Introducing: ANR Damage Control

My name is Jonathan Schoenfelder (although I appear most often on Netrunner sites as rumirumirumirumi) and I’m introducing today a project I’ve been brewing for the past few months. It’s called ANR Damage Control, a weekly column about Android Netrunner the Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight. This column will have a special focus given to damage decks and the various cards, mechanics, and strategies that go into them.

I’ve been playing ANR in Boise, ID for more than a year and a half (since the release of Creation & Control) and from the very first I’ve been struck by the game’s mechanical depth and the dynamic conflicts they create. The cyberwarfare waged between the runner and the corp has both thematic charge and compelling game design that has made it an obsession for me and many other players. One of my favorite aspects of the game’s design has been the way various types of damage and damage prevention shapes the games at many interconnected levels: from the individual game decisions to the overall strategy of different decks to the underlying psychology of players. Damage and its accompanying mechanics and dynamics are wholly distinct and intimately entwined with the entire game of Netrunner, and as such it makes for an interesting subject with a great breadth of topics available for examining and discussing.

When I began to think of what kind of original content I could bring to the Netrunner community, I thought about subjects I could write about that had both specificity and a large amount of material to cover. It’s often easy to make the subject of one’s writing so broad that it becomes abstract and vague, and for a game about precise interactions I felt like it would be unfitting to take too broad a view. At the same time, I don’t want to write something so narrowly focused that I would exhaust everything there is to be said in a single article. Damage strikes a middle ground between a focused approach that invites more thought and conversation than it closes. As the game progresses with new cards and different styles of play, there will be new aspects of damage to consider and discuss. And it’s one of my favorite parts of the game, which does a lot for giving me things to say.

Because this column will be dealing with such a specific topic in Netrunner, it’s going to be geared towards people who have played the game more so than total newcomers. But there’s something to be gained by new and experienced players to engage in an extended meditation on a specific topic in the game, and so I want to be open to wide audience of players even if non-players might find themselves lost in the specialized communication that defines Netrunner. As a means of introducing the column, I’d like to give a basic run-down of what I mean by damage decks and outline some of the basics about damage.

“Damage decks” is simply a term I use to describe any corporation deck that uses damage as a part of its composition and strategy. If a deck has Snare! or Scorched Earth in it, then it’s a damage deck. There are three types of damage in Netrunner:

Meat Damage - This represents the corporation attacking the runner’s body in “meatspace.” It’s often difficult to produce and in most cases require that the runner is tagged first. When a meat damage effect hits its target, it’s usually in large bursts. When you take a meat damage the corporation randomly trashes one card from your grip.
Net Damage - This represents the corporation attacking the runner’s mind while they’re jacked in. It’s easier to produce net damage than other forms of damage because it doesn’t require the runner to be tagged and many pieces of ice have subroutines that produce it. When you take a net damage the corporation trashes one card randomly from your grip.
Brain Damage - This represents permanent damage to the runner’s brain. It’s difficult to get brain damage to hit the runner because there are very few sources for it and most of the ice that give brain damage through their subroutines are bioroids, so you can avoid the damage by spending a click. When you take brain damage the corporation randomly trashes a card from your grip and your handsize is permanently reduced by 1.

If you ever take damage greater than the number of cards you have in your grip, or you end your turn with a handsize smaller than zero, you’re flatlined and immediately lose the game. It’s simple enough to point to a card in a decklist to determine whether it’s a damage deck or not, but there’s more to damage decks than simply whether there are damage producing cards.

It’s important to understand what purposes and strategies damage serves in a damage deck. Not every deck that has damage in them will try to flatline the runner. Some decks have damage cards in them without the damage being an integral part of their strategy, and there are decks that have no damage cards in them but are still using damage to their strategical advantage. Each deck is going to use damage in its own way in order to achieve victory and effect the way runners behave, and most of the well-crafted damage decks will use some combination of the basic damage strategies.

For the sake of simplification, I’ll use three different terms for the broadest categories of damage strategies. The first, which has already been mentioned, is the Kill. The potential to end the game in a fiery explosion (or a well timed jab in the heart) has been a staple for corporation decks since the core set, and a column on damage decks could not be complete without special attention paid to this powerful strategy. Kill strategies are most beneficial to the corporation player because it’s a surefire means of winning even if the rest of the game is going in the runner’s favor: it doesn’t matter if the runner can blaze through all your defenses and steal your agendas if they wind up dead. Kills are often highly situational and difficult to produce reliably: flatlines can take the corporation player by surprise just as much as they take runners. Decks that focus too much on killing the runner can find themselves in losing positions often, and unless they can land the fated killshot they’re left with dismal prospects for the game.

The second strategy is Disruption. Cards were included in the runner’s deck so that they could be used, and losing a card to a piece of damage can be a serious loss of resources. Many decks include damage in order to disrupt the runner’s plans and sap their resources before they have a chance to be used. This can come in the form of an important breaker lost to damage, but it can also disrupt the runner’s plans by forcing them to take an extra click to draw a card. The risks for disruption strategies are lower (since you aren’t putting all of your effort toward producing a specific amount of damage) but so are the rewards (you don’t get an automatic win).

Finally, the third strategy is to Threaten the runner, and this is the most subtle of the three. Sometimes you don’t have to deal damage to the runner at all to get a strategic benefit from damage: if the runner alters their behavior in order to avoid damage you’re gaining a benefit from damage without having to use any of your own resources. There are many decks that include damage cards but that are meant to be used only situationally. Meanwhile the runner changes the way they play the game in order to actively avoid those situations, which can create opportunities the corporation wouldn’t have if the runner wasn’t playing cautiously. Some decks are even built and played to give the runner the impression of forthcoming damage but don’t include any damage dealing cards. The rewards and the risks for this strategy are very difficult to articulate clearly because of its psychological effects, but its presence is palpable and powerful.

I’m planning several articles to deal with a variety of topics and in a variety of different forms. For instance I plan on writing card reviews, which is a well-worn genre of netrunner content but that I think could use the benefit of a narrower focus. I also plan on providing decklists when a specific topic lends itself to discussing specific decks. I want to also take certain opportunities to speak more broadly and abstractly about the game of netrunner, and in these cases damage will provide the necessary grounding. I’m excited to embark on this project and I’m eagerly awaiting any response from the community, whether it’s criticism, conversation, disagreement, or inspiration. Feel free to comment here or in the Reddit thread, or contact me directly through email at rumirumirumirumi@gmail.com.

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I Left My Heart In SanSan

Last week I moved a couple dozen miles from Boise to Nampa, ID, and between filling a uHaul twice, rearranging and demolishing furniture, and hunting down wifi to watch the World Championship, I couldn’t find the time to write for Damage Control. I intended to take an historical look at last year’s Worlds to see the role damage played in the finals, but with this year’s tournament fresh in people’s minds (and much to be digested in those final games) I’m putting that article on the backburner. Instead, I want to look at the new cards released in the SanSan cycle.

The release of new cards into the card pool has a wider (if subtler) effect on the game than simply giving players shiny new toys. As new cards find their way into players’ deck, their opponents are forced to anticipate a new set of possibilities and alter their own decisions with these new threats in mind. The SanSan cycle has given us many key examples, from the way Clot altered the landscape of corporation decks to the way Faust has added a new dimension to evaluating ice. The environment is an apt and often used metaphor for the card pool and how play is effected by new cards. Introducing a new card is like introducing a new species to an eco-system: if it thrives it will find its own niche in the environment, and every other species it shares the environment with will be effected by a new set of relations. Cards share space within the game’s design and play, and the meaning and purpose of each card is only fully fleshed out by how it relates to the other cards in the environment. While it’s valuable to think about each card individually or in relation to a few close analogs, being able to think more ecologically can provide a different kind of insight into the way cards function individually and in decks.

This article will, hopefully, function in concert with card reviews and reader’s personal assessment of cards to form a more complete picture of the effect the SanSan cycle has had on the game. The result should be a different sort of card review, as useful as a tool for understanding the game at large as it is for learning and assessing the new cards, and guiding readers through the interaction of the cards as much as guiding the reader towards or away from certain purchases. Damage and its supporting mechanics are only a small aspect of the SanSan cycle, and a review such as this could be written about many other aspect of Netrunner.

