Last week I moved a couple dozen miles from Boise to Nampa, ID, and between filling a uHaul twice, rearranging and demolishing furniture, and hunting down wifi to watch the World Championship, I couldn’t find the time to write for Damage Control. I intended to take an historical look at last year’s Worlds to see the role damage played in the finals, but with this year’s tournament fresh in people’s minds (and much to be digested in those final games) I’m putting that article on the backburner. Instead, I want to look at the new cards released in the SanSan cycle.

The release of new cards into the card pool has a wider (if subtler) effect on the game than simply giving players shiny new toys. As new cards find their way into players’ deck, their opponents are forced to anticipate a new set of possibilities and alter their own decisions with these new threats in mind. The SanSan cycle has given us many key examples, from the way Clot altered the landscape of corporation decks to the way Faust has added a new dimension to evaluating ice. The environment is an apt and often used metaphor for the card pool and how play is effected by new cards. Introducing a new card is like introducing a new species to an eco-system: if it thrives it will find its own niche in the environment, and every other species it shares the environment with will be effected by a new set of relations. Cards share space within the game’s design and play, and the meaning and purpose of each card is only fully fleshed out by how it relates to the other cards in the environment. While it’s valuable to think about each card individually or in relation to a few close analogs, being able to think more ecologically can provide a different kind of insight into the way cards function individually and in decks.

This article will, hopefully, function in concert with card reviews and reader’s personal assessment of cards to form a more complete picture of the effect the SanSan cycle has had on the game. The result should be a different sort of card review, as useful as a tool for understanding the game at large as it is for learning and assessing the new cards, and guiding readers through the interaction of the cards as much as guiding the reader towards or away from certain purchases. Damage and its supporting mechanics are only a small aspect of the SanSan cycle, and a review such as this could be written about many other aspect of Netrunner.

IDs have a strong effect on the game’s environment because their abilities are persistent and with a few exceptions cannot be disrupted by the runner. Even with the natural way IDs effect the game’s environemnt, the IDs introduced in SanSan cycle have special affinity with damage mechanics. This starts off directly with the game’s first flip ID, Jinteki Biotech, released in The Valley. The one-shot ability of the Brewery can deal two net damage without any provocation from the runner. Damage produced by an ID ability can have a powerful effect on the game because they are available immediately and persistently, as compared to other card types that need to be drawn and played. Until The Brewery was released, even ID damage had the limitation of triggering off of agenda scores/steals. The low requirement for dealing damage with the Brewery serves two purposes for Biotech. First, it allows the corp to capitalize on runner mistakes immediately and consistently, which mitigates some of the situational limits of dealing flatline damage. At the same time it poses an eminent threat to the runner whether the Brewery was chosen at the start of the game or not: so long as the ID is unflipped, skilled runners will have to respect that lethal potential. This ID doesn’t just change the possibilities for damage on an ID, but even the nature of IDs, since the ID is a first piece of information about a deck revealed and it’s information revealed before play begins, forcing the runner to play more flexibly against the deck’s threats.

Cybernetics Division, released in Chrome City, threatens the runner in a different way. I’ve already spent some time thinking about Cybernetics Division in relationship to brain damage decks, but the potential for this ID goes beyond the pipedream of a flatline by brain damage. By reducing both player’s handsize by one, the threatening potential of any other damage option is increased by weakening the runner’s defenses and limiting their options turn-to-turn. A smaller handsize can force the runner into installing important cards sooner or risk losing them to damage or being trashed because of overdrawing. If important cards are kept in hand, the quality of the cards trashed by damage increases because of the increased odds of hitting better cards. This makes Cybernetics Division as powerful for disruptive damage strategies as it is for kill strategies. Since important cards are getting installed sooner, this also makes destroyers like Ichi and Rototurret more potent earlier in the game. Cybernetics’ smaller deck size can also increase the speed with which the corp can find these pieces, increasing the pace of the game while forcing the runner into increasing theirs.

Both of these IDs can take advantage of a mechanic invigorated by several cards in the cycle: handsize control. Self-Destruct Chips and Valley Grid both effect the runner’s maximum handsize, the first as a continuous effect, the other as a turn-by-turn punishment for breaking ice. Before, the corp could only lower the handsize of the unner through Gyri Labrinth (a weak codegate), Chairman Hiro (an executive asset, which could be turned into agenda points by the runner), or through brain damage (which is generally hard to connect). These new cards can persistently effect handsize in ways that make it more challenging for the runner to contest. At an earlier moment in the game’s development, runner handsize was not a major concern because except for possibly a clutch save against double Scorched Earth, there wasn’t much to be gained as the runner from increasing their handsize. Adding these handsize control effects coincide with the release of cards like Faust that can take advantage of cards in hand, so the undervalued aspect of the game’s mechanics having their value increased at the same time the corp is begin given more means by which they can alter it.

