soybeeftacos

[soybeeftacos]

I guess this is transitioning into a Star Wars: Unlimited blog...? I'm not sure yet, but it's close enough to Netrunner, and I still have this site, so I might as well post here. I've been thinking a lot lately about this game, about our family, and about how following my son's obsession has led us back to a hobby I'd pretty much abandoned. I'm going to write a bit about that thinking here today...

Our family's obsession with Star Wars: Unlimited has been continuing. We've spent way too much on it (as happens with a TCG/CCG). Our son is really getting into it, and he's been looking up new cards daily, as it's spoiler season for the set releasing in November. That set, Twilight of the Republic, has cards set during the prequels, the Clone Wars, and related lore, which are his favorite. The picture here is him jotting down card names (and rarity!) so he can share them with a friend of his that he rides the bus with every day.

It's kind of ... magical to see this? It's not something I've experienced before, getting into a new game at the same time as your kid. And it's a great game, as well — one that has tiresome old dudebasher bones, but does some interesting things with old mechanics. Don't get me wrong, Netrunner is by far the superior game, but it's also the refined, elusive, and frankly snobbier experience. The lore is — or was, before Null Signal took over — really interesting, but it's not got the same connection to one's lizard brain that Star Wars has for many people. And I think that makes a surprising amount of difference.

Star Wars: Unlimited is just a mess narratively, and I find myself enjoying that a lot. None of it makes narrative sense — sometimes you're smashing a Millennium Falcon into a Star Destroyer and it has a bit of a feel of a movie. The rest of the time, you're, like, watching Kylo Ren fight Greedo. It's a mishmash of everything in the lore, and that's surprisingly... freeing? Weirdly fun?

I think my biggest insight is the following. I'm someone who was a Star Wars fan in childhood, grew into a snobby Star Trek fan shortly afterwards, and rationalized that Star Wars was shitty media for children intended to sell toys through most of my adulthood. The funny thing is — I was right, and that's okay! Star Wars: Unlimited has the anarchic feel of playing with Star Wars toys at times. Sure, make your Rey leader do direct damage to the Dagobah Swamp. Go ahead, have Grogu disable Grand Moff Tarkin for a turn. Your Fett's Firespray just swooped down and killed my surgical droid!

They're toys. As cards. And toys are fun!

....

Back in 2014 or so, when I first started going to FFG Worlds for Netrunner, I remember the Netrunner players' arrogance and hubris. I felt a lot of that arrogance and hubris myself.

There were Call of Cthulhu LCG players there, playing in their final FFG tournament. We shared a big warehouse to play in the Netrunner Icebreaker tournament with Star Wars LCG players, which only had another year or two before it folded. Netrunner was still ascendant and the players had a real "we're the cool game" swagger to them — which continued well into the rise of L5R (I remember Netrunner players making day two of L5R Worlds so they could play more Netrunner).

Now, of course, Netrunner is still alive, but of course, it really isn't. It's a game played primarily online by an offputtingly international player base. On the surface, the changes to Netrunner in the past 6-7 years have all been great — increased attention to diversity in both the card game representation as well as the team of developers, increased professionalism in printing and distribution of cards (other than, ahem, the European store), and a real fervor for the game from a cadre of new players who'd never experienced the FFG game. That all sounds wonderful, but it's also frankly, deadening.

Why? I think SWU is helping me understand why, at least a little bit. Netrunner has become a game for the obsessives and there's not much room in it for casual players. The national and international events are now dominated by, it seems, an even smaller number of top-tier players than there were during the FFG days. The game's design seems to swing wildly as they have changed lead designers three times (not counting interims) in the past five years. And it's virtually impossible to get local communities built where there weren't any before.

SWU doesn't have that problem. I've been struck by how friendly and easygoing it is playing a new card game with a built-in fanbase. I might not particularly care about Star Wars as a thing, but I'm related to a boy who does, and that obsession has been a bit infectious. I've found myself learning what the "Adelphi Patrol Wing" is, the name of the character that rats on Rey, Han, Chewie, and Finn at Maz Kanata's castle in The Force Awakens, and I now remember exactly how many systems has bounties out on Doctor Evazan. All because of these cards.

Playing these games is supposed to be fun. And, with it in the rearview mirror, I see that Netrunner wasn't ever fun after the FFG days. It became a hotbed of player contention, lots of political infighting, and lots of desperate attempts to recruit people while the community withered. But never was it the same kind of silly, goofy, pass-the-time fun that it was before that. And that's because it lacked casuals — at least where I was playing.

Games like these need people with incomplete collections to come in and try to swing wildly with whatever cards they have. They need people motivated more to make themely decks (something much more intelligible in a Star Wars game than Netrunner) to try and repeatedly fail at them. They need people who see the cards as cardboard toys first and foremost. They need... kids.

