Fantasy Flight Games

Android: Magnum Opus

Published 8 June 2018 | Genesys

Android: Magnum Opus

Android: Netrunner Organized Play Enjoys a Grand Finale at its 2018 World Championships

The Great Work was completed on a rainy Thursday afternoon.

As Android: Netrunner comes to a close, the game's Organized Play is also coming to an end—but not before players have one final chance to gather and celebrate the game's thrilling, high-stakes cyberstruggles!

Event Schedule

Download the Android: Magnum Opus event schedule (pdf, 166 KB).

From September 7th – 9th, the Fantasy Flight Games Center will play host to Android: Magnum Opus and the final Android: Netrunner World Championships. Corps. Runners. Games. Glory. You can expect them all. Even so, this event is far more than one final tournament. This is a celebration of the Android: Netrunner community and all things Android. Android: Magnum Opus will provide all attendees with an immersive experience, starting with the World Championships and rolling those into an overarching experience in the Android universe.

A very limited number of seats will become available during our first-come / first-served second wave registration for Android: Magnum Opus, which opens August 28th at 12:00 PM CDT (UTC -0500), and attendees will enjoy all the thrills of the 2018 Android: Netrunner World Championships, as well as a unique one-versus-many Android: Netrunner experience, Genesys roleplaying sessions set in the worlds of Android, and a weekend-long exploration of the Android setting that will thrust you neck-deep into the midst of an orgcrime turf war.

For years, the Android: Netrunner community has expressed its appreciation for the game's near-dystopian setting, and now you'll have a chance to change the setting. As rival criminal organizations renew their struggles for Base de Cayambe and the ability to smuggle goods up and down the Beanstalk, your actions over the course of Android: Magnum Opus will decide which orgcrime outfit rises to prominence.

Who knows—it might even be your criminal organization that wins!

The 2018 Android: Netrunner World Championships

Undoubtedly, the highlight of Android: Magnum Opus will be the 2018 Android: Netrunner World Championships. The final World Championships for this storied LCG® of corps, runners, and high-stakes cybercrime, this tournament will bring the community together one more time and crown the game's final World Champion.

The 2018 Android: Netrunner World Championships will be the last official Organized Play event for Android: Netrunner, and we'll be pulling out all the stops with our prize support. In addition to the commemorative apparel you'll receive with your event registration, you'll earn a copy of the new NAPD Corp ID we'll be featuring in our one-versus-many matches, and have the chance to vie for exciting bounty prizes every round.

The action will begin on Friday, September 7th, with the first group of players competing in Day 1A, continue on Saturday with then next group in Day 1B, and then all players with 28 tournament points will advance to Day 2 Swiss rounds on Sunday, followed by a cut to the Top 16.

The Top 16 will continue with double-elimination rounds until the world's best corp and runner face each other—each aiming to see the game out on a high note as its final World Champion. Yet, even as the 2018 World Champion helps bring the game to its grand conclusion, he or she will find a new, enduring role within the Android setting.

Working with the developers of the Genesys roleplaying game, the 2018 Android: Netrunner World Champion will help to inspire and craft a character within the Android setting—potentially even envisioning his or her avatar as a crime boss who helped to win the weekend's turf wars. More than this, he or she will have a chance to play that character during a special Genesys roleplaying adventure, set in the Android universe, at PAX Unplugged, the weekend of November 30th to December 2nd. Travel and accommodations will be provided for the winner to attend.

Turf Wars

During the construction of the Beanstalk, New Angeles was a boom town, a beacon of near-limitless possibilities that drew ambitious men and women of all stripes to the slopes of Volcán Cayambe. The lure of easy money and unclaimed territory drew the attention of numerous powerful criminal organizations from around the world, and they flocked to the new city to carve out what they could.
–The Worlds of Andorid, "Organized Crime"

The Android universe existed before Android: Netrunner, and it will continue after the game has come to a close. Nonetheless, it is impossible to deny the impact that Android: Netrunner has had upon the Android universe and its fans.

For most fans of Android: Netrunner, the game was their first interaction with the not-too-distant future of the Android setting, its Big Four corporations, and its diverse cast of hackers, sysops, clones, bioroids, street bangers, mid-level executives, enforcers, and crime bosses. And for many fans, the game's setting proved to be one of its most attractive selling points. Accompanied by some of the industry's greatest art, the Android universe, its corps, and its characters reinforced the timeliness and intellectual validity of the game's themes. Players who lacked an analog in other game worlds found themselves mirrored in the setting's diversity. We frequently saw players express their desire to explore the setting in other ways—especially via roleplaying.

At Android: Magnum Opus, you will have the chance not only to enjoy a Genesys adventure in the Android setting, but to take part in a larger, weekend-long roleplaying event that will allow you to both explore—and give shape to—the Android setting.

