How to Teach Netrunner
This is a general guide on how I teach Netrunner. It has general advice, an outline on the steps to go through, and even direct quotes I use while teaching that you’re free to steal. I also use these quotes to explain some of the steps I take. Once you’ve got to the hooked section, you can set pretty much any number of people up as you want, so long as they’re all within reach of your teach, and present to them all at the same time. If you’re doing this, try to make sure you’re engaging each player as you do from all the games you have set up, not just the people closest to you. If you’re asking players to do something, maybe get all the tables to try doing it at the same time. Net damage for example “Can all the runners now pick up the few cards I’ve laid out as a hand in front of you, and hold them up facing towards you. Now corps…”
The first thing you need to do is get people interested in the game. You need to find the right hook for the right person. One thing that I’ve found always works is to generally talk about all points of the game. You need to cover the basic premise of it being an asymmetric, 2-player card game.
The goal of this is to introduce the game, and try to spot the thing they focus on. Ideally you’ll have cards in front of them in some fashion. Are they gravitating towards a certain card type, a certain faction, are they commenting on the art, did they see “Draw 3 cards” and lose their shit? Whatever it is, try to look out for it. If you can’t see anything that’s jumping out at them, tell them why you love Netrunner. Is it the community, the fact that we’re anti-capitalist queers squatting on an IP, is it the fact that you lose your shit every time you see “Draw 3 cards”? If you’ve found it, tell them what it is about that aspect of the game that you like the most. If it’s something you don’t quite get into or don’t know much about, try to find something similar. Don’t know how to talk about the artwork, talk about the story, or the world and the theme. If you have no idea how to work out what a makes a card powerful, talk about the off the wall stuff you can do (like “Draw 3 cards”!). At this point, if they are still unsure and don’t want a demo of the game, be sure to give them a link to our site and whatever you can.
Once you’ve got their basic interest and they want to learn the game itself, it can be overwhelming. There’s quite a bit of Netrunner to go through, as you’re teaching two games at once. That can be exciting, though! First you want to find out who’s playing which side. If you are teaching one person, play Corp. If you are teaching two or more people, you should ask who enjoys bluffing, hiding, and being defensive more, and who likes being more aggressive, attacking, and just trying stuff to see what happens more. The former should corp, the latter should run.
Introducing card types is one of the stickier parts of the game for many teaches. Both players need to know what all the cards do, but each player is only going to play with half (ish) of them. We need to make sure we are being clear about which cards go in which decks, but we also want to talk about both sides almost alternately, so that both players stay invested. They want to learn about their cards more than their opponents, and they are the ones they need to know about more, but I tend to focus on the corp cards more, we talk about how the runner interacts with them. One thing that is common throughout most teaches I’ve seen, and which I continue the trend of, is that we start with Agendas.
First, you’ll want to grab some cards of each type. This is the list of cards I use from System Gateway. You should also set up a dummy hand for each player to use as a prop during your teach for explaining things like damage.
Once you’ve grabbed these cards, set up a little bit of a fake board. You can have this all ready to go on the table before they sit down, so you’re just picking up your pile of cards to teach them with.
Show them two or three different Agendas with different costs and points. In System Gateway I always show a copy of each 3/1, 4/2, and 5/3. Simply note that the higher the cost, the better the payout. You don’t need to explain never advance and IAA here, they don’t know what any of that means yet, but that’s the next thing we talk about. Once you’ve explained the anatomy of the card, ignoring the text for now, point out the basic actions. Say something like “Now we have this list of actions we can take in a turn. The runner has 4, the corp only has three, but they will draw a card every turn as well.” Read through the basic actions, noting the like actions as you go. “Both players can ‘click’ (use an action) to gain a credit, draw a card, to play one of their cards, or install one of their cards. That’s what we’re going to do now: we spend a click [physically spend that click] to install this Agenda.” make sure to note that it is going facedown, and that the runner can’t see it. Show them the advance action, and note to them on the card that it costs a click AND a credit. Make sure to make it clear if you are using credits as advancements that they are not the same thing, and it’s just something we do that is convenient. Then you can advance it again. “We need to get this all the way to 4, but now we’ve run out of clicks, so it’s the runner’s turn.”
