Root Cause - Your Worst Enemy

Root Cause is a series of Android: Netrunner articles about deck building, strategy and tactical decision, for new and mid-level Anarch players. It was supposed to be bi-weekly, but my schedule have been a little messy those last weeks. I believe it will be normal again in November.

Opening Moves wasn't really the best pack ever for us, Anarch players. Frame Job needs time to be proven good, and Rook isn't enough to justify Pawn by now. As if that wasn't bad enough for us, the Corp got a hard counter against Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire, our most popular identity. Everywhere I go, there are people asking if there is hope after Jackson Howard.

But before we start discussing how to deal with counters, we need to know what kind of counter it is. There are two types of countermeasure you can take against an opposing strategy: a soft one and a hard one (these terms came from Starcraft, as far as I know, but they are used widely nowadays), and each one of them requires different solutions.

A "soft counter" is something that can beats what it is supposed to counter, but it can be overwhelmed by a higher investment. Let’s take my old and favorite example, Tag’n Bag decks. A soft counter against SEA Source is to use more link in your deck, but the Corp can beat your high link simply spending more credits to trace you. Another common counter is to use Imp to trash the copies of Scorched Earth. It is a soft one because it can be prevented by protecting the servers better or purging the virus counters.

The second sort of counter is the "hard counter". A hard counter will stop what it is supposed to counter no matter what you do. Plascrete Carapace is the best example in the game. It prevents all the damage caused by Scorched Earth, and it doesn’t matter if you have a thousand credits or ten clicks per turn. Hard counters require you to either change your strategy (which is the most common option, most Weyland Consortium players design their decks to have a good chance to win by scoring agendas) or use a counter against the counter (like Peter Hodges did in the Albany Plugged In Tour championship, where he included two copies of Power Grid Overload).

What is up with Jackson Howard?

One of the biggest issues with soft counters is that they don’t “trigger” the metagame (you can read my old article about metagames here). Just like Imp would be a good card even if Scorched Earth didn’t exist, Jackson Howard would be good even if there was no Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire. We saw earlier this week (Oct 14th), for instance, how Kyle Walker used Jackson Howard to return pieces of ICE back to his R&D before scoring Accelerated Beta Test, increasing his chances to install expensive pieces of ICE for free.

Now that we know it is a soft counter, we know how to deal with it. As a lot of people are saying, Whizzard: Master Gamer is perfect against Jackson Howard - it gives you all the credits you need to trash it as soon as possible, and also helps you to trash a lot of currently popular cards, like SanSan City Grid and Ash 2X3ZB9CY.

Our second option is to invest on more virus programs, triggering the trash ability of Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire more often than Jackson Howard can deal with or, if you got lucky, trashing Jackson Howard itself. We got Gorman Drip v1 in Opening Moves, and it seems that using Levy AR Lab Access on Anarch decks is a solid option (judging by the recent championships reports), as it provides you more virus programs to play along the match.

The third option (and the last one I can think about) is to use Personal Workshop to delay your virus programs until you get rid of Jackson Howard, then you install them all and run the Archives. This had been a very popular strategy for months and I don’t see a reason to believe it is any weaker now.

Of course, Jackson Howard is just a convenient example that I used to talk about this topic. While knowing how to counter a strategy and how to deal with counters against your strategy is a huge part of the game, most of what can be said about this topic was said on my previous article - I just felt like I needed to talk about Jackson Howard, as a lot of people were talking about it like it was the death of the Anarch faction. I’m glad to say it is not.

Community Spotlight

A few weeks ago, a member of our staff suggested that we could use this questionnaire to present ourselves to the community. I won’t lie to you, I love talking about myself, and as this is my column, deal with it.

As this article ended a little shorter than I want it to be, because I removed some paragraphs that said things that I already said before, I think it is a good opportunity to share a little more about me.

In my next article, I’ll post my first Android: Netrunner tournament report. I hope you guys like to read reports.

(thanks Ketricel for the idea and the questionary)

1.How did you first get into TCGs?

As most players, I started with Magic: the Gathering. A friend of mine taught me the rules and showed me Lojas Jambô, which still the biggest store where I live, and it is the place where my group currently plays. I started buying cards like crazy (I was 13 years old, you can't blame me for wasting money!) and playing 6 days per week for years. Most card games I played I met there.

2.What accomplishments are you most proud of in your TCG career?

