“The victims were all Human First,” Frank explained. “The evidence points to them being jumped by someone big, heavily augmented, really strong. He killed them all with a sledgehammer, exactly the same way Human First goes about destroying ‘golems.’”

:: A grisly murder. An AUGMENTED killer. A deadly and many-layered MYSTERY. These are the things buried deep in the root of the TERMINAL DIRECTIVE Campaign Expansion for ANDROID: NETRUNNER.

Your job? CONTROL THE TRUTH.

Even while it adds four new identities and 159 other tournament-legal player cards to Android: Netrunner (three copies each of fifty-three different cards), Terminal Directive stands apart from all other Android: Netrunner expansions for its narrative, EVER-EVOLVING campaign, which will lead you and a friend through multiple games and the many layers of deceit and MISDIRECTION that stand between you and the killer you're trying to catch.

In these games, you will CONDUCT YOUR SEARCH on the net and in the New Angeles meatspace. You will jockey for position, you will unlock secret DATA SETS, and you will make CHOICES that will forever alter the shape of your investigations.

Using stickers to which you'll gain access over the course of your campaign, you will track the CONSEQUENCES of your choices on your PAD, categorizing them either as OBJECTIVES, TASKS, CAUTIONS, or ETHOS EFFECTS.

// OBJECTIVES

In addition to its identities and player cards, Terminal Directive contains a number of cards and sticker sheets sealed in DATA SETS designated for use only in the Terminal Directive campaign. Unlike the expansion's player cards, these cards are NOT TO BE OPENED until such a time as another card, sticker, or effect instructs you to open them.

Perhaps the most important of these are the stickers that serve as your OBJECTIVES. You will only have a single objective active on your PAD at any given time because whenever you accomplish your objective, you will unlock a new DATA SET and a new objective. You will then place the new objective over the old one, overwriting it and its effect.

And this is the way that you close on the killer in your Terminal Directive campaign—objective by objective.

// TASKS

Like objectives, TASKS are stickers that you add to your PAD and that set new goals for you to achieve. However, where you need to complete your objectives to progress your investigation, you do not need to complete your tasks. That said, you won't want to dismiss your tasks lightly; each task you complete grants you ACCESS TO NEW BENEFITS that can aid you throughout the rest of your campaign.

TASKS WITH CARD COUNTS :: A few tasks require you to include specific campaign cards in your deck. The sticker indicates the required quantity of that card in the left-most of a series of numbered hexes. If a copy of that card is destroyed for any reason, mark off the left-most hex on that effect to accurately reflect the updated quantity of that card.



"CLOSE THIS FILE" :: When you complete a task, you will be instructed to “close this file.” To close a file, place one of the closed file stickers over it. Any time a task is covered by another sticker, it no longer has any effect.

Most tasks (and objectives) require you to complete a given action more than once. Completing them may take you several turns or even several games. Such stickers all feature a progress bar with which you can record your progress. Each time you add progress to a task, you mark off one hex in the progress bar. When the bar is full, the task is complete.

// CAUTIONS

Cautions function like the evil twins of tasks. Like tasks, they define events that may transpire in your games, but if these events occur, they trigger far more harmful consequences.

Once you trigger the effect of a caution, it is RESOLVED IMMEDIATELY. You may find yourself confronted by new tasks mid-game. You may find yourself stumbling into the NET DEFENSES introduced by new cards. And these effects may very likely make it harder for you to win your matches and track the killer.

Accordingly, as you pick up cautions, you may find yourself playing more cautiously. But can you afford to do so? Can you play around both your opponent and the new limitations imposed by your cautions? Can you afford to ignore those limitations and TRIGGER AN UNPREDICTABLE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS?

Fortunately, it is possible to overwrite your cautions with various ethos effects.

// ETHOS EFFECTS

While you can safely predict whether the consequences of completing your objectives, tasks, and cautions will be good or bad for you—objectives and tasks are good; cautions are bad—the consequences of the game's ETHOS EFFECTS are far less predictable.

Ethos effects are stickers that grant you special abilities, and there are two types of ethos effects—PROTECTOR and PREDATOR.

Neither type of ethos effect is simply GOOD or EVIL. Instead, the PROTECTOR ethos reflects the instincts of those who focus on evading attacks and making counterstrikes, while the PREDATOR ethos reflects the instincts of those who would force their opponents to adapt to them.

At times in the Terminal Directive campaign, you will have to decide how to react to the INFORMATION you've ACCESSED. These decisions may even come outside the scope of your games. Based upon these decisions, you will receive an ethos effect to place in the specified space on your PAD. At length, one of these ethos—either PROTECTOR or PREDATOR—will come to dominate the other, and your DOMINANT ETHOS will provide you access to certain options over the course of the campaign.

Even while one ethos will prove dominant at any given time, you are never forced to follow a single path. Any choice between PREDATOR and PROTECTOR is a new opportunity to refine your ethos, and it is through these choices that you will not only pursue the killer but define your own existence within the Android universe.

Where will you draw the line?

:: In Terminal Directive, there is a killer on the loose. How far will you go to control the truth of the grisly murders you're investigating? WHO WILL YOU PUT AT RISK to expose or cover up any potential corporate involvement? Where will you draw the line? Most importantly, who is this brutal murderer? Could it be someone you know? Could it be... you?

Android: Netrunner has long been a tense game of high-stakes cybercrime, waged on the net and in meatspace. Corps have been broken. Runners have been flatlined. But there has always been something impersonal about the matter—until now. In Terminal Directive, there's no more hiding behind your avatar on the other side of the Net. You're entering a deadly dance with a singularly focused rival on the other side who is every bit as concerned with solving the murder as you are—as long as she gets there first.

The RACE IS ON when Terminal Directive arrives later in the first quarter of 2017. Head to your local retailer to pre-order your copy today!