Android: #Netrunner — Crimson Dust Review (Runner)

I like playing Corp most, because there’s a sense of storytelling with it. You lay out the setting and the narrative pace, going first and setting up both obstacles and determining agenda density.

As the runner, you’re the sometimes amoral hero-protagonist running through the story, which requires a different sort of mindset altogether. Thus Netrunner’s uniquely asymmetrical approach.

In general, though, FFG may have embraced the hero-protagonist side of things too much with the last few cycles. Temujin Contract, for instance, meant that the number one point of tension in the game — resource management and the difficulties thereof — didn’t really exist runner-side. If you can make your way through a central server, you were going to profit. If nothing else at all, you can click-one-Temujin an exposed Archives and come out with 12 credits, to which the corporation can do nothing about but sit there and wilt at the money-cannon the runner’s now pointing at their agendas.

That’s not great game design, is it? Now pair it with cheap ways to destroy ice, render ice meaningless, render upgrade protections blank, freely trash installed assets…

Well, it has gotten better. New lead designer Michael Boggs opened up his era with a new Most Wanted List, Netrunner’s answers to bans and restrictions, and simply made it too expensive to use the most degenerate pieces together in the same deck. While there were a few things that slipped through — the synergy between Estelle Moon and Friends in High Places may not be as degenerate as CTM asset spam was, but it’s a notably heavy weight on the meta — the overall health of the game is better.

And better yet, the Runner side of things is still interesting to play too. Here’s what they got out of Crimson Dust.

Crim

Aumakua
Type: Program: Icebreaker — AI — Virus
Cost: 3 Memory Units: 1
Faction: Runner Criminal
Faction Cost: 1
Whenever you expose a card or access cards and do not steal or trash any of them, place 1 virus counter on Aumakua.
Aumakua has +1 strength for each virus counter on it.
1[credit]: Break ice subroutine.
Strength: 0

There’s a very interesting pseudo-combo here, where you kind of never want to actually use this AI “against” iced servers. Instead, it works like Aeneas Informant: you soft-counter asset spam strategies by taking advantage of exposed remotes to load up on resources. In Aeneas’s case, it’s raw credits. In Aumakua’s case, it’s stacks of virus counters to then shatter all but a handful of anti-AI ice in your way at an efficient discount.

Sure the corp can always spend three clicks to purge, but given that any exposed remotes is four more clicks to fuel up for the runner next turn, that’s a turn wasted for the corp. A good trade (and a good reason for the corp to run Cyberdex Virus Suite).

Either way, consider my interests piqued. While this is best backed up by other icebreakers, of course, it’s an inherently powerful skeleton key that snowballs quickly and demands an increasingly urgent response.

Assessment: GOOD — plays against dominant decks well and synergizes with its faction options.

Caldera

Type: Resource: Virtual
Cost: 3
Faction: Runner Criminal
Faction Cost: 1
3[credit]: Prevent 1 net or brain damage.

Three credits to prevent one damage is not an efficient use of credits — unless it’s the one that kills you, of course. In which case, three is highly affordable and extremely efficient.

The brain damage seems like it’s the biggest threat prevented, but also it really isn’t. Brain damage as a kill option is notoriously unreliable and badly supported, meaning that what this really count as is as a criminal-side memory-free Net Shield. Which, granted, does see play (if also costs less for that mitigation).

Problem is: do you really need it? If you’re expecting a lot of Jinteki ping damage, or if preventing just one point of net damage means securing the Obokata Protocol waiting in the wings, then sure. …or you can overdraw beforehand, and have the effective “life” to survive its full blast, which just costs one click per card.

Assessment: NEUTRAL — Highly dependent on meta context, but its low faction cost and minimal upfront expenses fills a necessary defensive niche.

Shaper

Diana’s Hunt

Type: Event: Run
Cost: 4
Faction: Runner Shaper
Faction Cost: 4
Make a run. Whenever you encounter a piece of ice during this run, you may install a program from your grip, ignoring all costs. When this run ends, trash all programs installed using Diana’s Hunt.

