Fotonurth said:

Heh, I know, right?  I've been playing the Android board game again with some friends, and the Bioroid detective has been a popular choice.  I'm not saying add completely new play mechanics in addition to the basic concepts already presented, but I think it would make deck building that much more interesting for Runners if you see the "race" designation on the ID card in all of the Runner factions, then start seeing cards that have effect text that might go different ways based on what the race might be.

"Black Ops Blackout Team"

Trash 2 hardware of Runner's choice.  -OR- Give 1 brain damage to Bioroid Runner

Flavor Text: "Don't worry sir, with these new EMP rifles we can deal with whatever we may find without having to worry about waking the neighbors."

 Man, I am willing to buy packs of just Neutral cards for both sides right now. If you don't do any deckbuilding there's enough stuff in the box for up to three players, just not enough Neutral cards.

There are still a lot of untapped ideas left in the original card pool, obviously. So major new mechanics don't seem likely in the near term.

More agendae to choose from, more options for the existing themes, and some countertech for the major strategies are what I'm looking for in the first cycle or two. Expansions that give me more IDs and maybe add a twist on existing mechanics would be my next wish. AGOT took a long time to get an expansion out for all 6 Houses; 7 factions would probably take a while, too. So perhaps they won't follow that model and will use expansions for new mechanics or make them broader--making them for just the two sides and giving each faction a bunch of cards. It'll be fun to find out.

I love the patch and system upgrade idea. Sticking with the cyberpunk motif as much as possible is always appreciated.

 I could see them initially doing separate Runner and Corp deluxe sets instead of faction ones. There's more faction mixing in Netrunner compared to GOT, AFAIK so all the cards would be useful for deckbuilding no matter what faction you favor. Then they could introduce hidden resources in the Runner expansion without giving one faction a huge advantage.

 Considering players are expected to have both a corp and a runner deck in organized play, I get the feeling we will not be seeing expansion for just one side or another.

Janus said:

Unless they release a separate expansion for each side each month. I wouldn't mind that for the first few months, just so that the card base can be built up rather quickly. After that, maybe just drop to one expansion a month, with each side getting half of the box contents.

Regardless of what they do, I hope they just start releasing expansions right away. Otherwise, the championship tournament in November is not going to be all that different from the icebreaker tournament at GenCon… or any more interesting. Heck, it'll probably be a lot more predictable by that point, so even less fun.

The card base builds up at the same speed regardless of whether they do focused packs (1 per faction) or even distribution across all factions.

I'd rather see everyone get equal airtime.

byronczimmer said:

No, I mean multiple expansion packs per month, not just the typical 60-card single pack for a whole month. They could do a corp expansion pack AND a runner expansion pack each month, getting more cards out than they normally do with their other games.

TheRealLeo said:

I expect them to continue with the 60 card packs.  Each pack will have a mix of cards for each corp and runner.

TheRealLeo said:

No thank you.  Keep the drip slow.  There is no reason to accelerate beyond their normal rate.  If they oversaturate the market then it will just be a repeat of the first time, and that's not a good idea.

Further, they'll lose fans if they try to sell too much too fast.  $15 * 12 is already $180 year (MSRP, can get discounts online, blah blah blah).  Going above that takes this out of the realm of 'sure I"ll buy that pack for $15 to "$30?  That's a whole game!"

 All I want in the expansion:

byronczimmer said:

$180 for a whole year is hardly a big deal. And I'm not suggesting doing that for the whole year; just the first three or four months, especially October and hopefully early November to make the Championship tourney a little more interesting.

Also, it wouldn't be $30 if there was even distribution amongst the factions. If you ran the typical 60 cards for the corp expansion, 4 new cards per faction (including generic) x 3 each = 60, while 4 new cards per runner faction (again including generic) x 3 each = 48. So unless FFG decides to get greedy, the runner expansion would realistically need to be a little less, maybe $12. So the total would be $27. It's only a difference of $3, but it's still something.

Surely a distribution model like that for only a few months would not be a deal-breaker, or even a game-breaker.

kpyke said:

I hope that doesn't end up in an expansion. If you can pay the cost (A click and 3 Agenda Points?) then that's pretty much an auto win unless some serious meat damage absorption gets added along with it.

At the moment I'm hoping for more cards to further explore the themes of each faction. Like Weyland seems good at making money and the News corp has a lot to do with tag manipulation and getting agendas up.

For runners, I'd like to see more about utilising bad publicity and more programmes (Maybe something like an emergency escape when you reveal a piece of ICE? That would be quite useful, even if it's just a one-shot.)

Note that back in the day, Tag n' Bag could be brutally efficient but also a double edged sword- builds where you either won in the first couple of turns or it's over. The fact that I Got A Rock requires at least one agenda to be scored could potentially cost the Corp vital momentum allowing the Runner time to get up some tag prevention.

The reason why the Corp needed to act fast is the meta aspect- the second a Corp rezzed something killer like City Surveillance (for tag generation), then they've pretty much signalled their intentions to flatline the Runner. Even an unaware Runner should suspect something's amiss if the Corp hadn't delivered the goods upon a single tag (IGAR requiring at least two). The main killer is that there there were hard counters to Tag n' Bag in addition to all of the meat damage and tag prevention, such as Emergency Self Construct or Arasaka Owns You. A Runner doesn't care about meat damage if his consciousness has been uploaded onto the net, or a corporation can rebuild them.

As it stands, IGAR would be hugely imbalanced in Android Netrunner, but back then it was balanced by actually being slower than the conventional Tag n Bag builds, allowing the Runner to pull some hefty counters. Give it time, and we may see some fun cards in the future.

Plus it's dropping a freaking moon rock on a hacker, who doesn't want the power to do that?? In this setting it wouldn't actually be that out of place either. :D