Click Efficiency and Click Waste – a study on Android: Netrunner strategy

 

Introduction

Throughout my Netrunner career I’ve come to understand a lot of concepts fulcral to the playstyle of the game. Concepts like “click compression”, “binary ICE”, “tempo”. Today I’m going to talk about two concepts that I think are a detrimental part of the game’s strategies and playstyles that I’ve come to denominate as: “Click waste” and “Click efficiency”.

Netrunner is a game that revolves around actions. The Corporation side and the Runner side are alloted a limited number of actions (clicks) where they can take any combination or repetition of actions to advance their strategy towards the win. Furthermore this action-based system has some basic abilities that both sides can take and are available to them regardless of the situation. These basic actions include, most notoriously, the ability to gain one credit and the ability to draw a card, which are Netrunner’s most precious resources after clicks. The most competitive lists nowadays, however, are built such that the need for said actions is minimal or nonexistent. This is because they aim to have the most click effiency as the strategy they opted for allows. You could say that if Netrunner was a game of pure efficiency, the player who took the most efficient clicks throughout a game would always win. While this is true to an extent, it’s also true that some plays force you to waste clicks and variance, always present, must be taken into account.

From the many mechanics of Netrunner, there’s one intrinsically tied with the math and resources of the game that confer to certain players a precious advantage with which they can press for the win.

Meanings

For the purpose of this article whenever any of the following expressions are used they are to be understood as follows:

Click efficiency – To take an action that, while performing other tasks, brings your winning plan forward. You can be click efficient while depriving your opponent of achieving their winning plan as well. This is somewhat nuanced with Click compression and sometimes they go hand to hand, but ultimately, click compression, for the purpose of this article, refers only to the quantity of actions you are able to crunch into one sole click, whereas efficiency looks to seek more proactive and meaningful goals, always aiming towards the win.

Some examples: You’re playing Hayley and you install two programs using your ability, which happen to trigger the Technical Writer installed. You use a Self-Modifying Code to do this, so you do it on the Corps turn. After it turns back to you, on click one you gain the money off the Technical Writer. You compressed two clicks worth into one. But this doesn’t advance you towards winning. It definately sets you up to be able to do so more easily, but it didn’t grant you accesses, didn’t disrupt the Corporation plan, etc. Click efficiency wants to do a little bit more. Let’s get ridiculous for a minute: you run with Account Siphon against a server which has an ICE that deals 2 net damage; you let the subroutine fire discarding your Paperclip (an icebreaker you can use from your discard pile, so in a way you just installed a breaker) and I’ve Had Worse (which makes you draw three cards, filling you with options to move your plan forward), you then steal 5 credits, gain 10, plus 4 from Temüjin Contract (in this economical swing you are now able to contest the board with runs and at the same time you’ve successfully restrained the Corporations possible actions). This is click efficiency. You’re executing the deck’s strategy and at the same time you’re depriving your opponent from doing its own (by stealing away the credits needed to execute their plays), you were also able to compress some clicks through the board state (by ditching the Paperclip and drawing three cards and not wasting money breaking subroutines). Another quick and intuitive example is the Weyland agenda Oaktown Renovation: this agenda not only contributes to your win (because its worth points), it also doubles as an economic engine (giving you back the money needed to rez ICE and/or protective upgrades); the fact that it’s installed faceup is also an important part of the versatility of this agenda, because the faction Weyland has access to a secondary win condition through Flatline (Scorched Earth, Traffic Accident, BOOM!), which means that being an open bluff it may prompt the Runner to try and retrieve it, effectively turning your secondary win conditions online.

Click Waste – To waste a click is to take an action from all the possible ones which will translate into the most insignificant and/or ineffective action you can take in the current board state and your deck’s strategy. This can also be caused by your opponent enacting a play that turns your Click into an ineffective one, hence wasting it.

