Netrunner: Earth’s Scion Review

In this new series of articles Marc and Chris, our resident runners of nets, review the latest expansion for Android: Netrunner. In these articles Marc and Chris will introduce their favourite cards from the newest pack and then give a whistle stop tour of the rest of the cards. There are a lot of card names mentioned in these articles. If you don’t recognise a particular card, or need a refresher about what it does, we recommend either searching for a card on NetrunnerDB or installing this Chrome plugin to let you quickly look up what the cards do. Without further ado, let’s jack in…

Earth’s Scion: Pack summary

Chris: Generally a very strong pack, unless you only like Anarch’s and NBN. Aginfusion is one of the most interesting IDs in the game, and there are cards that I can imagine seeing in tournament play for 5 of the 7 main factions. A recommended pack for fans of Shaper and Jinteki, with a couple of interesting Criminal cards as well.

The most exciting card in this pack for me is Inversificator. This is a program that breaks one of the three main ICE types in Netrunner: Code Gates. The interesting ability of this card is that, once per turn, you can swap a piece of ICE you used Inversificator to pass with another piece of ICE. This gives the Runner the ability to mess with the Corp’s ICE positioning. Have they made a server that is horribly expensive to get into? Simply swap a few pieces of ICE with Inversificator to make it easier on the wallet!

The card is made even more amazing when combined with an ID from the deluxe expansion Creation and Control. Rielle ‘Kit’ Peddler’s ability makes the first ICE you encounter each turn a Code Gate for the rest of the run, allowing you to move any ICE you like with Inversificator. An interesting upshot of this is that you can swap the ICE with the next ICE you would encounter, letting you get into any server even if it has two ICE protecting it. All this with a single program installed! This gives Kit a huge boost in her effectiveness. Her ability fosters rushing, making lots of accesses early on when the Corp isn’t able to properly protect itself. Usually if you failed to win quickly then you would struggle. The release of Inversificator allows Kit’s ability to stay relevant into the late game.

I entered a recent tournament with this deck. The general plan is to get Magnum Opus online as soon as possible, as that is how you make money. Then get Inversificator online and swan into any server you like. Late game, make R&D as easy to get into as possible by putting weak ICE on it, then use Medium to access lots of cards. What I like most about the deck is that it it feels really tricksy to play as there are a few ways you can surprise the Corp player.

The other Runner card that I want to highlight is Rosetta 2.0, as it opens up a new way of building Criminal decks. Criminals are masters of surprise, and there are a number of programs that allow them to surprise the Corp when they least expect it. For example, Sneakdoor Beta is a program that lets you easy access HQ, while Snitch lets you peek at what ICE is about to be rezzed and jack out if it looks nasty. Before this pack, Criminals have had to use cards from other factions if they wanted a quick way to get these programs out of their deck when they needed them. However, with Rosetta 2.0 installed, they can now swap one program that might have become less helpful with another that is more useful in the current situation. The same is true of programs from other factions. If you wanted to make some money with Magnum Opus in Criminal you previously had to make difficult deck building decisions to include multiple copies in your deck. With Rosetta 2.0, you can just include 1 copy of Magnum Opus and use Rosetta 2.0 to find it. This ‘toolbox’ style of playing Criminal has been difficult to play previously, but Rosetta 2.0 opens up these deck building options and is a card I’ve been really enjoying.

The real standout of this pack for me is Red Planet Couriers. Theme wise, I guess that if you were shipping things to and from Mars, you’d want to bundle everything up into one big package before sending it to earth, and effectively that’s what this card does. Grab all your advancement tokens and send one massive package of them to the destination of your choice!

