You took your PAD into the street. You bought a sandwich from the local deli. You called your friend. You deleted the record of your call. Then you drove downtown and stole a Qianju PT. You rode it to our branch office and gained entry using the badge you stole from our sysop. That's when you jacked into our internal network. It was all very well done. The only question is: did you really think we wouldn't notice?

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Data and Destiny, the fourth deluxe expansion for Android: Netrunner The Card Game!

With its 165 cards (three copies each of fifty-five different cards), Data and Destiny explores new aspects of the info-focused megacorp NBN. In the world of Android: Netrunner, knowledge is just about everything, and no one has more or better access to the knowledge that humanity has collected and stored on the network. After all, not only does NBN boast the most pervasive data network ever imagined, it literally controls the infrastructure, media, and messages that define modern society. Accordingly, in Data and Destiny, you'll find a wealth of new media-focused assets, agendas, and resources. You'll be selectively targeted by new advertisements and tagged by new ice as NBN launches the initiatives of three new divisions, each of which rolls out with a new identity card.

Meanwhile, even as Data and Destiny lends new strength to NBN's efforts to shape the world in which we live, it unleashes chaos upon that world in the form of three new Runners. One is a network security officer sent to hack servers with the full blessings of Globalsec. One is a bioroid mysteriously set free from the Third Directive. One is a mysterious and predatory presence on the net, devouring all that it encounters. Each represents a unique take on the Runner's experience and, more than that, each introduces a new Runner mini-faction, so that for the first time since the Core Set, Data and Destiny explores brand new Runner paradigms.

Why Add Runner Mini-Factions?

Runners Apex, Adam, and Sunny Lebeau don't fit into the standard archetypes for Shapers, Anarchs, or Criminals, but why do they appear as new Runner mini-factions? To answer that question, we turn to lead designer Lukas Litzsinger:

"Back in 2012, when I was working on the Core Set, we created a road map for the first four deluxe expansions. Since then, we've released the first three of these (Creation and Control, Honor and Profit, and Order and Chaos), each of which focuses on two factions, one Corp and one Runner. The fourth one was going to be special, because we had seven factions in the game. Many different ideas were thrown around, but the one that stuck was that the box would introduce neutral Runners. These Runners would not fall into our three existing factions, for both thematic and mechanical reasons. Not everyone that hacks can – or should – be defined as Shaper, Anarch, or Criminal.

"However, things change, and our original idea was refined over time, especially in playtesting. We realized that our new Runners should belong to three new mini-factions, rather than a group of neutral Runners. I want to be very clear: we are not introducing a fourth, fifth, and sixth Runner faction to the game. The majority of the support these Runners will ever get is contained within Data and Destiny, and you will continue to see many Shaper, Anarch, and Criminal cards in the future.

"Ultimately, we made the decision to launch these Runners in their own mini-factions in order to ensure that each introduced creative deck-building possibilities without breaking or handicapping the game. Each has its own personality, and we felt that making them all neutral undermined their unique identities. It would have also meant that we couldn't push their power levels to the extent that we wanted; as neutral Runners each could have cherry-picked the best cards from the others. Additionally, by associating them all with their own mini-factions, we were able to carve out a unique aesthetic for each of these Runners with new card templating and retained the design space we would need to print more powerful neutral cards in the future, since all Runners would still have to pay influence for them.

"In the end, I feel confident that Apex, Sunny, and Adam will shake up the competitive environment in a good way, and that more casual players will have a lot of fun putting all of their signature cards together in one deck. Finally, I expect everyone will enjoy figuring out how to spend the twenty-five influence that each of these Runners has! Android: Netrunner has never been in a stronger position than now, and we look forward to taking the game to the next level."

Everything, Everywhere

NBN partners an unparalleled access to information with bleeding edge analytics to give customers what they want and keep them happy. However, even with the most sophisticated information infrastructure in the solar system, no one can please all the people, all the time. NBN's executives recognize they will never gain absolute market share and that they will always be forced to deal with a small number of disenfranchised criminals who will want to cut the Corp to pieces simply because it is the biggest and best in its field.

Still, that doesn't mean they have to like it or allow the criminals to succeed. In Data and Destiny, we meet one of these executives and discover the steps she's taken to secure NBN's legacy well into the future. As CEO of the largest media empire in the solar system, Victoria Jenkins (Data and Destiny, 11) has earned an astonshing measure of influence, and she uses it in Data and Destiny to rally a host of other characters and corporate divisions to support her four-pronged efforts to improve data collection, improve marketing, reduce the negative impact of criminal invasions of NBN servers, and seize control of the ongoing messaging about cybercrime.

To that end, Data and Destiny explores all-new designs in its agendas and assets as NBN looks to improve its image among consumers by establishing a number of unique characters as household names. You'll find agendas that aren't worth nearly as much to the Runner as they are to the Corp. You'll find news teams looking to break all the latest stories and then bend them in NBN's favor. You'll find new designs in ice that excel at tracking down the criminals that run on NBN's servers, and you'll find three new identity cards, including a new flip identity, SYNC (Data and Destiny, 1), that makes it harder for those criminals to shake their tags and that makes it easier for NBN to erase the criminal infrastructure that supports a Runner's runs.

In the end, though, as much as NBN's executives may not like the fact, life is all about surprises, and Data and Destiny offers plenty of surprising new tricks to both Runner and Corp, although cards like Surveillance Sweep (Data and Destiny, 23) go a long way toward ensuring that NBN suffers from as few surprises as humanly possible.

Knowledge Is Everything

Who holds your data? The agencies and individuals who hold your data gain the power they need to write your destiny.

Knowledge is everything in the world of Android: Netrunner, and Data and Destiny takes aim at all the available data with laser focus. From the solar system's best news and advertising agencies to the most mysterious Runners on the net, Data and Destiny offers new looks at tools and tricks for every fan of the game's high-stakes cyberstruggles. Use the new NBN identities, use the new Runners, or just add the new neutral cards to your decks and spend your influence to borrow the other tricks you wish were yours.

Control your data. Control your destiny. Data and Destiny is scheduled to arrive at retailers in the third quarter of 2015!