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The 2014 Holiday Sale Ends December 1st

Take Advantage of These Seasonal Savings Before They Disappear

It’s not too late to find great gifts for all the gamers in your life!

Running through Monday, December 1st, the 2014 Fantasy Flight Games Holiday Sale is your chance to take advantage of fantastic seasonal deals on games of all varieties. This year’s sale features nearly 300 titles, ranging from miniatures games such as Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare to board games like Gears of War to a vast library’s worth of roleplaying books, novels, and art books.

Hurry to our webstore now, or read more to learn how you can take advantage of the 2014 Fantasy Flight Games Holiday Sale to launch your friends and family into fantastic holiday adventures!

The Winter Campaign

The year is 1947, and Allied and Axis forces continue to clash on the battlefields of Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare. Our Dust category includes a comprehensive collection of Allied, Axis, and SSU expansions for both games.

In a world of alien technology, strange science, and bloody engagements, the soldiers of Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare continue to fight the ongoing battles of World War II with lasers, power armor, and powerful mechs. Both Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare use the same, meticulously detailed miniatures, so your armies for one game can pull double-duty in the other.

Additionally, you can find professionally painted troops, mechs, and vehicles in our Dust Premium category. Prepare for your winter campaign in style!

Our Dust miniatures have been among our hottest items throughout this year’s Holiday Sale. Do you have a miniatures gamer or wargamer in your life? Call in your troops, and win the war!

Liven Up Your Festivities

If you’re looking to add some excitement to your holidays, Gears of War™: The Board Game might be just the game you want!

Designed by Corey Konieczka, Gears of War: The Board Game is based on the wildly popular third-person shooter by Epic Games. One to four players take on the roles of COG soldiers cooperating to destroy the Locust horde, and must work together to complete missions against an ingeniously challenging and varied game system.

This holiday season, give someone the chance to Roadie Run into cover, spray enemies with blind fire, or rip Locust in half with a Lancer’s chainsaw!

Holidays in the Imperium

Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like the gift of unending war!

This year, you can ring in the holidays with an assortment of roleplaying games set in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium. Choose from dozens of titles for Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, Black Crusade, and Only War.

Moreover, as you prepare to head into battles across the Imperium, you can do so in style with our Collector’s Editions of Deathwatch and Black Crusade. In either game, you become one of the galaxy’s greatest warriors, fighting tirelessly to save the Empire or bring it to ruin. Few beings can stand against you, but you’ll meet your match in the hefty, stylized, and ornate Collector’s Editions of these core rulebooks.

Unleash the Imagination

Of course, there’s plenty more than Dust, Gears of War, and Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying in this year’s Holiday Sale.

You can share laughs and excitement with lighter fare like Rockband Manager and the adventures of The Hobbit Card Game. You can explore the worlds and intrigues of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or Anima Roleplaying. You can help your friends to immerse themselves in the settings of their favorite games with novels from the Android, Tannhäuser, and Arkham Horror lines. Or you can simply take advantage of the sale to build your own armies, establish your own civilizations, and confront the forces of Sauron.

Act quickly to take advantage of these deals while they last. The 2014 Fantasy Flight Games Holiday Sale ends Monday, December 1st. Visit our webstore now!

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Source: The 2014 Holiday Sale Ends December 1st

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Prep for Battle

A Designer Diary on Building Armies in an Imperial Assault Skirmish

“We have stolen a small Imperial shuttle. Disguised as a cargo ship, and using a secret Imperial code, a strike team will land on the moon and deactivate the shield generator.”

   –General Crix Madine, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Command iconic characters and soldiers from the Star Wars™ universe in Imperial Assault, a miniatures game of thrilling adventure and tactical conflict for two to five players. In previous previews, we focused on the narrative that emerges as you play through a campaign that pits the heroes of the Rebellion against a single Imperial player.

More recently, though, we turned to the heated competition and battles of the skirmish game. Our last preview explored how gameplay changes during a skirmish mission. Today, Paul Winchester, one of the Imperial Assault developers, shares his thoughts on different possibilities for building a finely honed fighting force from any faction included in Imperial Assault.

Paul Winchester on Building Your Skirmish Mission Army

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Han and Chewbacca ran into IG-88 and a slew of other bounty hunters in a Mos Eisley back alley? What if a squad of Stormtroopers found themselves surrounded by vicious creatures like the Nexu? These are the exciting Star Wars battles that can come to life in the Imperial Assault skirmish game!

Before a skirmish game begins, you must craft a deadly fighting force by spending up to forty points on units and powerful upgrades, as we explored in our last preview. After mustering an army, you assemble a deck of fifteen Command cards that can enhance your army and give your units an array of special abilities. Once both players have constructed armies and Command decks, the mission begins and players compete to gain forty victory points first by defeating enemy units and completing the mission’s objectives.

Each faction offers dozens of powerful combinations of cards and abilities with many different strategies that may lead you to victory. Here, I’ll explore just a few of the opportunities that these three factions bring to the Star Wars battlefield.

Soldiers of the Empire

Each faction in the Imperial Assault skirmish game offers the dilemma of whether your army should include many low-cost units or a few high-powered, high-cost units. This choice has perhaps the most important ramifications in the Imperial faction, which includes the most feared villains and the largest army in the galaxy.

For example, with your forty points, you can secure Darth Vader and the Royal Guard Champion for your squad. Both feature large amounts of health, two defense dice, and some of the most powerful attacks available in a skirmish. These terrifying villains can wreak havoc on your opponent’s squad, especially when combined with Command cards like Pummel and good support characters like the Imperial Officer, whose Order ability gives these powerhouses more mobility. Of course, your opponent earns victory points equal to the deployment cost of any units he defeats, so if he manages to defeat Darth Vader, he will receive a substantial reward.

Your Imperial army could consist of Darth Vader, the Royal Guard Champion, an elite Imperial Officer, and an Imperial Officer.

On the other hand, you could enter the battlefield with squads of Stormtroopers, Imperial Officers, Probe Droids, and E-Web Engineers. While these units are easier to defeat and have weaker attacks than more expensive units, outnumbering your opponent provides two distinct advantages. First, most skirmish missions have objectives that provide victory points as well as terminals that provide you with extra Command cards while you control them. With plenty of Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers on the map, you have more units that you can commit to fulfilling these objectives and claiming terminals. The other main advantage of a large army is that, since activations alternate between you and your opponent, you may have more activations that your opponent. This means that even after your opponent has made all of his activations, you still have half of your army available.

Posting a Bounty

One of your most valuable resources in a skirmish mission is your Command cards, which offer unique special abilities. In response to the power of these cards, several units from the Mercenary faction help you destroy your opponent’s Command deck by using strain.

Whenever a unit would suffer a strain during a skirmish, it suffers a damage unless the unit’s controller discards the top card of his Command deck. Inflicting strain is the calling card of  Mercenary units like the merciless bounty hunter IG-88 and the Trandoshan Hunters. Each of these units features the Relentless ability, which forces the target of an attack to suffer a strain in addition to any damage. IG-88 even has the Assault ability, meaning he can attack (and inflict strain with Relentless) twice in one turn.

A deadly Mercenary strike force may field IG-88, two units of elite Trandoshan Hunters, and two Nexu.

The Mercenary faction also features the ferocious Nexu, whose attack automatically inflicts the Bleeding condition on its target. A Bleeding unit suffers strain for every action it takes other than removing the Bleeding condition, forcing your opponent to delay and heal the condition or push forward and watch his Command deck melt away. As a combined force, the Mercenary faction can bring a massive amount of strain to bear. If this cumulative strain completely depletes your opponent’s Command cards, all strain is automatically counted as damage, massively increasing your damage output and quickly overwhelming your foes.

The Rebellion’s Finest

When you fight for the Rebel Alliance in Imperial Assault, you may choose to play as the named heroes of the Rebellion, including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and the heroes introduced in the Imperial Assault campaign. But you also have the chance to command the unsung warriors of the Rebellion: Rebel Troopers. These infantry units can be extremely powerful, but they require a great deal of finesse and tactics to be used properly. If you can maneuver your Rebel Troopers into position, they can bring down any target with their Aim ability, which grants extra damage and accuracy if they have not yet moved on their activation.

The soldiers of the Rebellion may compose an army with Luke Skywalker and Fenn Signis leading three units of Rebel Troopers, and supported by two upgrade cards.

You can enhance your Troopers more with Fenn Signis, one of the new heroes introduced in Imperial Assault. His status as an exceptional Rebel foot soldier is reflected in his powerful attack, his Assault ability, and his ability to give fellow Troopers multiple attacks per round, creating a powerhouse firing squad. Still not enough firepower? Enter Luke Skywalker. In addition to being a powerful combatant in his own right, he can inspire his fellow soldiers to greatness by allowing nearby friendly units to reroll an attack die, giving Rebel troopers extra chances to deal even higher damage. Alternatively, you could craft a strike team of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Rebel Saboteurs, enabling you to quickly sabotage any enemy plans. Whether you command squads of Rebel Troopers, or lead a team of saboteurs into combat, even the most powerful Imperial villains should fear the Rebellion.

Unlimited Options

In addition to the strategies inherent to each faction, worlds of possible combinations await when you begin delving deeper into Skirmish Upgrade cards and Command cards. Do you wish your Nexu could attack multiple times per activation? Use the Temporary Alliance card to bring Mercenary units into your Imperial army and enhance them with an elite Imperial Officer. Is your Rebel army having trouble dealing with high-defense units, but you’ve already reached the fifteen-point limit for your Command deck? Make room in your army for Balance of the Force and you can use Maximum Firepower, which lets your Rebel Saboteurs unload their ordnance on a single powerful target.

The combination of strategy, squad style, Skirmish Upgrades, and Command cards allows for so many different armies that no two skirmishes will ever be the same. The synergies between cards, units, and missions open worlds of tactical options for surging forward to victory. Good luck in your battles and may the Force be with you!

