Netrunner For Magic Players
Posted on September 16, 2012
Filed Under Articles, Not a Joke, Photochops, Staff | 6 Comments
Netrunner is an awesome game that has been recently rereleased by Fantasy Flight. It was invented by Richard Garfield. If you like Magic, you’d probably like Netrunner.
One of the especially fun things about Netrunner is that it is asymmetrical. Netrunner is played by two people, one of whom is a hacker or “runner,” while the other is a corporation. The runner plays a runner deck with runner cards. The corporate player plays a corporate deck, with corporate cards that work totally differently. Figuring out how to build a good runner deck is very different from figuring out how to build a good corporate deck. It’s like the deckbuilder in you gets to play two different games at once.
If you know how to play Magic, then Netrunner won’t be totally alien to you. Just somewhat alien. We’re going to teach you how to play Netrunner as if it were a crazy variation on Magic.
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The object in a game of Netrunner is for the corporate player to successfully “level up” seven “points” worth of “Agenda” permanents. If this happens, the corporate player immediately wins. The object for the runner player is to steal seven “points” worth of these same Agenda cards from the corporate player, whether from in play, from the hand or from the library. If she takes seven points worth of Agenda cards, she immediately wins, regardless of where those cards were.
(Stolen cards go into a command zone. Players do not ever put other players’ cards into their decks or hands. This is just like Magic.)
If the corporate player does nothing, the runner will steal seven points worth of Agenda cards, even if the corporate player does not play them. If the runner does nothing, the corporate player will play his Agenda cards, level them up and win. So both players are under pressure.
The runner can also win by decking the corporate player. The runner cannot get decked.
The corporate player can also win by killing the runner player. The corporate player cannot be killed.
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In Netrunner, there’s a runner. The runner’s deck works a lot like a Magic deck. But there are no instants. No cards are played at instant speed in Netrunner. There are sorceries, with mana costs.
Well, this one costs zero mana. You might think that this card is pretty broken. But it isn’t broken, because in Netrunner, it takes an entire phase to play a card. The runner gets four phases a turn. Drawing a card is a phase. Playing a card is a phase. Attacking is a phase. If you’re the runner, and you want to have four draw phases in a turn, you can. If you want to have four combat phases, you can. You can use your four phases however you want. Since the runner never has to have a draw phase, the runner can’t get decked. You decide your phases as you go. You don’t have to decide them all at the start of your turn.
The maximum hand size in Netrunner is five cards. That’s another reason why that card isn’t broken in Netrunner.
The card has Influence 2. This only affects deckbuilding. So don’t worry about that right now. You might wonder why the card is green even though it costs zero mana. Mana has no color in Netrunner. All mana is generic. If cards have a color, this is only because of deckbuilding rules. Don’t worry about that for now, either. We’re not going to build decks yet.
There are sorceries that make mana.
Mana in Netrunner, flavorwise, is money. Since it’s money, it doesn’t drain from your mana pool on its own. Not even from turn to turn. If you make mana, you keep it until you use it. (Your opponent might have cards that drain your mana, though).
There are no Lands in Netrunner. You might wonder, how do you get started playing cards, if there are no lands?
First, each player starts with five mana in his or her mana pool.
Second, a player may use an entire phase to make one mana. So that’s four things now that you know of that the runner can do during a phase: draw a card, play a card, attack or make 1 mana.
The runner has permanents, like in Magic. Some of these permanents make mana.
This is a new permanent type, a Program. Permanents are put into play at sorcery speed, just like permanents in Magic. Putting this permanent into play takes an entire phase, just like playing a Sorcery takes an entire phase.
This permanent has an ability with a cost of “Phase.” It takes a phase to use this ability. That means it can only be used at sorcery speed and uses up one of your four phases that turn. Permanents don’t tap in Netrunner.
This permanent has “Program size 2.” You’re only allowed to have four points of Programs in play. That’s why Programs are a special permanent type. If you would put more Programs than four points’ worth into play, you may sacrifice Programs already in play to make room.
There are cards that raise your program capacity.
There are other permanents besides Programs. For example, this one is Hardware. These permanents don’t have any kind of limit. So they’re more like the Magic that you’re used to. As long as you pay for them, and use an entire phase to play each one, you can play all your non-Program permanents. The only thing special about “being Hardware” is that there are other cards that can affect or destroy Hardware.
This is a Resource, another type of permanent. This Resource has an ability. Since this ability does not have a cost of Phase, this ability can be used at instant speed.
