I took the plunge. I bought a box of Neuroscape, Genesis set.
I have not been disappointed.
Neuroscape is a head-to-head cyberpunk themed competitive trading card game that was recently released and initially kickstarted by 1,891 backers. I am a non-backer recent convert, and I reviewed playing the sample starter decks about a week ago.
Back to the box. By the numbers, in a box of Neuroscape Genesis boosters packs you get 24 booster packs at 16 cards per pack. And you get one bonus promo card in the box as well. In summary you get 385 cards per box.
So, what’s in a booster pack? As printed on the side, a booster pack includes: 9-10 common cards, 3-6 uncommons, and 1-3 cards of rare or higher rarity. The approximate rates of the higher rarities are 1 in 4 packs will have a Quantum Rare, 1 in 342 will have an Art Rare, and 1 in 1526 packs will have a Serialized card. In addition, you may get a foil version of a card. I do not know the rarity frequency of foil cards. Also, you may get basic RAM, but very rarely. In my box I pulled a total of 6 cards of basic RAM, one of which was a foil.
In order to play a game of Neuroscape you need exactly 25 basic RAM per RAM deck, so to resolve this issue I bought a deck of 100 basic RAM for around $10. That fulfills the need of RAM for 4 separate decks of Neuroscape. Which is convenient, because after opening my box and analyzing my cards, I found that I could construct four 50 card decks that have enough synergy to be playable with plenty of cards left over. I think at least. I’m still learning the systems here.
Another thing to note, the left-over basic RAM box is the perfect size to carry a 50 card deck, covered in Dragon Shield matte card sleeves, plus 50 RAM cards not covered in sleeves with some room to spare.
My main concern with buying a box of booster packs (which was available) over premade decks (which were unavailable at the time of my purchase) was the frequence and amount of Mainframe cards in a booster box. A Mainframe card represents your cyberdeck and is necessary to play a Neuroscape game. It also sets up at least two synergies with the cards in your deck. In the Genesis set, there are 20 distinct Mainframe cards of rarities common, uncommon and rare. To date there are no Quantum Rare Mainframes.
I should not have worried. There are 12 common Mainframes. In one box, though everyone’s milage will vary, I pulled 17 Mainframe cards, at least one Mainframe from all rarities; and 7 of the Mainframe cards I acquired were duplicates. Some of the Mainframes were foil cards and are very pleasant to look at. I did not acquire all Mainframes in the core set, but that is to be expected. I did get both rare Mainframes, Hive Dynamics and Wndrtech, lucky enough though.
That’s neat and all, but where can you peruse the spectrum of Neuroscape cards and see for yourself? I have found that the website NeuroDB is your answer. In fact, since I don’t have access to the prebuilt decks available for Neuroscape, I found the website’s deck database to be invaluable to see what the card distribution is for those starter decks. In addition to being able to make your own decks and share a virtual catalogue of your card collection, NeuroDB lets you look at a Meta Overview of what cards users that are making decks are using and at what frequency. Now at the time of this writing, the Meta Overview is a new feature and was temporarily unavailable, but I had accessed it in the previous day. I found the website very useful for theorycrafting, looking up potential card synergies and for hosting the two decks I recently constructed with my collection, which I will discuss a bit below.
Here are some more observations on the cards I pulled from my box. After buying one box I found myself wanting more uncommons to fill out the decks I was attempting to make. For example, I wanted to put together a Wonderland heavy faction deck with the Wndrtech Mainframe, but I didn’t draw any of the Wonderland uncommons White Knight or Red Knight that would have been useful for that type of deck.
I also noticed that the non-faction utility cards were relatively rare. By non-faction utility cards, I mean cards like Antivirus, Short Circuit, Terminate and Delete that have no faction and are useful counters in any deck one makes. Even though those cards mentioned are common, I only drew less than 20 of these types of cards total, which is a small amount relative to the other factions in the box.
I am going to make a correction on a statement I made in my previous blogpost on Neuroscape. I said deck design is not limited by class restrictions. I am clarifying that statement now that I am more educated in the rules. Some cards are dependent on other cards being in play in order to use them. In the rules this is called a Synergy Requirement. For example, if I wanted to play the program script (Tarot) The Fool card, I would need a card from the Mystic faction in play to do so. Now this doesn’t mean that only Mystic faction cards can be in a Mystic faction deck or with a Mystic faction Mainframe. In fact, in one of the decks I designed below I added Dustrunner faction cards to a Hacker centric deck with a Hacker Mainframe. Now I don’t know if that deck design strategy will work too well; but I could do it, so we will see what happens when I playtest it.