Ready Your Troops

No matter which factions you play in your Imperial Assault skirmishes, you’ll find a nearly limitless number of possible armies and tactics for you to employ. In our next preview, we’ll turn our attention to two of the central characters of the classic Star Wars trilogy – Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. We’ll explore the extra missions and cards included in the Luke Skywalker Ally Pack and the Darth Vader Villain Pack that expand both your campaigns and your skirmishes!


Look for Imperial Assault at your local retailer soon.

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Source: Prep for Battle

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Breaker Bay

Announcing the Second Data Pack in the SanSan Cycle

“University of the Californias at Breaker Bay has something for everyone. Upload the attached datafile to your simsensie-capable PAD and take the virtual tour now!”

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Breaker Bay, the second Data Pack in the SanSan Cycle for Android: Netrunner!

As the SanSan Cycle provides fans of Android: Netrunner a guided tour of the Californias from San Francisco to San Diego, Breaker Bay focuses on the University of the Californias at Breaker Bay. UCBB has a profound impact upon the region as it educates tens of thousands of students every year in over one-thousand majors, minors, and programs from over a dozen dedicated colleges.

Here, the faculty can count themselves among the most distinguished in the solar system, and the university regularly competes with Levy University and NeoTokyo Daigaku for the top spot in the NBN Best College and University Rankings.

Accordingly, the sixty new cards from Breaker Bay (three copies each of twenty different cards) focus on the university’s graduate and undergraduate students, who number among the brightest in the world. We find resources that reflect everything from their living conditions to their parties, and we see some of the actions that the world’s largest megacorps take as they attempt to recruit the best and brightest of them. Of course, there’s a lot to learn, and you’ll find several inspired new pieces of ice, as well as a new Shaper who proves that knowledge is power.

A Fast Learner

While other students at UCBB may be distracted by beach parties, Corporate recruiters, or tailgating before the big games, Hayley Kaplan (Breaker Bay, 25) is quietly consumed by her passions for learning, technology, and astronomy, all of which she neatly combines in her burgeoning enterprise as a Runner.

Like most Shapers, Hayley Kaplan’s motives are not entirely clear to others, but her methods suggest that she’s interested in using her runs as a means to test the most efficient ways of distilling meaningful and actionable data from the network’s nearly infinite strings of code. Along the way, she uses her knowledge of astronomy and constellations to identify and map particularly intriguing data clusters.

In the game, Hayley Kaplan focuses on these clusters of information by gaining actions that are effectively free. Her ability reads, “The first time you install a card each turn, you may install another card of the same type from your grip (paying its install cost).” And her favorite console, Comet (Breaker Bay, 27), introduces a similar ability, “The first time you play an event each turn, you may play another event (without spending a click) after the first one resolves.”

By playing her events in quick succession, and by installing her programs or other cards in little clusters, Haley buys herself valuable clicks with which she can run or procure credits.

Of course, the fact is that Haley’s and Comet’s abilities require that you draw into small combinations, and if you hold onto your programs, events, resources, or hardware in a grip of just five cards, you may choke your progress rather than accelerate it. Accordingly, you might consider using Beach Party (Breaker Bay, 31) to increase your hand size and, then, use Game Day (Breaker Bay, 26) to draw into all the events you’ll want to play and all the parts of your rig that you hope to install.

Prepare Yourself for Future Success

No matter your interests, you’ll find that your education at Breaker Bay will help you to become a more well-rounded and successful individual.

The computational neuroscience and cybernetics research in Breaker Bay’s NeurotechniCollege is leading to new bioroid neural channeling techniques and applications of brain-machine interface technology. UCBB’s LibArts School fosters learning in such traditional subjects as American, Spanish, social sciences, history, and philosophy, and the Gore School of Network Architecture educates the sysops and cybersec administrators of tomorrow.

In Breaker Bay, the students and buildings of UCBB are given form, as are the corporate sponsorships that provide graduate and undergraduate students with hands-on fellowship and internship experiences. Will you intern with Jinteki Biotech? Will you apply for research grant from Haas-Bioroid? Will you take out a student loan from one of the banks in the Weyland Consortium?

At UCBB, your future awaits you. Look for Breaker Bay to arrive at retailers late in the first quarter of 2015!

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Source: Breaker Bay

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Best of the Best

The Specializations, Species, and Signature Abilities of Stay on Target

“Great shot, kid. That was one in a million.”

   –Han Solo

The Rebellion against the Empire is gaining strength throughout the galaxy. Spearheading the fight are the fearless and expert Aces who dedicate their talents and lives to defying Imperial Rule. It is upon their technical expertise, quick-thinking, fast reflexes, and willingness to risk their lives for freedom that the Rebellion's success depends.

Stay on Target, the first career supplement for the Star Wars®: Age of Rebellion™ roleplaying game, gives players numerous new options for creating the Ace characters that the Rebellion needs. Make your Ace extraordinary with the specializations, species, and signature abilities featured in Stay on Target, or choose from these new species and specializations to make your non-Ace character one in a million.

Risk Has Its Own Rewards

Three new specializations are featured in Stay on Target, each allowing you to take your career as an Ace in a different direction. Brave the wilderness as a Beast Rider, make daredevil combat moves as a Hotshot, or take your vehicle to a new level as a Rigger.

Able to break, and train almost any creature, a Beast Rider is most at home outdoors with the wind on his face. The Beast Rider specialization adds Athletics, Knowledge (Xenology), Perception, and Survival to the Ace’s repertoire, skills useful for any Ace who might end up stranded on an unfamiliar planet after a crash landing. Beast Riders fit in well with the soldiers and scouts of the Rebel Army, and can prove vital to a team during a ground battle or clandestine raid on an Imperial outpost.

Riggers unite engineering ingenuity with an Ace’s quick thinking, allowing them to modify a vehicle’s performance even in the middle of a battle. Constantly tweaking and fine-tuning their vehicles to ensure it can outgun and outrun the Imperials, Riggers tend to be cautious pilots who rely on technological advantages. In addition to Gunnery and Mechanics, Riggers have the bonus career skills Resilience and Knowledge (Underworld). Familiarity with the galaxy’s underworld keeps a rigger supplied with illegal tech, reconnaissance, and even allies who can help him out of a tight spot.

Hotshots are risk-taking daredevils –  naturally gifted, overly confident, and constantly improvising. Their flashy maneuvers can go horribly wrong, but most of the time their Cool, Coordination, and natural abilities in Piloting (Planetary) and Piloting (Space) serve them well in combat. Because of their unrestrained bravery, they tend to dive headfirst into the thickest part of battle, shoot first, and execute mind-blowingly narrow escapes. They are also a bit cocky, liable to brag endlessly about their most astonishing feats to anyone willing to listen. Putting a Hotshot at the head of your vehicle formation is usually a winning move – as long as the Hotshot’s luck holds out.

Made for the Fast Lane

The Empire is known for its cruelty towards non-human species. So, as the Rebellion grows, many non-humans are joining forces with the Rebel Alliance, seeking freedom from oppression for themselves and their people. Stay on Target introduces three new species, each eminently suited to the Ace career.

Descended from mammalian tree-dwellers, the small, furry Chadra-Fan are a gregarious and cheerful bunch with sharp senses and an innate understanding of technology. They fiddle with any device that they encounter, with or without the owner’s permission, which sometimes gets them into trouble, and they have been known to steal pieces of technology they particularly like. Because of their warm demeanor, positive attitude, and mechanical expertise, the Chadra-Fan are welcome in the Rebel Alliance as Engineers and Riggers on starships. Some also serve as Diplomats and Spies, their friendly natures gaining them entrance into even the most selective circles.

From left to right: a Xexto, a Dressellian, and a Chadra-Fan

Tall, gruff Dressellians have a long tradition of training riding war mounts, making them natural Beast Riders. They are also known for their achievements in music and literature, but the Empire occupied their homeworld before the Dressellians achieved industrial-level technology. Over a decade of guerilla warfare has shaped these gritty outdoorsmen and talented artists into outstanding Soldiers, Spies, and even Gunners. Because of the Empire’s cruelty, Dressellians are wary of outsiders, particularly, humans, and can be difficult to get along with. But once they form friendships, Dressellians prove to be loyal, fierce, and uncompromising allies.

Known for being die-hard podracing fans, the six-limbed, two-brained Xexto live for speed and adventure. Their bravery, love of risk-taking, and quick reflexes make them natural Aces, Soldiers, or Spies. The Xexto care neither for the former Republic or for the Empire, and it is rare to find one working outside of the pod-racing circuit, but a few of them have joined the Rebel alliance in order to prove their own courage. Many have been honored for their valor, often posthumously.

Keep Fighting

Stay on Target gives Aces two new signature abilities: This One is Mine and Unmatched Survivablility. Signature Abilities are elite skills that can only be accessed by experienced characters of a specific career, and certain talents must be developed before the signature ability is attained. You can also customize your signature ability by purchasing upgrades, as you can with any talent.

This One is Mine allows an you to focus on a single specific target in the middle of a chaotic battle. When piloting a starship or vehicle, you may spend two Destiny Points to lock another ship or vehicle with an equal silhouette into an isolated duel for your lives. For two rounds, no other ship or character can target you while you put everything you’ve got into taking your opponent down. Upgrades include Change Silhouette, which lets you target a wider range of ships, and Evasion, which increases the difficult of all incoming attacks.

With Unmatched Survivability, you can keep your ship fighting even after a crippling blow. By spending two Destiny Points, you can keep a crippled ship with a silhouette of three or less running as if it were unharmed for three more rounds. That could be enough time to finish off your enemy and get your ship and crew to safety. If nothing else, it at least increases your chance of survival. You can even make your ship even more invincible with a Durability Upgrade, reducing Critical Hits by ten for each Durability Upgrade you have.

