I don’t have a card to spoil for Netrunner’s new set

but that won’t stop me from Posting
netrunner
Published

February 9, 2026

Editor’s note: Although Lotus Eater is typically intended for a general audience, this post may be of limited appeal for those without an interest in the current state of the card game Netrunner. The discussion that follows was prepared without a single thought spared for the uninitiated and so they proceed at their own peril. If you would like to learn more about Netrunner, you may do so here.

I don’t have a card to spoil for the new Netrunner set, Vantage Point. That is no big deal, of course, and it is understandable—I haven’t written about Netrunner on Lotus Eater since when last I revealed a new card. Unfortunately, I just haven’t had much to say about the game. I was lucky enough to attend the World Championship in Edinburgh this past October. I just didn’t have anything to say about it other than: the event was very fun but the game itself was sort of boring. I uncharacteristically did not publish write-ups for either of my decks because I did not have anything to say about them other than: the event was very fun but the decks themselves were pretty boring. I did actually start to write a post about Worlds but it started to trend into overly-negative territory and so I ended up scrapping it, lest I seem unduly cynical or gloomy (especially when discussing such a successful event). That said, I have had a gaggle of thoughts and opinions bubbling noisily in my head for a couple of years now and this past year they have been fit to boil over. Had I been given a card to spoil for the new set, I would have taken the occasion to scrape the excess spume off the top of these perspectives and shared them in some limited way. As I will not have that opportunity, however, I think that now is as good a time as any to dump the pot out entirely and see if anything solid has formed.

Let me preface this discussion by saying that the tenor of these thoughts will be lightly-negative, but that they are made in the spirit of constructive critcism. If nothing else, they are the contemplations of a grizzled veteran who has dedicated quite a number of lifehours into playing the game and no small amount of time, effort, and money into organizing for it; perhaps that is enough to justify them. My goal is to organize and hone my understanding of the game and to hear the perspectives of others—nothing more than that. I do worry about writing a post like this, however, as I know (and love) that the Netrunner communty is an incredibly-positive place. I do not mean to detract from that positivity, of course, and I hope that this perspective is received in the spirit that it is given. With that said, let’s get to dumping.

I have expressed my scepticism regarding the aggressive rotation of all FFG cards previously on this website and I would say that the past year has shown that that scepticism was very well-founded. The removal of hundreds of cards from the game has unfortunately (if unsurprisingly) removed considerable diversity from the meta-game. Many archetypes had already been killed by rotation but last year’s final rotation of FFG cards was a particularly-devastating blow. The archetypes that do still exist are usually simplified down into extremely-slight variations on a single instantiation of said archetype. Your options for how to play the game have never been fewer and more restricted since the game’s initial release. If you are interested in playing in unusual, disruptive, or unorthodox ways, you have never been less well-served by the game. Ice is weak and breakers are boring and so you’re better off just playing some horizontal prison deck. Standard is just Startup now. Every format is Startup. I used to anticipate at least a couple of surprising decks at every tournament; now it is basically impossible for that to happen. The elimination of staples, pet cards, and all-but-forgotten tools for synergies has ensured that only a few variations on a handful of decks are viable.

So why did this happen? I do not know that there has been that much direct communication justifying this premature rotation, though there are a handful of reasons that have been given. The main one seems to be that rotating all of the FFG cards would make the game more appealing for new players. I have no doubt that, according to some metrics completely inaccessible to me, this was a grand success. From my perspective as a tournament organizer in one of the larger North American metas, it was not. Obviously the data from one meta is not sufficient to make any substantial claims, but here is what I can say: when metas are fresh and exciting, attendance is high. This makes it more likely to attract new players, either through friends, word-of-mouth, or because strangers see enough of us huddled together in an underground food court on a weekly basis. Good attendance also helps to remind players, new and old, that the game is active and exciting and worth the investment of time and money.

