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Eyes Forward to What Lies Ahead

A Spotlight on Android: Netrunner The Card Game

At Haas-Bioroid, we practice what we preach, and Ash models spearheaded an internal efficiency revolution that trimmed company overhead by 17.2% and increased productivity by 9.3%. The key? Bioroid efficiency experts always keep an unbiased eye toward the bottom line.

    –from “Better Business with Bioroids”

The Ash-model efficiency bioroid reinforces Haas-Bioroid’s position in Android: Netrunner as a defensive corporation.

While all the game’s corporations seek the means to defend their most valuable secrets, Haas-Bioroid has a style that sets it apart from its peers. Both NBN and Weyland Consortium are fond of their tags. Jinteki excels at laying snares and leading unwary runners into them. Haas-Bioroid, though, likes to focus on strength and effiency. They excel at shoring up their servers with multiple layers of ice and maximizing their clicks and credits as they advance their agendas.

Ash 2X3ZB9CY

Now, as we look forward to the Genesis Cycle and the game’s first Data Pack, Ash 2X3ZB9CY (What Lies Ahead, 13) offers a hint of how the cycle will meet the goals lead developer Lukas Litzsinger identified in his introduction to the cycle:

“I set out to design Genesis with several goals. The first goal was to increase deck-building options […] The second goal was to increase the number of traces in the game, and to expand upon the trace system. Lastly, I wanted to solidify and clarify the strengths and weaknesses of the factions.”

As a Haas-Bioroid upgrade that can restrict the cards a Runner can access, Ash works to fulfill all these goals.

While a Corporate server can contain only one agenda or asset, it may contain any number of upgrades. Ice may be the primary means of defending a server, but they only offer points of defense against a run and can be bypassed with icebreakers. In contrast, each upgrade offers a larger scope of defense, generally changing the rules for how a Runner encounters its ice or accesses its cards.

The Core Set gave us six different upgrades. Two of them belong to NBN and alter the game’s economy, Jinteki and Weyland Consortium each own one upgrade, and the other two belong to Haas-Bioroid. The Corporate Troubleshooter (Core Set, 65) and Experiential Data (Core Set, 66) both allow a Haas-Bioroid player to strengthen his ice. However, when What Lies Ahead becomes available in the fourth quarter of 2012, Ash will be the first upgrade that allows the Corp player an active means of thwarting a run. The closest the game currently comes is the NBN upgrade, Red Herrings (Core Set, 91), but while it provides a cost-effective countermeasure to the Runner’s efforts, the Runner can still access any agenda in the server if he has the five credits to spend. Ash, on the other hand, can scale. Its base trace strength of “4” is a strong start, but the trace allows the Corp player the ability to determine – actively – how much he’s willing to spend to stop the Runner from accessing the agenda or asset that Ash protects.

By providing new means of countering a run Ash introduces new deck-building options. Because it triggers a trace, Ash supports the game’s trace system. And because it works best when Haas-Bioroid plays defensively, shoring up its servers and focusing on click and credit efficiency, Ash gives us a better understanding of the nature of its parent corporation.

This is the future of Android: Netrunner. This is What Lies Ahead. Check back for more previews as we look forward to the game’s first Data Pack!

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Source: Eyes Forward to What Lies Ahead (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3618)