Some examples: You’re playing an NBN deck with some Fast Advance strategies. You’re about to score an Agenda you just drew for the turn. You install the Agenda in a new server and through click gainning cards (like Biotic Labor) you start to advance the Agenda up to its scoring requirement. On the second from the last click, during the paid abilities timing window, the Runner pulls a Clot into the table, effectively preventing you from completing your score, leaving you with an advanced card on the table and an unspent click. If you choose to advance the agenda one more time, this is a Click Waste. Not only it doesn’t help you with your plan, it also puts you behind one credit. The Runner has free access to some points just by running the server. If, instead, you choose to install something over it (perhaps an Whampoa Reclamation) such that you can shuffle the Agenda back into your deck again, albeit losing three credits from the Whampoa rez, you prevented yourself from losing those points and gained a valuable asset on the table that the Runner may or may not contest.. Although it might not be the best use of a click in your deck, it wasn’t a Click Waste. However, as with all things in Netrunner, nothing is black and white. In the same situation, keep advancing the card might actually be the best plan if your deck runs Ambushes (such as Project Junebug, Ghost Branch, Cerebral Overwriter, etc). In this situation you’re establishing a bluff and promoting an ambiguous board state the Runner may or may not be able to contest properly. Here, installing the Whampoa might actually be your most ineffective click, since you forfeited a bluff, and directed the Runner to what’s now the server which most assuredly has points: R&D. And you paid three credits to do so.

Fundamentally, “click efficiency” is how many things you can achieve in one click, be it acessing servers, scoring agendas, installing multiple cards, gaining multiple credits, or doing two actions at the same time, like advancing and gainning credits, or running and drawing cards, etc. with the caveat that, at the same time, your are contributing to your overall strategy to the point that you win the game.

“Click Waste”, falls in the other end of the spectrum, which, can bluntly be said to be the most insignificant action you can take with the click you have available. Some people fail to notice when they’re wasting clicks. This is because, sometimes this isn’t as linear or easy to perceive as “waste”, with the added condition that “waste” differs from deck to deck and from state to state.

This article will attempt to explain this two concepts efficiently without wasting your clicks.

Click efficient and Click Waster cards

If we look back into the history of the game it’s easy to understand that the top decks were always the ones that executed the plan in the most efficient manner, despite having some inevitable clicks wasted. Certain cards that provoked click waste were also always part of those reignning decks. First and foremost, from the Runner part, Account Siphon comes to mind as the true click efficient and click waster card.

Account Siphon is so good and so present because it’s one of the most click efficient cards in the game: you run, are able to utilize all the cards that trigger on successful runs and, most importantly, gives you back credits (often at a profit) which as said it’s one of the three most important resources in the game. The critical mass of credits it gives you is very important because it can budget your next assault and still net you profit for you to become an even more efficient threat. While the drawback comes in the form of tags, it also robs the Corporation of money (five credits) to use those tags. This means that in some cases the Corporation player will not be able to take immediate advantageous plays even with the Runner tagged because they might be forced to click for credits and strenghten the defenses of HQ to avoid another hit of Account Siphon. This is turn gives the Runner enough time to finance further runs, indirectly removes ICEs from other servers (where Agendas might be) and restricts the Corporation’s game to a very predictable course of action, that can be easily controllable by the Runner.

Another very click efficient card is Sansan City Grid: by removing the requirement cost of any agenda by one it gives the Corporation a virtual click and credit for each turn it stays on the table, it establishes a winning plan and shortens the time available that the Runner has to execute their winning strategy tremendously. Because the game has agendas with a requirement of three worth two points, the reduction allows for such agendas to be scored on the same turn the Corporation draws them (this would be impossible otherwise). Furthermore, if protected by ICE it will demand from the Runner the proper icebreakers and a click to run the server and five credits (plus whatever expenditure the run required to be successful) in order to be eliminated.  In most cases the Runner will at least be down two points on the run to seven (victory) and its economy can be easily strained should the player choose to contest Sansan City Grid. This in turn will open up a window in which the Runner cannot amass the money required to run the server and the Corporation might score yet another agenda safely.

From just these two examples we see that some cards while efficient make the other player waste clicks, these cards in the hand of a proficuous player press the advantage and are sometimes the deciding factor of a game result.