The Rebel Alliance Wants You

Use the species and specializations featured in Stay on Target to create a peerless Ace character, or choose another career and use Hotshot, Rigger, and Beast Rider as non-career specializations. Imagine a Hotshot Xexto Diplomat who became famous as a pod racer, a Chadra-Fan Spy with the technological knowledge of a Rigger, or a Dressellian Soldier who can steal his enemy’s mount and ride it across the battlefield. No matter what planet you come from or what your talents are, the Rebel Alliance can use your help in the galaxy-wide fight against the Empire, and welcomes you within its ranks.

In future previews, we’ll look at the beasts, vehicles, and ships of Stay on Target, and learn how to integrate interstellar dogfights into your Star Wars®: Age of Rebellion™ campaign. Check out the Star Wars®: Age of Rebellion™ minisite for more details.

Prepare to join the Rebellion. Pre-order Stay on Target from your local retailer today!

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Source: Best of the Best

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Enemies Within

Announcing a New Sourcebook for Dark Heresy Second Edition

“Our enemies prowl in the shadows of shining cathedrals. They scuttle in the darkness of dank underhives. They lurk in the corners of gilded palaces. They even dare to stand openly, hiding behind false faces and honeyed words. They are everywhere that man live and breathe – and so we must always be ready to face them with fire and the Emperor’s wrath!”

   –from the Epistles of Inquisitor Kharkov

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Enemies Within, a new supplement for Dark Heresy Second Edition!

Across the Imperium, countless threats assail the Emperor’s dominion. Xenos from outside the Imperium’s borders launch daily incursions, intent on the destruction of our species. From the ever-changing realm of the Immaterium, daemons and other creations of the Ruinous Powers threaten to burst into Mankind’s plane of reality, eager to devour every human in existence. But perhaps the most deadly threat to the safety of the Imperium comes not from without, but within.

The worlds of the Askellon sector fester with undiscovered heresies and cults. Heretics, mutants, and witches exist on every planet, offering dark worship to the powers of Chaos. If left unchecked, their ghastly beliefs and practices will explode across the sector, dragging humanity screaming into the darkness. For such unbridled corruption, there can be only one cure: the pure and cleansing fire of the Ordo Hereticus.

Enemies Within is the first supplement for Dark Heresy Second Edition, and it offers new opportunities for your Acolytes in the Ordo Hereticus alongside a host of new heresies and cults for you to exterminate.

Beware the Enemy Within

The supplement opens with a history of the Ordo Hereticus’s activity within the Askellon sector. This sector of the Imperium has long been plagued with heresies of all kinds, and even in times of relative peace, heresy spreads to three new souls for every one an Acolyte sanctifies with fire. In this chapter of Enemies Within, you’ll learn the truth behind some of the greatest tragedies in the history of the sector, including deadly psyker eruptions, ferocious mutant uprisings, and other atrocities perpetrated against the glory of the Emperor’s rule.

You’ll also find a wealth of information about various Askellian planets and the heretical cults that you may discover fermenting on each planet. A planet’s culture may lend itself naturally to the emergence of certain cults, and your inquests will face different opponents on different planets. You may travel to the desert world of Hrax, a planet recently grown dissatisfied with the rule of the Imperium and filled with the darksome Warp power of furimancers. Or, your investigations may bring you inexorably to Pellenne, a radioactive world with a terrifyingly high level of mutation. Every planet in the Askellon sector offers new dangers and new heresies to root out. What’s more, this chapter offers the Game Master tools for generating brand new cults and devious plots, giving you new ways to spread the infection of the Warp to any part of the Askellon sector.

Plenty of new options for creating an Acolyte and equipping him for his duties exist in Enemies Within. Completely new home worlds offer plenty of variety, allowing you to play an Acolyte hailing from a productive agri-world, a remote frontier world, or a feudal world without advanced technology. New backgrounds and roles allow you to battle heresy as a member of the Adepta Sororitas or as a penitent mutant. You can even take on a new elite advance, becoming a Sister of Battle and bringing down the divine wrath of the Emperor upon all enemies of humanity.

Finally, you can expand your armory with new weapons, talents, and psychic powers specially suited to the Ordo Hereticus. With these new tools and skills, you can personalize your Acolyte to a greater degree than ever before. You may take up the meticulously crafted and blessed Godwyn-De’az bolt weapons, burn witches with a Brazier of Holy Fire, or ride aboard an Adepta Sororitas Immolator. You may even seek out items forbidden by the more puritan members of the Ordo, using the darksome powers of heresy to eradicate any corruption you can find. In the fight against the enemy within, you’ll need all the help you can get.

Do Not Fail the Emperor

To you, the Emperor has entrusted a most sacred duty: the protection of the Imperium and every man, woman, and child within. Your duty must remain inviolate, no matter what the cost in lives. Should you or another Acolyte shirk your noble calling, the entire sector could fall to the Warp. Sometimes, millions must burn to save the lives of billions.

Join the ranks of the Ordo Hereticus with Enemies Within! Look for this Dark Heresy Second Edition supplement in the first quarter of 2015.

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Source: Enemies Within

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Empire of Crime

Preview Hutt Culture and Character Creation in Lords of Nal Hutta

"Soon you will learn to appreciate me."
    –Jabba the Hutt

Recently we announced Lords of Nal Hutta, a sourcebook for the Star Wars®: Edge of the Empire™ roleplaying game. Lords of Nal Hutta provides players and GMs with a wealth of information to help them to incorporate the slimy characters, black markets, and lawless planets of Hutt Space into their games. You can travel into the most decadent and corrupt stretch of the galaxy, work for a criminal syndicate, or create your own ambitious and conniving Hutt character. In this decadent and corrupt region of the galaxy, you’ll find plenty of opportunities for profitable crimes, illegal luxuries, or unexpected good deeds.

Today’s preview looks at Hutt character creation and the fundamentals of Hutt culture. Contributing writer Sterling Hershey also introduces you to the four kajidics featured in Lords of Nal Hutta, each one specialized in a different style of crime.

 

 

Power and Greed

Thousands of years ago, the Hutts used to be a warrior culture, settling disputes on the battlefield rather than in the political arena. When a civil war devastated the entire species, the Hutts created a ruling council and a clan system, so their battles for power and control could take place peacefully. Now, Hutt clans aggressively compete for political and economic power. The Hutt Ruling Council governs their society with a legal framework that is built to be manipulated, and their justice is based on politics and revenge instead of balance or fairness.

Since they transitioned from military to economic competition, the Hutts have come to dominate criminal activity in the galaxy, using legitimate activities to conceal their illegal dealings. Their knowledge of trade routes, open and secret, is unsurpassed. The spice trade, slave trade, and weapons black market all depend on the galaxy-wide networks of the Hutts.

 

The Means to Prosper

The most important unit of Hutt society is the kajidic – essentially a clan-based crime syndicate. Kajidic translates to “the means by which we prosper,” revealing that a kajidic’s purpose is to make its members as wealthy and powerful as possible. Each kajidic specializes in a unique set of legal and illegal economic activities, possesses a certain amount of political power, and is usually governed by a single, preeminent Hutt. Here, contributing writer Sterling Hershey introduces the four kajidics featured in Lords of Nal Hutta, including two that he designed:

“Kajidics are criminal syndicates intertwined with the Hutt clans through all of Hutt space and beyond. The book features four of the kajidics in detail, and I named and created two of them. Each kajidic description covers its general history, recent events, legitimate and criminal activities, areas of operation, and a few significant members. There is a mixture of recognizable and new characters.

“The featured kajidics include two of the best known – Desilijic and Besadii. Desilijic is Jabba the Hutt’s operation, an ancient and poweful kajidic that currently holds the upper hand in Hutt politics. The rival Besadii kajidic includes Durga the Hutt and Gardulla the Hutt, who are both heavily tied into previous Hutt storylines. Besadii lost its seat on the ruling council during the Clone Wars, but has prospered through striking secret deals with the Empire.

“Qunaalac is a heavily armed kajidic. It is a major defender of Hutt space, especially around the secretive Hutt throneworlds in the Bootana Hutta. It retains more of the Hutts’ ancient militaristic past traditions compared to other kajidics. Hutt military fleets are usually ad-hoc affairs reliant on current alliances and multiple agendas, like any other Hutt operation. So the Qunaalac Hutts aren’t entirely military,
 but it is their strength.

“While Qunaalac operates mostly within Hutt Space, Gorensla Hutts are galactic black marketeers. They operate in the shadows, secretly owning and controlling ports, hyperspace smuggling routes, and more. Their front organizations influence entire economies. They rig laws to legalize their activities. They play and profit from all sides in wartime. Gorensla even sells to the Rebels, but are careful to conceal that fact from both sides of the Galactic Civil War.”

Thank you, Sterling!

You can integrate your knowledge of kajidics and Hutt culture into your campaign, whether it takes you deep into Hutt Space or entangles you in Jabba’s smuggling ring on Tatooine. If you’re building an NPC or PC Hutt character, you’ll want to consider what kajidic the Hutt belongs to and how they fit into the competitive and ruthless society of the Hutts.

Be Your Own Crime Boss

In Lords of Nal Hutta you’ll find the outline for creating a Hutt character, namely a young adult Hutt only one or two centuries old. Your Hutt might be a self-interested smuggler eager to rise up in the ranks of his kajidic, or an outcast and a member of the Rebel Alliance. You might be running a successful weapons smuggling ring, or making a name for yourself as a warrior in order to better launch your political career. Or, you may choose to subvert Hutt tradition, and use your wealth to aid other, more impoverished species.

Hutts are physically tough, with a Brawn of three and a fairly high wound threshold. Their immense size does, however, cause a low Agility score and make them Ponderous, meaning that they can only spend one maneuver moving each turn. Hutts are also mentally tough. They have a high Willpower and are not only difficult to deceive, charm, or coerce, but resistant to the Force. Having taken advantage of their clientele for centuries, the Hutts are not about to let anyone take advantage of them.