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Let’s take a look at the corporate player.
The corporate player only gets three phases a turn, not four. But the corporate player gets a free, mandatory card draw at the beginning of his turn. The corporate player can get decked, just like in Magic. The corporate player can use a phase to draw a card, play a card or make 1 mana. The corporate player cannot attack. The corporate player in Netrunner never attacks. By the way, the corporate player always goes first.
The corporate player has Sorceries, just like the runner does. They work like the runner’s Sorceries.
But the corporate player’s permanents are totally different. This is the part of Netrunner that will probably blow your mind.
All corporate permanents have morph.
In fact, all corporate permanents must be played face-down. They cannot be played face-up.
In Netrunner, morphs do not cost three mana and are not 2/2 creatures.
Morphs in Netrunner cost zero mana to put into play, and are not creatures.
It takes an entire phase to play a permanent for the corporate player, just like it does for the runner player. The permanent above is played face-down for zero mana. The corporate player can turn it face-up at instant speed for two mana. It then has a triggered ability each of his upkeeps.
It also has a “trash cost.” This has to do with combat.
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In Netrunner, the runner does not attack the corporate player himself, and does not attack with creatures. The runner herself attacks the corporate player’s cards.
In Magic, permanents attack players. In Netrunner, players attack permanents.
That is to say, runners attack corporate permanents. Corporate players do not attack anything.
The runner can attack the PAD Campaign whether it is face-down or face-up. If nothing stops the runner’s attack, then the runner “gets through.” The runner gets to look at PAD Campaign, whether it is face-down or face-up; and the runner may pay the trash cost. If the trash cost is paid, the card is destroyed. If the trash cost is not paid, nothing happens to PAD Campaign. If it was face-down, it stays that way.
The runner does not have to attack permanents. The runner can attack the corporate player’s hand, or library, or graveyard. If the runner “gets through” to the hand, she looks at a random card. If the card had been PAD Campaign, the runner could pay the trash cost, and it would be discarded. If the runner “gets through” to the library, the runner looks at the top card. Again, if the card had been PAD Campaign, the runner could pay the trash cost, and the card would be milled into the graveyard. If the runner did not pay the trash cost, PAD Campaign would stay there, on top of the library.
(There’s no point in attacking the graveyard if the only cards in it are cards like PAD Campaign. Paying the trash cost would only leave the card there. Attacking the graveyard only comes up in special circumstances that we’ll mention in a moment.)
So how does the corporate player stop the runner from destroying cards?
Ice.
The corporate player plays Ice like other permanents — face-down and at sorcery speed. However, Ice is always played sideways, so that everyone knows that it’s Ice even though it’s face-down. The corporate player must play the Ice so that it guards a particular non-Ice permanent; or the hand; or the library; or the graveyard; or nothing. Once the Ice is in play, the corporate player cannot change what it is guarding by moving it.
Why would the corporate player have the Ice guard nothing? Because a new permanent can be put into play with that Ice guarding it, if the Ice was guarding nothing. This rule allows the corporate player to put the Ice first and the guarded permanent later. That way, the permanent was always guarded.
If Ice is guarding a permanent and the permanent leaves play, a new permanent can be put there, guarded by that Ice.
When the runner attacks a thing that has Ice, the corporate player may pay the morph cost and turn the Ice face-up. Ice has block abilities. The block abilities trigger one at a time. They always trigger in the order that they are on the card.
The above Ice does 2 net damage. All damage means that the runner discards a random card. Wall of Thorns makes the runner discard two random cards. Then it ends combat.
If the runner is told to discard a card, and doesn’t have a card to discard, the runner is dead.
The corporate player cannot be killed by being made to discard cards.
Note that the Ice does not have a trash cost. It cannot be attacked. The runner can only attack what Ice is guarding (or unguarded non-Ice things). The runner cannot attack Ice itself. If the runner attacks the library, and the top card is Ice, it can’t be milled, because it does not have a trash cost. It can’t be discarded from the hand when the hand is successfully attacked, either.
So, how does the runner get through this Ice, when it would just end combat with its ability?
The runner has Icebreaker Programs. If the runner is blocked by Wall of Thorns, the runner can use the break ability of Corroder to counter Wall of Thorns’ abilities. However, break abilities have a special clause. That’s why they’re keyworded here.
Break abilities can’t be used unless the Icebreaker in question has strength at least as high as the Ice’s strength.
