The latest episode of Strange Assembly is now available for download. Android: Netrunner was launched to much fanfare at GenCon 2012, including an inaugural Icebreaker tournament. That tournament was won by David Kempe, who has previously appeared on Strange Assembly to discuss Legend of the Five Rings. Chris interviews Kempe about his experience at the Icebreaker tournament and about Netrunner generally.
Strange Assembly – Episode 068 – Icebreaker
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I’d say the paramount feature of Netrunner is its asymmetry with each side playing a very different kind of game.
The corporation side is one of the few card games where there is truly meaningful bluffing. In most CCGs bluffing only makes sense when you have a weak hand. In net runner it never pays to allow your opponent to know the truth so deception is always valuable if you can get away with it.
It really was a masterfully designed game, just one that never found a large enough audience vs the far more accessible MTG. I’m delighted to see it back.
I think what makes L5R special is its story, not just the story telling team but also how the flavor of the cards in your deck feel like events happening rather than just numbers. There is a great synergy there. Magic has some of that too but its less distinct because the action is more generalized.
Its other unusual quality is the sheer number of decisions you make in the course of a game. Not all of them end up being that critical, but L5R almost always presents you with a huge range of options. Magic has moments like that but the mana curve and nature of the game tend to lead to a window of choices more narrow than the number of cards you hold as where L5R tends to open wider faster.
Kind of lackluster episode but an okay listen. I really disagree with his stuff about rotation and reset. This is why A Game of Thrones has the restricted and banned list and with fixed packs always in distribution it is not as big an issue as with L5R and other CCG’s. Also you don’t have to have every pack but it does not take much to catch up I did when I started A Game of Thrones, starting with the core set is more than enough and the Android:Netrunner core set is the best one so far for any of the LCGs.
Yeah, if it wasn’t clear from the episode, my total experience with the LCGs so far is buying the Netrunner base set. They seem to fill a mini-CCG sort of niche in the hobby. You have your own customized deck (therefore requiring/allowing time spent with the game outside of the actual game), you want/need to keep on buying packs, and players tend to devote a more significant portion of their gaming time to it than a random board game – it’s all just a good bit less of each.
They replace TCG’s really, same customization and play options, way less cost. And they are getting bigger all the time. My friends and I only play LCG’s now.