Chronos Protocol, the other Jinteki ID in the SanSan cycle released in Universe of Tomorrow, is clearly designed with damage in mind, but it has less potential as a kill deck and much more potential using disruptive strategies. Selecting the card trashed by the first piece of net damage suffered each turn gives the corp the oppurtunity to specially target resources. Where damage typically disrupts the runner in a scattershot manner, CP does so with surgeon-like precision. This makes the grip an unsafe place to keep important cards, which forces cards to be installed earlier than the runner may have intended. As mentioned before, this makes destroyers more potent, but it also has an effect on the runner’s operational flexibility. Typically the runner would want to keep cards a secret in their grip until the turn they intended to use them. That way, the corp can’t begin preparing their defenses against the runner’s next attack. Forcing the runner to install those cards earlier (and being able to look into their grip when they suffer damage) can give away their strategy before they have an opportunity to execute it. Skilled corp players can use this information to make reactive moves against the strategy or trash a key piece before the attack gets off the ground. Blacklist, another card released in the cycle, compounds the disruptive potential of damage by keeping cards in the heap and denying recursion. While CP has not have a huge amount of success as of late, I think that’s in part because of the recursion power of Pre-Paid Kate to be able to fight off the disruptive attacks by the corp. If Kate started to fade from prominence, more corps may be able to find success using a strategy for which CP is perfectly suited.

It may not be clear at first, but Haarpsichord Studios from Old Hollywood is an ID that can perform handsomely in damage decks. Limiting the runner to stealing only 1 agenda a turn doesn’t by itself make Haarpsichord a damage ID, but the subtle effect has major implications. Flatline decks need time to set up their killshots, and a limiting factor to that timeframe is how quickly the runner can steal points to win the game before they die. Turns where the runner can steal multiple agendas at once can severely truncate the length of a game, and those turns lost to rapid agenda steals could be the turns needed to kill the runner. Limiting the runner to 1 stolen agenda a turn will at worst guarantee a certain amount of time to the corp before losing. It weakens the runner’s multiaccess power which makes up a decent part of most runner decks. It can also give the corporation more oppurtunities to fire Midseason Replacements, which is the opening salvo of many different game-ending combinations. Haarpsichord’s ability works in a way that’s similar to Personal Evolution’s. The threat of dying to damage following an agenda steal gets the runner to slow down, either to draw up cards or to avoid an inopportune Snare! or Fetal AI access. The longer the game goes, the more chances a PE deck will have to set up a flat line or build a scoring server. Haarpsichord also slows the runner down, but in a less threatening and more absolute manner. This effect can improve a two-pronged attack of pairing a fast advance strategy with the threat of flatline that NBN does so well, and ultimately forces the runner to think beyond moments of intense aggression towards a totalizing game plan.

SanSan cycle did little to expand the options for damage operations. The only operation that directly deals damage is Defective Brainchips. Defective Brainchips can help increase the volume of brain damage dealt to the runner, which can help handle one deficiency in brain damage. The likely result of Defective Brainchips is to get the runner to act more cautiously around well-known sources of brain damage because while it increases the volume of damage, it doesn’t solve the challenges of landing brain damage in the first place. There’s a new source of brain damage that may make that task more difficult for the runner: Ryon Knight. Since he’s an upgrade, Ryon Knight can find a place in any server, so long as there’s oppurutunity to lose clicks on the way through. That typically means a server protected by bioroids, but there’s also ice like Enigma that can force the runner to lose clicks. There’s potentially something anti-synergistic to Defective Brainchips and Ryon Knight though: if you’re worried about taking extra brain damage, you may ensure you have plenty of clicks in case you run into a bioroid (which are an abundant source of brain damage). That may keep the runner from running last click, and unless you can completely surprise the runner, they may avoid Ryon Knight’s condition altogether.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse doesn’t produce damage, but it interacts well with servers that threaten damage against the runner. The choice AOYCR offers the runner will come down to whatever seems more or less appealing to the runner: the repercussions of running the chosen server or giving up an easy point to the corp. Aside from janky shenanigans like a Crick-installed agenda advanced three times by Space Camps in Archives, the primary repercussion for running the central is going to be damage. It’s possible for the corporation to set up a kill shot from AOYCR, but it requires an incredible degree of subterfuge because if the runner recognizes the potential for flatline they’ll likely give up the point instead of running to their death. It can be just as satisfying to get the runner to give up the point instead of running a server that isn’t actually dangerous, but this too requires the sort of mind games that are difficult to ever pull off, and the cost in time and credits to set up such a server may not be worth it. AOYCR does have interesting interactions with cards like Komainu (the runner can’t bypass it before it gains its net damage subroutines) and Ryon Knight (they have no unspent clicks during the corp’s turn, so it’s a guaranteed hit), but the subtle play it demands makes it difficult to take advantage of.

