Hi folks, Drewcifer here—as you may know, I’m at GAMA right now showing off Netrunner to interested parties from the tabletop industry, but thanks to the magic of scheduling I’m also able to bring you an exciting announcement!
Lately I’ve been wearing a lot of hats within NSG. Putting the finishing touches on the EU & UK fulfilment solutions (more news later this week) has been tough work at times, but I’ve also had the pleasure of working on a parallel project which I’m very passionate about: NSG’s new Learn-To-Play Decks! You might have heard me talk about these at Worlds or seen an early iteration of them at events like PaxU, but now I am thrilled to be able to officially announce this exciting new product.
As someone who plays games, the number one thing I want is more people to play games with. Despite being such an absolutely amazing game, one of the biggest hurdles Netrunner faces is onboarding new players. There are various reasons for this:
- The game relies heavily on hidden information so a lot of rules have to be taught up front—it can take quite a while to get from sitting down at the table to playing a competent first turn.
- The asymmetric gameplay means a teacher has to teach two games at once, and will spend a chunk of time relaying information which isn’t relevant to all players.
- It’s a card game, so there’s lots of reading to do! Plus shuffled decks mean the teach is less structured.
- There is a fair bit of thematic flair in the game text—Netrunner has two different terms for what most other games just call ‘the hand’. While this is great for making it feel like you are a hacker breaking into servers, the jargon also increases the cognitive load for someone discovering the game for the first time.
- There’s no readily available, easily parsable rulebook.
The need for a tool that helps mitigate these issues is significant. We get constant requests from TOs and our convention crew for something that they can use to teach the game more quickly and easily. While the intro decks from System Gateway provide the cards needed to learn, they don’t solve all these issues—and moreover it’s costly to print and ship a whole copy of System Gateway for every teaching application. Meanwhile, retail stores that are trying to build a community need a foundational starting point that works even if the staff themselves might not be familiar with the game.
Internally we’ve been calling these the ‘Learn-To-Play Decks’ but I also think of them as ‘First Exposure Decks’. If we’re going to jump through all the hoops of developing a product to solve some of the above issues, then it needs to solve them in as many cases as possible. Someone could come across Netrunner for the very first time at a convention, a board game store or cafe, a night at the pub or even at Worlds. We can’t control what they may or may not have heard about the game or if there’s someone there to properly teach them—but hopefully we CAN provide some decks that are fantastic at creating a great first experience.
The Learn-To-Play Decks are one Runner deck of 40 cards and one Corp deck of 44 cards, custom built for this purpose from cards in the NSG core set—that is, from System Gateway and Elevation. They will be distributed in bulk with each deck being individually shrink wrapped. The decks come with a QR code to a script we’ve developed that anyone can use to teach or learn the game from scratch. Myself and other volunteers will be showing them off to tabletop industry colleagues at GAMA this week.
Teaching games is itself a resource management game. The new player(s) have a finite attention span, and the person teaching needs to manage that as effectively as possible so that by the end of the teach the new player(s) feel comfortable continuing on their own. Everything we do during that teach spends that resource and so we need to be as efficient and mindful as possible.
Each deck is sorted in line with the script to produce opening turns that deliver a consistent teaching experience. On the final turn of the script each player shuffles what is left so that they can now finish the final chapter of that story on their own. By scripting and custom building these decks, we can limit the number of concepts that need to be taught. Sure, virus counters, tags & upgrades are all important parts of Netrunner, but if they’re not referenced by any of the cards in these decks then that’s fewer concepts for a brand new player to worry about. This allows us more time to focus on the core gameplay of making runs, protecting servers and maybe even flatlining the Runner!
If you saw these decks at events previously, you may have noticed that they initially had some cards from System Update 2021 in them. But of course, the final product will not include rotating cards. Instead, we chose to fast-track four cards from Elevation to serve the same purposes in the Learn-To-Play Decks. And as the folks who see the decks in action at GAMA get to see those new cards, well, it wouldn’t be very fair of us to withhold them from the rest of you.
Anthill Excavation Contract
Weyland Asset: Industrial
Rez cost: 3 – Trash cost: 1 – Influence cost: 2
When you rez this asset, load 8 onto it. When it is empty, trash it.
When your turn begins, take 4 from this asset and draw 1 card.
“If you lived here, you’d be at work by now!”
— Weyland recruiter
Illustrated by Olie Boldador
The new Weyland asset Anthill Excavation Contract offers a slew of great teaching moments—particularly how the Corp can rez assets during the Runner’s turn and why it is useful to do so. The previous iteration of the Corp Learn-To-Play Deck was somewhat lacking in economy and this high-value asset helps close that gap.
Of course, one of the most important core concepts of the game is ice, and with some iconic, straightforward ice like Ice Wall and Enigma rotating out of the cardpool with the departure of System Update 2021, we needed replacements.
Enter Kessleroid, an efficient new barrier, and Syailendra, an intriguing new code gate.
Kessleroid
Weyland Ice: Barrier
Rez cost: 2 – Strength: 1 – Influence cost: 1
The Runner cannot trash this ice (while it is rezzed).
End the run.
End the run.
“The detritus of failed incursions accumulates. Instead of sweeping it all away, the parsimonious sysop should nudge this debris into defensive positions in the server’s metagravity well.”
— Moira Virtue, Ice Engineering, KKU
Illustrated by Krembler
Syailendra
Weyland Ice: Code Gate – AP
Rez cost: 4 – Strength: 5 – Influence cost: 3
You can advance this ice.
When the Runner encounters this ice, if it has 3 or more hosted advancement counters, place 1 advancement counter on an installed card you can advance.
Place 1 advancement counter on an installed card you can advance.
The Runner loses 2.
Do 1 net damage.
Illustrated by Scott Uminga
This is where I should mention that neither deck will be using the neutral identities included in System Gateway. Instead, we chose Weyland Consortium: Built to Last and Zahya Sadeghi: Versatile Smuggler. Teaching games is all about telling a story which the player can associate with and contextualize. Identities are such an important part of the game, we didn’t want to leave them out, and these two really lend themselves well to that storytelling experience.
On the Runner side, we chose to use a new fracter that has a bit more nuance to it than Cleaver:
Rising Tide
Anarch Program: Icebreaker – Fracter
Install cost: 1 – Strength: 1 – Memory cost: 1 – Influence cost: 2
This program gets +1 strength for each fracter in your heap.
Interface → 1: Break 1 barrier subroutine.
1: +1 strength.
The waters begin to roil, and bit by bit they swell.
Illustrated by Scott Uminga
Fun fact: in the script that comes with this product, Rising Tide is the last card which is played. At that point the first chapter of those players’ first game has been told, and they get to play out the rest of the game themselves.
Rising Tide likely won’t reach its full potential within our Zahya build, but it gives new players a path towards an idea for their first Runner deck. These decks are not just a starting point for ‘first exposure’ to the game—we also want them to get new players excited to play more and see what they can discover in the wider cardpool.
Teams across NSG have collaborated to make the best Netrunner teaching experience we can, and we’re very excited to be debuting this product at GAMA this week. We’ll have more news on how the Learn-To-Play decks will be made available more widely soon.