IDs have a strong effect on the game’s environment because their abilities are persistent and with a few exceptions cannot be disrupted by the runner. Even with the natural way IDs effect the game’s environemnt, the IDs introduced in SanSan cycle have special affinity with damage mechanics. This starts off directly with the game’s first flip ID, Jinteki Biotech, released in The Valley. The one-shot ability of the Brewery can deal two net damage without any provocation from the runner. Damage produced by an ID ability can have a powerful effect on the game because they are available immediately and persistently, as compared to other card types that need to be drawn and played. Until The Brewery was released, even ID damage had the limitation of triggering off of agenda scores/steals. The low requirement for dealing damage with the Brewery serves two purposes for Biotech. First, it allows the corp to capitalize on runner mistakes immediately and consistently, which mitigates some of the situational limits of dealing flatline damage. At the same time it poses an eminent threat to the runner whether the Brewery was chosen at the start of the game or not: so long as the ID is unflipped, skilled runners will have to respect that lethal potential. This ID doesn’t just change the possibilities for damage on an ID, but even the nature of IDs, since the ID is a first piece of information about a deck revealed and it’s information revealed before play begins, forcing the runner to play more flexibly against the deck’s threats.

Cybernetics Division, released in Chrome City, threatens the runner in a different way. I’ve already spent some time thinking about Cybernetics Division in relationship to brain damage decks, but the potential for this ID goes beyond the pipedream of a flatline by brain damage. By reducing both player’s handsize by one, the threatening potential of any other damage option is increased by weakening the runner’s defenses and limiting their options turn-to-turn. A smaller handsize can force the runner into installing important cards sooner or risk losing them to damage or being trashed because of overdrawing. If important cards are kept in hand, the quality of the cards trashed by damage increases because of the increased odds of hitting better cards. This makes Cybernetics Division as powerful for disruptive damage strategies as it is for kill strategies. Since important cards are getting installed sooner, this also makes destroyers like Ichi and Rototurret more potent earlier in the game. Cybernetics’ smaller deck size can also increase the speed with which the corp can find these pieces, increasing the pace of the game while forcing the runner into increasing theirs.

Both of these IDs can take advantage of a mechanic invigorated by several cards in the cycle: handsize control. Self-Destruct Chips and Valley Grid both effect the runner’s maximum handsize, the first as a continuous effect, the other as a turn-by-turn punishment for breaking ice. Before, the corp could only lower the handsize of the unner through Gyri Labrinth (a weak codegate), Chairman Hiro (an executive asset, which could be turned into agenda points by the runner), or through brain damage (which is generally hard to connect). These new cards can persistently effect handsize in ways that make it more challenging for the runner to contest. At an earlier moment in the game’s development, runner handsize was not a major concern because except for possibly a clutch save against double Scorched Earth, there wasn’t much to be gained as the runner from increasing their handsize. Adding these handsize control effects coincide with the release of cards like Faust that can take advantage of cards in hand, so the undervalued aspect of the game’s mechanics having their value increased at the same time the corp is begin given more means by which they can alter it.

Chronos Protocol, the other Jinteki ID in the SanSan cycle released in Universe of Tomorrow, is clearly designed with damage in mind, but it has less potential as a kill deck and much more potential using disruptive strategies. Selecting the card trashed by the first piece of net damage suffered each turn gives the corp the oppurtunity to specially target resources. Where damage typically disrupts the runner in a scattershot manner, CP does so with surgeon-like precision. This makes the grip an unsafe place to keep important cards, which forces cards to be installed earlier than the runner may have intended. As mentioned before, this makes destroyers more potent, but it also has an effect on the runner’s operational flexibility. Typically the runner would want to keep cards a secret in their grip until the turn they intended to use them. That way, the corp can’t begin preparing their defenses against the runner’s next attack. Forcing the runner to install those cards earlier (and being able to look into their grip when they suffer damage) can give away their strategy before they have an opportunity to execute it. Skilled corp players can use this information to make reactive moves against the strategy or trash a key piece before the attack gets off the ground. Blacklist, another card released in the cycle, compounds the disruptive potential of damage by keeping cards in the heap and denying recursion. While CP has not have a huge amount of success as of late, I think that’s in part because of the recursion power of Pre-Paid Kate to be able to fight off the disruptive attacks by the corp. If Kate started to fade from prominence, more corps may be able to find success using a strategy for which CP is perfectly suited.

It may not be clear at first, but Haarpsichord Studios from Old Hollywood is an ID that can perform handsomely in damage decks. Limiting the runner to stealing only 1 agenda a turn doesn’t by itself make Haarpsichord a damage ID, but the subtle effect has major implications. Flatline decks need time to set up their killshots, and a limiting factor to that timeframe is how quickly the runner can steal points to win the game before they die. Turns where the runner can steal multiple agendas at once can severely truncate the length of a game, and those turns lost to rapid agenda steals could be the turns needed to kill the runner. Limiting the runner to 1 stolen agenda a turn will at worst guarantee a certain amount of time to the corp before losing. It weakens the runner’s multiaccess power which makes up a decent part of most runner decks. It can also give the corporation more oppurtunities to fire Midseason Replacements, which is the opening salvo of many different game-ending combinations. Haarpsichord’s ability works in a way that’s similar to Personal Evolution’s. The threat of dying to damage following an agenda steal gets the runner to slow down, either to draw up cards or to avoid an inopportune Snare! or Fetal AI access. The longer the game goes, the more chances a PE deck will have to set up a flat line or build a scoring server. Haarpsichord also slows the runner down, but in a less threatening and more absolute manner. This effect can improve a two-pronged attack of pairing a fast advance strategy with the threat of flatline that NBN does so well, and ultimately forces the runner to think beyond moments of intense aggression towards a totalizing game plan.

SanSan cycle did little to expand the options for damage operations. The only operation that directly deals damage is Defective Brainchips. Defective Brainchips can help increase the volume of brain damage dealt to the runner, which can help handle one deficiency in brain damage. The likely result of Defective Brainchips is to get the runner to act more cautiously around well-known sources of brain damage because while it increases the volume of damage, it doesn’t solve the challenges of landing brain damage in the first place. There’s a new source of brain damage that may make that task more difficult for the runner: Ryon Knight. Since he’s an upgrade, Ryon Knight can find a place in any server, so long as there’s oppurutunity to lose clicks on the way through. That typically means a server protected by bioroids, but there’s also ice like Enigma that can force the runner to lose clicks. There’s potentially something anti-synergistic to Defective Brainchips and Ryon Knight though: if you’re worried about taking extra brain damage, you may ensure you have plenty of clicks in case you run into a bioroid (which are an abundant source of brain damage). That may keep the runner from running last click, and unless you can completely surprise the runner, they may avoid Ryon Knight’s condition altogether.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse doesn’t produce damage, but it interacts well with servers that threaten damage against the runner. The choice AOYCR offers the runner will come down to whatever seems more or less appealing to the runner: the repercussions of running the chosen server or giving up an easy point to the corp. Aside from janky shenanigans like a Crick-installed agenda advanced three times by Space Camps in Archives, the primary repercussion for running the central is going to be damage. It’s possible for the corporation to set up a kill shot from AOYCR, but it requires an incredible degree of subterfuge because if the runner recognizes the potential for flatline they’ll likely give up the point instead of running to their death. It can be just as satisfying to get the runner to give up the point instead of running a server that isn’t actually dangerous, but this too requires the sort of mind games that are difficult to ever pull off, and the cost in time and credits to set up such a server may not be worth it. AOYCR does have interesting interactions with cards like Komainu (the runner can’t bypass it before it gains its net damage subroutines) and Ryon Knight (they have no unspent clicks during the corp’s turn, so it’s a guaranteed hit), but the subtle play it demands makes it difficult to take advantage of.

Damage-dealing ice may be scarce in SanSan, but what’s been added have had a strong effect on the game’s environment. Cortex Lock has become a major threat since its release. The biggest cause for this is the ubiquity of Mimic as the catch-all sentry breaker. Mimic has found its way into a great many runner decks because it can help protect the runner against some of the nastiest AP ice (like Komainu and Tsurugi) and can break Architect efficiently. This has considerably diminished the power of Neural Katana, which is expensive to rez and trivial for Mimic to break. Cortex Lock renews the threat of AP sentries by being an inexpensive piece of ice that Mimic can’t break by itself. Late game rigs can easily handle Cortex Lock (for instance, Datasucker + Mimic reduces it to a slightly more taxing Neural Katana), but by the time it’s easy to break, the runner has likely already installed enough cards to make its subroutine trivial anyway. Until that point, it becomes very dangerous for the runner to face check ice with only a Mimic installed.

