It was binary. Elemental. Powerful. Unmatched in its purity. It must be a source. Eden. Hades. Utopia. The nodes that built the net. The oldest protocols.…
Your quest for the legendary source protocols begins now… Upstalk , the first Data Pack in the Lunar Cycle for Android: Netrunner , is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore !
With its sixty new cards (three copies each of twenty different cards), Upstalk follows cyber explorer Nasir Meidan’s obsessive search for the net’s legendary source protocols. These nodes either built the net, or they’re nothing more than myth. If they actually do exist, wouldn’t they have degraded over time? It’s likely they would have fragmented so badly that their streams would be almost impossible to detect. Still, if they didn’t degrade, is it possible that they could have somehow evolved?
To answer these questions, Nasir Meidan must travel beyond the reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere. That means a journey up the Beanstalk, and each step up the Beanstalk is one step further removed from the Earth and the established ways of thinking about the game’s cat-and-mouse cyberstruggles.
Here, the game defies standard expectations. Corporate trace attempts can punish Runners even when they fail. Corporate assets are everywhere, there’s no life outside of Corporate-sponsored air, and there’s a chance that those who manage or run the net may encounter a shard or fragment of the mythical source code.
Shards of the Source Code
Starting with Upstalk , each of the six Data Packs in the Lunar Cycle introduces a fragment or shard from the legendary source protocols: three fragments for the Corps, and three shards for the Runners.
Like the Eden Shard ( Upstalk , 20), each shard is “Limit 1 per deck” and enters the game as a seven-cost virtual resource that a Runner can install from his grip for free, instead of accessing cards, after completing a successful run against a central server. Then, once installed, each shard of the legendary source protocols presents the Runner the option to trash it in exchange for a powerful effect.
In the case of the Eden Shard, the Runner may trash it to force the Corp to draw two cards. It may be foolish to grant the Corp this extra card draw early in the game when your Runner has the advantage, and it may even be unwise in the middle of the game when you need to buy time to finish building your rig. Still, Eden Shard presents a number of potent late-game options.
-
First of all, Eden Shard partners well with
R&D Interface
(
Future Proof
, 107). If you have an R&D Interface installed, you can access an extra card during a successful run on R&D, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to access an agenda, or even anything that you can trash. In such a situation, you can spend one click to run R&D, access the top cards, and leave them. You can then spend a second click to run R&D and install Eden Shard instead of accessing cards. Next, you trash Eden Shard to force the Corp to draw the two cards you left on the top of R&D. Now you’ve given the Corp a couple of cards that hold no surprises for you, and you’ve moved cards that you couldn’t trash from the top of R&D. Finally, you spend a third click to run R&D again, digging deeper into R&D and potentially scoring a couple of game-winning agenda points.
- Conversely, if you install Eden Shard early in the game, you may be able bait the Corp into layering additional ice on R&D, reducing its ability to protect its other servers, including HQ. In this case, you might trash Eden Shard to force the Corp to draw two cards into a vulnerable HQ, which you then run.
- Since Eden Shard doesn’t have a click requirement, you can trash it at any time, even after the Corp has resolved its last click, meaning that you may be able to force the Corp into a situation that it has no choice but to discard a couple of cards, either spilling agendas into Archives or, more likely, thinning its supply of credits and ice.
- Finally, that fact that you can trash Eden Shard to trigger its ability at any time means that it offers the Runner a new measure of protection against one of the Corp’s most powerful combinations. A number of Corp decks use Power Shutdown ( Mala Tempora , 58) to empty R&D before layering events back into it with Jackson Howard ( Opening Moves , 15) and playing them all in a single click via Accelerated Diagnostics ( Mala Tempora , 52). However, a Runner who has installed Eden Shard can simply trash it to force the Corp to draw two cards after it empties R&D with Power Shutdown. Instead of wondering how much meat damage he’s about to take, such a Runner simply forces the Corp to draw when it cannot, and he wins the game.
What Will You Discover?
With Eden Shard, two new identities, and a host of new ice, assets, resources, and events, Upstalk offers plenty of material certain to excite any cyber explorer.
Head to your local retailer to pick up your copy today!
Based on the classic card game designed by Richard Garfield,
Android: Netrunner The Card Game
is a game for two players set in the dystopian future of
Android
. It pits monolothic megacorps against subversive netrunners in a high-stakes struggle for the control of valuable data.