An Early Tournament Report

Date:      Mon, 6 May 1996 10:20:20 -0700
From:      "Mark K. Pettit" 
Subject:   Pro Tourney Netrunner tournament

At the Long Beach Pro Tourney this past weekend, the Wizards held a Sealed Deck Netrunner tournament on Saturday evening.

It was a blast.

I ended up coming in fifth place out of a field of somewhere around 20 people. And I had only played about 1/2 of a game before too! Just goes to show that a) the game is quite easy to pick up and learn, and b) Netrunner starters are actually quite powerful.

The tourney rules were the same as the ones on the web site. Swiss play, each player switches roles after the first game, and the scores are based on: 10 points for the winner, and X points for the loser, where X is the total number of agenda points they scored.

RUNNER POINT OF VIEW:

I have found that some of the most powerful cards are the ones a Runner has. 'The Short Circuit', 'Mantis, Fixer-at-Large', 'Gideon's Pawn Shop', etc. All of these let you search for particular cards.

Getting "Score!" on my first turn was killer. It gave me a HUGE boost a couple of times. Often I would play Mantis to search for The Short Circuit, and then use The Short Circuit to fetch Icebreakers when I needed them. Other VERY useful and important programs are cards like "SeeYa" and "Smarteye". Detection is another of the Runner's strong points. With SeeYa and Smarteye, I *never* ran into an ambush node (except for once, and I'll talk about that later). I always knew what ICE the Corp had unrezzed, so I could calculate whether or not to make the run based on the number of bits he had in his pool. Very useful indeed.

In fact, one Corp player I was playing kept trashing his older ICE and installing new ICE, presumably because I'd have to pay a bit and take an action to use SeeYa to find out what that new ICE was. Often he was trashing unrezzed ICE. Mighty cool.

Other highly useful cards are "HQ Interface" and "R&D Interface". Accessing an additional card each time you accessed one of those was quite useful indeed. In fact, as the Corp, I almost lost a game because of one of those cards. Luckily the runner ended up tagged... Heh heh heh... More on that later also.

The highlight game for me as the Runner was when the Corp had installed an Ambush node that does N brain damage when you access it, where N is the number of advancement counters on it. I don't recall the name, but it might be "Vacant Soulkiller". He had no ICE in front of it, and I had exposed it with SeeYa. I knew it was there. But then the Corp rezzed it, and starting advancing it. I asked him "What are you doing? Why are you bothering to advance it? There's no way I'm going to access that node." His response: "You'll see..."

After he had 5 counters on it, he used "Namatoki Plaza" to upgrade it. This is an upgrade which allows the Corp to install an additional Node or Agenda in that data fort. See his plan? He was going to use that fort to advance all of his agendas. After he upgraded the fort, he installed another card onto it, presumably an agenda. The Corp had 4 or 5 agenda points already, so I was screwed, unless I could do something...

It was my turn. I had five cards in hand. My first action was to play Jack 'n' Joe, a 0-cost Prep which causes you to draw three cards (Ancestral Recall Heh heh heh). I now have seven cards in hand. Then I used SeeYa to verify that the newly-installed card was indeed an Agenda (yup, and it was worth 4 agenda points, too!). Then I ran the fort.

No ICE on the fort. Just the Vacant Soulkiller with 5 advancement counters on it. I took 5 brain damage, but since I had 7 cards in hand, that was okay. I scored the agenda and won. YEAH!

I think the Corp player didn't expect me to make a run that would end up with me going to a hand size of 0. But when your ass is on the line, and you can see that Agenda just sitting there taunting you, you'll do almost anything to get it.

I ended up as a gibbering idiot, but I won anyway. Heh...

CORP POINT OF VIEW:

Similar to the Runner, when the Corp starts out the game with the card that gives you *9* when you pay *5* (I think it's called "Accounts Receivable", but I'm not sure), it's a HELL of an advantage. Luckily I had this one on some of my first turns also.