 

The Only Limit Is Ambition

At the edge of the Empire, where Imperial laws fail to check violence and greed, you’re sure to encounter the Hutts. You may perform in a decadent Hutt palace, make a deal with Gardulla in order to get supplies for the Rebellion, or become indebted to Jabba because of a bad smuggling run. With Lords of Nal Hutta, you can integrate the Hutts’ aggressive politics and black market economy into your campaigns, and even participate in their devious schemes as an aspiring Hutt yourself. In Hutt space, the only law is avarice, and the only limit is ambition.

Preorder Lords of Nal Hutta from your local retailer today!

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Source: Empire of Crime

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STAR WARS (R): Force and Destiny (TM) Beta Update 11

News From the Developers of the Force and Destiny Beta

Hello Force and Destiny™ beta testers,

This week’s update (pdf, 344 KB) contains the final errata for the Force and Destiny beta. In the past several months, we’ve seen this game undergo some important changes, and that’s thanks to you and the effort you’ve put into testing it. Now, it’s time for us to focus on polishing up the final version of the game, implementing your valuable feedback, and get the Core Rulebook finished and out to fans.

Will This Final Update Match the Core Rulebook?

When we first started this beta, we talked a bit about what feedback made it into the weekly errata, and what feedback did not. It’s important to reiterate that these updates are not the sum total of the changes we have made and will make to the final game; simply the ones we felt it most important that you have available so that we could get your feedback and see the rules tested.

That being said, not every potential change that you have brought to our attention will be made in the final book. There are a plethora of reasons for this, many of which go beyond whether your suggestions were good ones or not. As we’ve run this beta, we’ve had to consider whether proposed changes would break rules mechanics in unexpected ways, unbalance careers or specializations, or simply make the game less accessible to players new to Star Wars Roleplaying. We’ve also had some good suggestions that would fit better within a future supplemental product, and other good ideas that would clash with our future plans. In the end, not every change you suggested could be implemented, but we considered your feedback very carefully before making that decision.

What’s New in This Update?

For this final update, we have some slight changes to melee weapons and gear. However, we have more robust changes to the mechanics governing triggering Morality. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve learned that Morality is an engaging enough mechanic during gameplay that “triggering” it is less important than it is for Duty or Obligation, so we’ve transitioned the rule to an optional mechanic. Because of this, we’ve changed how the GM triggers Morality. This also gives us some interesting space to play with when it comes to integrating the three Star Wars Roleplaying lines.

The final part of this update is our proposed guidance for integrating Edge of the Empire™, Age of Rebellion™, and Force and Destiny. We’d love to hear what you think of it.

Over the next few weeks, we will not be releasing any more beta updates, but we will continue to monitor the forums and accept feedback. Pressing issues and concerns will still be considered and addressed if need be. We simply need to shift our focus from updating the beta to completing the final book.

Thanks again for all your hard work and enthusiasm, and may the Force be with you!

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Source: STAR WARS (R): Force and Destiny (TM) Beta Update 11

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Prep for Battle

A Designer Diary on Building Armies in an Imperial Assault Skirmish

“We have stolen a small Imperial shuttle. Disguised as a cargo ship, and using a secret Imperial code, a strike team will land on the moon and deactivate the shield generator.”

   –General Crix Madine, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Command iconic characters and soldiers from the Star Wars™ universe in Imperial Assault, a miniatures game of thrilling adventure and tactical conflict for two to five players. In previous previews, we focused on the narrative that emerges as you play through a campaign that pits the heroes of the Rebellion against a single Imperial player.

More recently, though, we turned to the heated competition and battles of the skirmish game. Our last preview explored how gameplay changes during a skirmish mission. Today, Paul Winchester, one of the Imperial Assault developers, shares his thoughts on different possibilities for building a finely honed fighting force from any faction included in Imperial Assault.

Paul Winchester on Building Your Skirmish Mission Army

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Han and Chewbacca ran into IG-88 and a slew of other bounty hunters in a Mos Eisley back alley? What if a squad of Stormtroopers found themselves surrounded by vicious creatures like the Nexu? These are the exciting Star Wars battles that can come to life in the Imperial Assault skirmish game!

Before a skirmish game begins, you must craft a deadly fighting force by spending up to forty points on units and powerful upgrades, as we explored in our last preview. After mustering an army, you assemble a deck of fifteen Command cards that can enhance your army and give your units an array of special abilities. Once both players have constructed armies and Command decks, the mission begins and players compete to gain forty victory points first by defeating enemy units and completing the mission’s objectives.

Each faction offers dozens of powerful combinations of cards and abilities with many different strategies that may lead you to victory. Here, I’ll explore just a few of the opportunities that these three factions bring to the Star Wars battlefield.

Soldiers of the Empire

Each faction in the Imperial Assault skirmish game offers the dilemma of whether your army should include many low-cost units or a few high-powered, high-cost units. This choice has perhaps the most important ramifications in the Imperial faction, which includes the most feared villains and the largest army in the galaxy.

For example, with your forty points, you can secure Darth Vader and the Royal Guard Champion for your squad. Both feature large amounts of health, two defense dice, and some of the most powerful attacks available in a skirmish. These terrifying villains can wreak havoc on your opponent’s squad, especially when combined with Command cards like Pummel and good support characters like the Imperial Officer, whose Order ability gives these powerhouses more mobility. Of course, your opponent earns victory points equal to the deployment cost of any units he defeats, so if he manages to defeat Darth Vader, he will receive a substantial reward.

Your Imperial army could consist of Darth Vader, the Royal Guard Champion, an elite Imperial Officer, and an Imperial Officer.

On the other hand, you could enter the battlefield with squads of Stormtroopers, Imperial Officers, Probe Droids, and E-Web Engineers. While these units are easier to defeat and have weaker attacks than more expensive units, outnumbering your opponent provides two distinct advantages. First, most skirmish missions have objectives that provide victory points as well as terminals that provide you with extra Command cards while you control them. With plenty of Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers on the map, you have more units that you can commit to fulfilling these objectives and claiming terminals. The other main advantage of a large army is that, since activations alternate between you and your opponent, you may have more activations that your opponent. This means that even after your opponent has made all of his activations, you still have half of your army available.

Posting a Bounty

One of your most valuable resources in a skirmish mission is your Command cards, which offer unique special abilities. In response to the power of these cards, several units from the Mercenary faction help you destroy your opponent’s Command deck by using strain.

Whenever a unit would suffer a strain during a skirmish, it suffers a damage unless the unit’s controller discards the top card of his Command deck. Inflicting strain is the calling card of  Mercenary units like the merciless bounty hunter IG-88 and the Trandoshan Hunters. Each of these units features the Relentless ability, which forces the target of an attack to suffer a strain in addition to any damage. IG-88 even has the Assault ability, meaning he can attack (and inflict strain with Relentless) twice in one turn.

A deadly Mercenary strike force may field IG-88, two units of elite Trandoshan Hunters, and two Nexu.

The Mercenary faction also features the ferocious Nexu, whose attack automatically inflicts the Bleeding condition on its target. A Bleeding unit suffers strain for every action it takes other than removing the Bleeding condition, forcing your opponent to delay and heal the condition or push forward and watch his Command deck melt away. As a combined force, the Mercenary faction can bring a massive amount of strain to bear. If this cumulative strain completely depletes your opponent’s Command cards, all strain is automatically counted as damage, massively increasing your damage output and quickly overwhelming your foes.

The Rebellion’s Finest

When you fight for the Rebel Alliance in Imperial Assault, you may choose to play as the named heroes of the Rebellion, including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and the heroes introduced in the Imperial Assault campaign. But you also have the chance to command the unsung warriors of the Rebellion: Rebel Troopers. These infantry units can be extremely powerful, but they require a great deal of finesse and tactics to be used properly. If you can maneuver your Rebel Troopers into position, they can bring down any target with their Aim ability, which grants extra damage and accuracy if they have not yet moved on their activation.

The soldiers of the Rebellion may compose an army with Luke Skywalker and Fenn Signis leading three units of Rebel Troopers, and supported by two upgrade cards.

You can enhance your Troopers more with Fenn Signis, one of the new heroes introduced in Imperial Assault. His status as an exceptional Rebel foot soldier is reflected in his powerful attack, his Assault ability, and his ability to give fellow Troopers multiple attacks per round, creating a powerhouse firing squad. Still not enough firepower? Enter Luke Skywalker. In addition to being a powerful combatant in his own right, he can inspire his fellow soldiers to greatness by allowing nearby friendly units to reroll an attack die, giving Rebel troopers extra chances to deal even higher damage. Alternatively, you could craft a strike team of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Rebel Saboteurs, enabling you to quickly sabotage any enemy plans. Whether you command squads of Rebel Troopers, or lead a team of saboteurs into combat, even the most powerful Imperial villains should fear the Rebellion.

Unlimited Options

In addition to the strategies inherent to each faction, worlds of possible combinations await when you begin delving deeper into Skirmish Upgrade cards and Command cards. Do you wish your Nexu could attack multiple times per activation? Use the Temporary Alliance card to bring Mercenary units into your Imperial army and enhance them with an elite Imperial Officer. Is your Rebel army having trouble dealing with high-defense units, but you’ve already reached the fifteen-point limit for your Command deck? Make room in your army for Balance of the Force and you can use Maximum Firepower, which lets your Rebel Saboteurs unload their ordnance on a single powerful target.

The combination of strategy, squad style, Skirmish Upgrades, and Command cards allows for so many different armies that no two skirmishes will ever be the same. The synergies between cards, units, and missions open worlds of tactical options for surging forward to victory. Good luck in your battles and may the Force be with you!

Ready Your Troops

No matter which factions you play in your Imperial Assault skirmishes, you’ll find a nearly limitless number of possible armies and tactics for you to employ. In our next preview, we’ll turn our attention to two of the central characters of the classic Star Wars trilogy – Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. We’ll explore the extra missions and cards included in the Luke Skywalker Ally Pack and the Darth Vader Villain Pack that expand both your campaigns and your skirmishes!