There are a lot more cards that provoke click waste and are click efficient or just pure efficiency, but for now let’s just stick with these two examples as they’re fairly simple and intuitive. In general these cards aim to give you click advantage. Because of the basic actions available to the players at all stages of the game (trading clicks for credits or cards) you very rarely achieve a card advantage (utilizing less cards for more gains) that impacts the result directly. You can instead achieve click advantage, which is far more important: if player A must spend four clicks to amass four credits, while player B can do so by spending only one click, then player B has a massive click advantage which will allow that player to be more efficient and achieve the victory conditions faster.

Suffice it to say, that click efficient cards turn the math of click advantage positively in your favor while click wasters do the exact opposite for your adversary.

 

Wasting plays

Other than cards and plays that provoke click waste, misreading the board state, failing to identify a bluff, or not taking into account the opponent’s possible plays are actions not related to the deck or strategy and are simply due to poor execution.

A blunt and obvious example: Runner is playing against Jinteki: PE and by click three has no cards in hand. On click four deciding not to draw up can become a click waste, because Jinteki has access to cards that deal damage directly, which would cause the Runner to lose the game. If all the direct damage cards are in Archives, however, then the Runner may take another more meaningful action since, by the board state presented it seems safe to do so. Finally, if the Runner did not draw a card and the Corporations has a way to retrieve the damage card then the Corporation successfully made the Runner’s last click a waste. And a deadly one at that.

Reading out the board state is quite important and deciding when it’s safe or unsafe to make certain plays is also a major part of winning. Taking into account possible plays is crucial to determine what course of action you can execute such that you’ll negate possible attempts by the opponent to waste your clicks. This is very clearly seen in the early stages of the game: when the Corporation has unrezzed ICE installed. Most Runners will perform runs without the proper tools to be successful (“running naked”), thus gainning access if the Corporation doesn’t rez the ICE. Because the Runner role has a built in win enabler (run), in this situation the Corporation is faced with decision branches that may lead to click waste by rezzing the ICE (forfeiting bluff possibilities and/or spending money that can be hard to recover so early in the game) while the Runner is being more efficient – wether you gain an access which can grant you victory (agenda) points or you get stopped by an ICE, but gain an economical advantage and information. Some ICE, however, were designed to account for this advantage and have subroutines (abilities) that turn around this little cat and mouse game of click waste. Most notoriously is the sentry type of ICE, like the infamous Architect that when the Runner encounters it without the proper means to nullify its abilities grants so much card manipulation and card selection to the Corporation that the player can easily overthrow the Runner’s early game advantage.

In a balanced game, one player is bound to make another player waste clicks in a way or another (be it an unexpected ICE firing its subroutines, an unexpected event and/or program granting an otherwise impossible access, etc). Thus in an even match the player who wastes less clicks, not due to the opponent’s actions, but by making efficient decisions based on the game state and its deck normally takes the lead.

 

Efficient deckbuilding

A fairly easy example is to take the busted version of Pre-paid Voice PAD Kate. You know, the one with the Clone Chips and “Lady” that eventually had all those cards and the engine, Pre-paid Voice PAD, on the Most Wanted List (MWL)? That one. That deck was built in such a way that the only action that you weren’t supposed to take was to click for one credit; instead the deck asked you to click to draw a card everytime you needed economy, because you’d either draw into cards that generated money or cards that drew money generator cards. The deck was so very well built that one of the base actions of the game (one that gives you another one of the most important resources – money) was completely rendered useless. No matter the economical drain the player was facing, clicking for one credit was almost always a click waste. In hindsight it’s fairly easy to understand why such a deck was gutted by the MWL, as it had easy access to recursion and redundancy, strong economy generation and card draw. The deck had very little to no variance and, in Netrunner, variance is also important to have.

To sum it up quickly, variance in Netrunner makes sure that your actions/clicks have a cost attached, requiring you to have to ponder if it is worth taking the risk of it being a click waste. The most intuitive example is on the Corporation side, where drawing is a powerful tool to reach out to your economy, ICEs, protective and/or utility cards, however there’s also the possibility that you draw into Agendas, which, without a safe server, may clutter your hand, being unusable, and virtually reducing your handsize, restrainning your available actions and give free reign to the Runner to enact its plan. A deck, be it Runner or Corporation, that trivializes this dimension of play is indeed unhealthy for the game.

