Some Personal Thoughts On Dioscuri

by Jens Kreutzer

It's very good to see that at last, something is coming of the Dioscuri project, which had been in the pipeline for so long. Douglas and the other people involved deserve praise for giving us something new to play with! However, the six cards (four of which having been published here in the TRQ so far) as they stand now are "beta versions" for testing, further discussion, and tweaking. The present names of the cards are just working titles, too. Since this is a TRC project, everybody can have a say and tell the others what he or she thinks. Please do, either by mailing your comments to the Netrunner-l newsgroup or to me, for publication in the TRQ. For a start, I'll put down my personal comments.

So, let's see what we have so far. On the Corp side, we have "Psychic AI" and "Corp Investigators" (for short). The first has influencing dice rolls as its theme, a really fun idea that was completely absent in Netrunner until now. Obviously, this is mainly targeted at Bartmoss and Rio de Janeiro, but there are actually quite a few other cards around that may be affected. In Sealed play, random cards may play less of a role, but the ability to cash in the counters averts this Dioscuri's becoming useless.

The theme of the other Corp Dioscuri is less obvious; it seems mainly to be an alternative bit source (to discourage the omnipresent bit-gainer operations?), albeit one thinks of "money for nothing" here, since there is no real downside to it. The Runner being able to pay for removing the counters while on a run encourages running, which is a good thing (and maybe the idea behind this card?), but one has the feeling that this still is a bit unbalanced. After all, either way, it costs the Runner. More on that below.

The two Runner Dioscuri, "Fax Loop" and "Serbian Badman", focus on anti-fast-advancement and hardware, respectively, and it seems to me that they're doing a good job. The idea behind "Fax Loop" is so obviously welcome that it hardly needs commenting - slowing down those annoying speed Corp decks that tend to take the fun out of Netrunner. On the other hand, strategies using hardware have been losing out on good support cards so far. Though The Shell Traders etc. can be used with hardware also, they are not specifically aimed at hardware; in that area, the two ominous words Ronin Around about sum it up. With "Serbian Badman", even deck cards like Raven Microcyb Eagle might become playable, which has long been on the "stuff-we'd-like" list of many players.

All in all, I think the design concepts are interesting (with the possible exception of "Corp Investigators") and fun; maybe we're even going to get something with tracing in the last two Dioscuri? That would be cool as well. However, as things are now, there are two points I'd like to see altered. The first is balance. Take "Fax Loop": It has no downside whatsoever, apart from being useless if the Corp does not use fast advancement. Because of this, I have no reason not to play with "Fax Loop" in any of my future games. I think that every ability should come with a (small) downside as well, so that people cannot say, "Playing with this Dioscuri is always more advantageous than playing without it". Since "Fax Loop" ensures that the Runner will have a certain amount of time, no matter what strategy the Corp is using (if it isn't using fast advancement, then it is slow anyway, if not, it is slowed down by "Fax Loop"), I think something along the lines of "When starting the game, Runner forgoes his or her next action." to be appropriate. As for the starting cards and bits (which only appear on the Corp side?), I'm not so sure how it works out. This is of course borrowed from the Magic Vanguard cards that inspired Dioscuri, but starting bits and cards seem not that important in Netrunner as starting life and cards are in Magic, since in Netrunner, you can always get either simply by spending actions. Maybe it would be elegant to make do without them. For "Corp Investigators", I could imagine "The cost of playing or rezzing Transaction cards is increased by 1 bit.", and for "Psychic AI" - well, it's not that powerful - maybe, to prevent Rio abuse, "You cannot have more than one rezzed Region in play. If you have more than one rezzed Region in play, trash all but one." But any small inconvenience would do.

The second point concerns the Dioscuri working names. I know that they're just working titles, but I'm not particularly impressed. Remember the discussion on "Consortiums" and "Mentors"? That is the way to go in my opinion. Let's choose a Corp name from Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. for the Corp Dioscuri and a famous Runner name for the Runner Dioscuri. In that way, players can identify with something when playing the cards. I can't identify with a fax loop too well, for example. My suggestion: Rache Bartmoss for "Fax Loop" (we can keep the quote, that's just his style), Spider Murphy for "Serbian Badman" (we'll think of a quote), Netwatch (they own the 'Net and write the rules for it) or Merril, Asukaga & Finch (info brokers) for "Psychic AI" and - hmm, I don't really know about "Corp Investigators". What do other people think?