Look for Imperial Assault at your local retailer soon.

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Source: Prep for Battle

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Breaker Bay

Announcing the Second Data Pack in the SanSan Cycle

“University of the Californias at Breaker Bay has something for everyone. Upload the attached datafile to your simsensie-capable PAD and take the virtual tour now!”

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Breaker Bay, the second Data Pack in the SanSan Cycle for Android: Netrunner!

As the SanSan Cycle provides fans of Android: Netrunner a guided tour of the Californias from San Francisco to San Diego, Breaker Bay focuses on the University of the Californias at Breaker Bay. UCBB has a profound impact upon the region as it educates tens of thousands of students every year in over one-thousand majors, minors, and programs from over a dozen dedicated colleges.

Here, the faculty can count themselves among the most distinguished in the solar system, and the university regularly competes with Levy University and NeoTokyo Daigaku for the top spot in the NBN Best College and University Rankings.

Accordingly, the sixty new cards from Breaker Bay (three copies each of twenty different cards) focus on the university’s graduate and undergraduate students, who number among the brightest in the world. We find resources that reflect everything from their living conditions to their parties, and we see some of the actions that the world’s largest megacorps take as they attempt to recruit the best and brightest of them. Of course, there’s a lot to learn, and you’ll find several inspired new pieces of ice, as well as a new Shaper who proves that knowledge is power.

A Fast Learner

While other students at UCBB may be distracted by beach parties, Corporate recruiters, or tailgating before the big games, Hayley Kaplan (Breaker Bay, 25) is quietly consumed by her passions for learning, technology, and astronomy, all of which she neatly combines in her burgeoning enterprise as a Runner.

Like most Shapers, Hayley Kaplan’s motives are not entirely clear to others, but her methods suggest that she’s interested in using her runs as a means to test the most efficient ways of distilling meaningful and actionable data from the network’s nearly infinite strings of code. Along the way, she uses her knowledge of astronomy and constellations to identify and map particularly intriguing data clusters.

In the game, Hayley Kaplan focuses on these clusters of information by gaining actions that are effectively free. Her ability reads, “The first time you install a card each turn, you may install another card of the same type from your grip (paying its install cost).” And her favorite console, Comet (Breaker Bay, 27), introduces a similar ability, “The first time you play an event each turn, you may play another event (without spending a click) after the first one resolves.”

By playing her events in quick succession, and by installing her programs or other cards in little clusters, Haley buys herself valuable clicks with which she can run or procure credits.

Of course, the fact is that Haley’s and Comet’s abilities require that you draw into small combinations, and if you hold onto your programs, events, resources, or hardware in a grip of just five cards, you may choke your progress rather than accelerate it. Accordingly, you might consider using Beach Party (Breaker Bay, 31) to increase your hand size and, then, use Game Day (Breaker Bay, 26) to draw into all the events you’ll want to play and all the parts of your rig that you hope to install.

Prepare Yourself for Future Success

No matter your interests, you’ll find that your education at Breaker Bay will help you to become a more well-rounded and successful individual.

The computational neuroscience and cybernetics research in Breaker Bay’s NeurotechniCollege is leading to new bioroid neural channeling techniques and applications of brain-machine interface technology. UCBB’s LibArts School fosters learning in such traditional subjects as American, Spanish, social sciences, history, and philosophy, and the Gore School of Network Architecture educates the sysops and cybersec administrators of tomorrow.

In Breaker Bay, the students and buildings of UCBB are given form, as are the corporate sponsorships that provide graduate and undergraduate students with hands-on fellowship and internship experiences. Will you intern with Jinteki Biotech? Will you apply for research grant from Haas-Bioroid? Will you take out a student loan from one of the banks in the Weyland Consortium?

At UCBB, your future awaits you. Look for Breaker Bay to arrive at retailers late in the first quarter of 2015!

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Source: Breaker Bay

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Assassins and Wendigos

Preview a Hero and a Monster Group from Guardians of Deephall

The city of Deephall hangs in the balance. Four valiant heroes stand ready to defend it, but the forces of the overlord – dark priests, wendigos, and crypt dragons – are fearsome and battle-ready. If you wish to save Deephall from destruction, you must defend its walls and delve into the icy caverns above the city!

Guardians of Deephall is the fourth Hero and Monster Collection for Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition. Within, you’ll find thirteen detailed plastic figures: four heroes, four dark priests, three wendigos, and two crypt dragons. Each hero and monster group was originally created for the first edition of Descent, but has now been matched to second edition aesthetics, featuring entirely new artwork and figure sculpts. In addition, two brand-new quests challenge you to fight for the fate of the city of Deephall.

In today’s preview, we’ll take a closer look at a hero and monster group from Guardians of Deephall: the deadly assassin Silhouette and the freezing wendigos!

An Unstoppable Force

Heroes from all backgrounds join together to defend Deephall. One of these heroes is the woman named Silhouette. In her work as an assassin, she only killed at dawn. The sunset before the assassination, her victims received a scrap of paper bearing the image of her iconic blade. Many mistook this sigil as a last warning, a final opportunity to flee or make amends. But after a long night of futile flight or pleading, Silhouette materialized at daybreak, a dark figure shrouded in the brilliance of the rising sun. Though she sports a checkered past, she now turns her skills against the minions of the overlord, eager to defend the innocent people of Deephall.

In battle, Silhouette can use her assassin’s skills to incapacitate the overlord’s monsters, and she can maximize her damage with her hero ability by using two single-hand weapons. Each time you perform an attack with Silhouette and roll the “X” result, you may choose a monster adjacent to you. Then, that monster must suffer damage equal to one plus the number of weapons Silhouette has currently equipped. With this ability, Silhouette never truly misses, instead taking the opportunity to deal three damage to an adjacent monster! To make matters worse for the overlord, he has no chance to roll defense dice against this damage, ensuring that it goes through unreduced.

Silhouette’s heroic feat gives her a chance to exercise her superior mobility and recover some spoils as she races across the battlefield. As an action, she can use her heroic feat to move double her speed. Not only does this allow her to traverse the battlefield quickly, but whenever Silhouette enters a space with a search token during this movement, she may suffer a fatigue to search the token. Whether you use this feat to dash between objectives or to collect any fallen treasure, Silhouette’s speed can prove the difference between victory and defeat.

The Killing Cold

Silhouette and the other heroes will face countless monsters in the defense of Deephall, including the terrifying beasts known as wendigos. A deep, unnatural cold emanates from the body of a wendigo. The chill from some of these monsters’ bodies is so powerful that they have been known to freeze a man to death rather than ripping him apart with their razor-edged teeth. This frosty aura, combined with unnatural stealth and unmatchable ferocity, makes them the fiercest of mountain predators.

Wendigos are deadly in combat, and possess a variety of abilities to serve you when you play as the overlord. Any wendigo can spend a surge to deal additional damage, and what’s more, wendigos also bear the Ravage ability, allowing them to take two attack actions in a single turn. The heroes may attempt to defeat the wendigos before they get close enough to attack, but the Stealthy ability makes successful attacks difficult. A hero attacking a wendigo must roll three additional range or the attack misses, giving your wendigos the opportunity to evade damage even in melee combat.

To negate the wendigo’s natural stealth, the heroes must find ways to gain additional range. They can move closer to engage the wendigos, but they may quickly find this an undesirable situation. In addition to the Ravage and Stealthy abilities, master wendigos harness their deathly cold aura as a weapon with the Freezing ability, which forces any hero who enters a space adjacent to the master wendigo to suffer a fatigue, inhibiting the hero’s ability to gain extra movement or trigger Class cards.

A City Hangs in the Balance

The city of Deephall needs the protection of heroes if it will survive the implacable attacks of the overlord. You decide the fate of the city in Guardians of Deephall, the newest Hero and Monster Collection for Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition.

Pre-order Guardians of Deephall at your local retailer today!

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Source: Assassins and Wendigos

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Jump to Lightspeed

Announcing the Sixth Force Pack in the Rogue Squadron Cycle

“Fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon?”

   –Han Solo, Star Wars: A New Hope

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Jump to Lightspeed, the sixth Force Pack in the Rogue Squadron cycle for Star Wars™: The Card Game!

Once, the countless species of the galaxy were bound to their homeworlds. The gaps  between planets and star systems were unimaginably vast, and even if a ship could fly at the speed of light, a journey might take hundreds of years. The galaxy shrunk forever with the discovery of hyperspace travel. Now, a journey of centuries could be accomplished in weeks… or for some ships, even less time. Use hyperspace travel to your advantage with a Jump to Lightspeed!

This Force Pack brings the major themes of the Rogue Squadron cycle to a triumphant conclusion. Throughout the cycle, you’ve been invited to pair your ace Pilots with the best Vehicles. In this Force Pack, you’ll find ten new objective sets (two copies each of five distinct sets), offering some of the best pilots and starships the galaxy has seen. You may fly alongside Rogue Squadron pilots like Wes Janson and Tycho Celchu. Or, you may serve the interests of Black Sun on the ground with Guri, a deadly human replica droid. Every faction gains new ways to bridge the spaces between the stars, and with the cards in Jump to Lightspeed, you can emerge on top of the galactic struggle.

Punch It

Across the galaxy, few ships are as legendary as the Millennium Falcon. Renowned for its speed, this ship can outrace almost anything your opponent might throw at it, and in Jump to Lightspeed, you can use the Falcon’s speed and maneuverability to stay ahead of your opponent.

The objective set begins with That Bucket o’ Bolts (Jump to Lightspeed, 625). This objective bears the “Smugglers and Spies affiliation only” restriction, but it also bears a powerful Action. By focusing That Bucket o’ Bolts, you can attach a Pilot unit you control to a friendly Vehicle unit as a Pilot enhancement. In almost every circumstance, your Pilots are more powerful from the cockpit of their Vehicle, but sometimes, you can’t wait for a Vehicle to appear – you just need to play a unit. With That Bucket o’ Bolts, you can play a Pilot as a unit, then attach it to a Vehicle when the time is right.