Because cards are released about once a year, the patterns in attendance are consistent and familiar: they are high after a release, drop off hard after a few months, and then slowly whittle further down until the next release. The most successful version of this in recent memory for my meta was Rebellion Without Rehearsal, which prompted massive attendance to even GNKs and held strong all the way until Worlds. The release of Elevation prompted a smaller spike, unfortunately, and it was far more brief. Within a couple of months, we had returned to the dreary pre-release lows. The rate of new player adoption in our meta has slowed dramatically in the past year, just as veterans of the game have lost interest and meandered elsewhere. This is not the fault of Elevation, of course—Elevation is fine! I only mean to say that rotation does not seem to have had a positive impact on the playerbase of my meta. The massive reduction in game diversity has had an impact, however, and that impact has been distinctly-negative.

This did not come as a great surprise to me, unfortunately, as I did not understand this rationale for rotation in the first place. Would fewer cards make it easier for new players to join the game? Perhaps, yes, if considering the general population; a person selected at random would probably find Netrunner more approachable with a few hundred cards than with a few hundred more. We are not, however, trying to recruit randomly-selected members of the general population: we are trying to recruit people who are interested in devoting dozens or hundreds of hours to mastering an extremely complex math-driven cyberpunk-themed children’s card game without any potential of reward. Would that sort of person be more interested in the game if it had fewer cards? Personally, I do not think that she would care. She is already inexplicably interested in learning the hypercomplex children’s card game that has hundreds of cards. What matters is whether the game is fun, dynamic, diverse, and well-attended, and it seems to me that the aggressive rotation has been at odds with those goals.

And what of the economic barrier? There is no doubt that Netrunner can be an expensive hobby to join: the current cost of owning all legal cards is hundreds of dollars. Before last year’s rotation, the cost was even higher, given that FFG cards were no longer being officially-printed. Again, however, I do not regard rotation as having meaningfully amelioriated this issue. As we all know, printed proxies are legal at every level of play. Low-quality proxies are effectively free. Beautifully-printed proxies that are nearly-indistinguishable from officially-printed cards are readily-accessible and a deck can be produced in this way for under ten dollars. If a player insists on owning the entire cardpool, he is the sort of person who is open to spending hundreds of dollars on cardboard. Whether he spends a few hundred on NSG cards or a few hundred more on FFG cards, this is simply the behaviour of a collector. Are there people who would avoid the game because they despise proxies and want to own every single card in the cardpool and are willing to pay a few hundred dollars for cards but are not willing to pay a few hundred more for the other cards? Perhaps! And if we had not rotated the last of the FFG cards, we would never have been able to tap that rich vein of players. I have not met any of these players, however. It seems to me that only a baby’s handful of people would be afflicted by all of those conditions to such a degree that they would eschew the game. I propose that that number of players is far smaller than the number we stand to lose if the game is staid and stagnant.

I do not know that NSG has ever spoken about this publicly, but one common speculation among players is that rotation was also spurred along by concerns about legal action by one of the parties who hold some intellectual property related to the game. I confess that I am no great legal mind and I have no doubt that the people at NSG are far better-versed in the legality of their actions than I. What I can say with confidence is that rotation has basically no bearing on the legality of NSG producing cards compatible with Netrunner. This is for a variety of reasons that almost need not be stated: several FFG cards are still included in the game and are sold by NSG; aspects of FFG’s Android and Wizards of the Coast’s original Netrunner are still regularly referenced by the game; the game is still ultimately the same game as those previous two instantiations, and so on. This is all actually completely beside the point, however, as legality is not the substantive issue. Completely-legal fan projects are regularly destroyed by the threat of legal action alone; if any of the corporate IP-holders decided that they wanted NSG to stop, this entire game would come screeching to a halt within the hour. Without hundreds of thousands of dollars and a protracted risky legal battle, the game would have no defence against accusations of malfeasance, regardless of legality. Ironically, our game continues to exist by the benevolence of these corporate overlords. Rotation does not protect us from this eventuality, I’m afraid.

