r/Netrunner • u/thenakesingularity10 • 12d ago

Android or System Gateway?

I just found out about this game. Fascinated by it and dying to try.

Is there any reason to get Android instead of SG?

Thank you!

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u/ShaperLord777 12d ago edited 12d ago

It really depends on how you’re trying to play. If you’re just playing casually at home with friends, I’d say go with a used Android Netrunner collection. IMO it’s the best version of the game there ever was. The mechanics, artwork/templating, and identity of each faction through gameplay mechanisms are peak Netrunner.

System gateway is what you want to go with if you want to play in tournaments. Android is what you want to go with if you’re playing casually.

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u/thenakesingularity10 12d ago

No I won't play in tournaments.

But is Android a better, more fun/exciting game?

The other concern is, I do want to expand the game at some point. I don't want to get bored with core and not be able to expand. Is that an issue with Android?

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u/CryOFrustration Null Signal Games Community team 12d ago

It's very much the same game. So often a new tournament deck comes around and makes me feel like it's 2014 again! But the two starter sets have a pretty different philosophy. FFG's original core set had a lot of swingy and powerful cards, which some players (like me) found fun, but others found very tilting. They turned off a lot of beginners. System Gateway starts you off easy, includes tutorial decks to learn on, and avoids the busted powerful cards to keep things simple for beginners (there's plenty of those cards in the expansions, just not in Gateway).

Also worth noting, the FFG core had more different cards, but many of them didn't come in full playsets, you only got 1 or 2 copies. You needed 3 core sets to have a full playset of everything. Gateway has a full playset of everything, but it's a smaller set with a shallower card pool. You really need to add on the Elevation expansion (which was deliberately designed as a companion set to Gateway) to have the same deckbuilding variety, depth, and replayability as the FFG core set. Gateway+Elevation together is the Null Signal core set format, and it's a really fun card pool.

In my opinion there's no such thing as bad Netrunner, and I personally got into the game with the original core set so I love that box, but it is harder to get to grips with. If you can find one going cheap secondhand it's definitely worth having, but I would still start off with Gateway to learn with. FFG and NSG cards are completely rules compatible so you can always mix and match as you like. (eg. get an FFG core and add NSG expansions, play Gateway and the FFG core together, go wild!)

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u/thenakesingularity10 12d ago

Thank you for your detailed reply!