NEXT Gold has a similar advantage (at 4 strength it can’t be broken by Mimic alone) but serves a very different function. Since the power of its subroutines are based on the number of other NEXT ice rezzed, it’s not very useful as ice until at least 1 or 2 other NEXT ice are rezzed, and because it’s so expensive it doesn’t fit well into the early game. Instead it’s ice meant to catch a runner out of position, and when it does it can be devastative. Losing 3+ programs can set the runner back significantly, and for that to be followed up with the same amount of net damage can blow away many of the runner’s resources at once or simply flatline them. One of the best ways to get NEXT Gold to surprise the runner is by using Marcus Batty (a Jinteki upgrade released in The Underway) to fire the program trashing subroutine before the encounter resolves. Marcus Batty works with all sorts of ice to get around the runner’s ability to keep ice subroutines from ever firing, and he does his best work either trashing the runner’s programs or doing tons of damage.

These ice (and Marcus Batty) are successful additions to the card pool because they serve a powerful purpose that goes beyond the result of their subroutines. By having dangerous subroutines that are difficult to face check safely, they force the runner into playing the game differently in order to meet the challenges they potentially face. This has a more profound effect on the game than simply a strong ice with good subroutines because most ice will never fire their subroutines, and those subroutines will only rarely fire in the most opportune moments for the corp. By effecting the game at a level that goes beyond their individual literal effects, they are able to alter the game as a whole even when they aren’t installed.

Despite how little use it’s seen since release, I think Contract Killer has a lot of potential to shape the game’s environment. Weyland is famous for its flatlining operations like Scorched Earth and Punitive Counterstrike, but aside from Dedicated Response Team it doesn’t have many assets that deal in damage. This includes any damage dealing traps like Jinteki’s Project Junebug or HB’s Cerebral Overwriter or hostile assets like Ronin. Without cards like these there’s very little Weyland can do to build flatline packages outside of their operations, and while those operations are powerful they are more easily played around because there’s little threat elsewhere (and those operations end up being imported into other factions’ decks anyway). Contract Killer can serve the purpose that Ronin serves in Jinteki decks by being a card that is neither a trap nor an agenda but that can be advanced and that the runner wants to run on to trash. Being able to install and advance such a card has a lot of power when it comes to either hiding agendas in plain sight or making advancable traps an active target.

Contract Killer doesn’t produce as much damage as Ronin and it costs credits to rez, but it also has a few advantages that make it very useful for Weyland. It only requires two advancement tokens before it can be activated instead of Ronin’s four. In a faction that has to pay influence for Mushin no Shin, being able to create an active threat quickly and cheaply gives a similar utility as Ronin but without demands for extra support cards. The lower advancement requirement is also useful because it makes Contract Killer look more like an agenda or an advanceable trap because it doesn’t need an unusual number of counters. The two credit rez cost is the same credit requirement to advance and fire Ronin, but having 2 of those credits offloaded until Contract Killer is rezzed reduces the resources lost if the runner trashes it and takes advantage of Weyland’s faction which is typically better at getting credits than Jinteki. Contract Killer also has more flexibility because it can be used to trash a connection instead of dealing damage, which at certain stages of the game can be more important (for instance, a Government Takeover hosted on Film Critic).

Many of these cards don’t see a significant amount of play, but they still fill in important roles within the game’s environment. And as the environment continues to expand and the game evolves, their place in that new environment may become more fertile and more frequently visited.

anr-dc ANR Damage Control Netrunner

Kill Build pt. 2

Last week I wrote about decks that paired a flatline method with a strong scoring strategy in order to utilize the flatline for the lowest possible investiture of resources. The value of these kill decks was the way the flatline created a two-prong attack for the deck’s overall strategy such that a runner was forced into straining their resources to deal with both vectors of the corp’s deck simultaneously. They also have the advantage of mitigating a major weakness playing for the flatline: killshots are highly situational. Being able to score agendas effectively while also threatening the flatline gives the corp a meaningful route to victory in any situation. Even as disparate as the scoring strategies or flatline methods may be, this broad category of kill deck is potent because of the combination of scoring and killing.

There’s another broad category of kill deck which can garner some of these advantages but does so in a profoundly different way. Rather than using scoring strategies to overcome the situational nature of the flatline, these decks produce a large volume of damage through a variety of different methods. The wide variety of damage production creates an overlapping set of conditions for the runner to avoid. While the conditions to create a flatline from any individual method may not be met in every game, the proliferation of methods can give an opening for a killshot with one method while the runner attempts to avoid a different set of flatline conditions. Scoring agendas is a relatively low priority in these decks compared to doing damage to and eventually killing the runner, but it’s the increased number of dangers and the limits of the runner’s knowledge that opens up an avenue for scoring agenda among the fatal traps. If the first broad category of kill deck was a two-pronged attack, this category resembles a minefield primed to explode at the first misstep.

We’ve already seen some aspect of this broad category at work in the decks we looked at in the previous article. Many Weyland decks include both Scorched Earth and Punitive Counterstrike together with a glacier or rush strategy for scoring. These two cards serve the same purpose (producing a large volume of damage in a single click) but have two different sets of conditions that need to be met in order to serve that purpose (Scorched needs the runner to be tagged and Punitive needs the runner to have stolen an agenda and be at lower credits than the corp). A runner who is able to avoid one of the conditions (for instance if they’re playing tag prevention cards like Forger or New Angeles City Hall) may not be able to avoid the other, which gives the corporation an opportunity to flatline one way while the other way is unavailable. In another example, NBN kill decks usually only have one way to flatline (because they have to spend influence for any damage dealing cards) but if their flatline method is through tag punishment they may include a wide range of ways to tag the runner. Tags from Data Raven means the runner either can’t run on a server or has to be ready to clear tags immediately after. Tags from SEA Source or Midseason Replacements means they have to keep up in their credits during the corp’s turn. Tags from Breaking News means the runner has to keep on top of easily scored agendas. Multiple means of tagging forces the runner to navigate a web of choices or die.

Kill decks that focus on multiple flatline methods extend this idea to a more extreme conclusion. If adding an extra means of flatlining makes it more difficult for the runner to avoid dying, then a third or fourth method will make it even more difficult. At a certain point, there are so many means by which the corp can kill the runner it completely warps the flow of the game. With fewer resources spent on defending servers, the time and credits invested by the runner on breaking into servers becomes, in some respects, besides the point. Stealing agendas is still the most viable way for the runner to win, but the path to stealing those points are laden with dangers. Runners must approach these decks more gingerly than because cards are more easily accessed but come with a wider array of risks. In some cases the runner is stuck with making a decision that is little more than a guess with the result deciding the outcome of the game. In other cases the runner is left with little decision at all: anything they decide to do will inevitably lead to flatline.

Understanding how to best utilize the new game environment these kill decks create requires an understanding of the lines of play each of the overlapping flatline methods requires and how they are mutually supportive. To provide some concrete example of this, I want to spend some time focusing on Cambridge PE, a deck popularized in the US by Chris Hinkes and brought to the World stage by Mihn Tran. The Cambridge deck begins its damage focus with the ID: Personal Evolution essentially turns every agenda into a source of net damage. This has several effects on the runner. For one thing, it adds an extra layer of cost to stealing an agenda since every agenda stolen is going to tax the runner one card from damage. The risk of flatlining due to agenda steal is a flatline method that’s unique to PE, and Cambridge decks try to make the most of this with Fetal AI. The risk of running into Fetal AI and a Snare! on a single run can spell certain doom and limits the use and effectiveness of multiaccess cards. Even when stolen agendas don’t result in flatline, unless the runner recovers from the net damage by drawing cards they make themselves more vulnerable to flatlining later. This can force the runner to slow down their aggression or take increased risks of dying. On the other hand, letting the corp score an agenda becomes more dangerous against PE because they get points and deal damage at the same time: this pushes and pulls at the runner, incentivizing runs while also punishing them.

This interaction between PE’s ability and scoring/stealing agendas opens up lines of plays in many different directions. Installing and advancing an agenda can be a means towards victory by points if the corp is able to do so multiple times over the course of the game. But an installed agenda can also be a way to deal damage to the runner without spending extra credits, and if there’s an opportunity from another card like an advanced Ronin or Neural EMPs, feeding the runner an agenda can promote those lines of play by dealing damage at the cost of 1 agenda point. Philotic Entanglement is potent for promoting this line of play because it becomes stronger the more the runner steals from the corp, so now not only are you promoting the flatline by dealing damage but you’re also promoting the Philotic flatline by giving them more agendas. With the correct set-up, the corp can create no-win scenarios for the runner by being able to capitalize on any decision the runner makes.

