I played my first run-through of Android: Netrunner. It went very slowly as I relearnt the rules.

I started with the suggested Shaper vs Jinteki pairing. The Shaper is Kate McCaffrey who can install hardware and programs cheaply, and Jinteki is the evil cloning corporation who specialises in doing surprise damage to the runner.

It was a bit hard to pretend I didn’t know when a server was hosting an asset vs an agenda, especially something like Project Junebug, but I do that all the time when playing Magic solo.

The tough bit was getting the hang of the criteria for deciding whether to make a run or not. When you have several pieces of ICE, you have to add up all the costs to figure out if it is worth it.

The base set is great because it comes with three runner decks and four corp decks, which makes twelve different games to play.

Things I noticed:

• The game can stall a bit if the corp has no agenda cards, or if they run out of money.
• If there are no remote servers with anything installed, you can often run against the central servers and trash something annoying.
• It is very important to get your economy going. Everything takes credits (see above).
• The corp’s card draw each turn is essential to move the game along.
• The corp can’t leave agendas uninstalled in hand (HQ) too long, else the runner might steal them.
• The flavour is great.

Rules I kept forgetting:

• You have to pay to install additional ICE.
• Check the identity cards for the corp or runner special abilities.

Next up, trying out different decks and then playing with Gab.