byronczimmer said:

One thing that's important to remember is that you get one mulligan. If you find yourself with a handful of agendas, and no ice, a mulligan is a good idea.

First round for corp: use your ice to protect R&D and HQ. (HQ especially if there's agendas in it!) Then use your last click to get a credit or a card.

It's good to put down ice, even if you can't pay for it. The runner doesn't know whether you can pay for it or not. They might run on the server, anyway, but they'll definitely run if it's unprotected.

As other posters have pointed out, corp has 5 credits at the beginning of the first turn, and by the end of that turn should have 5 or more credits (since you should be saving up to rez that ice you just installed).

Query for the OP: are you paying credits to install ICE in the first place? If you are, that's wrong. You have the first piece of ICE in front of each server free (plus spending one click, of course). You install cards within servers for free (plus spending one click).

(Note: it's cute to ice HQ and go "click-click" for 7 credits, enough to rez almost anything except the most high quality of ICE, and make the runner sweat a bit.)

Another possibility of things going wrong: are you playing that the corp has to spend a click to draw their first card? That's wrong, for the corp draws their first card free of clicks. 

My apologies if you're doing both of these things right, I'm just speculating.

The first ICE installed on each server is free. You only pay when you want to install additional ICE on the same server (1 credit for each ICE already on the server, though you can trash any number of those first).

 I'd start with protecting R&D - runner getting to know all the cards youll get is too troublesome. Next put something on HQ - HQ is much less pain as runner needs to pick right card and has no guerantee to get a good one, with ice he cant do much, with operations as well - he got some info, but was this really worth the trouble, with cheep nodes its quite bad, and agendas - you will lose some anyway, live with it; if you have 1 of 4 cards agenas runners chance is 25%. even with 2 of 5 - and its quite bad - its 40%, still in your favour. Laugh hard and keep poker face - will runner try again? If you think he will raise ICE - its not ment to stop runner, it just has to make the cost of acessing HQ big enough. Often don't rez ICE if you dont have to, an option of REZing ice is often enough to keep runner at bay, and if you rez one you lose an element of surprise and ability to rez other ice. As a runner i often make a run on sth i dont really wont, but it makes some sense - if Crop does protect it I can easly attack my real target Crop has no resporces to protect now.

 It's also worth pointing out that the Runner will often take an early lead on turn one or two. This is normal, and not disastrous for the Corp. Stay calm, continue to lay down defenses, and then the midgame is yours once the Runner has to stop running naked and start looking for breakers. Use that time to your advantage, because that's the time you'll score most consistently. Once the Runner builds up some resources and a rig, you're in a race to finish out on even ground.

byronczimmer said:

Also often misunderstood - the Corp must draw a card, and then gets 3 clicks to take actions, while the Runner does not draw a card, but gets 4 clicks.  This can make a big difference if you the runner is always drawing a card for free.

I've played a total of 7 games now. With one exception the runner has had an economic advantage in all of those games using discounts and credit generating cards. Is that a rare experience with those who have played more?

stevepop said:

The economic advantage of the runner isn't that they generate more credits, per se, it's that they don't HAVE to spend credits if they don't want to. The runner only HAS to spend credits if they want to attack (ie. Make a run). If they don't attack, the corporation can't do a whole lot to them. On the flip side, the corporation is always on the defensive and is attacked at the runner's whim. As such, the corporation HAS to spend money (or keep money available to rez ice) or else they'll lose quite quickly.

On the other hand, the runner has to pay every time he wants to break subroutines, while the corp has to pay only once to rez ICE.

stevepop said:

Credits held by a Corporation and Credits held by a Runner do not hold equal value in the game.  Although they share the same name and counter, what each buys is vastly different.  For the Corporation, credits function more like purchases, whereas for a Runner credits are half purchase and half fees.

Thus, you cannot say that a Runner with 10 credits has an economic advantage over a Corporation who has 5 credits.  The Corporation's 5 credits could rez an ICE that will cost the Runner all 10 credits to get past, and as Khudzlin pointed out the Corporation will keep that ICE rezzed and in-play, whereas the Runner will need to spend credits every time they want to to get past it.

I often find as Runner I struggle for credits, because you need the constant supply and are racing the Corporation, whereas when playing Corporation I feel less pressured and more in control of the pace.

Last night I played three games and won all of them:

1. Jinteki (me) vs Kate: I ended up with some 30 cred to spare (due to 'melange mining' from early game) flatlining Kate with an accessed Junebug advanced four times (that was a bit lucky because I needed to trick her into believing that it was a huge agenda), thanks to God my opponent didn't know the cards very well as we were playing with my decks.

2. NBN (me) vs Kate: that one was a close scrape, as Kate was lucky in accessing loads of agendas in early game. Without the player forfeiting one for an effect, he would have won.

3. Noise (me) vs NBN: NBN kept destroying my funds but with some 'demolition runs' , 'Yog 1.0' and 'Medium' I somewhat depleted R&D and found enough agendas in there. Again this could have ended up the other way round because my oponent forgot that 'Yog' just works on Code Gate. I had taken 3 brain damage and just one card in hand when I spent my last click on a run on R&D and stole the last agenda I needed. Apart from the agenda the remains of R&D consisted of two ICE which can't be trashed. As corp had private security force and me tagged during the run ('Data Raven' no way around that tag) it would have been my last turn.

.Zephyr. said:

Just wanted to clarify that the runner gets to peek only at the top card of R&D (and any upgrades).  It's Archives that he/she is able to look through all the cards.

 We played about 8 games on Friday night, and Corp won at least 6 of those.

The original poster may have gotten some of the rules wrong, but I think there is still a legitimate concern there.  If the Corp draws a poor starting hand, he may not have what is needed to protect even just HQ and R&D, and can quickly fall behind as a consequence.

IamSalvation said:

This only reinforces the point:  when the advice offered is the equivalent of "just make sure you have good cards in your starting hand", there's a problem.