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Ye Essential Saltes

The following are entries from an anonymous diary found in a Boston second-hand book store.

January 29th, 1925.
Here we are, finally arrived in Arkham. The house is much larger than our townhouse back in Boston but we shall just have to spread ourselves out. Lucy, our beautiful Siamese, has settled in already. She has found herself a new favourite patch in the sun on the window sill. It is Charles’ first day at the new shop tomorrow and he is a little nervous, but I have told him Mr Hutchinson is sure to be very pleased with him.

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Fhtagn!

Arkham Sanitarium Patient No. 1652: Carter, R.
Case file: March 1, 1925.
Transcript of handwritten note found in empty cell.
Patient missing, whereabouts unknown.

Mankind’s oldest fear is fear of the unknown. While the familiar and the mundane offer comfort and safety, the Other always lurks menacingly at the edges of our thoughts. The unknown can be found in many places, in strange streets where the faces are unfamiliar and no one meets your gaze, or in dim-lit grottos where eerie fungi grow and the air is heavy with a miasma that clouds the mind, or on bleak cold-swept plains where nothing has ever grown nor ever will and yet the shrill cries of unnamed birds echo disturbingly, or in cosmic voids of limitless space where the Outer Gods play and laugh and dance to the thin hideous piping of a nightmare flute.

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Improving the corp

Most of the Haas ICE is bioroid, which means they are run by artificial intelligences. The effect of this is that the runner can usually break subroutines on the ICE by spending clicks rather than using a breaker. They can work around them, or talk their way past them.

This is a bit of a weakness, so I need to make sure I also have some ICE with requires the runner to spend credits.

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Netrunner economy cards

It is very important in Netrunner to be able to pay for the cards you want to play. You pay using credits and you can get one credit by spending a click.

This is far too slow, so you will want to put economy cards in your deck to give you credits faster than this.

There are several different cards that give you credits, and they all work slightly differently.

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Running with a better rig

After a few plays, I am looking at tweaking my runner deck.

This is pretty much just getting rid of cards I find I don’t play much, either because the time never seems right or because they don’t really fit into the overall strategy.

First off, I will get rid of Scavenge as I can tell it is more of a combo card and not used on its own.

Other cards up for review:

Escher – This could be good to create a path to an agenda but it is too conditional. Just having the full set of breakers and enough economy should do me.

Crypsis – Might be good as a general breaker but it is very expensive. It can hit a trap, but so can Tinkering at a pinch. Also the cost of a click is bad when facing lots of bioroid ice. You need your clicks to get past them for free.

Inti – Cheap to install, but expensive to use, and the barriers are the strongest ice so the cost to break one can be extortionate. Maybe I need to consider another fracter option?

Personal touch – This is good on breakers like Inti, but is not essential to my strategy. I will keep it if I have enough slots.

Akamatsu Mem Chip – I do need mem units but is there another option?

Based on all this, the mods I made to my deck are:

-2 Scavenge
-1 Escher
-2 Crypsis
-2 Akamatsu Mem Chip
-2 Inti

+2 Battering Ram – a less costly barrier-breaker.
+1 Levy AR Lab Access – as a late game reset.
+1 Omnidrive – to replace the mem chip.
+1 Toolbox – also replaces a mem chip.
+1 Freelance Coding Contract – to clear out duplicate cards in my hand.

This leaves 3 more slots:

+2 Modded – to help install my now more-expensive programs and hardware.
+1 Feedback Filter – as defence in late game final rushes.

Done.

Now to take a look at my H-B corp deck.

Building a corp

Now I have a custom runner deck, I need a custom corp deck to play against.

Taking the Haas-Bioroid cards from the core set and from the Creation and Control deluxe expansion will give me a range of possibilities.

Haas seems to specialise in using its bioroid workforce to do all the work and hence gain extra clicks. These extra clicks in a turn will allow the corp to do what is known as ‘fast advance’, which is to play an agenda then advance and score it all in one turn.

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Netrunner deckbuilding

Moving on from playing with the core set sample decks, I am taking my first step into deckbuilding.

Seeing as I have the deluxe expansion Creation and Control, and this is based around the Shaper (green) runner faction and the Haas-Bioroid corp faction, my idea is to create two mono-faction decks. I won’t be using any influence at this stage.

I think I ought to be able to tweak the sample decks into something better, something that plays smoother.

Starting with the Shaper runner deck, I will stick with Kate as the runner identity. She makes it cheaper to install hardware and programs, which makes it easier to get her rig set up. (The rig is all the installed programs and hardware, including extra memory, icebreakers and other programs).

My plan is to select a specific set of icebreaker programs and then build around them to finance and support them.

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More non-Euclidean goodness

I got a Bag-O’-Cthulhu.

The figurines are stored in a separate dimension and accessed through a portal within the plastic bag.

While watching some videos of Call of Cthulhu tournament games on The You-Tube, I saw people were playing with tiny little Cthulhus as their domain markers, and not the large ones that come with the core set.

A little research later and this bag of cyclopean fun was winging its way to me.

It is a real thing: A bag of Cthulhu. You get six regular large Cthulhus and twenty-four tiny little Cthulhus!

The little ones are great for using in games, and they don’t take up as much room in the box, which leaves more space for cards.

I now have far too many of the big Cthulhus what with all those that came with the card game core set, but I can probably re-use them in any number of other games.

Here they are, when manifested fully into our dimension:

Great Old Ones up the wazoo. Aren’t they cute?

Of course, one cannot just send rabid lunacy through the post without the proper health and safety warnings. See the age warnings on the back of the label:

I agree, this is most certainly NOT a children’s toy

Notice how infants 0-3 are most prone to insanity. Sad face.

Flight from the Dark

Bifur puts down the book, being careful not to damage the crumbling pages any further.

“It is a sad tale,” he says.

His fingers trace the runes carved into the dusty tomb. “Balin, son of Fundin. Lord of Moria,” he reads.

Gimli is by the door to the chamber.

“The orc patrols were below us but I can no longer hear them,” he says, “It does not seem likely that we have lost them.”

Dain joins him at the doorway. A flicker of fire gleams far down in the atrium. It grows brighter as they watch.

“There is nothing more for us here,” says Dain. He turns to Bifur who still stands by Balin’s tomb.

“Come, Bifur,” Dain says gently, “We must leave this place.”

Bifur sighs.

“We had many adventures together over the years, Balin and I,” he says.

Dain puts his hand on Bifur’s shoulder.

“Indeed. He fought valiantly alongside me at the Battle of the Five Armies,” he says, “but I sense a great peril approaches and we must away.”

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Theme, Flavour and Mechanics

In boardgames, there are (for me) three main aspects that determine how much I like a game. These are Theme, Flavour and Mechanics.

The Theme is the overall story or setting of the game. It could be a Star Wars game or a Cthulhu game, a Sci-Fi space exploration game or a Sword and Sorcery D&D game. I am less likely to play a game if I am not fond of the theme. I don’t want to run a farm, for example, or sell textiles in medieval Florence. I want to shoot stormtroopers, or fight dragons, or try and stop the world being eaten by oceanic elder gods. You get the idea.

Let us suppose (correctly) that I am interested in any game that has anything to do with Cthulhu. What makes a good Cthulhu game?

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