Gamereviews2014

Strategic board games are fun and interesting to play and are very popular for playing with friends and family. In this review we are going to discuss one of the best and popular strategic board games of all times, the Android: Netrunner.
Game Overview:
The Android: Netrunner released by Fantasy Flight games in 2012 is a reincarnated version of the original Netrunner, designed by Richard Garfield, improving the clarity and producing a dynamic gameplay environment. The Android: Netrunner is a two player Living Card Gam set in a cyber punk, dystopian universe where monolithic corporations and individualistic netrunners collide for the balance of power and data. It is an asymmetric card game with some reasonably complex rules and structures that rewards skill, strategy, gambling and guts of the 2 players.

Game Objective:
The Objective for both the players is to score seven agenda points. The Corporation is required to advance agendas to score agenda points while the runner tries to hack inside the corporations and steel the agendas before they are advanced, to score agenda points.

Game Play:
The game play of netrunner is more complicated when compared to other strategic board games. It took me 2 games to get used to the mechanism of the game and figuring out the different components of the two player’s deck. The game has a learning curve and it took me 7 games to actually get to know all the possible game play mechanism and all different operations possible for all the different cards. The game becomes more interesting and enjoyable after you play few games.
The game is basically a battle for scoring agenda cards by two opposite roles, first one as a corporation which is an evil organization and second as a runner, the hacker who must break into the corporation’s sever The game provides the cooperation four and the runner three different factions to choose from, both the players build their custom deck consisting of minimum 45 cards and maximum of 15 out-of-faction value.
The corporations protects its initiated agendas by placing multiple layers of ice above it. The cooperation hides the cards on the deck from the runner this allows him to bluff an agenda in a remote server to lay traps for the runner and counterattack him. The cooperation has to conduct operations to gain credits in order to activate his cards on the deck. On the other side the runner initiates run to attack the corporation servers, the runner has to gamble in choosing his runs and try to outthink the corporation’s strategy. The runner installs different programs, memory and hardware to break the corporation’s ice, the runner uses different resources to earn credits.

What I liked about ANDROID: NETRUNNER:
Netrunner is one of the most interesting two player strategic card game I have ever played. The amazing artwork on the cards and the complex logical terminologies used in all the cards creates a perfect futuristic cyber punk theme in this dystopian universe.
Like other card games Netrunner does not only concentrate only on deck building capability of the player, it tests the player on how can pace his game, execute all his plans in the limited amount of resource’s (clicks and credits), to make timely paced moves, efficiently utilize the opportunity and make the most of it and keeping ones plan confidential from his opponent.
The asymmetric nature of the game makes the game more interesting, on one side cooperation has control over the information so he uses weapons of secrecy and resources, while on the other side runner tries to attack the cooperation by trying to guess the plan of the corporation and taking an element of risk to build a strategy trying to provoke the corporation in revealing their plans. Each and every turn in the game is very important and one bad move can make you loose it.
The element of bluffing gives a cutting edge to the game. The corporation keep their deck undisclosed to the runner, this allows the corporation to mislead the netrunner by keeping advancement counters into a well-planned trap trying to deplete all the resources of the runner. Bluffing is a key part of the game play strategy, if the corporation is successful in making the runner initiate a run on a non-agenda card he has enough time to activate his agenda before the runner gathers resources again to initiate a new successful run. But if the runner guesses a bluff and makes successful run on another remote server having an agenda card he can spoil the corporations plans and steel points easily, without wasting as many resources.
The deck building capability adds more fun and encourages a more creative gameplay environment. The game comes along with prebuild decks and also allows user to build their own deck out of it. The deck building capability ensures that no two games will be played in the same way and with the same strategy. The ability to buy additional cards in a Living Card Game allows to keep on innovating their decks and also the users do not get bored playing with one set of cards. Despite the corporation and the runner having altogether different types of cards, the game ensures that both have equal ability and strength while competing with each other.
Resource management is a very important while plying the game, both the runner and the corporation have limited amount of clicks each turn, they have to efficiently and wisely use their credits to execute their plans successfully at a reasonable pace and the runner has to efficiently invest his memory in the right programs.
The game becomes more enjoyable and dynamic after few turns, there are certain bonus elements on completion of certain successful tasks, like tags help the corporation to end a run and bad publicity helps the runner to gain more credits.

Overall:
Netrunner is a highly dramatic, strategic and dynamic two player game. If you like strategic board games to play with your friends and if you like games with twists and turns and nail-biting finishes along with fun and entertainment, I would strongly recommend Android: Netrunner.

Rating : *****