Takes me back to my teenage years… (image source: Fantasy Flight Games)
I used to play Magic: The Gathering fifteen years ago at university and I wasted many dollars collecting cards and hours designing decks, even before I actually got around to playing the game. Sometimes, I’d stay up all night playing with friends, and often we wouldn’t eat. At the college I went to, in my building, we had maybe half-a-dozen players, and we played group games that involved up to 8 players with great politics, teamwork and betrayal. These group games led to grudge matches between friends to find resolution and created a dynamic cycle of group games and one-on-one face-offs. In that environment, it was really fun. But outside that bubble of players living together with too much time and too few responsibilities – I’ve never played it again. I’m no longer interested in collecting cards, or searching for other players. None of my friends want to play it because it is complicated and takes too much time and effort to learn.
Now something has popped up and caught my attention: Android Netrunner by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). This game is a re-imagining of an old CCG card game from the 90’s. Want to play corporations vs hackers? Think Sony vs Anonymous, or Pirate Bay vs RIAA, but with some cyberpunk and robots added to it. This game although set in the future, is interestingly current and topical in intent. It’s a completely self-contained game, with set expansion packs. This means two players can play straight out of the box and have a decent experience, and no chasing rare cards to have a more complete experience. Apparently it has a 30+ page rule book, so maybe it is a little complicated, but all indications are of something I really want to have a go at. So, when time permits, I may give this a go, and twist someones arm to play with me.
Here’s a summary about the game from FFG:
Monolithic megacorps and individualistic netrunners collide in a dystopian future. Set in the gritty, cyberpunk future of Android,Android: Netrunner is a two-player Living Card Game™ that rewards skill, strategy, and just the right amount of calculated risk.
In a world where corporations can scan the human mind and interface it directly with electronic data, more data moves every second than was ever processed in the first five-thousand years of written language. The network is omnipresent, the crux of modern human civilization, and while visionary corporations seek to secure their most valuable data on the network, the elite hackers known as netrunners seek to steal it.
This asymmetrical card game resurrects the mechanics of the original Netrunner, designed by Richard Garfield, and updates them to increase clarity and promote a more dynamic play environment.
The Android: Netrunner Core Set features 252 cards, including seven unique identity cards.
Learn more @ Fantasy Flight Games
Watch a short rundown on the game @ Youtube
Buy in Australia @ Games Paradise ($54.95 plus shipping at time of posting)
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