Today we have a guest author to talk about a card depicting a place that’s very special to them! Richard Hall, aka Limes, the 2020 World Champion, is ready to reveal his champion card design! Over to you, champ!
This is The Wizard’s Chest:
It’s a game store in Denver, and as far as I’m concerned, the spiritual home of Netrunner in Colorado. Being lucky enough to be given the opportunity to design a card, I wanted to immortalize the place I’ve spent so many happy evenings with friends.
As ever, the NSG Visual team, and artist Martin de Diego Sádaba in particular, have taken this brief and delivered something amazing:
Thematically, the place is full of character, so there was a lot to work with! Rather than going for a card with the location subtype, the store has become a physical chest, with a Runner reaching inside for some critical piece of equipment that will help foil the corporation’s plans. This suggests a card that allows the Runner to dig through their stack for the tools they need. There are a lot of little details that reference the real store in the art, and the theming really shines through.
Mechanically, the card went through quite a lot of iteration during playtest, and seeing a little of the inner workings of this process has given me a lot of respect for the work the design and playtest teams put into balancing card designs. The final card is very flexible, working equally for all types of installable card and installing anything it finds for free. This utility comes with a high barrier for entry, albeit one that works very well thematically with the card as a whole – a ‘quest’ requirement:
⬩ The Wizard’s Chest
Anarch Hardware
Install cost: 0 – Influence cost: 2
Use this hardware only if you made a successful run on HQ, R&D, and Archives this turn.
: Choose hardware, program, or resource. Set aside cards from the top of your stack faceup until you set aside 2 cards of the chosen type. You may install 1 of those 2 cards, ignoring all costs. Shuffle the rest of the set-aside cards into your stack.
Designed by 2020 World Champion Richard Hall
Illustrated by Martin de Diego Sádaba
The card should benefit aggressive runners that like to run early and often. Many of the anarch decks in vogue at the moment like to install expensive consoles (Knobkierie, Maw), and The Wizard’s Chest may find a home with them. However, at two influence, the card could also find a home in other decks that like to run centrals (e.g. Sable), and the install-now, use-clicklessly-later aspect means it won’t disrupt the gameplan of Deep Diving shapers either.
I’m really pleased with how the card has turned out, and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who worked on it – with special thanks to Anzekay, my main point of contact for most of the process. It’s been a pleasure!
-Limes
Rebellion Without Rehearsal will be released on March 18, 2024. It will be available on the Null Signal Games online store, through our print-on-demand partners, selected game stores and authorized resellers, and as free print-and-play PDFs from its product page. It will also be playable on Jinteki.net within a few days of release.
Excited about future sets? Apply to be a playtester for “Dawn”, the set after Rebellion Without Rehearsal. All experience levels welcome, especially newer players! Click here for details!
