Terminal Directive Campaign Discussion (spoilers)

[Arthur_Barnhouse]

I'm not seeing on here anywhere where the campaign was being discussed. If I'm just missing it I'm sorry.

Terminal Directive campaign:
Was anyone else...a little disappointed? The campaign felt weirdly imbalanced with a favor to the corp and then the game snowballs in a real crazy way if the runner can't find a way to complete their objective and the corp can. By the end of the game the corp had:
-An asset that gave me a tag every time he rezzed ice
-A 3/2 agenda that was worth one less in my score area
-anytime I didn't get a successful run he got two credits.
-the ability to draw as little as zero and as much as two during the mandatory draw
-the ability to draw a card and shuffle the deck whenever I stole an agenda, which meant I could never R&D lock.

It felt crazy. By the end I was just kind of going through the motions. Honestly I was so excited about TD when we stared but by the end I was happy it was just over.

Did anyone have a GOOD experience with it?

[Orbital_Tangent]

There have been a lot of reports of snowball victories with TD. It looks like they didn't have a mechanism in place to rebalance the game if it starts to go heavily in someone's favor.

[victorygames]

Our campaign went the same way...I was the corp, and I had the exact same set up as you did...in one of the later games I even did one of the "caution" abilities just to see what would happen, the 20+ credit one...I still never lost a game

[victorygames]

the problem seems to be that you only get to open new stuff when you win, unless you lose four...that just screams snowball to me...it should have been if either player completes the conditions to use a new set of cards there needed to be an offsetting set for the loser of the game to open...not just after 4 losses, but after every loss

[ErikTwice]

I think that the combination of being able to draw 0-2 cards and gaining 2 credits if the Runner doesn't make a successful run each turn is kind of overpowered. Basicallty, you can get both NEH and EtF on top of your identity which is very powerful.

The two Corp assets are both super-powerful, the tagging one we reduced to "one per turn" because otherwise the game becomes extremely silly. It trashes for 5 too and becomes even better if you upgrade it twice. Your 3/2s turning into Global Foods would also be more palatable if you couldn't play it alongside other 1 pointers, at this point my Skorpio deck has only 3 real agendas.

The Runner gets nothing as powerful as that, most of his campaign cards are actually awful. We are still 1-2 games in and I think he is only considering the use of one. We joked that the Runner pack should have Temujin on it hahaha

Still, the campaign is very fun and building and rebuilding your deck is a fantastic part of the experience. And while there might be some imbalance, when I see the numbers and am reminded of the fact that I was playing with 3 Scorched I must admit it's not really that bad. Just remember to add Mopus to all your builds.

[phette23]

I had a pretty similar experience to those described here and I was playing runner. I wanted to try out Bios so I went with her; the criminal cards in both core and TD seem better so it's possible crim would be a stronger.

The only campaign effect that helped me was gaining 2 credits on every agenda score, all the other runner stuff felt useless. As I lost my fourth game to receive the catchup mechanism, the corp won the campaign, so that didn't even kick in. I read through those "Sneakdoor" cards and while they're certainly powerful, they're also expensive and not that hard for the corp to play around once they know about them.

The campaign experience was pretty fun, I enjoyed running into the increasingly-ridiculous corp cards and trying to deckbuild in the limited card pool, but it did feel very disbalanced in the corp's favor.

[thunderfist]

Sounds like I had a kinda different experience.
I was the runner and I never dropped a game until the last set (Deep Data Mining FTW!) Then once the corp got some of the bonuses on their pad, I couldn't win a game for the longest time and they caught up really fast to the last set

(I kept stealing their normal agendas, and they would score the campaign 0 pointers and swap them for agendas with corp campaign Delgado. Since the 0 points were in my score area, they didn't get destroyed)

I finally won a game again and finished the campaign. I think I only did so well in the beginning because the corp just had their set 1 cards/bonus.

[Arthur_Barnhouse]

Interesting. I wonder if it's just that's if one person gets ahead it's hard to ever catch up, rather than specific to the Corp.

Although, corp cards still seem nuts in comparison to the runner cards.

[netrunnerunner]

I played Steve against Seidr (ya know, the one where his ID isn't blank) and it was awful. I won a bunch of games early when my opponent couldn't figure out how to play around my stuff, but once he did, I was completely locked out. Steve's economy is awful, and putting Sure Gamble on the top of your deck whenever you play it prevents you from ever drawing the breakers you need). Then he started swapping 0-pointers that let him install free Archers from his deck for Elective Upgrades WITH the on-score ability (with 6 3/2s in his deck!), and we both agreed the campaign is hilariously imbalanced and stopped playing.

[miek]

Corp definitely snowballs and runner definitely does not. Both of the corp "win" upgrades are really good cards and the caution they receive in return is barely worth even caring about. On the flip side the runner gains 2 useless cards and a caution that actively takes away 25% of their turn in the early game where you need to be setting up.

That said, I think core set + TD runner is significantly stronger than TD corp, and in the hands of a decent deckbuilder and player it should be at an advantage early game and able to push that into an overall win. The snowball mechanics are hugely in the corp's favour but the runner has enough stones to work through it.

[moosecapable]

One of the cautions that the runner gets forces them to include a resource where you have to trash a card to initiate a run.
I can't remember the name.

It also says to immediately install it when you draw it.
Does that apply to your starting hand?

The ruling on Find the Truth might be relevant, but I wasn't sure.