And that brings me back to the start. Playing with our son has been transformative for me. I tried to get him and his sister to play Netrunner, but there's no hook there for them. Frankly, there was no hook there with Magic or Pokémon, either. By virtue of being a game based on the Star Wars license, there's a hook here, and one that I'm happy to get reeled in by.

Too bad it's so fucking expensive, though.

[soybeeftacos]

Oh hi — I haven’t posted here in a long while. Mainly because I stopped playing Netrunner again. We had a small group going here last autumn, but it fell apart around the holidays, oddly enough because I bought a couple of kits and wanted to run some casual tournaments. I think I’m done trying to organize for Netrunner, as I’d just like to play and enjoy the game, y’know? Trying to get people excited and skilled up and providing opportunities to play/win prizes is sadly too much — it may not actually be a “dead game,” but for all intents and purposes it is a long dead game for most casual players.

So, I’ve found myself exploring other things. My son has been on a huge Star Wars kick this past year, roping the whole family in with him. We are literally sitting around the house rewatching a couple episodes of The Clone Wars as I type this on my phone. That has led me back to FFG and to the constructed deck world.

And… to my great surprise, I’m quite liking Star Wars Unlimited. The whole family has played it and it’s been really fun so far. Unlike Netrunner, it’s something my kids actually want to play rather than have imposed on them.

I’ll be blunt; I like the LCG model and hate the TCG/CCG model. I don’t like “dudebashers.” That’s said, SWU is a very approachable and fun twist on these games, with some very fun — and sometimes silly — thematic combinations. I hate the cartoony art but don’t particularly care how a Star Wars game looks. The games are quick and light, with some strategic depth, though I haven’t really had the opportunity to get that deep into it because the cards are just prohibitively expensive due to print underruns. Oh, FFG, how typical.

But, it’s serving as a fine replacement for Netrunner for me and that makes me happy. It’s fun to talk through deck design with my son and get regularly destroyed by him. Netrunner will always hold a special place in my heart and I’d love to have a group to play with again (provided they don’t go crazy on me). For now, though, I’m diving into SWU with excitement — it’s great to show up to a store to play with strangers again, to learn about new cards again, and to explore a game that seems well crafted for casual play.

Prerelease this weekend and I’m stoked!

[soybeeftacos]

Nine Years

Today is this little Netrunner blog's ninth year anniversary. Wow, times flies. I'd like to muse on the history of this blog a little here, but there's not much to say, really — it's more of an archive of my ups and downs with it, and thankfully mainly a lot of ups. When I'm not posting here much (like lately), it's because I've moved onto other things.

I honestly haven't even played the game in a bit, since around the holidays. We ran out of steam on playing card games before the holidays, at least a little bit, and I very intentionally disconnected myself from the only organized local group of guys still playing. It dawned on me that I was interested in playing with a group who wanted to organize events (casual, competitive, whatever) and with people who were interested in making their own decks. But these guys weren't that, to the point of even refusing free promo cards. It wasn't a good fit and they made me feel awkward to play with, so, well, life is too short to do that.

That's the problem with the game, as everyone knows. If you don't have a good local group of people to play with or connect with others in the community, it's hard to move forward. I have tried to reconnect with the community online, but frankly, that's gone nowhere as well. Everyone talks about how nice the Netrunner community is, but it's still extraordinarily cliquish and off-putting. I love the game, I've reached out to multiple people to play the game with online, but nothing's come of it.

So, I'm a little sad that my interest in the game is still pretty high but also there's just no time in the day to keep trying to locally organize a "dead game" or build an online playgroup when there are many other things I could be doing with myself. I've gone back to watching a lot of movies and hosting movies at the local Alamo. I've picked up other games to play with our family. I'm doing things other than optimizing my play and reading the same tired Slack memes from the same three Netrunner players over and over again.

I think the most off-putting thing is how playing online isn't much fun anymore. I got warned that I'd get banned from Jnet by the current World Champion — I got salty with him after losing to his smurf and then he hopped on his main account to threaten more severe sanctions. Yeah, that's what the site is for many now, just a good place for the elite players (read: twentysomethings with a lot of time on their hands) to smurf and clean up in games against us lesser randos.

The game is always the best when it's played in person. And the best times I've had with it have been when I was playing with paper, sitting across a table, having laughs and being frustrated in equal measure. That's what the game was designed to be, and that's what I'd love to get back to. There are a handful of players around here that will still play with me on occasion, and I'm thankful that they're still into it. I just got a new CO kit in the mail the other day and even if I'm not playing much, I hope I can organize a fun event for those guys and draw out other local players to join us.

