Gotcha!
This is a list of the Corp’s “Gotcha” cards in the post-Elevation Standard. The cards that are most likely to cause frustration when a new runner sees them for the first time in game.
The decklist posted are some of the most surprising and punishing cards the corporation has at their disposal (With the restriction that it had to be a legal deck list so that NRDB allowed me to publish). They are not the only gotcha cards, and the write-up will cover the gotcha cards more fully and is organized in a way to hopefully make it a bit more digestible.
I started playing Netrunner about 9 months ago, and I remember moments of being very frustrated when learning the cardpool, especially as a runner when I would lose the game to a card that I had never even seen before.
The frustration wasn’t because I was caught off guard and surprised by something I didn't expect (that will always happen in Netrunner, and can cause some very fun moments). The reason I was so frustrated was because I was caught off guard by something that I didn’t even know existed.
What I wanted at the time was a list of “Gotcha” cards. Not that I expected to immediately fully memorize all the cards, but a little bit of knowledge can help take the edge off of a shocking defeat. I wanted something that I could skim through that would change the experience from:
Reads card for the first time
“Welp, I guess that means I lose”
Fights urge to flip table
To:
Reads card
“Oh right, I vaguely recall that card exists. I’ll need to keep that in mind next time. GG.”
As is the right of passage with newbie runners, I went on the GLC discord and bitched about these bull$% cards. The folks on the discord listened to me vent, and then helpfully shared some of the common gotcha cards, but it was by no means a complete list. With the Elevation rotation occurring, I thought actually trying to compile the sort of list I wanted when I started out would be an interesting exercise for me, and hopefully helpful or informative to others.
What exactly is my criteria for a gotcha card?
Most of the Corporation’s cards could be considered frustrating for Runners, and we don’t want to just make a giant unorganized list of all cards in the standard format. A Gotcha card isn't just a frustrating card, a Gotcha card is a card that can
surprise the Runner with
severe consequences, especially if the
Runner would have played differently if they were aware of the card's existence.
Gotcha: Surprise with Severe Consequences
Surprise
Surprises are unexpected and don’t give you time to adapt.
You may not know that a card like Superdeep Borehole exists, but you have time to react after it is rezzed. So it’s not a gotcha card.
The corp rezzing a Ballista can mess up your day, but even if we don’t remember Ballista specifically, we know ICE with scary subroutines exist. So it’s not a gotcha card.
To know what could be considered surprises, we need to know what we can expect. I’ll give a list of some general overly naive netrunner expectations, and list out the cards that prey on those expectations.
Severe Consequences
I have assigned symbols to flag cards with the most common consequences (when those consequences are surprising):
♥ |
Net/Meat Damage |
♥ |
Core Damage |
♡ |
Non-Damage Card Discard |
♻ |
Trashes Installed Cards |
⯐ |
Gives Tags |
|
Lose Credits |
|
Lose Clicks |
⬢ |
Quick Scoring |
Additionally, it’s helpful to identify cards that want/need the runner to be tagged, and non-agenda cards that want/need to be advanced.
⯐ |
Wants/Requires Tags |
🠉 |
Non-Agenda that Can Be Advanced |
Naive Beliefs and the Cards That Punish Them
“Running and Accessing Cards is good”
The game is called Net
runner, of course you want to run. But there are some cards that will punish you for running.
Agendas that have on-steal effect or cost
Stealing agendas wins you the game, but some agendas can hurt you when you touch them.
Note: there is a difference between “When the runner steals…” and “As an additional cost to steal…”. The runner can always decline to steal if there are additional costs, but if it is not worded as an additional cost then the runner has no choice but to steal (and suffer the consequences).
Non-Agenda cards that trigger when you steal an agenda or add an additional cost
These cards will make stealing agendas even more painful.
Cards that hurt you when you access them, even if not installed
These cards can hurt you when you access them, even if they are uninstalled: in R&D or HQ, and some even in Archives.
Cards that hurt you when you access them, but need to be installed
These cards need to be installed in a server for them to be active, but they can have some really damaging consequences. Some of them need to be rezzed, and some do not.
(Note: Mavirus is in both of the “Not Installed” and “Needs to be Installed” lists, as it has different effects depending. It will always give the corporation the option to purge, but it will only do damage if it is installed and rezzed)
Cards that the Corporation can only play if the runner ran/stole/trashed cards
Certain cards that have powerful effects may be limited to only being able to be played the turn immediately after the runner has made a successful run, stolen agendas, or trashed the Corporations cards. If you expect the Corp has one of these cards in their deck, you may want to only run when you are prepared for the consequences.
“If I can deal with the ICE, nothing can stop me from accessing/stealing/trashing cards in a server”
ICE is the core defense in netrunner, but there are other things that can make getting into a server more difficult, even if you have a plan for all the ICE.
Defensive cards that must be installed in the attacked server
If the corporation rezzes one of these upgrades on the runners turn, or even mid-run, they can either make the attacked server’s ICE scarier, or otherwise end the run, but they have to be installed in the attacked server.
Defensive cards that can be installed in a different server
If the corporation rezzes one of these cards mid-run, they can either make the attacked server’s ICE scarier, or otherwise end the run, and can be installed in a different server
Cards that make trashing harder
These cards won’t stop a run from being successful, but they make trashing the corporations cards harder, either by costing more credits or by causing the runner to take damage.
“The most damage I can take from facechecking an ICE is 3 cards”
A good runner can’t be overly cautious. Facechecking ICE (running into an unrezzed ICE without knowing you can break it) is something good netrunners will do, as long as they have a plan for the worst case scenario.