Corroder’s strength is 2. Wall of Thorns’ strength is 5. Corroder cannot break the block abilities of Wall of Thorns unless Corroder’s strength is also at least 5. Fortunately, Corroder’s strength can be raised. If the runner pays 3 mana, Corroder will have 5 strength against Wall of Thorns. If the runner then pays 1 mana more, twice, the runner can counter both block abilities of Wall of Thorns. The runner then gets through.
Note that the runner doesn’t have to counter the damage ability. She can just take the damage. The second ability would have to be countered for her to get through, though. Some Ice doesn’t have an ability that ends combat. If the runner is willing to suffer all the effects, she gets through whether she had any Icebreakers or regardless of what their strengths were. Ice only stops the runner from getting through if it specifically says so.
Note also that Corroder only counters the block abilities of Barrier Ice. There are different types of Ice — if blocking Ice were a Sentry instead of a Barrier, the runner would not be able to use Corroder on it. The runner would have to use a different Icebreaker. The runner might need several different Icebreakers to win the game. Fortunately for the runner, the runner attacks using all her permanents — remember, the runner is attacking personally. It isn’t that the Icebreakers are attacking. The runner attacks, and may use any of her Icebreakers, even combining them in some cases. She doesn’t have to say, “I’m attacking with this particular Icebreaker.”
Finally, note further that Corroder’s pump ability doesn’t last until end of turn. It only lasts until the current piece of Ice is “gotten through.” For any further Ice this turn, Corroder will have 2 strength all over again.
Some Icebreakers can get through any Ice.
Crypsis can get through any Ice. But it’s very mana-intensive. It’s also time-intensive, because you must first put virus counters on Crypsis in order to keep it alive. Without enough virus counters on Crypsis, Crypsis will die after an attack.
The corporate player has a special ability with regard to virus counters. The corporate player can use three phases to remove all virus counters from play. Normally, this means using up the entire turn. This isn’t that great a play when you consider just Crypsis, but some runner decks might have lots of cards that use virus counters.
Suppose the corporate player has Wall of Thorns face-down when the runner attacks the thing that Wall of Thorns is guarding. The corporate player can flip it up by paying the morph cost; or can decline to do so. Perhaps the corporate player doesn’t have the mana right now. Or maybe the thing the Ice is guarding isn’t important. The runner then waltzes right through Wall of Thorns without interacting with it at all.
If the runner gets through the Ice, or doesn’t, nothing happens to the Ice either way. It stays there. The runner will have to get through it again next time. There is no combat damage in Netrunner. Programs and Ice don’t have toughnesses.
The corporate player may put more than one Ice guarding something. However, the second piece of Ice guarding a given thing costs 1 mana (and takes the entire phase, like normal) to put into play. A third piece of Ice would cost 2 mana, a fourth would cost 3 mana, and so on. The corporate player may sacrifice Ice already there to reduce this cost. Ice that is grouped together like this cannot be separated or moved around. Those pieces of Ice will always be together. Also, the Ice must remain in the order in which it came into play. The runner always interacts with the most recent Ice in a group first, and the oldest Ice last.
Ice, or any group of Ice, can only guard one Asset or one Agenda (or the deck, the hand, or the graveyard). However, the corporate player has another type of card called Upgrade. Upgrades work just like Assets, except any number of Upgrades can be grouped with one Asset or one Agenda for guarding purposes.
If the runner is facing multiple Ice, the runner can give up the attack after the first piece of Ice or after any other. Maybe she didn’t like what happened. Maybe the first piece of Ice surprised her and cost her too much money to deal with. However, once the runner goes ahead and says she’ll try to get through a certain piece of Ice, it’s too late to back out from that piece of Ice, even if it was face-down. If the corporate player flips it up, its block abilities will trigger.
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Although the corporate player may have lots of helpful cards worth guarding, the real point of the game for the corporate player is to put Agenda cards into play face-down, guard them, level them up, and “score” them.
Agendas are played face-down, but do not have a morph cost. They cannot be turned face-up by normal means. The corporate player must level them up. The corporate player may level up an Agenda in play by using a phase and paying 1 mana. So this is another thing that the corporate player can do with phases. Put an advancement counter on the face-down agenda each time it is leveled up.
If the Agenda has advancement counters on it equal to its level up number — 5 for Priority Requisition — the corporate player may reveal it and remove it from the game. It goes in a command zone called the “score zone.” This Agenda is worth 3 points. If the corporate player removes 7 points of Agendas from the game in this way, he wins.
This Agenda also does something nice for the corporate player when it is scored.