Another great card is "Liche". Having to take 3 brain damage and then ending the run will scare away almost anyone. And it has a >6< strength! That's the strongest ICE in the game. There are others with a 6 strength, but none have more. It was nice to get that in my starter (it's an Uncommon card, I believe). :-)

Urban Renewal is a fun card as well. In one game, a Runner played "Edited Shipping Manifests" as the last action on his turn. Bad mistake. "Edited Shipping Manifests" is an operation where you make a run on HQ. If successful, you don't access any cards from HQ. Instead, the Corp loses *1*, the Runner gains *10*, and the Runner gets a tag.

Tags. Heh heh heh. Tags are something that every Corp player should strive for at all times. Tags make life worthwhile. Since the Runner had a tag, and only had 2 cards in his hand, and I had Urban Renewal in my hand, he was dead. He quickly learned the value of removing tags.

On my very last match (the fifth and final round of the tournament), I played one of the playtesters, Gabriel Alonso. He's credited in the rulebook. All evening I had asked my opponents "Have you been playing long?" Most of them said something like "Oh, I've played a few games" or "I learned the game earlier today". Gabriel just pointed at his name in the rulebook. Hmm...

Gabriel knew the power of tags. I had an Urban Renewal in my hand for the entire game, and was never able to use it because he always got rid of a tag as soon as I managed to get it on him. On one turn, I was sure that I had him. He had attempted a run the previous turn, and so I played "Chance Observation" (an operation that allows you to attempt a trace^5 on the runner if he attempted a run last turn. If the trace is successful, you give the runner a tag). I had plenty of bits, and he had no Base Link, so I easily traced him. I was then going to play Urban Renewal and kill him, but unfortunately he had a card which allowed him to trash it to avoid receiving a tag (Leland, Corporate Bodyguard?). So my plan didn't work out.

As the Runner, he was playing with an Icebreaker called "Blink". A very interesting card. It is an Uncommon Icebreaker with a strength of 5, and an install cost of 5. For each subroutine you encounter that you want to try to break with Blink, you roll a d6. If it comes up 4, 5, or 6, the subroutine is broken. Otherwise, you take that much Net damage. This can be done on ANY type of ICE: Wall, Code Gate, or Sentry. He was playing with two cards that, combined, allowed him to absorb 3 Net damage per turn. So even when the attempt didn't go his way, he still wouldn't be taking any Net damage probably.

He had earlier attempted a run on a fort protected by Liche, and his Blink had failed him twice, giving him two brain damage. His hand size was now three. Now he made a run on a fort where one of my ICE had a subroutine that does 4 Net damage (don't recall the name of it). He attempted to use Blink on it, and rolled a "3".

3 Net damage from Blink, and 4 Net damage from the subroutine. He could absorb 3 Net damage with the cards he was using, but that left him with 4 Net damage to deal with, and he only had 3 cards in his hand. Flatlined.

OBSERVATIONS AND OPINIONS:

The only time I lost both games was when I played against a guy who didn't use pennies or glass beads for keeping track of his bits. He used D6's. I don't think I like this practice. It's too easy to forget just how many bits the Corp has when there are only four dies sitting there with a "6" showing on top of them. If those were glass beads, I'd know for SURE that he had a load of bits. 24 bits is rather hard to NOT notice when there are 24 actual "things" sitting there.

I would like to request that people don't play with D6's. It may be a matter of personal taste, but I don't like it. It's far to hard to remember and keep track of when you're the opponent. Of course, maybe that's the point, eh?

The tournament was quite well run, even though it lasted from 6 pm until 1 am on Saturday night. It was long, but it was fun.

For coming in fifth place, I was given a Netrunner T-shirt. I wore it proudly the next day at the Pro Tourney, and will keep very good care of it so that I can wear it to other tourneys as well. That was a very nice prize for coming as far behind as I did.

I would like to thank the Wizards staff who ran the tourney. I don't know your names, but I hope that someone prints out this tourney observation for you and lets you read it. You guys did a great job.

I hope that the tourneys become sanctioned soon. That would be great fun.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, if you made it this far. :-)

Comments and questions are welcomed.

 My thanks to Mark. Got a true story? Contact cardguy@bitblaster.com. Updated 7 July 96.