I won some small Dragon Ball Z CCG and Pokemon TCG small tournaments, but nothing that I can say "OMG! I'm proud!". My best result in a Magic: the Gathering tournament was 9th place in a 64 people championship. I like my results considering that I went to the store with just one Island in my bag and built the entire deck there, with borrowed cards, so I had basically zero experience with it.

I don't have any big accomplishment in my Android: Netrunner career as a player yet, but being a writer in CardGameDB.com and being invited to participe in BadPublicity videos make me feel really honored. I can't explain how happy I feel when someone recognizes me or send me a private message like "don't care about the haters, dude, your articles are cool, keep writing!".

3.What other games have you played in the past?

The card games I played, maybe not in orders, are Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon CCG, Dragon Ball Z CCG, Magi-Nation Duel, The Spoils, World of Warcraft TCG, Legend of the 5 Rings, and Android: Netrunner. I won't write all the boardgames I played, but my favorite ones are Arkham Horror, Twilight Imperium, Puzzle Strike, Yomi, and Earth Reborn (I'm not a very "party" person, but I'm a big fan of Dixit and King of Tokyo).

I'm huge fan of video games too. I grew up playing Sonic and Streets of Rage (the second one has the best soundtrack ever!), and I still love them. My favorite games are Silent Hill 2 and Bioshock Infinite (biggest mindblows I've ever had), but a lot of games could be in the third place.

4.What games do you currently play?

Android: Netrunner is the only card game I'm playing currently. I would like to play a second LCG (Call of Cthulu or maybe Lord of the Rings), but my wage and the lack of players in Brazil doesn't help at all.

About video games, I'm currently playing King of Fighters XIII, Diablo 3, X-Com: Enemy Unknown, and Dustforce (best soundtrack after Streets of Rage 2).

5.What first interested you about Android: Netrunner?

The theme. A cyberpunk card game? It couldn't be better.

6.What advice would you give to new players just starting the Android: Netrunner?

Keep your mind open and experience the game as much as you can. I know that games like these give a sense of "loyaty" to your favorite runner or favorite faction, but you really should get over it, take your time, and try each faction at least once. You don't need to choose what factions you'll play as soon as you open the box.

7.What is your favorite card in Android: Netrunner?

That's really hard to answer. I love how some cards represent how they actually are in the real world, like Pop-up Window and Clone Retirement. I also love some cards artwork, like Dedicated Server and Queen's Gambit. At last, there are cards that are good/fun to play, like Sahasrara and Successful Demonstration. I can't say a favorite card overall, but if I had to, I think I'd say Queen's Gambit.

8.What would you like to see changed about Android: Netrunner in the future?

What I think that really needs to be fixed as soon as possible is that Jinteki needs better agendas. Currently, I'm more worried about getting hit by a Ronin rather than let the Corp score a Braintrust with 1 agenda counter. Nisei MK II have almost no synergy with the other Jinteki cards. The only Jinteki agenda that I like is Fetal AI.

I also think that it is time for Criminal to get a new archetype other than "I run a lot and Account Siphon you whenever I can". Anarch is getting the Caissa programs, Shaper has the stealth chips, but Criminal isn't getting anything new in the Spin Cycle. I don't care that much because I don't like to play Criminal, but I think it would be healthier for the game to give a new road for them.

At last, I think that the Runner have too much options to search for programs. People say that Atman is broken, but I don't think it would be that dangerous if Self-Modifying Code, Test Run and Special Orders didn't exist. Or maybe Corp could have something a "little" better than Levy University. Geez, what a crappy card...

9.Who is your favorite Android character?

I never read any book or played any other game from the Android universe, so all I have is the characters from Android: Netrunner. As I don't care about the "lore" of the game, I usually like the characters with the best pictures and the best names. By now, I'd say Rielle Peddlar is my favore one. The picture is really cool, and I think Rielle is a beautiful name. Maybe my daughter will be called Rielle, if I ever have one.

10.What card/ability would you like to see printed in the future for Android: Netrunner?

After I've seen Director Haas, I'm really curious about Jack Weyland would do. I like the idea of powerful assets that give the Runner agenda points if they get trashed, I think they add a good risk/reward management to the game.

11.Shout-outs/Comments

Shout-out to CardGameDB, thanks Darksbane for the opportunity; shout-out to BadPublicity guys; shout-out to Lojas Jambô for letting my group to play there; shout-out to Mundo 10 Jogos de Tabuleiro; shout-out to CoolStuffInc.com; and of course, shout out to my Netrunner group.

João “Hraklea” Almeida is a brazilian amateur card game player. You can know more about him by reading the questionnaire above.