Alongside the risks of agenda play Cambridge uses a combination of Ronin and advancable traps to promote multiple lines of play. A card that can be advanced is likely either an agenda, a trap, or a Ronin. When there’s an agenda installed and advanced, the runner generally want to run on it to prevent the corp from scoring. When there’s a trap installed, the runner doesn’t want to run because they’ll suffer the effects of the trap (which can be incredibly punishing in the case of Project Junebug or Cerebral Overwriter). When the card is a Ronin, the runner wants to run and trash it or else the corp can threaten to deal a large amount of damage in a single click. These three possibilities are at odds with each other because you want to run right away on an agenda, you never want to run on a trap, and you eventually want to run on a Ronin but you don’t necessarily want to right now. As more cards are left installed and advanced, it becomes even more difficult to clarify for the runner which cards are which and the stakes become higher for the runner if they leave those cards unmolested.

Once two Ronins are installed and advanced, the corp can threaten an instant flatline. The threat of a double Ronin flatline can open up many lines of play. Even with one Ronin out, a pair of Neural EMPs in HQ can kill off a runner with less than five cards in hand and no prevention. If one of the cards installed and advanced is a Cerebral Overwriter, the risk of double Ronin may seem so great to the runner that they can be forced to run headfirst into a trap in order to deny a double Ronin flatline. Players may be approaching these lines of play with straightfoward and well reasoned maxims. For instance, they may rightly assume that if an advanced card was an agenda you would have scored it at the first opportunity. The threat of double Ronin may reactivate a trap that’s been set but not sprung: now that one of the two cards may be a Ronin setting up for a flatline, the runner may feel forced to run on a card they previously thought was a trap. There’s also an opportunity to keep advanced agendas ready to be scored to deal a piece of net damage without spending a click. And as soon as the corp reaches match point all advanced traps suddenly become active as the runner cannot allow the corp to score the winning points uncontested. As long as the lines of play are available to the corp, the runner is left with a set of uncertain and risky choices, and as more lines of play are developed the choices for the runner become more serious and more difficult.

Even if the runner is able to avoid a total blowout from the corp, as the game goes longer they can start to run up against a completely different line of play : death by a thousand cuts. Because Cambridge has many different sources for damage, it’s possible to deal a large volume of damage spread out over the course of the game. Once the runner draws through their deck they’ll have no new cards to lose to damage, which can put serious constraints on their actions. Unless they’ve been able to get enough points so the next agenda access will win the game, they need to have enough cards left over to steal the winning points or lose from PE’s ability. If on the way to finding those agendas they should run into traps, they may be locked out of winning by points altogether or flatline from small pieces of damage. It’s always a possible avenue for the Cambridge player to bleed the runner dry of all their card. This line of play is developed slowly every time the runner trashes a card from overdrawing or taking a piece of damage and its subtle effect on the game may only be perceived when it’s too late to mount a meaningful defense.

The corporation’s job in this game is to keep as many lines of play open for exploitation at the same time they promote those lines of play. For instance, a corp player getting ready to flatline the runner with a double Ronin play may install a Ronin with Mushin no Shin and advance it once, leaving themselves with 4 credits. Three of those credits need to be available if the corp wants to threaten the runner with a Cerebral Overwriter. Going below 3 credits closes off that line of play until the corp can get more credits. With the threat of Cerebral closed, there are fewer reasons for the runner not to run on the advanced cards: if it’s an agenda they can take some damage and get points, if it’s a Ronin they can defuse a future threat, and if it’s a Cerebral Overwriter they’ll avoid taking any brain damage. If the runner should run first click into a Snare! in R&D, the corp is left with a difficult decision of their own: trigger the Snare! and close off the Cerebral play, or lose the Snare! and keep the Cerebral play alive. It’s difficult to know in this circumstance the absolute correct play (for instance, the runner may be willing to run on the advanced remotes even if the threat of Cerebral was alive, or they may be unwilling to run during the same turn they ran on a Snare! for fear of Fetal AI or Scorched Earth), but the decision has to be made and the way to discern the best play has to come from an understanding of what lines of play are available and how the choices made by either player changes the possibilities of those plays.

A term that’s been used to describe the kind of intensive decision-making decks like Cambridge PE require is “skill-check.” At each step in the development of lines of play, each player has opportunities to shape that development based on their skill and knowledge of the game of Netrunner, and as long as players are able to use that skill and knowledge there is a possibility for them to successfully navigate the deck’s challenges. Players who don’t make the proper use of their skills can find themselves promoting lines of play for the corp instead of closing or removing them. If, for instance, the runner feels safe running on advanced remotes because the corporation has 1 credit (so Cerebral isn’t an active threat), they may be forgetting that Project Junebug only needs 1 credit to trigger its payload of damage. If the runner is being too conscientious about advanced remotes for fear of traps, they may be facing a rude awakening when the corp suddenly scores a Philotic for massive damage. A deck like this is challenging the skills of the runner because they’re being forced to use their resources and card knowledge in a way that is almost alien to other decks, and unless the runner has the necessary experience and skill they may not be able to make the changes to their play in time to deal with the deck’s challenges.

Unfortunately the reverse is also true: if the runner is familiar with the kill deck’s tricks and are able to play the odds well, the challenge the deck poses to the runner is significantly diminished. Even with the advantage of multiple means of flatlining the runner, flatlines are also situational, and if the runner can skillfully navigate those situations the opportunity to flatline the runner may never arise. In that case, the corp is now forced to win the game on points for which a kill deck of this type is not well suited. Sometimes this comes down to luck (for instance, if the corp never draws a trap against a runner who wants to aggressively run remotes) and other times it comes from the runner’s deck choices (for instance, if they include a lot of damage prevention cards in their deck build), but regardless of why the skill-check fails to adequately catch the runner, the corp is left with a bad mess to try to clean up.

This is a major part of why these types of decks only appear occasionally in high levels of competitive play and why once they make their way to top tables they’re likely to fall out of favor more quickly than other deck types. Once strong players start winning consistently with these decks, players become more familiar with the various tricks in their arsenal, giving them an ever-growing advantage over the corp. Even in match ups where the corp has the advantage, the fact that skill is a major determining factor limits the effect the mismatch has over the general outcome of the game. Even if players aren’t able to learn how to navigate the overlapping flatline conditions, damage prevention cards go a long way in countering these decks because they rely so much on producing damage in volume. These decks can periodically reappear in the meta once people stop anticipating them or as new cards are introduced to reanimate lines of play, but once they come back people are able to tech against or play around them more quickly the second time.

The fleeting nature of the deck’s competitive life shouldn’t discourage players from picking up these decks or building new versions of them. For one thing, playing these decks is the fastest and most effective way of learning how to counterplay against them: by learning the lines of play from the corporation side, you can learn as a runner how plays develop and what signals to look for when a line of play is coming together. For another, building a new deck might be able to catch unsuspecting opponents off-guard, since they may be unfamiliar with the general tenor of this type of deck or respond to lines of play as if they were developing out of a similar but distinct kind of kill deck. As new cards come out new lines of play are made available which can take advantage of other player’s unfamiliarity with how those new cards are used in the field. And ultimately, playing a game of netrunner which challenges the skills of each player is a benefit all to itself, and these decks challenge player skill in unique and surprising ways.

anr-dc ANR Damage Control Netrunner

Kill Build pt. 1

In previous editions of Damage Control I’ve made an effort to balance the conversation around damage decks between three primary strategies: killing, disrupting, and threatening the runner. Of these three strategies, killing is the one that most readily comes to mind in conversation about damage decks. Flatlining the runner is an incredibly powerful strategy because it can create a sudden win out of even dismal situations for the corp. It’s possible for the runner to die to a random piece of damage, but a careful or skilled runner will be able to avoid flatlining from stray pieces of damage. This means that most of the time a deck has to be specially designed to actively and consistently flatline the runner. Decks built to flatline the runner (often called “kill decks”) can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and demonstrate the full power of damage in Netrunner.

Despite its power, killing the runner is also a highly situational win condition. The corporation needs to be able to produce a large amount of damage and the runner needs to have fewer cards in hand and inadequate prevention methods to succumb to that damage. This adds risks to decks that want to go “all-in” to kill the runner because, unless the situation arises for the kill shot, the deck may be left with few other opportunities to win. In my opinion there are two broad categories of decks that try to overcome this central challenge: decks that pair a strong flatline method with a strong agenda scoring method, and decks that include multiple methods for flatlining the runner. These broad categories have their own approach to the flatline that make discussing them together less useful than discussing them separately, so I’ll be focusing in this article on the first of these broad categories.