Anyway, nine years. That's a long time! I'm thankful the game still exists and while I'm not the hugest fan of Null Signal, I'm thankful that they have put so much care and effort into the game. I'm excited to see what Rebellion Without Rehearsal might bring.

[soybeeftacos]

A pretty great haul at the thrift store today — an ANR core set for $3! As well as a bunch of other FFG games, plus Small World Underground, the 1993 TSR Dragon Strike VHS game, a Bohnanza expansion (I think?), etc. Each for $3 or less, the whole haul for $25.

[soybeeftacos]

Some lunchtime pubrunner games with my wife yesterday. Tip to the wise: Don’t double-stack Gatekeepers when you don’t have any ice to replace them with, unless you enjoy getting milled.

[soybeeftacos]

Some Christmas Netrunner additions to our household. At the top, a new Quiver playmat carrier and a new, smaller Quiver I received from my wife. At the bottom, two Christmas-themed decks: An "Esâ in Suburbia" deck played by and alt-arted by SeaRose, and a 3x Deep Dive "Sleigh Girl Sleigh!" Sable played by and alt-arted by ZoeHope (I made the ID card for Nyusha "Sable" Santa-shta). I printed the decks, proxied in some Santa sleeves, and then put them in some dabbing/vacationing Santa deck boxes for my wife.

Hope everyone is having a great New Year so far!

[soybeeftacos]

Some pre-Xmas pubrunner games this afternoon. I’ve had some rougher times playing the game online lately — losing a lot, finding online play to be very alienating. Grumping out a lot, even to the point of being chastised by mods for not being as polite as I could be. Anyone who knows me knows that I get much saltier in the cold and annoying confines of good ol’ Jinteki.net.

This is a card game, not a videogame. And it’s always preferable to play with real people, eat a sloppy burger while playing, and drink some beverages. It’s great to be playing in real life again, with real folks to play with. This is what the game was made for, not AMTs and online leagues and testing groups/cliques.

And it is especially fun to play when a runner as fun as this Zahya deck is in the game. Whenever I get a little sick of the game, I come back to this deck, which is loosely based off of something Ysengrin was playing on a stream a few weeks ago and seems a lot like whiteblade’s recent CO-winning list. It feels like fundamentals incarnate; just run a lot for value and accesses, no fancy tricks, nothing complex. It’s like a perfect palate cleanser and a healthy meal all in one.

Anyway, happy holidays to anyone who might still read this little blog. I wish you all happy running and corping!

[soybeeftacos]

Going through my binders this morning and beyond missing these actual cards, I’m gonna miss the FFG-era full bleed alts and fan alts. The current game has some great full bleeds but, frankly, pretty amateurish fan alts in a lot of cases. Maybe because the top tier fan alt creators have been recruited to make actual art for the game now (Cat Shen, Scott Uminga). Anyway, just appreciating these cards before they go.

[soybeeftacos]

Got a nice set of Proteus-era Netrunner CCG cards in the mail yesterday, I think all commons. They will go into the growing pile of cards destined for an ONR or maybe mixed ONR/FFG-era ANR cube. Of these, I think Bel-Digmo Antibody and Death Yo-Yo are both awesome and should be reprinted by NSG with number tweaks. Redecorator, however, has the best theming.

[soybeeftacos]

How is it that no one has apparently ever typed this phrase into the internet before?

[soybeeftacos]

It's been pushed out onto the live server, everyone! Tripling your number of NRDB decks! No longer will I have to delete my old janky Professor and Tennin decks from days of yore to make room for my janky Ayla and Issuaq decks from days of now!

[soybeeftacos]

I haven’t posted in a few weeks, but I’m still playing! Running nets at home with my ladies (our son still refuses to play) and with local players at the store three times in the past two weeks. And on jnet more regularly — had a memorable win with a Tāo Hermes deck yesterday, in fact. I think it’s gonna be hard for anyone to sour me on this game again.

[soybeeftacos]

This is sweet. I mentioned to the store we visited last week that I was going to show up with some people today (Tuesdsay) and wanted to make sure that was okay. It's a very small store with only one really usable table for card games, and I wanted to reserve it. Told them I was playing Netrunner and always happy to teach it to new players, and that I always bring a bunch of decks for others to borrow and play with, etc.

Somewhat to my surprise, they turned this into an "demo event"! The copy is a little rough, sure, but I'm just glad they seem excited by it and are doing a little to promote it. In this day and age, with no product in the store, it's nice to see a local store be so supportive. I hope we can show them that the game is very fun right now and worthy of future support.

Again, I'm shouldering most of the teaching/deckbuilding for our little group right now. They're mainly getting new cards as they can afford them, and still learning many of the basics of the game. I am happy that our group seems to be active at all, and hope I can do something to keep it going. I just want people to play with, y'know?