On the surface, Diana’s Hunt looks pretty shoddy. All it basically does is replace the installation cost of a big icebreaker like Femme Fatale or otherwise — which isn’t necessarily bad unto itself, but the mandatory trash cost really limits the savings you get from it.

At least, under most circumstances.

There are a number of key exceptions that work around the trash issue. If you can pull the card back into your hand, for instance, they’re no longer “installed” and cannot be trashed by the card effect. For the Bird breakers, that’s easy — and it comes with the ability to shut off ice too. Just too bad that they cost so much influence to get into Shaper, since you’re not burning four influence points just for a Hunt.

However, there are also underutilized breakers, like the Deva suite. Their swap effect not only lets them steer around Diana’s drawbacks, but even the cheapest one — Sadyojata, at four to install — makes Diana’s Hunt at least cost-neutral. With the two others, and facing two disparately statted ice, Diana’s Greco-Hindu approach is a net cost savings.

Yes, that’s janky. You’re better off with London Library. You can, of course skip the mandatory trash entirely with Sacrificial Construct — but two cards just to make one piece of software slightly cheaper and more flexible to install is not anybody’s idea of a sound and profitable strategy.

Assessment: BAD — Helluva niche card, just to make it semi-reasonable. Sure, you can use Femme Fatale as an ice-bypassing missile this way, but why bother?

Dummy Box
Type: Resource: Virtual
Cost: 1
Faction: Runner Shaper
Faction Cost: 2
Trash a card from your grip: Prevent an installed card of the same type from being trashed by the Corp.

This, on the other hand, is an eminently splashable Sacrificial Construct on steroids, meaning that it’s going to frustrate a lot of Skorpios players. In exchange for going deep on one or two kinds of resources, such as with Hayley decks hyperfocusing on software and hardware, you have guaranteed means of protecting what’s in play from trashing effects or trash-based costs (unless, of course, that preventing the trash necessarily means preventing the trash ability from firing off).

In the age of Skorpios, this is a great effect. And since it’s a Virtual resource, it even works with Apex decks!

Assessment: GOOD — limited defensive role, but does its job well at minimal investment.

Reshape
Type: Event
Cost: 3
Faction: Runner Shaper
Faction Cost: 4
Swap 2 pieces of unrezzed ice.
“I wield the power cosmic–a galactic force that can reshape the Net!” -S’onge Galaxy

You’re putting this in your Mass-Driver Kit deck. No, I don’t care that you don’t have a Mass-Driver Kit deck. PUT IT IN THERE. The ability to offensively reposition ice is a nasty one — basically turning a Wotan into a Vanilla for just three credits, making the scoring run that much easier. In a lot of cases, the corp player will have a lot of one- or two-of ices, and usually high-costing ones that are meant to be slot-effective in the scoring server. Reshape lets you swap that with the early-game cheap ice they slapped over HQ to keep you from Account Siphoning them, making the scoring server as porous as swiss cheese in lieu.

Sure, that means no accessing HQ for a bit (at least until you dig out another Reshape), but that’s well worth it for the winning agenda, or to put you within shot of it.

Even outside of Kit, though, a Reshape lets you knock down a stubborn door even if you haven’t dug out the right icebreaker for it yet.

Assessment: GOOD — Severe disruption to a corp’s defensive mid- and late-game play. Dependent on how they’re running their ice strategy, of course, but the value potential is high.

Anarch

Mining Accident
Type: Event
Cost: 2
Faction: Runner Anarch
Faction Cost: 2
Play only if you made a successful run on a central server this turn.
The Corp must pay 5[credit] or take 1 bad publicity. Remove Mining Accident from the game instead of trashing it.

So you’ve either vamped them for five, or you have free Bad Publicity, which is worth a lot more than five in the long run. There is no such thing as a losing proposition with Mining Accident — for the runner, that is. If you can find an excuse to run Mining Accident, it’s heavily encouraged that you do so.

Assessment: GOOD — Simple but painful effects, regardless of what the Corp chooses.