Damage-dealing ice may be scarce in SanSan, but what’s been added have had a strong effect on the game’s environment. Cortex Lock has become a major threat since its release. The biggest cause for this is the ubiquity of Mimic as the catch-all sentry breaker. Mimic has found its way into a great many runner decks because it can help protect the runner against some of the nastiest AP ice (like Komainu and Tsurugi) and can break Architect efficiently. This has considerably diminished the power of Neural Katana, which is expensive to rez and trivial for Mimic to break. Cortex Lock renews the threat of AP sentries by being an inexpensive piece of ice that Mimic can’t break by itself. Late game rigs can easily handle Cortex Lock (for instance, Datasucker + Mimic reduces it to a slightly more taxing Neural Katana), but by the time it’s easy to break, the runner has likely already installed enough cards to make its subroutine trivial anyway. Until that point, it becomes very dangerous for the runner to face check ice with only a Mimic installed.

NEXT Gold has a similar advantage (at 4 strength it can’t be broken by Mimic alone) but serves a very different function. Since the power of its subroutines are based on the number of other NEXT ice rezzed, it’s not very useful as ice until at least 1 or 2 other NEXT ice are rezzed, and because it’s so expensive it doesn’t fit well into the early game. Instead it’s ice meant to catch a runner out of position, and when it does it can be devastative. Losing 3+ programs can set the runner back significantly, and for that to be followed up with the same amount of net damage can blow away many of the runner’s resources at once or simply flatline them. One of the best ways to get NEXT Gold to surprise the runner is by using Marcus Batty (a Jinteki upgrade released in The Underway) to fire the program trashing subroutine before the encounter resolves. Marcus Batty works with all sorts of ice to get around the runner’s ability to keep ice subroutines from ever firing, and he does his best work either trashing the runner’s programs or doing tons of damage.

These ice (and Marcus Batty) are successful additions to the card pool because they serve a powerful purpose that goes beyond the result of their subroutines. By having dangerous subroutines that are difficult to face check safely, they force the runner into playing the game differently in order to meet the challenges they potentially face. This has a more profound effect on the game than simply a strong ice with good subroutines because most ice will never fire their subroutines, and those subroutines will only rarely fire in the most opportune moments for the corp. By effecting the game at a level that goes beyond their individual literal effects, they are able to alter the game as a whole even when they aren’t installed.

Despite how little use it’s seen since release, I think Contract Killer has a lot of potential to shape the game’s environment. Weyland is famous for its flatlining operations like Scorched Earth and Punitive Counterstrike, but aside from Dedicated Response Team it doesn’t have many assets that deal in damage. This includes any damage dealing traps like Jinteki’s Project Junebug or HB’s Cerebral Overwriter or hostile assets like Ronin. Without cards like these there’s very little Weyland can do to build flatline packages outside of their operations, and while those operations are powerful they are more easily played around because there’s little threat elsewhere (and those operations end up being imported into other factions’ decks anyway). Contract Killer can serve the purpose that Ronin serves in Jinteki decks by being a card that is neither a trap nor an agenda but that can be advanced and that the runner wants to run on to trash. Being able to install and advance such a card has a lot of power when it comes to either hiding agendas in plain sight or making advancable traps an active target.

Contract Killer doesn’t produce as much damage as Ronin and it costs credits to rez, but it also has a few advantages that make it very useful for Weyland. It only requires two advancement tokens before it can be activated instead of Ronin’s four. In a faction that has to pay influence for Mushin no Shin, being able to create an active threat quickly and cheaply gives a similar utility as Ronin but without demands for extra support cards. The lower advancement requirement is also useful because it makes Contract Killer look more like an agenda or an advanceable trap because it doesn’t need an unusual number of counters. The two credit rez cost is the same credit requirement to advance and fire Ronin, but having 2 of those credits offloaded until Contract Killer is rezzed reduces the resources lost if the runner trashes it and takes advantage of Weyland’s faction which is typically better at getting credits than Jinteki. Contract Killer also has more flexibility because it can be used to trash a connection instead of dealing damage, which at certain stages of the game can be more important (for instance, a Government Takeover hosted on Film Critic).

Many of these cards don’t see a significant amount of play, but they still fill in important roles within the game’s environment. And as the environment continues to expand and the game evolves, their place in that new environment may become more fertile and more frequently visited.