When the corp moves to score agendas, it poses a challenge to the runner to use the resources at their disposal to either stop the corp from scoring or steal points faster that than the corp can score. These resources come in many different forms but are primarily cards, credits, and clicks. Once a corporation advances a card in a remote or starts to fast advance agendas from their hand, the runner is being forced to use these resources. These resources, however, are also the resources used by the runner to keep themselves from dying when faced with damage. An icebreaker installed from the runner’s grip is one fewer piece of damage they can take before flatlining. Clicks they spend getting credits or making runs are fewer clicks they can spend drawing back up to a full grip or drawing and installing damage protection. And the credits used to break into servers or use their multiaccess options are fewer credits available to remove tags or prevent dangerous traces. Runners can find themselves hemmed in from the need to pressure the corporation’s agendas and the need to stay alive.

At the same moment the runner is caught spending resources between these important drives, the corporation is similarly spending resources advancing their agendas while threatening the runner with death. This balancing act for the corp takes place primarily in the deckbuilding phase of Netrunner. The corp has to decide how much of their deck is going to be dedicated to killing the runner and how much is going to be dedicated to things like protecting servers and building an economy to sustain them through the game. There are cards like Data Raven that can pull double duty, but for the most part cards that are included to flatline the runner are not going to be able to contribute to the corp’s goal of scoring agendas. For most kill decks, this means constructing a method for flatlining the runner which requires the smallest investment of resources possible and designing the bulk of the deck around a method for scoring agendas. Kill decks constructed in this way are said to use the flatline as an “alternative win condition” where the primary win condition is to score agendas. This is not precisely true in practice since many of the decks constructed in this way find the preponderance of their wins through flatline rather than scoring. Put more precisely, these decks create powerful “forks” in the runner’s decisions on how to best use their resources and powerful means for punishing the runner regardless of the branch they choose.

The most notorious flatlining method for this style of kill deck is the ubiquitous SEA Source + Scorched Earth combo. Scorched Earth creates a massive amount of damage in a single click, making it one of the most efficient damage cards in the game. At 4 meat damage a pop, Scorched Earth gets a lot of utility out of a single deck slot, which makes it very popular for decks that want to invest as little deckspace as possible on the flatline. Paired with SEA Source in order to actively give the runner a tag and another Scorched Earth, you’re looking at dishing out 8 meat damage in a single turn, which will flatline most runners instantly. For Weyland decks, this combination only cost 4 cardslots and 2 influence (plus an extra cardslot and 2 influence for each extra copy of SEA Source you want to add) which leaves most of the deck for the economy needed to land the SEA Source trace and for the ice used to protect agendas while they’re waiting to be scored. The low investment this combo requires also gives the corp a lot of latitude for what the rest of the deck looks like, and that allows for a wide range of scoring strategies to be used.

A common style of scoring strategy that gets paired with SEA Source + Scorched Earth is Rush. By installing small end-the-run ice and trying to score agendas as soon as possible, rush decks try to exploit the runner’s relatively underdeveloped boardstate to score agendas safely and cheaply. Weyland as a faction has many advantages to taking the rush approach: they have access to some key pieces of end-the-run ice like Ice Wall and Meru Mati, they have cards like Power Shutdown and Archer that can degrade the runner’s rig, and many of their agendas give them money which can maintain their early momentum. Add to that Weyland’s low-investment in SEA Source +Scorched Earth and you have a potent rush deck. Rush as a scoring strategy assists in creating flatline situations by forcing the runner into managing their early game resources in less than ideal ways. If the runner starts prioritizing early runs on remote servers over building their rig they’re less likely to take the time to build up a lasting economy or slow down to install damage prevention. If the runner does decide to slow down their pace, they may be letting the corporation get a big early lead in points. That early lead in points can also give the corporation more resources with which to score agendas or pull off the flatline. It’s a dangerous balancing act that the runner is being asked to perform, and the threat of the flatline raises the stakes of that performance.

I’ve been recently playing the Argus Security deck that won the Polish nationals this year, and it illustrates in full form the power of Weyland rush decks. Argus’ ID ability is a powerful punishment on a runner that is able to successfully steal agendas This increases the investment of resources the runner has to make in order to keep from losing the game on points. Behind the scenes Scorched Earth is waiting to catch an unprepared or ill-equipped runner when those expenditures of resources leave them weakened or unable to clear tags. The agenda suite is also geared towards keeping the pressure on the runner and threatening them later in the game: Oaktown Renovation lets the corp maintain their economic presence while advancing an agenda, Project Atlas can be overscored to let the corp search for combo pieces or more agendas to score, Posted Bounty can be left advanced in a server and then later scored and forfeited to land a free tag, and Chronos Project can remove some of the runner’s spent resources. These interlock nicely with an overall strategy of advancing agendas to create no-win situations for the runner.

The deck description claims that you want to focus on scoring agendas rather than trying to flatline the runner when playing this deck. In deed, many players talk about playing kill decks in general as focusing on scoring agendas and only flatlining the runner as an afterthought. But I would suggest we think of it a different way: that trying to score agendas with this deck actually promotes the flatline rather than detract from it. Advancing agendas becomes the means by which the corporation creates situations for flatlines, and the threat of flatlining is the means by which agendas get scored. This is the general condition of kill decks, and what decks do by having strong methods for scoring agendas is make the threat of scoring of equal weight to the threat of flatlining.

Glacier decks are the mirror image of rush decks: rather than taking advantage of the early game underdevelopment of the runner’s rig, they build a powerfully taxing array of ice during the mid- to late-game in order to score big agendas behind their defenses. Against glacier decks the runner usually has more time to spend on building their rig, but they also need to build a robust economic engine if they want to keep the corp from getting massive scoring windows. Relying on strong defenses means the corp will need to spend more deck space on ice and econ. They can afford to have large agendas which reduces the likelihood of a runner stealing an agenda on a random access and let the corp take full advantage of the scoring windows their large defenses create.These conditions in the glacier deck pair well with another potent flatline method: Punitive Counterstrike. With large agendas it’s possible to get 3 or even 6 meat damage from a single Punitive Counterstrike, and since it will be expensive for the runner to make their way through the corp’s defenses, the runner will often find themselves with a handful of agenda points but no money to beat the corp on the Punitive trace. Weyland is again the obvious faction to make use of this strategy, but because Punitive Counterstrike is 2 influence and doesn’t require any other cards to make it useful (just a strong economy and big agendas), many factions have been able to use Punitive Counterstrike to give their glacier decks a deadly edge.

This Blue Sun deck that won a store championship in Manchester, NH and this HB deck that won in Edinburgh both illustrate how glacier builds can improve with the flatline. Blue Sun’s ability is incredibly useful both for glacier strategies and flatline strategies: credits from expensive ice can be brought back into the credit pool to help maximize the defenses of key servers, or the credits can make a huge swing in the credit differential which can be brought to bear on deadly traces like Punitive Counterstrike or SEA Source. Weyland also has the advantage of using Government Takeover as one of their agendas, which makes for a very small agenda count and hilariously massive Punitive Counterstrikes. ETF has a naturally strong economy which facilitates building well-defended servers while also threatening the flatline through SEA Source + Scorched Earth. More influence is being used in the HB deck to import the flatline combo, but HB doesn’t have to use their influence on ice as much as other factions, so the extra influence is available in this glacier build. For both of these decks most of the wins are made up of flatlines despite having a relatively small amount of deckspace dedicated to damage dealing cards. This is largely because the opportunities for flatlines that these decks create with their method of scoring are nearly as consistent as their deck’s capacity to score: the difference is flatline opportunities arise earlier in the course of the game than the winning agenda.