But I digress! Click efficiency starts with deckbuilding and its one of the major reasons certain cards are included while others are not. To be click efficient you also have to take into account the cards that your deck has such that your plays are fluid and, well, efficient. A Corporation deck that intends to win through Flatline, will often have fewer agendas worth more points which serve a double purpose of enabling certain kill cards (Punitive Counterstrike) and, if able to score them out the Corporation gets to match point faster which forces the Runner to make a move even if it’s not fully prepared. These types of agendas also easily amount to the total points required in the deck which in turn, means the deck more “useful” slots. Because of this the Corporation may take certain actions without being punished, like leaving R&D without defenses (as the probability for an agenda on top is lower than the otherwise most played compositions) and attempt to score agendas in dubiously protected servers. Corporations that focus their strategy around Assets for example, clutter the board with facedown cards, amidst which they can easily disguise one agenda as a useless facedown card, scoring it later; this translates into prompting the Runner to check the cards you have on the table (for insurance that there aren’t any other agendas lying), wasting clicks. On the other side, the Runner can draw more than they are able to hold (handsize of 5 cards), if the deck has icebreakers that can be installed from the heap, or the Runner has easy recursion available, thus filling their hand with more option from which to attack the Corporation, while necessarly losing anything in the trade up of cards in hand.

In deck building (or net-decking for that matter) it’s fundamental that the player identifies the overall plan of the deck for economy (is it bursty through events/operations, drip and passive, through resources/assets, alternative, through counters/stealth credits/tokens), the plan for ICE (placement, rez curve, tax, gearcheck), the plan for icebreakers (costs, usage, main and support), etc. And most importantly the strategy you have to build towards the win (flatline, fast advance, glacier tax, tempo; early aggression, attrition, economy denial, milling, control, etc). The plays that you are then allowed to make may become click waste if you don’t respect the possibilities allowed by the set of cards included in the deck and strategy.

The strongest decks are normally those that despite being forced to waste clicks or wasting by misreading of the board state can still perform rather well. It is also worth noting that the most played IDs are the ones that contribute easily to click efficiency (HB: Engineering the Future, Pālanā, Near-Earth Hub; Kate “Mac” McCaffrey, Hayley Kaplan, Andromeda, Armand “Geist” Walker, MaxX) or IDs that provoke click waste (Whizzard, Valencia Estevez, AgInfusion, SYNC, Gagarin Deep Space, Industrial Genomics).

Click efficiency lies in details, accounting for your outs or possible plays like gainning the 5th credit on the last click that may allow you to play an Hedge Fund/Sure Gamble click one of the next turn in case you draw it through mandatory draw phase (for Corp) or card effect (mostly for Runner). Therefore click waste shouldn’t be interpreted as a misplay, rather a click which is rather fruitless or becomes fruitless by the decision you took or the way the board changed, even if you were fully confident that the click would commonly not be a waste. Ideally a deck wants to be the most efficient possible even when forced to waste some clicks. Or gain the most advantage possible by nullifying most of the click efficacy and perhaps even turning it to waste.

Not only do you have to build your deck to be efficient, you have to tailor your plays in order to bring out most of the efficacy available to you by the strategy you chose. 

 

Conclusion

The game starts with your deck and gameplan; it has to be accurate, resilient and effective. Some strategies aim to be most efficient at what they’re trying to execute while others aim at making the opponent waste so many clicks that their plan can be executed even if it’s not the most efficient (in raw power). Ideally your decks can withstand disruption with ease and disrupt the plan of your opponent and, when forced to waste clicks, be efficient enough to get back on track of the winning gameplan.

When playing you have to be aware of possible plays and counterplays, play around them and have backup plans for when you are forced to waste clicks. Constant and fluidly building up towards your winning strategy – be it by drawing a large amount of cards, having a large amount of money, combining certain cards together, etc – is crucial and needs to be mantained despite any difficulties thrown at you. It’s not by chance that the top players are the ones who don’t waste as much clicks as the rest while they execute their gameplan properly, which is to say, read the boardstate correctly and have sound plans to overthrow whatever the opponent is trying to aim at them.

Have you been wasting your clicks?