Note that the Agenda does not have a trash cost. If the runner attacks the face-down Agenda and gets through, she steals it. She does not have to pay anything. This is a special rule for Agendas. She takes it and puts it in her score zone. If she has 7 points of Agendas in her score zone, she wins the game.
The challenge for the corporate player is that the runner can steal Agendas not just from play, but from the corporate player’s hand, from his library, or from his graveyard. If the runner gets through to the corporate player’s library, and the top card is an Agenda, the runner steals it without paying anything. If she gets through to the corporate player’s hand, and the random card she looks at is an Agenda, she steals it without paying anything. And if there are ever any Agendas in a graveyard for some reason, and the runner gets through to the graveyard, she steals all of them that are there. So the corporate player does not want to discard Agendas.
This Agenda has an ability that is activated from the score zone. It does 1 meat damage. Meat damage is just like net damage — the runner discards a random card, and is dead if she can’t. The only difference is that things that prevent damage usually prevent only meat damage or net damage — not both types.
But this ability may only be activated if the runner is “tagged.” What is “tagged”?
Some things can threaten to give the runner a tag. A tag is a counter, like a poison counter. “Trace X” is a game action. The corporate player may pay any amount of mana, and adds this amount to the trace value of the ability causing the trace (Hunter’s is 3). This total is locked in. The runner may then spend any amount of mana, and add this amount to her “link value.” The runner’s initial link value is usually 0, but certain of her permanents might increase it. If the total of her link value plus the mana she spent at least equals the trace value plus the mana the corporate player spent, the trace does not happen. Otherwise, it does happen.
When Hunter successfully traces, it gives a tag counter to the runner. Other trace abilities might do something different. Note that if the runner had used an Icebreaker to counter Hunter’s block ability, the entire trace process would not have taken place.
Tags do two things. First, they allow the corporate player to activate abilities or play Sorceries that require the runner to be tagged. Second, if the runner is tagged, the corporate player may use one phase and 2 mana to destroy one of the runner’s Resource permanents. Only Resource permanents can be destroyed this way — not Hardware or Programs.
The runner can get rid of a tag by using a phase and 2 mana.
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When building a deck, each player must choose an Identity. This is like choosing your commander in EDH.
The Identity card is not part of the deck. It’s not in play. (It’s helpful for the corporate player to put it on the playfield to represent his hand.) It has deckbuilding restrictions, and has a helpful ability.
Gabriel Santiago decks must be at least 45 cards. Also, they have a 15 influence maximum. Here’s how influence works. Gabriel Santiago is blue, so his deck may have any number of blue cards. For cards that aren’t blue, however, the total influence value of the nonblue cards must add to 15 or less.
In Netrunner, the maximum number of copies of the same card that may be in a deck is three, unlike Magic’s four.
Many of the cards we showed you have influence 0. That means you can run them in any deck. Other cards have a positive influence value, so they are limited. Magnum Opus, for example, has an influence value of 2, and is green, not blue. If a Gabriel Santiago deck runs all three Magnum Opus, that uses up 6 influence points, leaving only 9 remaining for other nonblue cards.
Corporate decks work the same way. However, corporate decks have an additional restriction. A corporate deck with 45-49 cards must have exactly 20 or 21 agenda points worth of Agenda cards. This is so the runner will have something to steal. If a corporate deck had more cards, the agenda point requirement would be even higher.
Some cards — as of this writing, all the colored Agenda cards — have no influence value. This is not the same as influence 0. If a card has no influence value at all, then that means that the card cannot be run except in a deck of its color.
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There are some things we didn’t tell you about. But if you understand the above, then you would be able to figure out nearly every Netrunner card just by looking at it. Netrunner is a great game, in part because there’s a lot of opportunity for bluffing and outsmarting your opponent. If you already know how to play Magic, then the above probably wasn’t too tough to understand. We’ve been playing this a bunch since it came out, and if you decide to try this game, we hope you have a lot of fun with its asymmetry and tricky play. Good luck!
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6 Responses to “Netrunner For Magic Players”
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Thanks for this! I’ve seen this game a few times but it seemed to overwhelming to get into, but this was a nice writeup.
I always liked netrunner, but my starter deck was not balanced well. I’m looking forward to trying it again with this new tighter pool of cards :)
I’ve been curious about this game, and this convinced me. Great article!
Great article.
It would be awesome, if you perhaps did a follow-up article, with a sample game you’ve played.
Awesome writeup! You’ve intrigued me to check out the game for myself. Go Deckmaster games! ;)
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