The long-standing champion of scoring methods is fast advance, and for good reason. Fast advance forces the runner to rely on random accesses to steal agendas because agendas are rarely left installed during the runner’s turn. Many fast advance decks are also able to begin scoring agendas after only a few turns, meaning the runner will have to find ways to build their rig and start getting high-quality runs or risk being left in the dust. Since fast advance decks don’t have to build scoring remotes, they have a lot more flexibility on how much of the deck is taken up with ice, econ, or other cards. All of this makes fast advance deck fertile ground for flatline options. One of the key features to kill decks that pair a scoring method with a flatline method is the need for strong draw power and careful hand management. Dealing with both scoring agendas and threatening the flatline means the corp player will have to deal with an HQ that is chock full of cards like Scorched Earth and Punitive Counterstrike that they can’t use right away. In rush and glacier decks that can start to cause problems because you’re either left using their resources installing cards at inopportune moments or trashing cards they want to save until later. Fast advance decks don’t have this problem as much as other deck types because agendas are going to leave HQ to be scored quickly and since the overall pace of the game will increase there’s less to be lost when trashing a card that isn’t immediately useful. Because NBN has the best draw, the strongest fast advance options, the strongest means of tagging the runner, and plenty of influence, it’s the faction that can most deftly apply the threat of flatline to their robust fast advance strategies.

This Haarpsichord deck that took 2nd place at the PSI games is a great example of fast advance paired with flatlines to make an aggressive and powerful deck. Haarpsichord’s ability puts the breaks on the runner’s ability to steal agendas, which gives the corp much needed time to gather all the pieces required to make the deck thrum. The limit to one stolen agenda a turn also makes TGTBT and Explode-a-palooza into strong punishment for a runner using the multiacess cards that pose the greatest threat to fast advance decks. Quantum Predictive Model punishes runners for keeping tags and pairs wonderfully with Data Raven to give the corp free agendas. AstroScript Pilot Program is a powerful fast advance engine in its own right, while small agendas like QPM, TGTBT, and 15 Minutes can be forfeited with 24/7 News Cycle and a scored Breaking News to land two tags in a single click. Those two tags activate Scorched Earth and Traffic Accident, which can produce flatline-causing damage to a runner. Add in Midseason Replacements and News Team for more tagging potential and you have a vicious combination of speed and power. It’s a powerful development of the older Butchershop style in Near-Earth Hub (which used the extra draw from NEH to drive up the game’s pace) which leaves very few solutions on the runner’s side except pray from Plascrete Carapace and lucky draws.

These kill decks put on display only a portion of the vast variety of kill decks possible to create. Essentially, all that one needs for such kill decks are a means to win by points and a method for flatlines that compliment each other. The challenge in these deck builds is finding the proper balance between investment in flatlines and investment in scoring agendas, and in following the best line of play to achieve victory. Next week we’ll be working with another style of kill deck that emphasizes lines of play over complimentary strategies.

anr-dc ANR Damage Control Netrunner

Massive Headache

For Netrunner players who enjoy deckbuilding, there are interesting puzzles to solve within the game’s mechanics that make the task feel like a game onto itself. While other players see deckbuilding as a means to an end (tweaking old lists to fit personal preference or meet the challenges of the current meta), inventive players can find many pleasures in tooling around with an as-of-yet unsolved msytery in the game’s design. Few deckbuilding puzzles have been as enticing as building a brain damage deck, which has captured the collective imagination of deckbuilders since the Core Set. Brain damage is pound-for-pound more powerful than either meat damage or net damage, and the prevalence of deck types that use meat or net damage makes the absence of brain damage decks an alluring puzzle to solve. New sources of brain damage have trickled into the cardpool with periodic releases, and each new source of brain damage has caused a renewed interest in creating decks that use brain damage to its fullest effect. “This new card,” many deckbuilders claim, “is the card brain damage decks needed.” They go off to create their masterpiece and finally realize their deckbuilding dreams.

These dreams are rarely realized. Even after several cycles and deluxe expansions, the dream of a brain damage deck seems almost as distant now as ever. Somehow, even with a deck loaded with brain damage sources, it’s rare to see these decks break out in major tournaments or even find consistent wins in casual play. After a few weeks of excitement and frantic activity, the cards touted as the final piece of the brain damage puzzle fade into disinterest and find residence in binders and card boxes. This cycle of excitement, disappointment, and obscurity followed each new card despite the disappointments from the last. The collective desire for a brain damage deck has become a repetitive headache on the deckbuilder’s brain. I want to take the opportunity this week to consider brain damage more closely and find a different approach to the idea of a brain damage deck that might be more useful and less brain-busting.

The sources of brain damage play a crucial role in understanding its place in Netrunner. Beginning in the Core Set, brain damage was the exclusive domain of Haas-Bioroid’s signature bioroid ice. This added an extra layer of danger to HB’s beefy ice suite which, together with its formidible economy, made it the strongest corp at the game’s onset. The trade-off for having such powerful ice was the ability of the runner to spend a click to break bioroid subroutines. That meant that however threatening these ice could be, they only rarely landed brain damage against unprepared or reckless runners. These subroutines acted more often as an extra tax on runner clicks and credits rather than as dangerous sources of damage because the runners controlled when they ran and could easily prepare for bioroids by running early in their turn in case one was unexpectedly rezzed. Bioroids were also relatively expensive, which meant runners could force the corp to decide whether to rez a dangerous piece of ice knowing there was a chance the runner could slip through with clicks. During certain parts of the game, runners might even let those brain damage subroutines fire in order to get access to servers to steal agendas, turning their handsize into yet another resource the runner could use against the corp. Janus 1.0 has increased the dangerous potential of bioroids, and Ryon Knight has helped restrict the flexibility of the runner to avoid brain damage, but these cards haven’t categorically altered the relationship between runners and bioroids as sources of brain damage. Even as new cards were released and sources of damage changed this has been the familiar theme of brain damage: the runner has considerable control over when they take brain damage and they will take brain damage when it serves their own purpose.

Since the Core Set there have been a few important releases that give the corp more opportunities to deal brain damage, and the most significant addition is Cerebral Overwriter. Most sources of brain damage deal out single pieces of brain damage at a time, making each successful brain damage effect only a slight disruption to the runner’s resources. Cerebral Overwriter upturns this pattern of low-volume brain damage by giving the corp the chance to land several brain damage in one blow. If brain damage is limited to instances of runners making ill-timed runs, Cerebral Overwriter dramatically increased the penalty for those mistakes and gave those penalties lasting consequences. The strength of Cerebral Overwriter doesn’t only come to bear on the runner when they mistakenly fall prey to its brain damage. Runners are left to wring their hands when an agenda gets installed and advanced twice because the chance of it being an advanced Cerebral Overwriter makes the prospect of running the scoring server less appealing. This change in the runner’s behavior can be used by the corp in order to score agendas unopposed or even score agendas undefended because the risks of taking brain damage seems greater than the risk of letting the corp score. This crisis for the runner becomes even more pressing once the corp is on match point because now the threat of letting the corp win becomes greater than the threat of damage, which can get an otherwise cautious runner to make a mistake. This illustrates another theme in brain damage: that brain damage’s strategic power is more in how it threatens the runner than in how it disrupts or kills them.

It’s difficult to land brain damage consistently, and because generally sources of brain damage are low-volume, getting a runner to flatline due to reduced handsize is rarely done. This becomes even more difficult if runners start playing handsize increasing cards, so it doesn’t make, in and of itself, an effective strategy. Brain damage, to be most effective, requires other strategies besides dealing more brain damage. When it comes to flatlining the runner, this generally means using meat or net damage to secure the killshot after brain damage has diminished the runner’s defences. Unfortunately deckbuilders trying to pair different types of damage run into a further restriction: brain damage cards, with a few lackluster exceptions, are exclusively Haas-Bioroid while HB has almost no sources of other types of damage. This means decks that want to leverage brain damage are either going to be in HB and use up influence splashing other types of damage, or are going to be in other factions and spend influence splashing for HB. While Punitive Counterstrike and Neural EMP have found their way into HB brain damage decks, they can only so often be relied upon to secure the killshot because they will make up a small amount of the deck. Compounded with brain damage’s unreliability, it makes the flatline exceedingly difficult for brain damage decks to achieve.

In HB the ID that most readily comes to mind for brain damage decks is Cybernetics Division. Since it starts both players with a reduced handsize, it effectively treats the runner as if they start with a piece of brain damage at the cost of reducing the amount of flexibility the corp has from turn to turn. With a smaller deck size, Cybernetics Division also makes it more likely for the corp to draw into damage-causing cards and reduces the number of agenda points available in the deck. With a full compliment of 15 influence, the extra damage cards splashed in from other factions make up a larger percentage of the deck. This makes the game go faster for both players and lowers the variance of the deck, making it more likely for them to assemble the cards needed to threaten the runner with brain damage or with the killshot. If the goal of the Cybernetics Division deck is to reduce the runner’s handsize into range of a killshot, it can also make use of Self-Destruct Chips to get the handsize reduced without having to actually land brain damage. This deck needs to be able to effectively score agendas because the volume of damage produced in HB is generally low, but the threat of brain damage and other means of reducing the runner’s handsize makes scoring agendas easier and fits brain damage into an overall strategy for the deck. This is an important theme to brain damage that runs counter to the dream of a brain damage deck: brain damage is more effective in supporting a deck’s design than in leading it.