As to how all of this came about, I am not sure. There is not much transparency in how these sorts of decisions are made or in what the plans are, though I can understand why that is: plans are made on the schedule of years and by people who may not be around to see them executed. This means that the game is stewarded by different people and is baton-passed between people who ultimately have different priorities, principles, and perspectives on how the game should be run. From an outsider’s perspective, here is a rough timeline of events: Piggy Bank was the next intended release after the Liberation cycle (followed by a couple of other codenamed releases); someone decided that rotation should be accelerated; Piggy Bank (etc.) was waylaid in favour of a new foundational set, Elevation, to address the gaps caused by rotation; it became clear that the game was still incomplete without FFG cards and so Piggy Bank (etc.) was again waylaid so that another foundational set, Vantage Point, would be prioritized. I imagine that these sorts of shifts in production and priority have had serious ramifications on productivity—it certainly seems like it would be difficult to deal with, anyway. Whether that is an accurate representation of what happened is immaterial, since we have not been told what happened; what matters is the effect that it has on the game and its development. Based on the current schedule, three years will have passed between “regular” (“non-foundational”) releases. I do not imagine that this was the intended plan but, again, this information is not shared with the public.

Suffice to say, I am not aware of any substantial or compelling reasons to justify the accelerated rotation schedule. I tried my best to be optimistic and open to it but I believe that it has ultimately had a negative effect on the game. I believe that this is also clear to most of us (if to varying degrees), both players and the fine people who work on the game. And so, to quote another great lover of children’s games: What is to be done? Well, rotation is not going to be undone, that much is clear. One possibility—the presumed tack—is that we will barrel on ahead and hope for the best. This would mean, presumably, releasing 63–82 cards per year until the game is dynamic and interesting again. This may work eventually but, as I have intimated, I do not believe that this is a viable path. One release per year is frankly not enough to make a living card game. It results in slight variations on a single meta for an entire year, which is deeply stultifying and causes the game to bleed players. People who are interested in the meta for the first three months after a release might return after a year, but they also might not—maybe in the intervening nine months, they found another children’s hobby to which to devote their life. Perhaps one release per year is simply the upper limit for an organization composed primarily of volunteers. I am very sympathetic to this possibility and recognize the massive challenges that go into producing something like this. If that is the case, however, then we must recognize that fact and treat the game accordingly. If 75 cards per year is the upper limit, then we probably should not throw hundreds of cards into the furnace, given that it would take half a dozen years to replace them. If cards were being released more swiftly, then yes, a massively-accelerated rotation could be justified—but we have not lived in that world since 2018 and it is unlikely that we will return to it. The optimal path forward now may be just to slouch forward for as many years as it takes to find a good Jinteki ID again, but I do believe that there are at least a few alternatives that would complement this strategy.

One possibility that probably should have been taken preemptively is to “save” cards. Evidently, players and NSG all agree that there are a great number of cards that should be kept in the game: NSG still reprints FFG cards and will, I imagine, continue to do so. Cards like Biotic Labor, Snare, and Diesel could have just been protected from rotation and released as a small pack on their own. Indeed, saving fifty or so cards in this matter would have probably obviated many of the problems discussed entirely. Naturally, they would have had to have their art replaced (as has been done with previous reprints) and, if need be, their names changed, but these are superable problems. This “set” could have been sold alongside Elevation; players who did not own these cards already could purchase them and veterans who did could use the originals. This could (and should) still be done, of course, though it certainly would have been preferable to do so in advance. It would have allowed Elevation to be an entirely new product: instead of devoting precious slots to direct reprints (or inexplicable sidegrades/downgrades), every card in Elevation could have contributed something new and unique. Given that this opportunity has passed though, something similar could still be done: “packs” of old cards could be periodically released in this way, serving the dual purposes of filling out the cardpool and of injecting some of the “living” back into the card game. This would also allow staple cards to be saved from previous rotations, as there are undoubtedly cards that should have been saved in the past. This is not a trivial task, of course—cards would still need to be tested for balance in the modern cardpool and with forthcoming cards—but it is a surmountable one.