At any rate, I decided to construct two 50 cards decks with the cards I obtained from my single box. The first deck is a Hacker focused deck that I made to model the playstyle of the Hacker starter deck I played initially against Leo as I reported in my previous Neuroscape blog post. In short, this deck focuses on playing Viruses and Trojans on my opponent’s Mainframe that do direct damage to his Mainframe Health (blue health). This deck is also an experiment in that it only has 4 rare cards, and the rest are uncommons and commons. I am testing the viability of playing a “budget rarity deck”. The second deck is a Cybernetic and Corpo deck where I slammed together my strongest cards of each of the factions without regard to rarity limitations and I focused on dealing out damage to the opposition’s Bioframe Health (red health).
The first starter deck I played with was the Hacker starter deck with the Firestarter Mainframe. This deck revolved around placing Trojans and such as Power Spike and Memory Leak as well as Viruses like System Error on the opposing Mainframe to do Mainframe Damage to the opponent. This direct damage to the opponent was supported by the Firestarter Mainframe’s synergy, the Script Programs Overload MK. I and Overload MK. II along with other cards in the deck.
I wanted to see if I could replicate this theme of direct Mainframe damage and Trojans/Viruses while improving upon its design. So, I chose the Mainframe Deepnet (a common card) as the center of this deck. The first synergy of Deepnet requires two Hacker cards, then upon playing a protocol, Deepnet will deal two Mainframe damage to target player. So far so good. Now I just needed protocol cards. So, I then added all the Trojans and Viruses I obtained from my box to my deck. This consisted of 4 Memory Leaks, 1 Power Spike and one Simulated Solace. Trojans and Viruses are protocols.
The Memory Leak Trojan will only do damage to the opponent, if the opponent’s RAM is running or committed. So, a canny opponent will just not run all of his RAM when a Trojan shows up face down connected to his Mainframe. To solve this problem, I turned to the Dust Runner faction. The Dust Runner faction has a number of cards that destroy opponent’s RAM. These include characters like Badlands Marauder and Coyote Raiders and the script EMP Grenade. Also, the Dust Runner faction has the Virus Growing Unrest, which punishes the opponent with one Mainframe Damage per RAM they install. Together these Dust Runner cards of RAM destruction and punishment for RAM installation should function well with the Memory Leak Trojan strategy.
The issue is, the 3 EMP Grenade and Growing Unrest cards require a Dust Runner faction card to be in play before they can be played. I hope the six Dust Runner character cards I’ve added will be drawn frequently enough to play an EMP Grenade or Growing Unrest card when I need them. I may have to add more Dust Runner cards to change this ratio in my deck in the future.
Moving on, Hacker cards such as Anima Proxy and Black Hat, of which I only have one of each, also support this Trojan and Virus deck strategy. Anima Proxy can be used to damage a player for each program attached to their Mainframe. Trojans and Virus programs fit that criteria, so Anima Proxy is a damage amplifier. Black Hat can put Corruption tokens on an opposing Mainframe, and the opponent takes Mainframe damage equal to the number of Corruption tokens every Netcheck. This is useful because, not only does it do the damage I want to the opponent; if the opponent plays the big counter to my Trojan focused strategy, the Antivirus card, they will have to choose between destroying one of my hidden protocols (Trojans) attached to their Mainframe or the Corruption tokens that are damaging them every turn.
To get through my cyberdeck quickly and obtain the cards I need, I included 3 Phantom OS characters. I can activate and purge the Phantom OS cards to look through my deck for Virus or Trojans. Also, I included 2 Hyperclock scripts. Hyperclock is a rare card that is the exception to the rule that this deck consists of common and uncommon cards. This 1 RAM cost card (very cheap) allows me to temporarily install more RAM for a health penalty so I can speed up the pace of using cards from my deck. I wanted to see how Hyperclock functioned in play and determine if they were too deleterious or not to my deck’s focus, so I included them as a test.
Lastly, I included cards that buff Hacker character’s Mainframe damage like Tagger and Binary Blast. This in general is a good strategy since I’m using a lot of small damage (1/1) Hacker characters in my deck and I will likely need to enhance their capability to make them competent attackers or blockers.
So now my strategy is laid out, what are the possible problems that could come up with the Deepnet deck? I have already mentioned that I may not be running enough Dust Runner faction cards to justify running Dust Runner dependent cards (EMP Grenade, etc.). In addition, this deck needs more Trojans like Power Spike and Viruses like Simulated Solace, but I just don’t own more, so that is not a problem I can finesse with more deck design. The other issue is that I only included 18 character cards out of a 50 card deck. Most of the starting decks have 25 character cards and 25 other cards in their cyberdeck. Am I too light on character cards? I don’t know. I know that having the option to draw two cards from my cyberdeck per turn may alleviate this issue, but I need to test it. Which is one of many reasons I’m playing with this Deepnet deck at Brookhurst Hobbies soon.
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