Outside of HB, Jinteki is the faction most likely to see brain damage used. It is the only faction besides HB to have brain damage producing cards, but those cards are difficult to wield effectively and still hinge on runner making mistakes. Where brain damage finds its way most often into Jinteki is through Cerebral Overwriter, and the large burst of brain damage it produces can nicely compliment Jinteki’s penchant for net damage. Cerebral Overwriter fits into Jinteki’s impressive arsenal of traps and earns the 6 influence used to splash a full set. Cards like Mushin no Shin and Ronin and agendas like The Future Perfect and House of Knives synergize well with Cerebral Overwriter both in its capacity to reduce the runner’s handsize and the way it influences runner behavior. Despite its purple card boarder, Cerebral Overwriter has had a definitive effect on Jinteki damage decks. Cambridge PE is essentially defined by the role Cerebral Overwriter plays alongside its other cards to the point that Cambridge-style decks are influence by Cerebral Overwriter’s presence even when they don’t run them.

Recently I’ve been playing a deck I found on Netrunnerdb called Xanatos’ Gambit that makes novel use of these various themes in brain damage. It’s a Cybernetics Division deck that splashes for Mushin no Shin and Media Blitz to create a complex web of card interactions to promote the deck’s goals and leverages the strengths of brain damage. While typically Mushin is seen as a gambit on whether the runner will run on the advanced trap or ignore an advanced agenda, this deck makes a gambit where all outcomes can in some way benefit the corp player. An unsprung Cerebral Overwriter can become a means of defending a Shell Corporation, which is the principle econ engine of the deck, and a stolen Mandatory Upgrades can be copied with Media Blitz to create a fast advance engine to rapidly score the other agendas in the deck. While this is the ideal line of play for this deck, I’ve found myself in very interesting situations which go against the regular plan. Several times I’ve been able to score an over-advanced Project Vitruvius, which in one game let me recur Hedge Fund to save myself from siphon spam and in another let me recur NEXT ice that kept getting trashed by Parasite.

What most interests me about this deck is that while the primary deterrent to running advanced cards in remote servers was Cerebral Overwriter, the threat of brain damage in this deck is mostly a bluff. Aside from NEXT Gold, there is no way to reliably deal damage to the runner aside from Cerebral Overwriter, and while the smaller handsize from Cybernetics Division makes brain damage more disruptive to the runner’s handsize, there’s no real means for capitalizing on a runner with a hand size of zero. There’s another deck that’s very similar with Neural EMP for a killshot rather than Media Blitz, but the Xanatos’ Gambit version is a masterful demonstration of the power of threatening the runner. There have been several games I’ve played where, looking at the board from the corp’s perspective, I saw that taking some brain damage would have been the best course of action in order to trash my economy. In one game, it seemed obvious to me that running on a newly installed and advanced Mandatory Upgrades would have been the best move because the runner could tank four brain damage with almost no worry of flatlining. But the runners’ perspective in these games were very different because the threat of flatline is so closely tied to an abundance of brain damage that aggressive runners start to get more cautious around even the smell of brain damage. Because Media Blitz is such an influence intensive card it should key the runner into the lack of damage to follow up a zero card handsize, but it can still catch players off guard when they’re reduce to such a vulnerable position even if the danger isn’t real.

These decks won’t completely sate the desire for a brain damage deck because they don’t quite go for the “all-in” kind of strategies that fuel that desire. Deckbuilders are still interested in a deck where it’s the brain damage flatline that clinches the game, and while we’re a long way off from having the cardpool to support such a deck, that won’t keep them from dreaming. Meanwhile brain damage when incorporated into a wider deck strategy can have an impact that’s both subtle and profound.

anr-dc ANR Damage Control netrunner

The Psychographics of Damage

Magic:The Gathering is a major touchstone for many Netrunner players because it has been in continuous development for the longest period of time and is by far the most popularly played collectable card game. As such, many pieces of terminology used in Magic have been inherited for use in Netrunner. One set of terminology that is important to be familiar with are the psychographic profiles used by the designers and players of Magic. These profile some of the reasons players are attracted to different cards. There is an excellent article from Magic’s head designer Mark Goldwater that defines and describes the three major psychographic profiles used by Wizards of the Coast’s development team:

Timmys like powerful cards that have impactful effects.
Johnnys like cards that can showcase their creativity and personality.
Spikes like to play cards that gives them the best chance of winning.

These profiles are useful categories and can generally apply to Netrunner players as they have done with Magic players for many years. There are, however, some crucial distinctions between Netrunner and Magic that require a slightly different perspective. Netrunner has a significantly smaller card pool than most legal sets of Magic and the fact that the Netrunner cardpool is practically cut in half (half for corps and the other half for runners) means that decklists are going to have more overlap in Netrunner regardless of the different players’ motivations. Netrunner is also different from Magic in that individual player choices that dictate the flow of a Netrunner game are more numerous than similar choices in Magic. The choice and order of each click a Netrunner player uses dictates the flow of the game just as much as the cards they choose to put into their decks. The psychographic profiles, when applied to Netrunner, should be geared towards how each type of player understands and utilizes the game’s complex mechanics as much as what cards they like to play in order to harness those mechanics.

As I wrote in the introduction to ANR Damage Control, damage has an effect at all levels of the game of Netrunner, from the lowest level of individual gameplay choices to the broadest and most abstract conditions of the game itself. Psychographic profiles fall under this former category since it is an overarching condition of what brings players to the Netrunner table and what they walk away with once the game is over. Grounding this broad conversation on how different types of players view and utilize damage can give us a way into thinking about psychographic profiles in general without becoming too vague or cliched. Here are my views on these three profiles and how they understand and utilize Netrunner’s damage mechaincs.

Timmy likes fireworks. Displays of majesty, power, and surprise bring an element of excitement and pleasure that Timmy desires in everything, especially in their card games. In Netrunner, these fireworks are often provided by damage cards that threaten to blow up the runner and all their stuff. Whether it’s unleashing the fury of a Scorched Earth or nimbly dodging the corporation’s Punitive Counterstrike, it’s these thrilling moments in Netrunner that keeps Timmy playing game after game.

The immediate appeal of flatlining the runner can motivate Timmy to bring decks specialized in kill strategies even if they lose repeatedly in search of that elusive killshot. The promise in a card like Project Junebug is the sudden reversal of fortune from one careless move, and cards that support it like Mushin no Shin and big agendas like The Future Perfect can create gamestates that force a climatic situation. There will surely be games where a lucky or astute player will foil Timmy’s attempts at the kill, but for Timmy spectacular losses are just as important as spectacular wins and it’s better to go down in a fireworks display than to win in a slow middling fashion.

Even when Timmy isn’t going for a kill strategy, there’s something appealing to the act of dealing damage to the runner. Discarding a card at random from the runner’s grip can sometimes have disastrous results, and for Timmy every card trashed from damage could be that disaster. When playing on the other side, Timmy enjoys seeing their least valuable cards get trashed while the key pieces avoid destruction. Each piece of damage is pregnant with possibilities, and even though dozens of cards may be trashed to damage without much effect, Timmy will remember that one time, when they were down to the wire against a Kate deck, that they sniped the Levy AR Lab Access from their last piece of damage. It’s moments like these which Timmy cherishes the most.

However exciting these moments may be, there will be plenty of unexciting moments. This becomes especially true during tournament play, when many players set aside their homebrewed decks and settle in for several hours of math homework. There are plenty of thrills to be had during tournaments, but they are more often in closer margins and with fewer spectacular swings (READ: smaller fireworks). Even during meet-ups Timmy can find themselves losing (or winning) from a single Shock! or a runner forgetting to draw in their last clicks, and for Timmy these are very dissatisfying conclusions. Subtle strategies are also not in Timmy’s wheelhouse, and so the potential for threatening damage to change the runner’s behavior may simply be lost on a Timmy who is in search of something splashy.