There's a turf war underway between the orgcrime outfits in New Angeles. When you register for Android: Magnum Opus, you'll find yourself connected to one of the city's orgcrime outfits—either Los Scorpiones or 14K. Then, throughout the weekend, you'll have the chance to help your organization become the city's preeminent criminal power. You'll control the streets that host the Beanstalk, and that means controlling the Beanstalk—and everything that smuggles up or down its incredibly lucrative channels.

Each of your victories in the Android: Netrunner World Championship will aid your organization.
You'll have the chance to help your organization claim valuable assets in a special Genesys roleplaying adventure set in New Angeles.
Your victory in the one-versus-many Android: Netrunner staff challenges allows you to throw the NAPD's resources against your rivals.
Win the 2018 Android: Netrunner World Championship, and you'll be able to establish yourself as a major player in these turf wars—a leader of the winning organization, an elusive (and expensive) asset for the losing organizations, an NAPD agent positioned to strike at the heart of the city's orgcrime, or a brilliant civilian able to find profit in the chaos.

Only one player can win the 2018 Android: Netrunner World Championship, but everyone who attends Android: Magnum Opus will find their efforts memorialized in future Android products. Your actions will determine which criminal organization rises to the top of the world's greatest and most influential city. You'll steer the future of the Android setting, and you'll see the results reflected first in a future Genesys roleplaying adventure that you'll be able to download for free.

Additionally, your efforts in these Turf Wars may earn you a personal share in the Beanstalk's smuggling trade. Each attendee associated with the criminal organization that claims control of the Beanstalk will win a special, acrylic click tracker in the form of the worlds' most important architectural marvel!

Hack into the Future

Android: Netrunner and its Organized Play may be coming to an end, but all true fans know there are plenty of ways to bypass or break an "End the run" subroutine.

Join us this September 7th – 9th for the 2018 Android: Netrunner World Championships at Android: Magnum Opus and upload your consciousness into the Network. You'll enjoy fantastic games, superlative prizes, and one of the greatest communities in all of gaming. More than this, your actions will live forever in the Android setting, breathing new life into it and impacting the design of future products. We'll have even more information about Android: Magnum Opus in our upcoming previews.

Come celebrate Android: Netrunner, its community, and its legacy. See what the future holds for the Android setting!

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All times are CDT (UTC/GTM -0500).

Updated 8/31/2018: Event schedule added.

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Open for Business

Published 23 November 2016 | New Angeles

Open for Business

The Rules for New Angeles Are Now Available for Download

"Bioroids changed the world. Over the long run, androids are going to be as revolutionary a technology as fire, or the printing press, or the Network. And Haas-Bioroid got there first (a fact they’re never going to stop rubbing in Jinteki’s face)."
–How Not to Get Scragged

Ready your android workforce. New Angeles opens for business next week!

Set in the not-too-distant future of the Android universe, New Angeles is the highly immersive board game of bluffs, bribes, negotiations, blackmail, and unfettered corporate greed for four to six players. You and your friends each take charge of one of the world's largest megacorps, entrusted by your stakeholders with the sacred obligation to transform their unfathomable riches into even larger and more unfathomable riches.

The quest for capital is everything… but you'll need to balance your immediate interests against the token efforts you'll make to keep the city of New Angeles running smoothly. After all, the freedoms afforded to your corp—and the others—by the city's Special Economic Zone must be protected. If the city were to plunge into chaos, the U.S. government might intervene. And that would be bad for your bottom line.

Which path will lead you to the greatest profit? Whatever course you follow, you will need to know when to strike deals, when to support other corporations, when to undercut your rivals, and when to put in a good-faith effort toward maintaining peace in the city. Balancing these matters will require a good deal of vision, and it also helps to have a firm understanding of the rules.

Familiarize yourself with the rules today. The New Angeles Learn to Play booklet (pdf, 8.8 MB) and Rules Reference (pdf, 4.4 MB) are now available for download.

The Grand Opening

The focus of New Angeles is laser-sharp: make money. To win, you just need to amass more capital than your rival. However, the process of making money is anything but simple. You'll face numerous challenges and decisions along the way, many of which we explored in our series of previews:

In "Collaborate / Manipulate," we took a closer look at the game's negotiations, and the different ways you can use them to advance your corporation and to hinder your rival. We also looked at the game's victory conditions and how they foster engaging tension at the gaming table. How can you undercut your rival without tipping your hand? Who is the Federalist? How can you convince the other corps to trust you enough to support your deals?
Our second preview, "Pacify the People," looked at the challenges the corps must address while allocating their android laborers. Each round, you'll need to meet various demands—for energy, credits, entertainment, and other resources that the city's districts can generate—and you'll need to make sure your android tokens are in the right locations.
Then, in our third preview, "A Work in Progress," we looked at how the game works against you with its orgcrime, Human First activists, riots, and outages. Together with the events we explored in the second preview, these things force you to think fast and revisit the viability of your strategy from round to round as the world's largest city changes moods—from happy and productive to angry and disruptive. As a corporate CEO, you'll need to aim for the best, but allow yourself plenty of strategic space to accommodate the inevitable disasters.
Finally, "Career Day" introduced several of the highly talented individuals you might recruit to your corporation as a result of winning your deals. These characters and their abilities can make major impacts upon your business strategies, even as they add color and personality to your enjoyment of the Android universe.

