alienate large sections of the player base.

Have you not heard the Core 2.0 rumors? At this point, most of the competitive players have heard so many rumors about Core 2.0 that I don’t think they’re going to be shocked/offended when it comes out and some core IDs like Kate, ETF, and Noise most likely rotate out.

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Even if the purge happened and core 2 came out, I don’t know that I’d be 100% confident that Kate would rotate. She feels very much like a shaper, with strong affinity for all things digital. Even the link feels right. She is a prime example to new players of what Shapers represent. If they do make core 2 and decide to put in new IDs, I’d hope to see a new ID that embodies that taking her place.

Anyway, this is all speculation. From the perspective of us peasants, Kate will live forever.

I’m not 100% Kate will rotate, but she’s the most likely of the core runner IDs. She’s the only one who dominates her faction, and FFG tends to make these changes to attempt to promote variety. Noise is another likely one due to being a kind of weird runner for beginners.

I’ve heard players talk about it the same way I’ve heard them talk about bans or restricted lists – as hopes/wishes/dreams/etc.

FWIW, I think it would be a significant mistake to print a new core at this point in the game from a market perspective – a lot of players will take it as a cue to jump ship, and I’m skeptical that it would bring in many new players. They’ve already tamped down the most broken cards (Astro) via errata and MWL for competitive purposes. New boxes in the vein of Terminal Directive should provide avenues for new core-style products (self-contained experiences for new players) without demolishing the existing player base. But I’m obviously not their business manager, and I don’t have access to their sales figures or internal market research, so that’s all pretty speculative. =)

9 Likes

So, I don’t like magic as a game, but I think one thing they did right was their notion of blocks. Every time a new block starts, the slate is wiped. A new core set comes around, containing some old goodies, and some new toys. Then they block sets release with a ton of new content to tinker with.

And Netrunner is in the perfect place to adopt such a system. Introducing a new block is as simple as cherry picking from the existing game to form a block core, and then you release block sets from there.

The highlight of this system is that it benefits both the veterans and the new players. It’s never expensive to buy into the game, and It’s constantly fresh for the people invested in the game. Yeah it sucks to buy things and have them no longer “playable”, but it’s pretty much necessary (you can also support legacy formats with ban/restricted lists, as Magic also does).

So, I don’t think I agree necessarily with “core 2” as a SKU, but I don’t think forming a new “block core” would be a bad move (and such a thing would need an SKU(s) for new players). Keep the legacy collection relevant (don’t pull a thrones 2), but also breath some life into the game. Win-win…

As someone who has followed core 2.0 rumors pretty significantly, I’ve never once seen something that looked substantive about them.

Core 2.0 rumors started, as far as I have ever been able to tell, in this thread. It’s the first instance of the phrase core 2.0 I’ve been able to find. https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/comments/3j9cep/how_would_you_feel_about_a_second_new_core_set/

The big ideas of what people wanted from core 2.0 (Switching core cards with cards from spin/genesis, errata of overpowered cards, etc) came, If memory serves, from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/comments/54wg3h/possibility_of_new_big_expansion/

The ideas from these threads seem to bubble up constantly, but the thing is none of it has ever been substantiated. Testers have never leaked anything like this, people with friends in FFG haven’t confirmed anything from it, not even an anonymous post from a throwaway account has provided a wiff of confirmation.

When it was determined from ffg’s product codes that there was a gap between flashpoint and red sand everyone seemed to treat it as a fait accompli. It turned out to not be Core 2.0 and ever since then I think my mild dismissal of this core 2.0 stuff has been fairly warranted.

To be clear there might be a core 2.0 at some point, but for now I’ve seen nothing that bares that’s out.

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I think the biggest point in favor of Core 2.0 has been the acrylic CT with the Core symbol on it.

I recall that around the time of Worlds, someone said in the Slack that they had heard from an FFG employee that Core 2.0 was incoming. But then Terminal Directive was announced, and I decided to assume that the employee in question had meant that, and at some point in the chain someone must have been confused by all the stuff about how it will go well with the core.

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I had for forgotten about that. The symbol was different but the number was the same. It would be odd that they would create a core 2.0 and

  1. Not create a new symbol for it
  2. Have the reprint for the cards from genesis/spin use the old core symbol
  3. Chaos theory coincidentally happens to have the same number.

All of that is possible but it seems odd. All of that seems less likely in a general sense than the term accidentally printed the acrylic with the wrong symbol.

Ah! I don’t follow the slack so this is new info to me. That’s more than I’ve ever heard from the reddit where a lot of this core 2.0 discussion has happened.