[Arthur_Barnhouse]

It was unclear, but in our game we discussed it a couple of times and landed on yes. Otherwise you could just discard it, which doesn't seem like the intent.

We played it as "draw. If you don't mull and have one in hand you install it, otherwise you mull and it shuffles back in". I don't know if that's how it SHOULD work tho. Perhaps @dodgepong could assist on this.

Edit: sorry I meant @jakodrako. My brain is dumb.

[CrushU]

Steve vs Seidr for my campaign.
Corp won the first game, then lost the next four.
I had trouble with the make a run every turn caution... Finally said 'screw it' and let it resolve, and the Shadow Team isn't that bad for Steve since I can get cards back anyway, and once you get one Delgado in your score area, the other two can be pitched for Shadow Team... And they get destroyed when you run a Central, which I'm doing anyway... Yeah, was way easier to take that Caution than play around it.

Corp's econ is... not that great. With IPO+Hedge+Campaigns it's manageable, but every so often the Corp doesn't find those, or does find them and I Siphon him into the ground... I suspect the Shaper has a much harder time of it.

Also Maxwell James is completely nuts. I could present Siphon+Maxwell with Steve and I'm pretty sure I'd get the Siphon back. You can de-rez during Encounter.

Runner cards were unimpressive for Steve, until I got Set 9 at least which upgraded the BMI... Now if I happen to hit a Neural Katana (yes he has those. It's annoying.) it can be a good thing for me. It might even make him take those out.

Steve's economy is awful, and putting Sure Gamble on the top of your deck whenever you play it prevents you from ever drawing the breakers you need

Uh, what? What was making you put Sure Gamble on top of your deck...?

[netrunnerunner]

There was one of the campaign abilities that only triggered when the corp had three or more remote servers; I don't remember what that one did, because I didn't pick it (because obviously the corp just won't create three remotes if it would provide me a benefit). The one that I did pick said that, if the corp has three or fewer remote servers, whenever a runner card is trashed, it goes back to the top of the stack. Not "you may put it on the top of your stack," just...it goes there. I was smashing my opponent's face in with it originally by infinitely recurring Bank Jobs (and in one game he installed three ICE on different remote servers so I could never get the ability back; against Criminal, you don't want three ICE on pointless servers). Then he wised up and just let me get the ability, which made it virtually impossible to build my board, as playing the Sure Gambles I needed to install stuff also put them back on top of the stack, making it REALLY inefficient for me to do anything.

It's possible I misread something, but the ability didn't say "may."

[CrushU]

Oh.
I just unlocked that one. Haven't played a game with it yet.

I have Laguna Velasco to improve card draw speed because otherwise you don't have anything available to you as Criminal. Turns out drawing 2 cards with a click is pretty damn fast.

I also think that's only for the first card trashed...? I'll have to look again.

[miek]

On the flip side if you get 2 diesels in hand then its a build in laguna velasco not to mention all the other power things you can do with it (Siphon + Forged Activation Orders, Repeated Econ, Repeated Special Order, etc..)

[vk_yyc]

We just finished our campaign. I played Steve vs Seidr and it felt a bit imbalanced, but I was able to catch up with my pack 4 cards. All in all it was corp 6 wins, runner 4 wins, with most of our games being super close with both of us sitting on match point. In fact I could have won our last game to get to pack 8 if I hadn't talked myself out of playing inside job.

The other runner cards that came in pack 2 and the Masque were useless and I didn't even bother including them. We also found the corp economy was just too good. Between the 3 types of campaigns, hedge funds/IPOs and the 2 credits for not making a successful run, I could almost never keep the corp poor. I triggered Shadow Net and while it was annoying ultimately I was able to get rid of them each time I drew one. We did play it such that the install was clickless though. The corp player missed adding one of his cautions (the more than $20 one). Not sure what happened, if the sticker sheets got stuck together or what, but we read through the resulting card and it felt like it would have barely mattered.

I think the biggest issue was the lack of hq multi access. The runner economy is so bad that I couldn't afford to spend credits for single accesses on hq and once the corp player got his sansan online it was very difficult to win. My strategy was to snipe a few agendas early and to try to win on a makers eye or well timed inside job/stimhack.

All in all we had fun, but there were a few miserable games where it felt like I couldn't win no matter what I tried. I hope they make more of these and hopefully they apply things they learned.

[phette23]

There's also a corp effect (I think it's an ethos effect?) where whenever you take a tag, you have to put a random card from grip on top of the stack, it has a similar effect of causing you to draw the same cards over & over and not advance your board state. I found the critical mass of tag effects to be pretty much impossible to deal with (Data Raven, campaign asset, KP Lynn, that effect).

[CrushU]

Masque is useful on the Predator side at least. Protector side she's a lot less useful.

Corp econ is very strong, but it needs to be because every game we've had where the Corp doesn't find their money early, I can Siphon them to nothing and he can't come back.

HQ multi-access being non-existent is a huge problem.

Did you ever use Maxwell...? He's worth an HQ run to be able to bypass any remote ICE...

Also I included Parasites in my Steve deck because you don't have to pay MWL for them and they're very very good for making R&D/HQ easier to get into over the long term.

[vk_yyc]

I did use Maxwell, I completely forgot to mention. He was bonkers especially with Sneakdoor Prime. I focused spending my influence on Makers Eye and Diesel. It was hard to find room for much else. I was predator, but just couldn't find slots for the Masque due to not being able to run all over the place as my play partner would ice up every server.