One Vehicle you may attach your Pilots to is the new version of the Millennium Falcon (Jump to Lightspeed, 627). Like the past version of the Millennium Falcon (Edge of Darkness, 332), this version bears the edge (1) keyword, but it has gained the elite keyword as well. In addition, the Millennium Falcon features a new Action ability that allows you to remove this unit from an engagement once per phase. With this powerful ability, the Falcon can run rings around your opponent’s defenders. If your opponent attempts to defend with any unit without a tactics icon, he runs the risk of you simply leaving the engagement, forcing his units to focus for nothing. What’s more, with the edge (1) keyword, your opponent must play an edge card to even have a chance of winning the edge, giving you a potential means of whittling away at his hand.

Of course, the power and speed of the Millennium Falcon shine even brighter when Han Solo (Jump to Lightspeed, 626) is in command. This new Pilot version of Han Solo can be played as a normal unit, but he can also be played as an enhancement on a Vehicle for two resources. When played as an enhancement, he gains, “Reaction: After enhanced unit is declared as an attacker, target an enemy unit. That unit cannot be declared as a defender during this engagement.” With Han Solo at the controls of the Millennium Falcon, his ability will keep the Falcon out of reach of your opponent’s defenders, even highly effective defenders such as Emperor Palpatine (Core Set, 51). By denying your opponent the chance to use his best defenders, you force him to choose between an unchecked Millennium Falcon and a sub-optimal defense, which can be worse than no defense at all. The objective set also includes a copy of Heat of Battle (Jump to Lightspeed, 65), allowing you to punish your opponent if he does choose to defend.

This objective set doesn’t just help you accelerate past potential blockers. It also helps accelerate the rate at which you bring new Pilots and Vehicles into play. The objective set comes with two copies of Well Paid (Jump to Lightspeed, 628). This free event is limited, and it allows you to reduce by one the cost and pilot cost of each Pilot and each Vehicle card you play this phase. With that amount of resource advantage, you can easily create a swarm of starfighters and ace pilots ready to bring down the Galactic Empire!

Make the Jump

Hyperspace has brought the stars closer together, and taking advantage of this technology with new Pilots and Vehicles can easily make the difference between victory and defeat in Star Wars: The Card Game. Climb aboard the Millennium Falcon and prepare for battle!

Look for Jump to Lightspeed at your local retailer in the second quarter of 2015!

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Source: Jump to Lightspeed

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Fighters Coming In

A Preview of STAR WARS (TM): Armada

“The Empire doesn’t consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat, or they’d have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station.”

    –General Jan Dodonna

There’s no denying the raw power of the Star Wars galaxy’s capital ships. Many of them are massive war machines that can exceed a kilometer in length, their crews can number in the thousands, and the largest of them boast enough firepower to cower entire star systems. Still, the Star Wars movies remind us that there’s always room – even a need – for personal heroics. There’s always the chance that a single starfighter pilot can turn the tide of battle.

Accordingly, even though they’re dwarfed by the capital ships they accompany, starfighters and their pilots play a critical part in the tactical fleet battles of Star Wars™: Armada.

In our earlier previews, we focused primarily on the game’s capital ships. We looked at how their command values and command stacks force you to plan ahead, we looked at how capital ships battle, and we looked at how they fly along the table. Today, though, we turn our attention to the game’s starfighters, looking at the how they function within the game and looking, also, at how even a single starfighter squadron can turn the tide of battle.

The Squadron Phase

Squadrons move according to a set of rules that is entirely different than that utilized by the game’s capital ships, and though their attacks work similarly, they use the distance side of the game’s range ruler, rather than the range side. The differences between squadrons and ships are further reinforced by the fact that squadrons also have their own phase within the game. After you and your opponent have activated all of your capital ships in the Ship Phase, you proceed to the Squadron Phase.

In the Squadron Phase, you and your opponent take turns activating any squadrons that were not already activated by a Squadron command during the Ship Phase. Each squadron that activates during this phase may either move or attack, but cannot do both.

The player who has initiative goes first. He chooses one of his unactivated squadrons and activates it:

   
• If he chooses to move his squadron, he utilizes the range ruler, placing it on the table so that its distance side is faceup, with the distance “1” end of the ruler touching any part of the base of his squadron. Then, he picks up the squadron and places it at any point along the ruler, so long as its base does not extend beyond the maximum speed indicated on its squadron card.

An X-wing squadron has a speed of three, meaning it can move up to distance “3” in any direction from its original starting point.

   
• If he chooses to attack with his squadron, he can target any enemy ship at distance “1.” Any squadron that attacks can use all the dice indicated on its squadron card, but they ignore all  results.

The X-wing squadron begins its activation within distance “1” of a Victory-class Star Destroyer, meaning the Rebel player can activate it to attack.

After the active player finishes activating his squadron, he must activate a second unactivated squadron, if able. Then his opponent activates two of his own squadrons in the same way. This process continues until all squadrons are activated.

Each squadron’s base features an activation slider that you can use to track whether or not it has been activated. The activation slider displays one of two colors, orange or blue. If the color on the activation slider matches that on the initiative token, the squadron has not yet been activated.

Deploying Your Fighter Wings

While you are not required to field any squadrons in your fleet, the squadrons that you bring to battle can easily prove the difference between victory and defeat.

It’s hard for capital ships to hit them because most capital ships’ anti-squadron armaments number only one or two dice. Meanwhile, your squadrons each get their own attacks, and your opponent’s ships only get a limited number of defense tokens each round; swarms of starfighters can quickly wear down even the largest of ships.

Accordingly, most admirals acknowledge the threat that squadrons pose by ensuring that each of their ships has its own escorting fighter wing. They may use screens of squadrons to protect their ships, or they may deploy their squadrons more aggressively to pin down enemy squadron groups.

In Armada, whenever two squadrons are at distance “1” of each other, those squadrons are engaged and must abide by the rules for engagement:

   
• Engaged squadrons cannot move.

   
• Whenever an engaged squadron attacks, it must attack a squadron instead of attacking a ship.

While it is engaged by the TIE squadron, the X-wing squadron cannot fire on the Victory-class Star Destroyer, leaving its captain free to ignore the pesky X-wings in favor of larger and more important targets.

Whether you’re hoping to negate your opponent’s superior numbers or you’re looking for ways to swarm your opponent’s ships with as many squadrons as possible, you want to consider how engagement can play into strategy.

Ace Pilots and Their Wingmates

As you think about the best ways to use your squadrons, it’s important to remember that not all fighter squadrons are the same, and you’ll want to select the right squadrons for your strategy.

X-wing squadrons, for example, feature the Bomber keyword, which means that while they’re attacking a ship, they do not ignore all their  results. Instead, their  results are added to the damage total and allow you to resolve a critical effect as though you had scored a  result with a capital ship’s attack.

On the other hand, TIE fighter squadrons feature the Swarm keyword. While a TIE squadron is attacking an enemy squadron engaged with another one of your squadrons,  it can reroll one die.

In addition to the differences between the different types of starfighters (which we’ll explore more when we take a closer look at the Rebel and Imperial Fighter Squadrons Expansion Packs), there are differences between your standard squadrons and those led by your aces.

An ace X-wing pilot like Luke Skywalker doesn’t necessarily gain any extra speed, hull points, or anti-squadron armament. However, he gains a number of defense tokens, which may, in the long run, prove far more valuable than a couple of hull points. Luke Skywalker, specifically, gains two brace tokens, which each allow him to halve the damage of an attack directed at his squadron. Additionally, ace pilots each have unique abilities, and in Luke’s case, his ability allows him to treat any ship he attacks as though it has no shields, meaning his damage goes straight to its hull. This is even more important when you consider that Luke attacks your opponent’s ships with a black die, which represents a meaningful step up in damage potential from the standard X-wing’s red die.

While your squadrons’ defense tokens work the same as they do for capital ships, they may also permit additional effects. Some ace pilots, like “Howlrunner,” can use the powerful scatter defense token to negate all damage that they would otherwise take from a single attack.

   
       
           
       
   

The scatter defense token.

With such tremendous defensive abilities, ace pilots and their squadrons are far more resilient than their base hull points may indicate, and that means that pilots like “Howlrunner” are likely to make a significant impact round after round after round…

Every Starship Matters

“Admiral, we’re in position. All fighters accounted for.”

    –Lando Calrissian

The fighter squadrons of Star Wars: Armada may not be as large or hard-hitting as the game’s massive capital ships, but when they’re employed effectively, they offer your fleet tremendous tactical flexibility.

Adding a number of starfighter squadrons to your fleet greatly increases its tactical flexibility!

Every ship matters, no matter how small, large, or heavily outfitted, and in our next preview we’ll look at how you can bring them all together, arm them, command them, equip them with upgrades, and deploy them to engage your enemy!

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Source: Fighters Coming In

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Descendants of Isha

Announcing the Sixth War Pack in the Warlord Cycle

“Fetch me another plaything. This one seems to have broken.”

   –Urien Rakarth

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Descendants of Isha, the sixth War Pack in the Warlord cycle for Warhammer 40,000: Conquest!

Draw upon the power of the galaxy’s ancient races in the Descendants of Isha War Pack! Long ago, there was only one race of the Eldar people, but their depravity quickly led to Chaos. Now, you may walk the path of asceticism and self-denial with the Eldar or revel in unlimited excess and devour souls with the Dark Eldar. Whichever faction you embrace, however, you’ll find new options in this War Pack!