Today, in our final preview, we'll bring all these things together as we look at a sample game from setup through the first player turn.

Hit the Ground Running

When you play New Angeles and sit down to the bargaining table as one of the world's most powerful CEOs, you're not starting from scratch. Other people (and androids) built the company. They filled its coffers. They spread its influence across Earth—and beyond. And they left you a heap of resources, and a good number of issues that will demand immediate resolution. Accordingly, the game's setup rules thrust you right into the thick of the action.

For your first game, you'll use the simplified setup from the Learn to Play booklet. After that, however, you'll be ready to tackle whatever challenges may await you. And whatever these challenges are, you'll face them in the third step of setup, "Resolve Setup Card," which you perform after creating all the different decks of cards.

You and your friends will resolve one of six different possible setup cards. These are themed to different challenges, such as the conflicts with Human First rioters that drive Storming the Stalk and the widespread illness of Outbreak. Each card then indicates the initial placement of the game's three android tokens, as well as the placement of other production modifiers, including protest, strike, outages, and illness tokens, as well as Human First, orgcrime, and prisec units.

Additionally, each of the game's setup cards indicates the number of assets you line up for the first round. In the case of Hit the Bricks (setup shown above), you line up four assets, meaning the first round will last four turns. If you're playing with five or six players, this also means those players won't be active players during the first round of gameplay, and they'll want to focus on manipulating events through their counteroffers and support.

Once everything is into place, you set the round and demand tracks, determine which corporations the players will represent, assign rivals, and select one of two random investment cards. Since you have a chance to score your investment in the first demand round, before selecting a new investment, you'll have additional incentive to shape the course of events. Altogether, the result of setup is that your game begins in media res, with a bustling city hard at work and headed for a moment of crisis.

Let the Games Begin

In our sample game, our five friends draw the Hit the Bricks setup card and prepare the board. Ann is first player, followed by Brad, Chelsea, Dmitri, and Emmett. As the head of media conglomerate NBN, Ann knows she'll gain capital whenever the players reduce unrest, so when she selects her investment, she chooses Banking Sector over Entertainment Sector, in order to diversify her portfolio.

As the first player, Ann starts with only ten capital. Her opponents each start with more capital, as starting capital increases by one for each player position. Accordingly, since Ann randomly ends up with Jinteki as her rival, and since Dmitri is playing Jinteki as the fourth player, Ann starts out trailing her rival by three capital. She has her work cut out for her.

Ann's opening hand of action cards include Media Circus, Spin Doctors, and Information Procurement. At the beginning of her turn, since she's the active player, she draws three more action cards—two Media and one Biotech. She draws Puff Piece, another copy of Media Circus, and Clean Slate.

Next, it's time to make a deal! Ann reveals the rightmost asset card and places it in the "Revealed Asset" box on the board. She reveals Saul Eustecio, a talented short seller who would allow Ann to gain one capital anytime another player successfully wins a counteroffer. She decides she really wants him to come work for NBN, and she gives some thought to the deal she'll propose.

The threat track is still at zero, so there's no point to playing Information Procurement. Ann could play Clean Slate to mitigate the threat presented by the illness tokens in Guayaquil and Esmereldas, but since she's competing with Jinteki—and Jinteki gains two capital each time an illness token is removed—Ann doesn't feel inclined to help Dmitri accrue any more capital than he can accrue on his own.

As a result, Ann narrows her focus toward the different Media cards in her hand. Both Media Circus and Spin Doctors would reduce unrest in districts, which would help the city's production and earn her some capital, but simply because the actions would earn her capital, she feels the other players might view them as too self-serving. Instead, she offers to script a Puff Piece, pointing out that the extra action cards it would let people draw should help them resolve the strikes and outages that she feels present the most immediate threat to everyone's productivity.

Brad passes, but Chelsea, playing as Weyland, proposes a counteroffer, Budget Renovations. "If you want to remove the outages," says Chelsea, "then we can just do that right now, rather than drawing cards to remove the outages later." It's a solid argument, and it leaves Ann a bit worried. But then Dmitri discards an action card from his hand to play Efficiency Experts, offering to move one of the androids from Base de Cayambe, where it would generate one energy if the outage were removed, to Quince, where it could generate one energy without further attention.

