7 minutes.  That's the total elapsed time between when the doors opened at 10:00 AM on the first morning of Gen Con Indy 2012, and when Fantasy Flight Games sold out of Android: Netrunner. Obviously, this game received a lot of pre-release hype, but is it worth it? Let me put it this way: you are wasting time reading this review when you could be playing Netrunner with someone.

A little history lesson may be needed. Richard Garfield's Netrunner was originally published as a collectible card game from Wizards of the Coast in 1996, had one expansion, and then died an ignominious death amid the glut of CCGs released at the time. However, it maintained a small but dedicated following, and when Fantasy Flight announced this year that they were republishing it as a Living Card Game in their popular Android setting, the fanbase exploded, pouncing upon each preview of beautiful new art and layout, updated mechanics, and a return to a game that was finally receiving the love and attention it always deserved.

Netrunner's most striking feature is its asymmetric play. Strictly a 2-player game, one player plays the Corporation, installing and advancing its Agendas and protecting them with layers of ICE ("Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics"), and one player plays the Runner, attempting to sneak past the Corporation's defenses to steal those same Agendas. Each player has very different strategies and goals, and cards from one side may not be used by the other. 

While a full explanation of the rules to Netrunner is too much to take on here, I will attempt an overview. On the Corp player's turn, he installs cards into servers in his play area. Installed cards can either be agendas, which must be advanced by the Corp player to score them and win the game, or assets, which can provide additional resources or serve as bait for an unwary Runner. Because installed cards are played face down, the Runner won't know if a card is a valuable agenda or a dangerous trap until after he successfully runs it. The Runner, on his turn, has the opportunity to run against the installed cards, or against the Corp player's hand (HQ), deck (R&D), or discard pile (Archives). Each of these spots must be protected by the Corp player's installed ice, which can be revealed and have subroutines that will damage the Runner (either his net connection, body, or brain), trace his connection, or simply end the run.  In contrast, the Runner can use his icebreaker programs to bypass ice subroutines. If the Runner is successful in his run, he can access cards and steal any agendas he found. If the Corp player manages to advance and score 7 points of agendas, he wins. If the Corp player manages to steal 7 points worth, he wins.

It sounds relatively simple, but all of these things are expensive: the Corp player needs credits to spend on advancing agendas and protecting them with ice, and the Runner needs it to pay for installing icebreakers and boosting them to a high enough strength to defeat the Corp's ice. Not to mention, all of these things take time, and each player only has a very limited amount of "clicks" with which to take actions. As a result, many cards help to increase a player's time or money efficiency…but drawing cards costs you clicks. 

Much of the original Netrunner game depended on the Corp's ability to bluff and misdirect the Runner, and the Runner's ability to penetrate the Corp's subterfuge and find out which locations have valuable agendas and which are worthless or traps. The updated version keeps this cat-and-mouse style of play, and much of each player's game will be devoted to intelligence and counterintelligence, with the Corp trying to keep their agendas and plans secret from the Runner's prying eyes.  

Fantasy Flight has tweaked the rules a bit, overhauling the trace and "bad corporate publicity" mechanics from the original game, and those rules are now far less fiddly than they used to be. They have also added a welcome faction mechanic and adapted the game to its popular cyberpunk Android setting. There are four different Corporations and three different Runner identities to choose from, and each has a set of in-faction cards that define its play style. For your first game, you simply choose a faction and add all of the neutral cards to form your deck. After, you can deckbuild to customize. As one of Fantasy Flight's Living Card Games, the basic set comes with a full set of the cards needed to play, and each expansion will contain an entire playset of its cards, so the collectible element of the original game has thankfully been removed.