A lot of the time the pieces are changed irrevocably so resetting back to the base components becomes nigh impossible. With Risk Legacy, you can absolutely use your board after to play, but with Pandemic Legacy it unfortunately doesn’t play regular games of pandemic after the game is completed that well because of spoilery reasons, and that the already-stacked game will become more stacked against the players, making it better to play vanilla pandemic or pandemic w/ expansions versus the final game of pandemic legacy. Legacy games are typically better more for the narrative over the course of the campaign. Once the campaign is over, it’s a) hard to reset back to vanilla and b) the game that it’s based off of is usually ends up being a better balanced game because the mechanics have been balanced around the campaign and not necessarily how the base game is usually played.
well you typically have a set number of completion plays. for example, Pandemic: Legacy plays for about 15-20 times (i haven’t played it yet), but only when you’ve ‘won’
any losses, and you keep playing. once you win, you then have to make a choice. something gets removed from the board, or cards get removed from the cardpool of the game. these are permanent changes that carry over into all subsequent plays of the game. usually you’ll put stickers on things, or draw new lines with a marker, or be instructed to throw cards away.
once you get to the end, you have a customised version of your game, but as @BerenzenSA says, sometimes it’s better to play the vanilla game (Risk, Pandemic) or simply start over with a new Legacy game.
i read that it’s basically like binge-watching a series on tv. once you play a game, you want to play the next one as quickly as possible to see how it all turns out. you’ll end up playing through all of your allotted playthroughs quite quickly (unless you lose interest in the game), and there will eventually be an ‘end’
at that point, you’ve probably played the game a lot more than a lot of other games you have in your collection (if you collect board games, that is), but probably won’t play it too much after that.
i don’t know how much this game will necessarily fit into that description, but i’m excited either way. even if there are a finite number of plays, it’s usually still good value for the money (and more plays a lot of games i already own)
The thing that grabbed me is the lore expansion here. The legacy aspect seemed cool at first blush, but when I saw the PAD board that will have stickers on and thought about the line “only one side can be the first to uncover—and control—the truth” my thoughts turned to ‘might not be so cool actually, could be a bit meh, will just have to wait till we get more info’.
Why? Well if they haven’t changed the victory conditions (which is what the quoted line is talking about) then, well it’s still just netrunner. We’ve been changing cards and using crazy combos and trying to make bad cards work etc. for ages. Compare this with the other other legacy games are largely the same every time and you don’t get to customise stuff and have loads of different game-styles etc. - the legacy thing does a lot to mix it up for those and bring in new stuff, where as netrunner is always bringing in new stuff. Maybe they have some really cool ideas up their sleeve and I think it’s great that they’re trying new stuff out, but I think about how many games of netrunner have already been by people here and wonder how you’re make a few games with a couple weird rules stand out. Newer players might get a real buzz out of it though. But hey, I hope I’m wrong.
Even if you could play the campaign only once, I would still be quite happy with it as the cards will be legal for regular netrunner. In my eyes it is more of a deluxe expansion with a story than a legacy game which you can recycle as an expansion.
It is. WEYLAND IS THE STRONGEST FACTION PEOPLE 
Jokes aside, I see your points on all this. I realize that for some people the lack of replayability is no issue, and that there are many, many benefits to legacy games. They are, admittedly, pretty damn awesome (well, Time Stories isn’t IMO, but the other ones are anyway) But they also annoy me in that all FFG had to do was make the stuff a little more permanent, and we could have had a campaign mode for Netrunner like the one they added to Lotr (which is awesome btw).
So…I’m guessing this thing isn’t gonna rotate?
That’s a good question! I don’t believe so, because it is still a deluxe, right? (hopes for OP advancable ice enabler.)
just thinking out loud, but we don’t know for sure that these cards will even be legal outside of this format yet.
This seems a great format to bring new players in. I’m very excited. I really hope the cards are actual cards though I’ll still buy it if they aren’t.
Actually we do. From the product page for Terminal Directive: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/android-netrunner-the-card-game/products/terminal-directive/
Two PAD sheets, one sticker sheet, one rulebook, and four data sets of campaign cards and stickers allow you to track your progress, even as the expansion provides a massive infusion to your standard, tournament-legal Android: Netrunner matches with 163 new cards (86 Corp and 77 Runner) divided between the Criminal, Shaper, Haas-Bioroid, and Weyland Consortium factions, as well as neutral.
Well, seems like I’m going to be thrilled beyond measure.
It’s technically not a deluxe. It’s a campaign expansion. Splitting hairs, because it looks like it’s the same from a tournament-legality PoV.
Personally I’d prefer if it wasn’t tournament legal. New cards are all well and good, but with their shallow cut, it’s already too expensive for new players to buy into the game (a concern for small meta’s like mine). This is a grievous addition to that price point.
Also, the word “massive” implies that we’re getting 163 unique new cards (and hopefully 3 copies of each), rather than two cards less than the equivalent of a deluxe box that costs almost $40 more.
Final tally according to the preview is 86 corp and 77 runner and four new IDs.
It seems as if the two cards fewer comes from only singletons of the I.D.s as well. Personally, I’d be pretty happy if it did rotate, or if they used it to rotate out one of the weaker deluxes.
I think I am happy either way. Four factions get support and some neutrals and I only pay the cost of three/four data packs for more than a cycle worth of cards AND a legacy style campaign?
It’s pretty much a slam dunk for me.
Or, it could be two data packs worth of cards.
What’s the highest diamond symbol card number on the spoilers?
edit: I see 51 for sure, IPO might be 57 (a bit hard to tell from the picture). That still fits in “divide by 3”, as there’s then 4 IDs and 53 other cards, so IPO would be the last one of the set (assuming runner cards first). The HB campaign card number seems like a #33, which seems reasonable here also. If it was “multiply by 3”, it’d mean that corp cards came in first and then IPO at 57 could mean ~20 neutral cards (which I find a bit hard to believe, but it is a new type of product, so who knows…). Hell, it could have a completely different numbering scheme due to the legacy aspect, so who knows. If they stick with the ordering&numbering we’ve seen in the past, it seems more likely it’s 4 IDs + 53 playsets. I’d LOVE to be wrong about this, though.
we’ll likely get more of these expansions, so i don’t expect they’ll stay as asymmetrical as they are for long
Have you seen the meta recently? It’s asymmetrical for good reason.
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
Most data packs have 2-4 cards for your faction of choice.
That means it adds up to about 15 to 20 cards per cycle per faction.
At the least we will get that many worth of the factions it supports, which is two more factions than a regular big box.