[soybeeftacos]

I'm starting to feel a bit down about the game again — lots of losses whenever I try to play anyone on jnet, and the few wins I get seem to be only against completely new players who don't understand the game. I'm also in the role of now being the organizer for our little group here (I'll post a link about that later), which even though everyone is great, feels like a mixed bag as I'm more interested in learning how to play better than teaching the game right now. It's becoming more work and I'm not getting better at playing yet.

That said, we have garnered a little local interest — we moved to a different store last week (which I only just learned is co-owned by a former student of mine), and they seem eager to support us. We are also drawing in some folks from outside of town (Richmond) to come play with us. So, we'll see, maybe it'll take off? Or maybe I'll do one teaching/demo event this week and then take a few week break from face-to-face Netrunner.

Regardless, the Quiver is now full. The top six decks are all Standard decks (in order from top to bottom: Deep Dive Sable, the FA/Rush Comfort-Ob-le Ob, an Arissana with Gachopons, Marbles' Worlds PE with an extra Moon Pool and House of Knives, a Laamb/Begemot Esâ, and Ghost Meat's "Banana Breath" R+ from US Nationals). After the dividers, it's all of Abram's FFG era teaching decks. My second Quiver contains two Gateway-only decks (a Zahya and a PD), demo decks (both FFG and NSG), as well as even more tokens, spare sleeves.

Even if I feel like I'm winding down a little, you can't say I come to these meetups unprepared. It's eaten up too much of my time, at least lately. But at least I will have decks ready to go in case anyone ever wants to play.

[soybeeftacos]

A “quick” lunch game with my wife took over an hour because (1) she’d never played with Sable or most of the current cardpool before; and (2) Ob really hurts my brain. I have had fun piloting the Mutual Assured Destruction combo Ob, but that’s really just one turn of Ob nonsense and then you win. This deck was that hybrid rush/FA Ob and it’s awesome — popping a Calibration Testing to grab a Tucana, then scoring an agenda, then popping out a new Border Control? Feels good.

Oh, I lost, though. I’m still really bad at this game and my wife always has better instincts about what to play and when than I do!

[soybeeftacos]

This past week, I started goofing around with a Loup deck (the one with Audrey v2 and Buffer Drive). I don't really know what I'm doing with this ID yet, but I had some fun playing it and Zahya. And as a big Universal Monsters fan — I just saw The Wolf Man on the big screen a month or so ago, and I've got tickets to see Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein in early December — I started goofing on an alt ID as well.

I just whipped this one up with that old FFG template I dug up, some of the NSG assets, and a nice old promo photo of Lon Chaney, Jr. And then, this morning, I watched the video of last night's stream from The Métropole Grid (which I had turned off right after Andrej belittled me for thinking I was cool for having an all-Apoc team at King of Servers back in, like, 2018). Turns out the new Circuit Opener kits have some new Moshing alts which were, originally, going to have some Universal Monsters background characters in it.

Anyway, great minds think alike. I'm probably not the first to make a Wolf Man alt for Loup. The question is, what other Universal Monsters arts make sense for Runners? Maybe Padma could be the Gill-Man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon? Maybe Adam could be the creature from Frankenstein— I'm reticent to make Mercury as "the Bride," but there aren't any other Bioroid runners, I don't think? There's vampiric ICE, of course, but nothing that seems to obviously fit Dracula or The Invisible Man. Hm.

Maybe this just speaks to the common refrain that so many of the NSG-era Runners are just too nice and not weird enough? There is certainly a bias in their writing toward having the player identify with the Runner (and seeing Corps more simplistically as the "bad guys," narratively). Hard to find much glorious monstrousness in the game these days, even if it's much more playable right now than it has been in a long time.

Anyway, I should stop there lest an alt-art almost turns into a rant. How fun!

[soybeeftacos]

I have been feeling regretful lately that my multi-year grump attack about this game has left me without a bunch of cool stuff. The game seems in a better place now than it was a few years ago, but if I’d stuck it out and gone to Worlds in Toronto or Barcelona this year, I could have had those awesome avatar IDs! And other stuff.

One thing that seems to be necessary is getting a Mark die. They were handed out at Worlds last year and I see them on streams pretty often. Once, a long while ago, I made psi game dice which were prizes at a 2017 King of Subways tournament in NYC. So, maybe it’s time to make some more dice!

This bag of blank acrylic dice just arrived last night and over Thanksgiving, I’m going to see if I can come up with a decent Mark die design. I’ll probably keep it pretty simple — letters and color coding? The symbols that NSG made for each of the centrals don't quite work for me, but maybe I’ll go that route, I don’t know.