To understand why this is good, let’s have a little refresher on what cards can be advanced. There are three main types, Agendas, Assets, and advanceable ICE. Whilst you could use this ability to do interesting sudden board state changes with just Assets and ICE (Converting failed traps into a massive Fire Wall, or gaining emergency cash with Thomas Haas). The main use of this card is for scoring Agendas. For the card to be worth playing it has to be used to add more than three advancement tokens, as otherwise you’d be better advancing with the default game action. But with 4+ tokens available you can do more than you otherwise could. Red Planet Couriers fits in nicely to “Fast Advance” decks, which aim to score their agendas without leaving them vulnerable in a remote server. As a Triple Operation playing the card uses all your 3 clicks, so to fast advance you’d need to gain a click or install at the start of your turn. But this is true for fast advancing any card other than 2/1’s, and whilst an extra click would usually only let you score a 3/1 or 3/2, with a sufficiently charged Red Planet Couriers, you could even fast advance score the monstrous 9/6 agenda Government Takeover.

However, Red Planet Couriers doesn’t have to be used for fast advance, you can also magnify the size of agenda you can score with a “Never Advance” strategy. This involves installing cards on one turn without adding advancement counters, then scoring them on a subsequent turn. This has the advantage of needing less combo pieces, but runs the risk of the Agenda being stolen. Creating a remote server that is hard to get into, and including many upgrades and assets that can be used to bluff if an installed card is an agenda, help mitigate the risk of this steal. As with Fast Advance, this technique is mainly used to score agendas that need 3 advancements to score, so they go from being advanced to scored in one three click turn. However as before, with Red Planet Couriers and enough preexisting tokens, you can score any agenda like this!  

I’ve been playing this out of Tennin Institute: The Secrets Within, since it came out, and this ID is a natural home for it. As Tennin can add advancement tokens to any installed card if the runner doesn’t make a successful run. This makes it easy to rack up the number of advancement tokens to make Red Planet Couriers work. It is also likely to be good in Weyland: Builder of Nations, another ID that encourages leaving advancement tokens out. My deck, aims to score 2 small agenda through normal Never Advance, whilst building up tokens via the ID, then use Red Planet Couriers to score out a 5/3 agenda such as The Future Perfect. The never advance plan is supported by making running unknown cards risky such as Psychic Grid, and this pack’s own Ben Musashi.

This pack also brings a new Jinteki ID, AgInfusion. New ID’s are always interesting, but AgInfusion especially so as it makes you think about ICE placement in a very different way, and forces the Runner to plan their turns differently. The ID ability lets you trash a facedown ICE to move the Runner from one server to another. This lets you tax the Runner’s credits and clicks. Is the Runner running on your server with an Agenda in it? Trash some ICE and force them to break some nasty piece of ICE on another server. If you’ve planned it properly, the Runner is now too poor to run again. It also protects you from powerful Runner Events that focus on a particular server. Is that Criminal about to access your HQ and Siphon your accounts? Trash some ICE and move them to Archives!

The ID isn’t just for disrupting the runners plans, you can make your own ! I’ve enjoyed trying rush based decks with it, focused on getting one horrible piece of ice rezzed early, then rushing whilst they don’t have the breakers to deal with it and can’t deal with letting the subs fire. ICE like Chiyashi or Brainstorm are ideal for this.  But the real worry when facing a player running AgInfusion is that they will try and force you to encounter a deadly trap. There are a few ways in Netrunner to ensure you can’t jack out, and in AgInfusion, these will often be used before transferring you to a deadly server. Another combo card to watch out for is Cell Portal, which is being used to create large loops that you are forced through again and again, to the Corp’s benefit.

This is a great ID to explore and we’d love to hear about cool things you’ve done with it. Fun story, in early testing of this ID, we had a game where after Chiyashi was rezzed, one of us forgot about the ability, saw the corp was poor, and ran into what would have been a safe server, if AgInfusion hadn’t moved them into the Chiyashi for the kill! What made it even more ridiculous is that we then swapped sides, and the same thing happened again. We then realised that it was 2 am and we were too tired for the brain burn of playing with Aginfusion!