For the vast majority of the cardpool, the worst case scenario from a damage/flatline standpoint is 3 damage before being able to jackout, but there are two exceptions:
Mycoweb is unlikely to do 4+ damage, but there are technically setups that allow it if the right ICE is rezzed.
Saisentan will usually do at least 4 damage, but could do up to 6. This is often one of the scariest ICE to see on a facecheck.
“If I have a full set of breakers, and infinite money to use them, ICE can’t hurt me”
If you have one of each breaker type, and a pile full of money, you can feel invincible, fearlessly running a server with unrezzed ICE. But ICE with “When you rez…” or “When the runner encounters…” or “When the runner passes…” effects can still pack an unexpected punch.
On-Rez
On-Encounter/On-Pass
Trash Abilities
“An AI breaker works just as well as standard breakers”
An AI breaker, like a
Mayfly or a
Matryoshka can usually get through any ICE, but there are some ICE that are particularly good against AI breakers.
“My virus counters are safe on my turn, since the Corporation can only purge on their turn”
If using a virus based strategy, it’s important to keep these cards in mind as potential ways the corporation can mess up your day.
“My stolen agenda points are safe and can only go up”
These cards will either give the runner negative points, or will remove agendas from the runners score area.
“The corporation can only really hurt me during a run”
Runs are the most risky part of Netrunner. Scary ICE, costly ambushes, etc. But the corporation can also hurt runners outside of runs and you should be prepared for that.
Damage/Flatline Threat
Giving Tags
Trashing your installed cards
Making You Lose Credits
Making You Lose Clicks
“Due to only having 3 clicks, the corporation can only advance a card 3 times in a turn. (or 2 times if they need to install it)”
These cards will allow the corporation to potentially get an agenda to the required advancements quicker than you expect, either by just gaining more clicks, or by using cards that place multiple advancement counters with a single click.
“Corporation needs to advance a card at least 3 times to get agenda points”
Most agenda’s need to be advanced at least 3 times to be scored. This means in order to score an agenda, the Corporation either needs to install the agenda on the previous turn, risking that you steal it from the remote server, or use one of the tricks from the previous section.
But there are some agendas that can be scored after being advanced twice, so they can be installed and scored in a single turn.
2/1 Agendas (Only need to be advanced twice, but are only worth 1 point)
Agendas that have advancement requirements that can be reduced
Non-Agenda cards that can give the corporation points
This non-agenda card can actually give the Corporation an agenda point without needing an agenda
“The corporation scoring a single agenda can’t warp the game too much”
The corporation scoring an agenda is never great for the runner, but sometimes even if the agenda doesn’t do one of the nasty effects we have talked about already, scoring them can have a bigger effect on the game then you would expect.
Agendas that score more points than you would expect for their advancement requirement
Usually for an agenda to be worth 3+ points, it would require at least 5 advancements. But these agendas can be worth 3+ points and only require 3 or 4 advancements, at the expense of having some restrictions.
Agendas that have very powerful effects
These agendas have either on-score or persistent effects that have large effects on the rest of the game.
“Once a corporation draws an agenda, they can’t get it back into R&D”
While usually agendas only flow from R&D into HQ, there are some cards that allow the corporation to put agendas from HQ and/or Archives back into R&D. This can help a corporation who has drawn too many agendas without a way to safely score them.
“Having a tag just means the corporation can trash my resources, so if I don’t care about my resources then I can float tags without fear”
Punishing the runner for having tags can have a myriad of consequences, and they have basically all been covered in all the other sections, but it may be useful to group all the severe tag punishment cards in one list.
Tag Punishment
ICE that is harder to break when tagged
What did I learn from making this list?
By these definitions, there are a lot of gotcha cards.
There are 273 unique corp cards in the standard format currently.
In the decklist itself, I included 73 gotcha cards. That is ~25% of the carpool.
In the writeup, I discussed 127 unique cards. Thats ~45% of the entire card pool.
Does that mean this list is too big to actually be helpful? Maybe. That’s probably the reason a list like this doesn’t exist already. But my hope is that by organizing the list the way I did, it broke it down in a way that it was still somewhat helpful.
Categorizing the list by the naive assumptions that the gotcha cards break gave me some decent heuristics and guidelines.
For instance, realizing there is realistically only one ICE that can do more than 3 damage when you facecheck it is pretty helpful. Even if I don’t have any meta knowledge of which ICE to expect in a certain matchup, I know that if I have 3 cards in hand I am safe unless I expect a Saisentan.
Knowing all 3 or 4 “AI-Hate” ICE in the format, depending on if you count Hafrún, can be helpful when I am running a Matryoshka deck and I want to know what to be prepared for.
There are not any cards in the format that bounce installed cards to the runners grip or shuffle them into the stack.
This just kinda surprised me. Before rotation, I was fond of the Self-Growth Program
+ Degree Mill decks (don’t hate me) so I was a bit surprised to realize those non-trashing ways of removing the runner’s installed cards don’t exist in the format anymore.
Netrunner is a cool game
Whether or not other people find this useful, I had fun trying to take all the interesting threats in netrunner and try to organize them. And there are plenty more combinations that take the threat on all these cards to the next level, that I can’t possibly get them all into a digestible list. (ie. Tucana → Anemone for an additional two damage after the runner steals an agenda). The game is fun to think about, let alone play. Netrunner is pretty cool I guess.
if nothing else, you're a markdown legend