With the first Bandcamp Friday of 2024 scheduled for February 2, we decided it was time to catch up with some of the best new content the Netrunner community has created since our last roundup!
First, the music.
- The soundtrack to everyone’s Jnet games and every NSG Twitch stream, TrippMirror, has released a new Always Be Running album, Selections from Parhelion. In a stylistic departure from his previous albums, the wild serenity of the Arctic landscapes shines through in tracks like Spark of Inspiration, though tracks like Hypoxia (a personal favourite) can still get the heart pumping harder, as it struggles to get oxygen to your brain…
- Somndev is a newcomer to the roundup, but their album Biotic Labor feels like a best-of selection of Netrunner set-pieces. The tone is darker and more industrial overall, but uses a broad range of styles, from the dissonant flourishes of Awakening Center conveying the disorientation of a disembodied intelligence being born into the Net, to the anxiety-inducing beats of Inside Job capturing the tension of a high stakes heist. Huge props for this selection and hope to see more from them!
- Though not actually Netrunner-themed, Megahit’s album Megacorp is chock-full of cyberpunk (both lowercase and capital-C) tropes. It mixes in a variety of musical genres to evoke the range of ne’er-do-wells loitering a typical dystopian megacity’s alleys or living it up in its arcologies. For me the highlights of the album were the peaceful Chemical Sunrise leading into the distorted synth blares of Crypto Crash.
Next up, some new content that sprang up while these roundups were on hiatus.
- Not enough TrippMirror in your lives? Listen to every episode of NSG’s official podcast, Null Signal Station, where Always Be Running is always the intro and outro music!
- That’s not the only podcast that was rezzed up while we were facedown in Archives – Neon Static are fast approaching their 1-year anniversary of pumping their enthusiasm about Netrunner into our ears, and if there’s anyone left out there who hasn’t heard it they should do so now!
- Two new podcasts you say? How about three! Queering the Message is a podcast hosted by a rotating roster of members of the QTM testing group. If you’re looking for high quality Netrunner analysis from top-performing competitive players, as well as a chill time sharing in the camaraderie and in-jokes of friends who clearly spend a lot of time chatting, this is the place to get both!
- Audio isn’t the only thing the QTM crew have been up to! Winner of the 2024 Circuit Breaker Invitational jan tuno has been slowly compiling a thorough competitively-focussed guide to all aspects of the game, from the basics of the different deck archetypes to how to collate and compile your testing group’s data on each deck’s win rates! Spike biased can be read here.
- One of the most surprising things from the past 12 months has been that, in this age of video, three new Netrunner blogs have started up! The second one is Logic Bomb, in which Postis explores the minutiae of the game’s rules, highlighting interesting interactions and debating the implications proposed changes would have.
- The third is Rapa-Nui’s Netrunner Blog, which, prior to a presumably holiday-related hiatus since December, has been publishing new posts almost every week, on a broad range of topics ranging from theme and setting to meta overviews.
Lastly, come join me in front of this softly glowing CRT to check out the new and returning stars of streaming together.
- First and foremost, Sokka is back, not just to streaming regularly, but also as the World Champion, becoming the first two-times consecutive winner since Dan D’Argenio in 2015! His YouTube Shorts in between each round at Worlds 2023 helped those who couldn’t be there share in the excitement of the event, and his overview of his winning Corp deck had many useful competitive insights even for veteran players. Make sure to watch him livestream his games during the Okorina 6 tournament this Saturday!
- Make sure to also watch our own stream of the Accelerated Meta Test tournament at 3PM UTC this Saturday (4 hours before Okorina, so you can watch or play in both)!
- Neon Static have also been dabbling in multiple media! Their YouTube channel has been publishing regular content, from recordings of in-person tournament games to casual play sessions between the podcast’s hosts!
- Next, possibly the most prolific Netrunner streamer of all time, Codemarvelous, has been streaming regularly again in the past month! Go hang out with one of the OGs of the genre!
- Groenkaaf, frequent guest on Codemarvelous’s stream from back in the day, has just made his own first foray into streaming! Tune in for a veteran player getting reacclimated to the competitive meta.
- Not a streamer, but James of the Good Games Cast has published a three-part video introduction to Netrunner that you should absolutely send to everyone who asks you “what’s so great about this game you’re into again?”
- Finally, two new Spanish-language channels that appear to be run by the same person. If you’re behind either abi_can or Netrunner Spain please get in touch with us so we know who to reach out to if we ever want to collaborate!
We’ve been away too long to be able include all the notable Netrunner happenings since the last roundup. We hope to be able to do these more regularly after a new Community Manager is recruited (applications for which will open soon!). Feel free to get in touch with us if there’s anything you’d like included in the next one!