Note that we’ve gone over a few of the actions the runner can take already, as they’re the same as the corp ones, and that the runner’s first unique action is the ability to run any server. “So we’re going to use that to run this server now and (flip the agenda over) now that we’ve accessed it we immediately steal it, and get those two points.” You can use this as an opportunity to explain how it costs resources -both time and money- for the corp to score Agendas, but runners just need to touch them to get those points, and they deny the corp those points at the same time. At this point, rewind to before the run, and show them Palisade, and explain how this will end the run, letting us finish scoring our agenda next turn. When you install it, show them the ability on the basic action card that we use to do it. Then show them Tithe and that it does something, but they still steal the agenda. You can take this opportunity to also explain how damage works, make the runner player physically hold their hand up and ask the corp player to pick one of those cards and flip it face up on the table for both players to see, explaining at the same time that this card is trashed and gone forever! (Which obviously isn’t true, but they don’t know that yet.) Explain how flatlining works here, too. The alternate win condition the corp has. I use a phrase like “The cards in your hand are like shields. If you take damage and it hits your shields you’re okay, but if you take any more than that, you are flatlined, and you die.” or something.
Now that we’ve introduced ice, we can introduce icebreakers. I often say “Let’s go back to Palisade. If the corp could just keep putting stuff behind this Barrier we can’t get past every turn, that wouldn’t be any fun. That’s why we have icebreakers, so…” at this point I will establish the board with a single advanced OffOff behind an unrezzed Ice. “We run. They rez this Palisade. It ends the run, but we still have three more clicks left so we can spend a click again to install a card, and we’re going to install a Cleaver. And we have two clicks left so let’s click to gain a credit, then with our last click we can just choose to run again.” help reinforce the idea that you can do the same thing any number of times, limited only by the number of clicks you have. Explain the general idea of a run. Rezzing, breaking, and breaching. Try to use the language of the game in a conversational way. “As we approach this ice” doesn’t sound like a game term, so should help reinforce it as the phrase we use generally. The corp will rez this ice. When the runner encounters the ice, they can use their icebreakers to ‘break’ the subroutines on it. Explain that Cleaver can break Palisade for a single credit because it has 3 strength and Palisade only has 2. Then you can bring up that Palisade actually has a bonus ability, and teach them about increasing strength, and also introduce the language of “remote server”.
Show them Urtica Cipher and Nico Campaign, and explain that there might be no Agendas in the server. I then show Manegarm, but don't let them read it because it has way too much text, and the way it works in a game if they draw it can give the corp player a real buzz knowing that the runner doesn’t know what’s coming. I say "You can also upgrade any of your servers as many times as you want", and that has really driven home that you can only have one asset/agenda, but infinite upgrades. At this point we have actually removed Manegarm when we do the teach, and introduce it if we go onto the booster pack. I also explain that corp cards always go face down and runners always face up. After that I show them an event and an operation, explaining that these cards work differently to the rest. You play them, they do what they say, then they go in the bin. Hedge and Gamble are good for this, as you can also explain the shortcut of “If you’re at 5c, you can just play this to spend 5, gain 9, so we just add 4 credits.”
Depending on how many questions they ask, this should be 5-10m at most, and then you can get them playing a game.
Walk them through setting up the first turn. You don’t need to explain specifically where HQ and Archives are or anything, just keep it set up and get going. Tell each player to draw 5 cards, and ensure that they have 5c. You want to let the corp player play; engage with them like "let's see what we have here", but try to let them make decisions. If they have a truly shit teaching hand Mulligan, otherwise don't talk about it unless they’ve told you already play another card game. You don’t want to be looking over their shoulder or anything, but you need to make sure they feel comfortable asking. They may have gotten everything they need, and they may just be able to go on their merry way, but if they’re struggling, ensure they know you’re happy to be asked questions. Don’t over prompt them, as they may just be happy reading stuff before they figure it out, let them play at their own pace.
On the runner's first turn, get them to do anything by themselves. Make a comment or two about what the corp has done “Ooh, what could that be?”, “Wow, that’s a lot of money they’ve started with!”, whatever. Once they’ve taken three clicks, assuming they didn’t try to run HQ or R&D (because you’ve not told them that’s a possibility) say “I’m going to stop you before your last click”. For their last click, make them run HQ. When they breach, call back to the net damage demonstration and make the corp hold their hand up in the same way. The runner has been sat patiently learning about corp cards for a while, learning all the tricks they have, learning about damage, and this can be a great moment where they feel a sort of revenge on their opponent. They’re prying at things they shouldn’t. You should take an extra click to demonstrate an R&D run here, too.
After this, you want to check in with them on how they’re feeling about their first turn. Remind them they can ask you anything they need, and keep an eye on the game, but try to just let them do stuff. Unless the corp is placing cards in the wrong place, don’t make comments about not having enough money. Only discuss strategy if they directly ask, people tend not to like being told what to do, and expressing yourself is something that Netrunner let’s players do in a very unique way.