You know, at my age you’d think I’d learned not to judge things too quickly, but apparently old habits die hard. When Data and Destiny came out for Android Netrunner, I took one look at those mini-factions and thought, “Great, more complicated stuff to confuse an old electrician.” Boy, was I wrong about that one.
My grandson Jake had been trying to get me into Netrunner for months. He’s sixteen now and way sharper than his old grandpa when it comes to these modern games, but I’d been sticking to the basic corporations I understood – you know, the straightforward ones where you install ice, protect agendas, score points. Simple enough for a guy whose brain moves a little slower than it used to.
Then last month we had our regular Tuesday game session, and Jake brought over this Data and Destiny expansion I’d been ignoring. “Come on, Grandpa Ray,” he says, “let’s try something different.” I figured I’d humor him, maybe play one quick game before going back to something I actually understood.
Well, that kid absolutely demolished me. I mean, it wasn’t even close. He was using this NBN faction called Controlling the Message, and I swear he was getting credits every time I breathed wrong. By the end of the game I was broke, tagged six ways from Sunday, and wondering what the heck had just happened to me.
That’s when I realized I’d been treating this expansion like it was just more of the same, when really it changed everything about how these factions work. See, I’m used to learning new board games where the basic mechanics stay consistent – you just get new pieces or maybe a new board. But these mini-factions? They don’t play by the same rules as the regular ones at all.
Take that Controlling the Message identity that Jake used to school me. First time I tried playing it myself, I kept doing what I always do – install agenda, advance it twice, score it. Except that’s completely wrong for this faction. This thing wants you to interact with the runner, not hide from them. Every time they make a run, you get opportunities to trace them. When those traces work, you get credits and tags. Those credits buy better ice and more traces. It’s like this snowball effect that I totally missed the first time around.
I spent a whole afternoon re-reading the rules and watching some videos online – yeah, this 68-year-old grandpa can learn new tricks when he needs to. What I figured out is you actually want the runner to make runs early in the game. Sounds backwards, right? But every failed run makes you stronger if you’re playing it right.
The math works out differently too. With regular NBN, I needed maybe twenty credits saved up to score an agenda behind decent ice. With Controlling the Message, if I’d been landing those traces consistently, I could do the same thing with half that. That’s huge when you’re trying to keep up with some teenager who’s been playing this game since he could hold cards.
I learned this lesson the hard way during a game night at our local hobby shop – yeah, they have board game nights for us older folks too. I was playing against this other retired guy who seemed to know what he was doing, and he kept making these aggressive runs that looked reckless to me. I thought he was just being impatient, trying to pressure my economy before I could set up properly.
Turns out he understood something I didn’t back then. Every one of those failed runs was making me richer and him poorer, and by the middle of the game I had more credits than I knew what to do with while he was scrambling just to make basic runs. That’s when it clicked for me – this isn’t about protecting your stuff early on, it’s about encouraging interaction so you can profit from it.
The trick is knowing when to switch gears. Early game, you want those traces happening. Install cards that force traces, use ice that starts traces, build up that economic advantage. Middle game, you use that advantage to control the board and create scoring opportunities. Late game, you maintain pressure through tag punishment while scoring out your agendas.
Now Spark Agency, that’s another beast entirely. I probably wasted two months trying to make it work like a fast advance deck – you know, score agendas quickly before the runner can stop you. Terrible results every time. Carol kept asking why I was getting so frustrated with “that computer game” as she calls it.
Spark doesn’t want to fast advance anything. It wants to spam advertisements while building up an unbreakable scoring server. The genius of it – and I use that word carefully because I’m not one to throw around praise lightly – is how it makes normally mediocre cards actually useful.
Cards like Commercial Bankers Group that I’d never bothered with before? Amazing in Spark. Adonis Campaign? Even better. Every advertisement becomes this double threat – it makes you money and it might be hiding an agenda. The runner can’t ignore your stuff because they might miss agendas, but running everything bleeds them dry.
My breakthrough with Spark came when I started thinking about how many advertisements I could keep running at once. Not just the credits they generated, but the psychological pressure. Picture this – you’ve got six cards installed across three different servers. Three are real advertisements making you money and dealing damage to the runner. Three might be bluffs hiding agendas or just more economy.
The runner’s stuck with an impossible choice – run everything and go broke, or let potential agendas score while taking steady damage from the real ads. It’s like being an electrician dealing with a panel where half the breakers are mislabeled. You’ve got to check everything, but every check costs you time and money.
That damage adds up faster than most people expect too. One point here, one point there – doesn’t seem like much until suddenly the runner’s dead and they never saw it coming. I’ve actually won games where the runner died just from advertisement damage, without me using any ice or damage cards at all.
Playing against Spark requires juggling economy, damage prevention, and pressure across multiple threats at once. Most people can’t keep all those balls in the air, which creates scoring opportunities for patient players like me – and at my age, patience is about the only advantage I’ve got left.
On the runner side, Data and Destiny introduces stuff that threw me for a loop completely. Apex doesn’t run like any other runner in the game. When I first tried it, I kept installing programs and losing them because of that weird facedown card requirement. Frustrating doesn’t begin to cover how I felt.
The lightbulb moment came when I stopped trying to build a normal setup. Apex doesn’t want normal programs and normal economy. It wants an engine that turns installed cards into temporary advantages. Those facedown cards aren’t just fodder for installing programs – they’re fuel for Apocalypse runs and other unique tricks.
Apocalypse deserves special mention because it creates game states that don’t exist anywhere else in Netrunner. When you pull it off successfully, it resets the board in your favor while giving you massive tempo advantages. But timing is everything, and at my age timing isn’t always my strong suit.
I’ve found the sweet spot usually happens when the corporation has invested heavily in board development but hasn’t locked down their scoring yet. Multiple servers with ice, several unrezzed assets, maybe an agenda or two scored. That’s when Apocalypse generates maximum value by destroying their investment while leaving you positioned to take advantage.
Then there’s Sunny, whose credit-based approach seemed straightforward until I realized her economic needs are completely different. Regular runners can operate fine on ten to fifteen credits most of the game. Sunny needs twenty to thirty credits to work optimally, but once her engine gets going, she can generate and maintain those totals more easily than other runners.
The link economy creates interesting decisions too. Traces become less scary, but that safety requires significant upfront investment in link generation. It’s a different risk calculation that changes how you evaluate both ice and corporate strategies.
After months of playing with these factions – and getting beaten by my grandson more times than I care to admit – I can say they’ve actually improved my overall Netrunner skills. Understanding their unique approaches helped me see strategic possibilities I’d been missing in other factions too.
That’s what good game design looks like to me. When expansions don’t just add new cards, but add new ways of thinking about the game’s core systems. Data and Destiny rewards players who embrace its innovations rather than fighting them. Each faction demands specific approaches that feel strange at first but become incredibly powerful once you master them.
I may be 68 and my brain may not work as fast as it used to, but I can still learn new tricks when a game is designed this well. And hey, it gives me something to challenge Jake with during our Tuesday game sessions – even if he still wins more often than not.
Raymond’s a retired electrician from Pennsylvania who discovered modern board games through his grandkids. He writes about family gaming across generations—teaching rules, keeping things simple, and creating screen-free time that actually sticks.
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