Johnny likes attention. That’s not to say they are vain or needy, but whether it’s attention they’re paying to the game’s inner workings or it’s attention others are paying to their outlandish deckbuilding choices, Johnny gets a lot of pleasure from the kinds of attention the game of Netrunner creates. Whether damage serves this purpose intrinsically (because of the special dangers that attend damage) or extrinsically (for instance if no one else is currently playing damage decks in their meta), Johnny will find a use for damage if it strikes their fancy.

Kill strategies can be very popular with Johnnys, although for Johnny it’s less about the result and more about the path to achieving it. Anyone with a core set can slap together SEA Source and Scorched Earth to make a killer combo, but Johnny prefers a more circuitous route. Maybe a Haarpsichord deck that uses Explod-a-palooza to swing the credit differential first? Maybe a Titan Transnational deck that uses Project Atlas counters and Archived Memories to chain Scorched Earths? Developing the specific combination of cards and adding the cards to support these combinations pull double-duty for Johnny: not only can it surprise and bewilder their opponent, but it also leaves their games with a personal signature. When the combo falls apart, Johnny is similarly left with more sources of pleasure than sources of frustration; now the combo can be further developed with the lessons from this recent game, or it can be abandoned to search for a new combo, and all the while Johnny has created an experience in the game of Netrunner that few even imagined possible.

It’s not Johnny’s intention to make a deck that doesn’t work well, in fact the opposite is generally the case. A deck that doesn’t work well will leave both players with the sense that the deckbuilder simply has no idea what they’re doing. Instead Johnny wants to build a deck that works in a way that no one else had thought of, whether because it seems too unorthodox, it hits upon an aspect of Netrunner that people generally haven’t considered, or because it uses cards that Johnny has a personal interest in. That being said, winning and losing bears less weight on the minds of Johnnys than winning and losing with their personal creations. The deck building portion of the game is a great source of pleasure for Johnnys, who get to imagine all the possibilities of all the different cards and their various interactions taking place at once; when they finally do go to play with their strange new deck, it’s an opportunity to share the attention they’ve paid to the game and get some attention for the work they’ve done. Where damage fits into these decks is a matter of personal choice for Johnny, whether there’s something unexpected that damage can create (in the case of Chronos Protocal decks that snipe fractors) or cards that seems undervalued by the community consensus (in the case of brain damage decks).

Despite the pleasures, the frustrations are very real for Johnny. When a deck is a personal creation, it’s not always feasible that other people will appreciate its finer details, and Johnny is very particular about the details that go into their decks. Many other players, Johnnys and non-Johnnys alike, will give Johnny loads of unsolicited advice on deckbuilding, which can be disturbing when your favorite cards are selected to be cut for more popularly played ones. Netdecking takes on the aspect of a cardinal sin, and it adds insult to injury to lose to a deck someone pulled unchanged from Netrunnerdb. Taking personal investment in the game of Netrunner is a double edge sword for Johnnys because failure becomes just as personal as the successes.

Spike likes to win. Seems easy enough. Honestly, who doesn’t like to win? Is there someone out there playing Netrunner right now who isn’t trying to win? In order to win consistently, you should assume that everyone you’re playing against is also trying to win. If Spike seems cold or callous because they want to win at Netrunner, it’s not exactly their fault. It’s because they take seriously the premise that one plays a game in order to have fun, and winning is almost always more fun than losing. Essentially, Spike should assume, in order to get the most out of the game, that everyone else is a Spike.

Damage mechanics for Spike are simply a part of the game, something that must be considered only as much as necessary. Kill strategies have the benefit of winning games quickly and suddenly at the cost of spending resources (deckslots, influence &c.) that may only be situationally useful. Damage prevention cards have a similar cost-benefit relationship (the cost of resources against the benefit of avoiding sudden losses), and the decision to focus on kill strategies often hinge on whether it can be expected that runner decks will have damage prevention slotted at a ratio that beats the frequency of killshot situations. Spike will look at this dynamic, consider their expectations of the meta, and decide how to construct their deck accordingly. If there’s a way to include kill strategies without expending too many resources (like playing Scorched Earth in Weyland with only 1 SEA Source) or if spending more resources will greatly increase the chance of winning by flatline (like x3 Scorched Earth and x3 Traffic Accident in Near Earth Hub), all the better for Spike. Expectations for a flatline need to be well-tempered and damage production should either (1) focus on killshots or (2) get as much benefit as possible from either their disruptive effects on the runner’s gameplan or adversely effect the runner’s play choices. If there is some other strategy that affords Spike a better chance of winning, then Spike will abandon damage strategies until they become “viable” again.

Spikes aren’t mean people, rather they are especially devoted to a style of play that emphasizes player skill. The pleasure Spike gets from winning is tied to winning well, which for Spike means winning based on the skill in their decision making against a challenging opponent. Spike plays in order to take their knowledge of Netrunner and their instincts for playing it and pitting these against someone else who will use all their knowledge and skill to win. Losing may be the opposite of winning, but for a Spike losing may not be the biggest source of frustration. If their opponent is more skillful in their play, or if their opponent made choices in the deck build that creates a major weakness for Spike, they will at least take some pride in giving the game their best effort and accept the loss. It’s a part of the common imagination to imagine Spike yelling at another player because of a game loss, but poor sportsmanship isn’t a trademark of Spikes: in my experience Spikes are more likely to make a special point about good sportsmanship when they’re feeling frustrated. Besides, getting upset will only hamper Spike’s ability to win in future games.

Where Spike meets the most frustration are games where they make mistakes, games where something seems unfair, or games against opponents that don’t take the game as seriously as they do. A loss at a superior opponent’s hands is to be expected, and as long as they are playing their best Spike can except these losses. But if they made a bad move, it’s reflective of their lack of skill, not their opponent’s accumulation of it. Similarly, losing to some freakish agenda flood or to a bad string of psi games doesn’t represent two players challenging eachother’s skill but the random distribution of the game’s elements that simply fall against their favor. Perhaps worst of all is going into a competitive environment and playing against someone who treats the prospect of winning and losing the game as not important, or who treats player skill as something not particularly important to cultivate. These players, while easily dismissed in Spike’s mind, undermine the whole premise that justifies Spike playing Netrunner in the first place.

Most players will not fall strictly into one of these categories but will be motivated in ways that intersect these profiles. Personally, I find myself balanced between all three of these profiles, enjoying the spectacular, inventive, and competitive potential of Netrunner. I often shift into Johnny mode after a tournament so I can come up with new ideas, then shift into Spike mode once a tournament is announced in order to prepare for the competitive environment. Player motivation will change over time. Many players begin playing Netrunner as a Timmy, excited by all the spectacular situations created in the game, and as they get more familiar with it become Spikes or Johnnys. Reflecting on these profiles can help understand what kinds of pleasure you get from playing Netrunner and steer you towards the styles of play that satisfy you. It can also guide you towards a style of play you’ve never tried before. Understanding what motivates you and other players can help you enjoy the game of Netrunner more.

It’s also worth understanding these psychographic profiles because it can help you understand the other players with which you will be sharing the game of Netrunner. There was a recent article from The Winning Agenda by Brian Holland about competitive and casual players and how there’s more to be gained in a united community than a community that sees itself as fractured over this divide. It’s easy to look at the Spike profile and think “this is the profile of a competitive player,” but the divide between casual and competitive players is a little more complicated. For instance many Johnnys I’ve met have been just as competitive as a Spike, but they want to play at the highest levels with decks they’ve constructed themselves whereas a Spike doesn’t get an exceptional amount of pleasure from the deck build being a sign of their personal creativity. I’ve also met competitive Timmys (who insist that playing the strongest cards and getting spectacular wins is the best decision competitively) and casual Spikes (who play for the sake of challenging player skills but without much interest in investing in the current cardpool). Even in competitive environments like Store Championships I’ve met a lot of new players who are there for the experience of meeting a lot of Netrunner players and collecting alt-art prizes.

By understanding what motivates players who are different that you, our communities of players can find ways to keep the game enjoyable for everyone and find pleasures that many different players have in common. Some competitive players may shake their heads at a casual player slotting in a bad card, and some casual players may groan and roll their eyes when they see Near Earth Hub hit the table once again, but so long as the spirit of fun prevails between players these different perspectives can coexist and garner benefits from their interactions. I hope this article can be a part of the larger conversation that’s been going on about how casual and competitive players can see value in eachother, remaining an open and sharing community.

Please leave your comments here, on the reddit thread, or at my email rumirumirumirumi@gmail.com.

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ANR Damage Control — Introducing: ANR Damage Control

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.