Descendants of Isha contains two new warlords, one Eldar and one Dark Eldar, each with an eight-card signature squad, alongside forty-two other cards (three copies each of fourteen distinct cards). Each of the other factions in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest finds useful tricks and tactics in this expansion. You may clear entire planets of enemies with a deadly Space Wolves tank, fire the devastating Artillery of the Astra Militarum, or transform your opponents into Squigs with the uncontrollable psychic power of the Orks. In Descendants of Isha, the Warlord cycle comes to a triumphant conclusion, challenging you to find victory as the battle for the Traxis sector reaches new heights!

Master of Torture

In Descendants of Isha, the Dark Eldar gain a new warlord and a new style of play in Urien Rakarth (Descendants of Isha, 116). This warlord is a Haemonculus, completely dedicated to the study and perfection of torture, which is reflected by Urien Rakarth’s ability. While he is hale, the cost for you to play any Torture event is reduced by one, while the cost for you to play each non-Torture event is increased by one! By building a deck filled with Torture events, you can take advantage of Urien Rakarth’s cost reduction to subject your opponent to unending torture. What’s more, Urien begins the game with eight cards in hand, one more than most warlords, enabling him to compile punishing amounts of Torture events in his hand before the game even begins.

Urien Rakarth also breaks away from the established structure of a signature squad. Most warlords up to this point have possessed a signature squad consisting of four units, two events, one support, and one attachment. Urien shows where his true power lies by including four copies of his event, Rakarth’s Experimentations (Descendants of Isha, 118). This event bears the Torture trait, and can be played at any point as an Action, allowing you to name a card type: unit, support, attachment, or event. Then, your opponent must either discard one card of that type from his hand or deal one damage to his warlord. By strategically torturing your opponent, you can either strip him of his most useful cards, or quickly rack up the damage on your opponent’s warlord, making him susceptible to hard-hitting Dark Eldar units.

Urien Rakarth draws more power from his assistants: Twisted Wracks (Descendants of Isha, 117). There are two copies of this army unit in the signature squad, and with a strong attack and health, they’re a great deal for only two resources. What’s more, they give you a secondary option for using your Torture cards. As an Action, you may discard a Torture card from your hand to ready the Twisted Wracks, enabling the unit to potentially strike twice (or even more) in a single combat round. Whether you play Torture events against your opponent or use them to fuel your Twisted Wracks, their power cannot be underestimated.

You’ll double the effectiveness of your Torture events with the inclusion of the Ichor Gauntlet (Descendants of Isha, 119). This attachment is attached directly to Urien Rakarth, and it bears a potent Reaction that reads, “After you play a Torture event card, exhaust attached warlord to copy its effects. You may choose new targets.” With this attachment, Rakarth’s Experimentations and any other Torture events in your deck are twice as effective, inviting you to torture your opponent into submission as quickly as possible.

Torture can quickly crush your opponent’s options, reducing his hand of cards to nothingness. Urien’s Oubliette (Descendants of Isha, 120) gives you the opportunity to manipulate your opponent’s deck as well as his hand. While Urien’s Oubliette is in play, your opponent must play with the top card of his deck revealed. Not only does this give you an intimate knowledge of every card in your opponent’s hand, you can also exhaust Urien’s Oubliette to discard the top card of each player’s deck or have each player draw a card. Moderating exactly which cards go to your opponent’s hand and which go to his discard pile gives you a crucial advantage in the battle for the Traxis sector.

Choose Your Path

The Eldar race has split in two. The Dark Eldar revel in excess, devouring souls to escape the clutches of She Who Thirsts, while the Eldar choose to deny their impulses and follow a different path. Both factions receive a powerful new warlord in Descendants of Isha, the final War Pack in the Warlord cycle for Warhammer 40,000: Conquest! Stay tuned for a preview of the Descendants of Isha War Pack in which we’ll preview the Eldar warlord and his unique signature squad.

Choose which side you will fight for, and look for Descendants of Isha at your local retailer in the first quarter of 2014!

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Source: Descendants of Isha

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Something Has to Give

Balancing Your War Effort and Budget in XCOM: The Board Game

Hello, Commander. In response to the alien threat, this council of nations has chosen to activate the XCOM project. You have full command of XCOM headquarters. You must learn more about the enemy to expand our capabilities as well as the abilities of our operatives…

Being the Commander of XCOM is a high-stakes, high-pressure job. It’s not one for the weak-willed or the faint of heart. As alien invaders assail the world’s nations, laying waste to its great cities and sowing panic among the masses, you must be willing to make hard decisions that will affect the lives of hundreds of millions – maybe even billions – of people.

In XCOM: The Board Game, there are four distinct roles the players must assume. Each of these roles has its own unique set of responsibilities, and the Commander is responsible for, among other things, managing the team’s budget. This isn’t a matter of simple mathematics, however; everything your team needs to do will cost you, and the money never seems to meet your needs.

Ultimately, balancing your budget means choosing which technologies you can afford to research, where you’ll deploy your Interceptors or soldiers, and which nations must fend for themselves as alien invaders continue their massacre.

Build Toward Victory

When you play as the Commander, it is your job to track the budget and manage the emergency funds. However, there’s a catch: You don’t actually have the authority to shut down your teammates’ expenditures.

Throughout the game, your teammates will assign units to various tasks based on what they think is the best way to respond to the alien threat, and based on what they believe they can contribute. Each of those units counts against your budget, but your teammates are the ones making the decisions about how many units they assign, and where they assign them – not you.

After the team’s budget is set at thirteen credits, the Chief Scientist decides to assign eight scientists to research tasks: three to UFO Tracking, three to Plasma Cannon, and two to Interceptor Repair. While you hope the science division can make some meanginful progress, the rest of the team now has only five credits to spend!

This is one of the unique challenges of the Commander’s position within the fully co-operative structure of XCOM: The Board Game. You’re responsible for tracking the budget, but in order to make your efforts meaningful, you need to encourage the cooperation of your teammates.

You know that if your team overspends, you’ll have to advance the continent with the highest panic level by one space for each credit that you’ve gone over budget. That means that you’ll be watching the different units your teammates assign to research tasks, orbital defense, and missions, and you’ll have to weigh their number against the number of credits you have available.

The Squad Leader assigns two soldiers to the current mission and two more to base defense, committing four of your five remaining credits.

In your Emergency Funding, you have some leeway to accommodate your teammates’ enthusiasm. They’re the savings you can dip into once or twice if your team can’t get its monthly budget in order, but these funds aren’t refreshed. Once they’re spent, they’re gone. Accordingly, it’s in your best interest – and that of the whole XCOM team – if you can get your teammates to work with you to develop a more strategic and foresightful use of XCOM’s resources.

One way you might be able to get your teammates to budget more effectively is to help them identify key expenditures as early as possible. If you can help your team quickly identify the most threatening aspects of the alien invasion plan, your organization can take actions that do more than respond to the various alerts flashing across the screen; you can direct all your efforts so that they build toward the completion of your final mission.

After your team has assigned units elsewhere, the aliens spawn UFOs over several different continents. As the Commander, you know your team only has one credit remaining in the budget. Do you assign a single Interceptor, hoping to mitigate the damage in one of the continents? Do you ignore the UFOs, allow the continents to move up the panic track, and invest your last credit to recruit a soldier or build an Interceptor that you can deploy next round? Or do you go over budget, deploy your interceptors to reduce the panic in multiple continents, even as you push the most frightened continent closer to the brink of chaos?

A More Judicious Use of Limited Resources

Each time you or your teammates assign a unit to a task, it counts against your budget. Each Interceptor assigned to global defense costs one credit. Each satellite assigned to orbital defense costs one credit. Each soldier assigned to a mission or base defense costs one credit. Each scientist assigned to research – one credit.

You need to complete these tasks in order to hold back the alien invaders long enough to formulate a meaningful response. However, there are ways to counter the aliens’ various attacks and the crises they create that don’t cost you credits.

Each player starts with one or more asset cards. Like Satellite Uplink and Research Center, these cards introduce valuable tactical abilities that can help you maintain or reshape your response to the alien menace. And some of these asset cards introduce powerful abilities that you can trigger by placing units on them:

   
       
           
           
       
       
           
           
       
       
           
           
       
   

	The Central Officer can place a satellite on Mission Control to move one unit from its reserve to the board or from the board to its reserve. In this way, you can add an extra soldier to base defense if the enemy invaders launch a surprisingly deadly assault, or you can pull back one of your Interceptors from global defense in order to ease the burden on your budget.
	As the Commander, you can train one of the Squad Leader’s reserve soldiers by assigning it to Officer Training. That soldier becomes elite, meaning it will be able to roll an additional XCOM die in future rounds.
	The Squad Leader, meanwhile, can place two soldiers on Skyranger to discard a crisis card from the crisis pool.

These are powerful abilities, and any units assigned to asset cards don’t cost against your budget. Likewise, the science division’s research efforts are likely to unlock even more cards, introducing other abilities that you can trigger by assigning your units to them. For example, your efforts are bound to benefit if you can unlock the secrets of UFO Power, and it’s much more effective to develop techniques for Interceptor Repair than to buy new Interceptors each time they’re damaged in combat.

Identifying the Invasion Plan

In order to make the best possible uses of the resources available to you, you’ll want to identify the exact threat you face as early as possible. While UFOs pour into orbit and fly over the world’s great cities, while crises erupt across the globe, and while enemies assail your headquarters, it can be difficult to take your eyes off the immediate threats. But if you want to win, you need to focus on larger patterns.

There are five different invasion plans in XCOM: The Board Game. As noted earlier, each invasion plan features a different ratio of UFOs, enemies, and crises. Accordingly, each drives the game’s action in a different direction, and though you’ll never know exactly what to expect, you’ll begin to recognize the larger patterns:

   
• The alien invaders focus on creating crises to sow chaos and panic throughout the nations when they follow their plans for Infiltration.

   
• When the invasion plan is Domination, you’ll have to quickly identify the greatest threat you face each round, as the aliens swarm a single, targeted continent.