Faction by Faction

Anarch: This pack is not for the players who choose Anarch for their powerful effects but instead for those who appreciate the unusual card design this unorthodox faction can encourage. We get two new icebreakers in Bezerker and Persphone. Neither of which are likely to supplant more efficient breakers in faction.  The strength for subs mechanic in Bezerker would be good with medium-high strength barrier ice with many subs, but this situation is rare. Persephone has some potential in decks where you aim to make the Corp lose by running out of cards, however it relies on your opponent having multiple sub sentries, that you are willing to let fire, whilst having Perephone out. Which whilst fun, will probably have to be a secondary strategy in any deck you wish to include it in. Putting on my tin foil hat, I think these two breakers hint at a potential future card this cycle that allows you to add benign subs to ICE. Something like Datasucker, for example, but where you spend virus counters to add “The Runner gains 1 credit” subs to ICE before the printed subs. This is, of course, pure conjecture, but the release of such a card would increase the utility of both of these breakers and provide an interesting alternative to other suites of Anarch icebreakers.

Criminal: Los gets a very nice support card in Rubicon Switch, as he is now able to derez ICE so that his ability triggers again. This increases the viability of decks based around derezzing ICE. Aeneas Informant is nice economy card,  especially against asset spam decks that have lots of cards that can trigger it. It may actually end up being the most widely played card in this pack because of this, but it’s not as cool as our favourites!

Shaper: Adjusted Matrix modifies existing breakers to AI and lets them break by spending clicks, this looks like it will be interesting with high strength breakers such as Endless hunger, and has been used to great effect in this deck. Dedicated processor is probably best paired with icebreakers that cannot boost strength without it, Yog-0 and Mimic seem likely to be frequent companions for it, though I have been having fun putting in on the underplayed NFR. The mechanic of modifying cards already installed is a really fun one, and fits into the Shaper theme of tweaking and tinkering with your code until it’s perfect!

Neutral: Dadiana Chacon seems too risky to me, but I’d love to be surprised. You also don’t really want to be poor in this game, so hovering near zero credits is not something you’d ideally want to plan for. Owl is fine, but probably won’t be used much if you have the full cardpool. It might have a home in a rush style deck to force the Runner to find an icebreaker to get around Sentries, but it need another piece of ICE behind it for it to be effective.

HB: Now I love the NEXT identity and the existing NEXT ICE, but NEXT Opal may be one of the worst cards in Netrunner. The fact that the installing cards subs do not have the crucial word “may” on them means that you may be forced to install cards you do not wish too, including installing agendas into vulnerable places. The only time you may want this mass install is if you are playing an asset spam deck which a) Is an archetype already overpowered currently b) Is one of the less fun archetypes to play against in my opinion and c) is anti-synergistic with the other NEXT ICE.  Bioroid Work Crew on the other hand is a very strong card for fast advance decks, as by making the install action clickless, you can fast advance 4/2 agendas with Biotic Labour, or perform equally good tricks with Subliminal Messaging and Jeeves Model Bioroids.

Jinteki: Bamboo Dome joins a growing list of Jinteki cards that manipulate the top of R&D that can be useful for combo decks.  Ben Mushashi  joins Caprise Nisei in the club of extremely useful Jinteki upgrades. If you are playing Jinteki and have an extra slot, try him out, as the tax he adds to a server is worth having. I’ve very much enjoyed having him behind a Kakuyo or alongside a Prisec, to make a very nasty scoring server.

NBN: These new NBN cards don’t seem to lend themselves to a particular archetype in my opinion barring the general NBN theme of doing interesting things with tags. Although the ability to avoid having to break Authenticator by taking a tag is a very interesting piece of card design.

Weyland: Audacity is an interesting tool for Weyland players to score agendas without leaving them on the table for a turn. It will be interesting to see what decks are developed with it. On the other hand Battlement, whilst not being badly designed or especially weak, doesn’t do anything particularly interesting, as if you want to stack the subs, you’d be better with Spiderweb, and if you want to just keep out runners without a Fracter (Barrier-Icebreaker), you’d be best with Ice Wall.

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That’s our thoughts on Earth’s Scion! What tricks have you found with this pack? Which are your favourite cards? Let us know in the comments!

Since this is the first in a new article series, we would love to get some feedback on it! Please let us know your thoughts!

Marc & Chris will return with Blood and Water!