Respirocytes
Type: Hardware: Cybernetics
Cost: 0
Faction: Runner Anarch
Faction Cost: 3
When you install Respirocytes, suffer 1 meat damage.
The first time you have 0 cards in your grip each turn, draw 1 card and place a power counter on Respirocytes. When Respirocytes has 3 or more power counters on it, trash it.

If you have three Respirocytes, it’s like having a free I’ve Had Worse whenever you facecheck a Komainu. But even one takes you out of Neural Amp range, which is great value for a zero-cost hardware!

Also, this basically means that the overall strength of a Faust is +n, where n is the number of Respirocytes you have installed. While Faust has lost some popularity due to its new MWL cost, it’s still fundamentally one of the most powerful AI breakers in the game. If you’re already running Anarch, you’re running Faust with a full set of Respirocytes and I’ve Had Worses.

Of note: having Respirocyte installed makes the rarely used Noble Path an excellent card. The damage prevention isn’t contingent on having an empty hand, after all — only that you trashed it all first. Doesn’t say anything about taking cards again afterward.

Assessment: GOOD — Though it doesn’t fit a wide range of available strategies, it complements some of the most powerful available tools.

♦ Salvaged Vanadis Armory
Type: Resource: Clan
Cost: 0
Faction: Runner Anarch
Faction Cost: 3
[trash]: The Corp trashes the top X cards of R&D. X is the amount of damage you have suffered this turn. Use this ability immediately after having taken damage.
Vanadis, a Martian arms manufacturer, was among the first sites targeted from orbit during the war.

Imagine deliberately facechecking Komainu just to deck out the corp — pretty much the dream situation for SVA. Outside of that, though, the applications are limited. If the opponent is running anything like a pacifistic deck, it’s mostly a dead card.

Most runner-inflicted self-harm comes in the form of Brain Damage or limited-utility hardware installations. The exception, I think, is Net-Ready Eyes, which does two meat damage to permaboost breakers. And while it does effectively turn Mad Dash’s drawback into an advantage — if you don’t score anything, you at least remove the top card for another attempt at an agenda — you’re still only milling nine cards at most.

That’s not to say you’ll never see SVA played. Not if Jinteki comes out strong, forcing runners to consider damage mitigation or ways to mutate them into advantages. In which case, this is an interesting silver bullet.

Assessment: NEUTRAL — Highly meta-dependent. If the new playing field favors damage-based strategies, this sharply increases in value. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a dead card.

Neutral

Corporate Defector
Type: Resource: Connection
Cost: 0
Faction: Runner Neutral
Faction Cost:
Whenever the Corp spends a [click] to draw a card (not through a card effect), reveal that card.
He was suddenly very motivated to pass on confidential information.

On its face, this doesn’t seem like a terrible card. Getting to see what’s in-hand is a subtly powerful and underappreciated effect, letting you get a sense of what tempo the opponent is playing at (versus when they’ve installed it, in which case the corp’s already cast their metaphorical die). But cards aren’t judged in a vacuum, and the surrounding context makes this one suck.

One, Jackson Howard is still a thing until some time after GenCon.

Two, Estelle Moon exists, and so do other draw effects in the game.

Three, Mandatory Draw is already a thing, meaning that resource pressure on the corp is less about getting the right card into hand and more about how much it costs to do so.

Runner Assessment

There’s something of a rudimentary Anarch tagme/punchme deck in the making, thanks to the damage mitigation theme, and the Respirocyte/Faust interaction is worth looking into. Shaper and Crim both came out with a couple of toys too, though Shaper might have the most general utility.

Overall, there are niche strategic expansions for the runner, but nothing groundbreaking with this pack — except for Mining Accident, which has no reason not to go into every deck that can at least run Archives once. It either drains the corporation of tempo, or gives you a permanent +1 credit on every run, increasing your tempo at corp expense.

That quite possibly makes it the standout card of the entire data pack, even among the Corp cards.

…your guess is as good as mine as to why FFG keeps pushing Anarch.