   
• You’ll face fewer enemies and more UFOs in orbit as the aliens aim to scramble your transmissions and throw your defenses into disarray with the Misdirection invasion plan.

   
• The invaders focus on dominating the ground in the Onslaught invasion plan. You’ll find more enemies, and they’ll be more difficult than is typical for your difficulty level.

   
• If you have to fight back from a state of global Occupation, you’ll need to do so with extremely limited funding, even though the pressure never relents.

As the Commander, your recognition of these patterns can help you counsel your teammates to budget more effectively. For example, while the aliens are working at Misdirection, you may face a brutal early assault against your base that renders it uncomfortably vulnerable, but you could choose to play your odds, knowing that the massing UFOs pose the greater threat.

In such a situation, you might ask the Squad Leader to assign minimal troops to your base defense, despite the risk. Then, your team can allocate those funds toward fighting UFOs and mitigating panic elsewhere… as well as racing through missions in order to locate your enemies’ key weaknesses and get an earlier start on your final mission.

To that end, each invasion plan introduces a different final mission. This means that each invasion plan demands that you succeed at a different set of tasks before you can win. It also means that each invasion plan inflicts a different sort of punishment upon you whenever the damage to your base hits a red space.

For example, the invasion plan Domination, which focuses upon pushing the aliens’ existing advantages, spawns two UFOs in each continent in the red whenever your base damage marker hits a red space.

On the other hand, the invasion plan Misdirection seizes upon the opportunity to further build a fleet of UFOs to menace the earth and scramble your transmissions. When your base damage marker hits a red space, Misdrection spawns two UFOs in orbit.

The Bottom Line

Alien invaders have arrived, the world is under siege, and traditional military units have all proven ineffectual. As the poorest and richest nations alike tilt perilously close to panic, a secret coalition has activated the XCOM project. Now, as XCOM’s Commander, it falls to you to ensure that your resources are used as effectively as possible.

It’s a tough job, and even as you assign your Interceptors where you feel they’re needed most and choose the crises you’ll resolve, you’ll need to identify situations that you can potentially use to your advantage. You’ll also need to recognize when it’s time to cut your losses. More than that, though, you’ll need to encourage your teammates to work with you, as any chance you have of successfully repelling the invaders hinges upon your ability to work together, united, sharing an understanding of your larger strategic concerns.

In XCOM: The Board Game, when you’re Commander, you’re not some authoritarian presence with the final word on every matter. You must be a leader, and you must lead by example. If humanity is to survive, you must think quickly and clearly, putting others’ needs ahead of your own interests.

You are humanity’s last hope!

Next preview: We’ll take a look at the Chief Scientist and the different tech your XCOM team can research in order to turn the tide of battle!

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Source: Something Has to Give

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Stay on Message

An Overview of the NBN Faction by 2012 World Champion Jeremy Zwirn

“We don’t actually want to discourage runners from running. We just need to ensure that we’re deflecting a majority of their hostilities toward our competitors and other corporations. The truth is that runners use an awful lot of bandwidth, and most of that usage translates to credits in our accounts.”

    –Bernice Mai

In the third of our faction overview articles for Android: Netrunner, guest writer and 2012 World Champion Jeremy Zwirn takes the megacorp and media giant NBN and boils it down to its essence.

As Jeremy argues, NBN is, at its heart, all about the three things it does better than any other Corp faction: fast advancement, tagging the Runner, and card draw.

Fast Advancement

 

One of the most powerful Corp strategies in Android: Netrunner is to fast advance your agendas, installing and scoring them in a single turn. By fast advancing your agendas, you reduce the risks and vulnerabilities associated with them because you'll never give the Runner a chance to steal them from a remote server. Oftentimes, you can play an entire game without ever installing ice in a remote server, and that saves you numerous actions and credits that allow you to focus even more on defending your central servers. 

 

NBN is well-suited for a fast advance archetype largely because it owns what is arguably the most powerful Corp card in the game. AstroScript Pilot Program (Core Set, 81) is the poster child for fast advance. With an AstroScript scored, you can install an agenda that requires three advancement, advance it twice, and use the hosted agenda counter to immediately score the newly installed agenda before the Runner has a chance to steal it from your remote server. Chaining AstroScripts into each other is so strong and prevalent that it's sometimes referred to as “riding the train.” Whenever a Corp starts to ride the train, it threatens to win very quickly, and it places a lot of pressure on the Runner to dig for agendas in the central servers – from HQ, in particular – before it's too late.

Another powerful component of many fast advance decks is SanSan City Grid (Core Set, 92), which lowers the advancement requirement of agendas installed in its server by one. A rezzed SanSan is similar to having a scored Astrocript; they both allow you to install and score three-advancement agendas within a single turn, although the Runner can counter a SanSan simply by trashing it.

NBN players can further improve their fast advance decks by splashing some of their influence on other helpful cards. Biotic Labor (Core Set, 59) gives the deck a trifecta of ways to score agendas “straight from HQ.” Fast Track (Honor and Profit, 27) has quickly become an integral card for the archetype because it acts like a proxy agenda without the added vulnerability of being stolen by the Runner. Sometimes all the Corp needs to win is to find an agenda to score, and Fast Track increases the odds of drawing one. When you have any combination of scored Astrocripts, a rezzed SanSan, or a Biotic Labor, you can use Fast Track to score an agenda “straight from R&D.” For example, with a scored Astroscript, you can play Biotic Labor so that you have four available actions for the turn. Then, you can play Fast Track to find another Astrocript, install and advance it twice with your remaining actions, and then use the hosted agenda counter on the already scored Astrocript to immediately score another Astrocript. Scoring agendas has never been so easy and risk free!

Once you've played with or against a fast advance deck, you'll know why it's one of the strongest archetypes in the game.

 

Tagging the Runner

 

One of NBN's biggest strengths is tagging the Runner, in particular, during the Corp's turn. If you have enough of a credit advantage over the Runner, SEA Source (Core Set, 86) or Midseason Replacements (Future Proof, 116) can tag the Runner during your turn when their conditions are met. Breaking News (Core Set, 82) gives them two temporary tags when you score it. Additionally, many NBN decks also use a number of other cards to tag reckless Runners, such as Data Raven (Core Set, 88), TGTBT (True Colors, 75), and, if you use some influence, Snare! (Core Set, 70).

Why is tagging the Runner useful? Well, as a basic action, the Corp can spend one click and two credits to trash any resource of a tagged Runner. Having the ability to snuff out powerful resources like Kati Jones (Humanity's Shadow, 91) and Professional Contacts (Creation and Control, 49) denies the Runner crucial resources.

 

Entire archetypes are built around punishing a tagged Runner, and one of the best ways to punish a tagged Runner is to burn them! Scorched Earth (Core Set, 99) can flatline the Runner from out of nowhere. Who needs to win the game by scoring agendas when scorching Runners is so much fun? This “tag and bag” archetype usually relies on spending twelve influence on three copies of Weyland's faction-defining card, Scorched Earth. You'll have little influence left, but it's well worth it. 

 

If using twelve influence for a few Scorched Earths is too much, you can spend it elsewhere and focus on winning without flatlining the Runner.

   
• A well-timed Midseason Replacements will overload the Runner with tags and create opportunities for you. One of the coolest (albeit difficult) ways to win the game is to use Midseason Replacements to give the Runner at least thirteen tags, install a Project Beale (Future Proof, 115), and then use Psychographics (Core Set, 85) to put thirteen advancement tokens on it and immediately win the game with seven agenda points!

   
• Even if you don't live that dream, Psychographics can help you fast advance agendas out of HQ.

   
• Closed Accounts (Core Set, 84) is another excellent way to punish a tagged Runner. For a single credit, you can bankrupt a tagged Runner, no matter how many credits they may have. There's nothing more exhilarating than watching the Runner lose twenty or more credits!

Card Draw

 

Drawing cards is one of the surest ways to improve your odds of winning in card games. The more cards you draw, the more options you have, and having more options gives you a definite advantage. Drawing cards as the Corp, however, can be a double-edged sword. For the Runner to win, he generally needs to find the agendas hidden within the Corp's deck. Agendas are generally safe when buried deep within R&D, but the more the Corp draws, the more likely they'll uncover those agendas. If the Corp draws too many agendas and has no way to deal with them, the Runner can pluck them out of HQ and the game can end in a heartbeat. Getting caught with too many agendas in HQ, often referred to as being “agenda flooded,” is one of the most disheartening way to lose a game.

 

Thankfully, NBN has the perfect answer in the form of Jackson Howard (Opening Moves, 15). In addition to doubling the efficiency of your card draw – as he offers two cards for one action – Jackson Howard can bail you out of sticky situations when you get agenda flooded. Simply draw enough cards until you're over your maximum hand size, discard any agendas you don't want, and then use his second ability to shuffle the discarded agendas back into R&D before the Runner can steal them. This ability is so useful that nearly all competitive Corp decks will include two or three copies of Jackson Howard to help prevent agenda flooding.

Near-Earth Hub (Upstalk, 5) is another NBN card that can generate card advantage. The first time you create a server each turn, you draw a card. If you build a deck with many assets and upgrades, Near-Earth Hub will keep you flush with cards, often drawing you an additional eight or more cards over the course of a typical game. Moreover, its generous seventeen influence makes it a good choice for many decks since you can include three copies of Biotic Labor or Scorched Earth with influence to spare.

Even in the Core Set, NBN offers the Corp its best card draw. The operation Anonymous Tip (Core Set, 83) is simple yet effective; for one click, you draw three cards. If you like drawing cards, NBN is the faction for you.

Thanks, Jeremy!

As the world’s leading multi-media conglomerate, NBN knows a thing or two about staying on message. It knows its strengths and how to play to them. Don’t mistake the fact that a veteran player can reduce the faction down to its three core strengths; all the colors in the world are made from just three primary colors, and NBN’s three core strengths lend themselves to an astonishing array of deck types.

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Source: Stay on Message