“It’s called the ‘Water Tower Massacre,’ boys and girls.” Images pulsed up, filling the feed: armored prisec troopers, masked protestors, guns firing, corpses.

–from "Intervention"

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Intervention, the fourth Data Pack in the Flashpoint Cycle for Android: Netrunner!

As with the other Data Packs in the Flashpoint Cycle, Intervention and its sixty cards (three copies each of twenty different cards) deposit you in the streets of New Angeles in the wake of the Twenty-Three Seconds incident. The economy is in free fall not just in New Angeles, but worldswide. For days the city lurches deeper into chaos. There are riots. There are kidnappings. And then the corps open fire on each other…

There's damage everywhere in Intervention. Meat damage, brain damage, and collateral damage. In keeping with the themes and aggressive stances of the Flashpoint Cycle, Intervention continues to provide us access to a set of desperate corps forced to show their teeth. We also find a new Haas-Bioroid identity, a new Shaper identity, a handful of Runner cards that dare you to run despite the risks, and a place of sanctuary in which the Runners can hide.

Haas-Bioroid, Architects of Tomorrow

Earlier in the Flashpoint Cycle, we introduced the new identities for two of the game's other Corps—Weyland's Builder of Nations (Blood Money, 38) and Jinteki's Potential Unleashed (Escalation, 54). And much was made about how each of the identities offered a new, more aggressive take on the identity originally released in the Core Set. Weyland's new identity deals meat damage the first time each turn that the Runner encounters an advanced piece of ice. Jinteki's compounds the Runner's misery, forcing him to trash the top card of his stack whenever he suffers net damage.

Haas-Bioroid, however, does not pursue any of this extra damage with its new identity—at least not directly. Instead, Intervention gives us Haas-Bioroid, Architects of Tomorrow (Intervention, 72), which relies more aggressively upon its bioroids to keep the Runners—and the other Corps—out of its business.

In a way, Architects of Tomorrow is still a more desperate version of the Core Set identity, Engineering the Future (Core Set, 54). But if the Weyland and Jinteki identities are the Core Set identities backed into a corner and forced to lash out with the tooth and talon at their disposal, then Architects of Tomorrow is Haas-Bioroid's Core Set identity finding itself surrounded on all sides, dropping all extraneous development, and putting on the biggest, baddest suit of armor it can find.

The identity retains the Corp's focus on efficiency, but discards the extra credit that Engineering the Future would have offered for expanding outward with the installation of new cards in favor of the efficiency you can gain by rezzing bioroids at terrific cost reductions.

Meanwhile, although Haas-Bioroid's new identity might not directly introduce or rely upon the sort of damage that come with the new identities for Weyland and Jinteki, it can certainly help you rez the fairly large number of bioroids capable of dealing brain damage. And that brain damage isn't trending downward anytime soon. Even as it's introducing a new bioroid-focused identity, Intervention is giving you the ability to upgrade those bioroids with Wetwork Refits (Intervention, 71).

Ele "Smoke" Scovak

Even as the chaos and violence forces the Corps to adopt new survival protocols, the Runners, too, need to adapt in order to survive. For some, like Ele "Smoke" Scovak (Intervention, 66), this means staying low and watching their backs.

The host of a daily netcast, Smoke typically focuses on high tech products that haven't yet hit the market yet, DIY programming, and running as a means of cyber-exploration. For her efforts, she has earned a great deal of Notoriety (Trace Amount, 26), and it is only her ability to make clean runs, leaving behind no discernible traces, that allows her to make her Daily Casts (Creation and Control, 53), gain cult celebrity status, and still remain a free woman.

Now, however, in the wake of the Twenty-Three Seconds incident, Smoke is using her daily casts to draw attention to the Corps' violence and bloodshed, broadcasting the footage she acquires from such sources as Beth Kilrain-Chang (Blood Money, 30). Even for Smoke, this is a dangerous game to play at a time when the Corps are clearly willing to kill in order to protect their interests, so she's taking extra care to be stealthy on the net and cautious on the streets.

That sort of caution, as Smoke says, is important for anyone who isn't with a corp. If you're not with a corp, who can protect you? There are painfully few options, but you might find some security with the less-chaotic street gangs or with the Templars of the Starlight Crusade. Of course, if you seek shelter among the streetbangers, you're not going to enjoy top-shelf rations; in fact, you may wind up relying upon Blockade Runners (Intervention, 65) simply to enjoy such basic necessities as drinking water. On the other hand, while its members are commonly viewed as creepy zealots, the Starlight Crusade might be able to provide you the shelter you need in its Citadel Sanctuary (Intervention, 70). Your stay might cost you more than you feel you can afford, but their protection is almost certain to keep you safe.

Compelled to Intervene

It's a tough, chaotic, and deadly time in New Angeles, and your choices are to act or be trampled underfoot. Whether you stand with the Corps or with the Runners, you'll find yourself confronted by new threats on all sides, but you'll also find new resources to help you survive. All you have to do is use them well, and take a stand. Amid all the chaos, all it's going to take is a good push to send everything into motion.

What's the future that you want for New Angeles? Make it happen. The time for Intervention is nearly upon us.

Intervention is scheduled to arrive at retailers everywhere in the fourth quarter of 2016!