Newest Netrunner ECG set focuses on a robotic uprising in futuristic Brazil

Netrunner, the expandable card game set in a dystopian future, is getting a new set that focuses on a robotic uprising in futuristic Brazil.

The Automata Initiative is the next set planned to be released for Netrunner, an unofficial continuation of Android: Netrunner – an expandable card game that was published by Fantasy Flight Games, until it was cancelled in 2018. Part of the third narrative cycle released for Netrunner, which was originally known as Project NISEI, after the Ashes Cycle and the Borealis Cycle, this set will be the first of two launched for the Liberation Cycle. The upcoming narrative cycle will focus on the conflict between robotic kind and their oppressors.

Androids, clones and bioroids all exist within the world of Netrunner and have been persecuted by various people and organisations. Netrunner’s Brazil has remained a safe haven for robotic beings, with human rights being extended to those under the android-umbrella, after the Order of Sol ensured that laws protecting them remained enshrined. However, after a new bill stripping the rights of android-kind is introduced into the houses of Brazilian parliament, unrest quickly begins to brew across the country.

The Automata Initiative looks to label bioroids as robots and force them into lives of servitude, with a growing number of supporters looking to push the bill through to serve their own means. Suspicions of corruption and corporate interference are leading to heightening tensions amongst the android community and their allies, with the message of liberation and uprising ringing through the streets of Netrunner’s Brazil.

According the publisher for the expandable card game, Null Signal Games, the sabiá bird was chosen as a symbol for The Automata Initiative set, due to its identity as the national bird of Brazil and its strong associations with freedom. The key gameplay mechanic to be introduced in the Liberation Cycle will allow players to scale the overall power levels of each game, as they play it. There will also be opportunities for players to enact “haymaker” moves at certain important points of each game. The set will feature a total of 65 cards, including new connections, sysops, a shaper run event, a three-point agenda for every corp deck and three new weapons, amongst other things.

Netrunner is a card game for two players that sees one person taking the role of a corporation and another player becoming a runner attempting to infiltrate their opponents’ networks. Null Signal Games’s Netrunner is an unofficial continuation of Android: Netrunner - which was, in itself, a reboot of the original Netrunner card game designed by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield and set in the same universe as the Cyberpunk tabletop RPG. Whilst the runner’s objective is to access the corporation’s servers to extract the data they need, the corp’s goal is to stop the runner and advance their specific agendas.

The Automata Initiative is set to be released sometime in Q3, with price points and product details yet to be confirmed.