Relatedly, I think that regular small releases—comparable to the Booster Packs and Magnum Opus Reprint previously released by NSG—could also help to improve the dynamism of the game. I loved the idea of the Booster Pack releases; if the cards weren’t just previews of a forthcoming release, 7 new cards (even if they combined reprints and new cards) a few times a year would genuinely be extremely exciting. This, too, could help inject some of the “living” back into the card game. It also has considerable narrative potential; Why not use them to check back in on the settings and characters of previous cycles? Or use them to stage a “mini-cycle” that plays out dynamically over time? Or to stage short, singular crucial events? Again, I recognize that this would be no small amount of work, but I wish to offer some sort of positivistic way forward, not just impotent critique.

I apologize if this has come off as dire or fatalistic or maudlin. What you should know is that I have been playing the game for 11 years without interruption and that I will continue to do so for as long as there are people around me who wish to play it. I am not trying to insult anyone or to whine excessively. I have given quite a lot of my self to Netrunner, in one form or another, and so I am highly invested in its continued health and existence. I have gotten so much from this game and this community and I have tried to return those favours by contributing as much to them as I could. I am deeply grateful for the hard work of people at NSG and in metas around the world. I know that this game would not exist were it not for their selflessness. All I want is for Netrunner to be fun and dynamic and attractive to players, new and old. I am just as excited as everyone else for Vantage Point—obviously I am a little disappointed that I don’t get to spoil a card—and I know that there are yet many interesting metas to come for Netrunner. I am just eager to get to them sooner rather than later.

Some final errant thoughts:

Footnotes

  1. I actually did mean to do a write-up for one of my decks last month where I penitently admitted to having stolen a bottle of handsoap from the Worlds venue (which I really did do) and expressed my deep shame and regret for the act (which I did not have) that had been brought about by the erosion in my appreciation for the soap and its scent (which did happen). I know that stealing a bottle of handsoap from a venue is a very stupid thing to do but I did actually have a sort of good reason for doing it. If you would like to know it, you may come to my house and offer me one (1) piece of ripe fruit.↩︎

  2. regarding the current state of the meta-game, of course, and not the event or the community itself↩︎

  3. other than The Greatest Prize in Gaming,™ of course↩︎

  4. and if you are reading this, you probably are too↩︎

  5. i.e., negligence↩︎

  6. One possible rejoinder to this point is: Rotation does not protect us, but it might at least demonstrate an attempt to distance ourselves from the most protected intellectual property, thereby invoking good will from said corporate overlords. I accept this as a possibility but I do not ascribe it much credence. The moment one of these entities find it profitable to shut down Netrunner, it will end—there is no additional good will to extract, beyond staying safely within the bounds of being a registered nonprofit company.↩︎

  7. This is complete speculation, of course, but one possibility is that repeated and dramatic changes in production may have disrupted the workflow that would have otherwise produced regular releases. This steady release of cards would have vastly eased the pains of rotation, but the decision to accelerate rotation seems like it may have thwarted those regular releases. The irony is not lost on me.↩︎

  8. Rebellion without Rehearsal was released in March, 2024. Vantage Point will be released in March, 2026. Unless the release schedule is accelerated, the next pack will release in the Spring of 2027.↩︎

  9. he was more of a chess guy though i think he would have loved netrunner too↩︎

  10. though, as I have argued, I think that need be’nt↩︎

  11. even through the years of CtM↩︎

  12. only precisely as much as I have earned by volunteering so much of my time to the game; it has all been a machiavellian ploy leading up to this moment, cashing in all my chips on a Great Gnashing and Wailing.↩︎

  13. I have also applied for volunteer positions at NSG three times but have never been selected. Mediocre I may be but let it never be said that I am indolent!↩︎

  14. This benefit has also attenuated considerably since Standard has shrunk down into such a small cardpool.↩︎

  15. It also does not have a playable Criminal fracter, for example.↩︎

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