After Emmett passes, the players have the opportunity to lend their support to either Ann's offer or Dmitri's counteroffer. Thinking that Chelsea might have been soured by Dmitri's decision to replace her earlier counteroffer, Ann reminds her that the first player to support her gets to draw three action cards. Brad overhears the conversation, and decides to lend his support to Ann before Chelsea gets the chance. Chelsea then passes.

At this point, Dmitri realizes that Emmett would have to play two cards in support of his offer, or Ann will win the tie. He offers to trade Emmett his last action card in return for the support. "But your action card will ultimately just earn you more capital," says Emmett. "If you want my support, you'll need to give me the action card and three capital."

Dmitri considers the deal, but decides that it's too steep a price. Yes, it might help him win the support of Saul Eustecio, which will help him earn more capital, but it will leave him almost completely without the means to influence other deals until he becomes the active player and draws new action cards. He declines, and Emmett decides not to lend support to either offer.

Ann wins the deal and Saul's talents. She removes Saul Eustecio from the board and places his card near her corp sheet. Her turn ends, and play passes to Brad…

Business Is Good

New Angeles is not only the largest, richest, and most diverse city on Earth. It's also a uniquely fertile base for the worlds' most powerful megacorps and the many tensions running between them.

Manage your corp. Keep New Angeles happy. Keep it profitable. And then milk its resources for all their worth. In New Angeles, you run one of the world's largest corporations, and the corporations run New Angeles!

New Angeles is scheduled to arrive at U.S. retailers next Thursday.

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Career Day

Published 8 November 2016 | New Angeles

Career Day

Meet the Talented Individuals You Can Recruit in New Angeles

According to a recent study, there are now 10 million androids in New Angeles, working mostly low-paying jobs across all industrial sectors.

In a city of nearly one billion people—where humans must compete for jobs with the ten million androids literally built for efficiency—you need to develop some valuable skills if you want to stand out. But if you can develop these skills, carve out your own niche, and market yourself, you might just find several of the world's largest megacorps bidding for your services…

In an earlier New Angeles preview, we looked at the ways that megacorps work their deals—making offers, proposing counteroffers, and then negotiating and cajoling each other to support one initiative or the other. However, when all the wheeling and dealing is done, only one of those corps is going to walk away with the asset at stake. There are thirty-four assets in New Angeles. Most of these assets are human. Some are androids. All are extremely talented—and unique.

Your goal in New Angeles is to accrue capital. Specifically, you need to accrue more capital than your rival, or if you're the dread Federalist, you need to accrue twenty-five capital while sinking the rest of the city. And throughout your efforts, the assets you win will prove invaluable.

Assets Acquired

In New Angeles, the men, women, and androids that you'll acquire as "corporate assets" can set you apart from your rivals. Let's be clear: the game is asymmetrical from the word "go," as your corp and the others each draw a different set of Action cards and gain capital from different triggers. But your starting positions are equivalent, even though they're different.

Assets allow you to shatter the equivalency. They usher forth new opportunities and create new, more dynamic board states. Some introduce new triggers for the acquisition of capital. Some introduce lasting effects that you can leverage to win new deals. Others still trigger powerful abilities immediately once they're claimed, and are then discarded.

Altogether, the thirty-four assets in New Angeles introduce thirty-four different abilities with which you can reshape your path to greater fortunes… Let's meet some of these talented individuals!

Gurren Imaishi

The reward for claiming this finance guru's services is about as simple and clear-cut as you can get. But that certainly doesn't make it trivial. Five capital will see you a long way toward victory.

Floyd 2X3A7C

Like Gurren Imaishi, this crime-solving machine offers an immediate reward, but it doesn't immediately push you toward your victory condition like Gurren Imaishi's five capital. Instead, it puts you in a better position to win or influence more deals, promote the city's health (or ruin), and plan a course of action. And the increase to your hand size is no small thing, either, especially if you can win a Braintrust.

Braintrust

In New Angeles, you need Action cards in your hand, or you're nobody. Without Action cards, you can't make counteroffers or support either side of a deal. No one has any reason to win your support. By doubling your card draw, from three to six, Braintrust ensures that you're able to make more strategic plays and remain an active player longer in the round. The reduction in hand size means that you'll only be able to keep four Action cards in your hand after your turn ends, which slightly limits your ability to win other key assets—but not by much.

Monica Singh and Marco Cubrero

Gaining capital once is good, maybe even great. But gaining capital turn after turn is even better. And if you gain that capital by stealing it from your rival? That's the dream. These two talented "assets" are best addressed only through unofficial channels. Let your underlings be the ones to meet with them. Always maintain plausible deniability.

Caprice Nisei

Bribery can be effective. Sometimes it's even best to offer other corps genuine deals in order to get what you want. But there are also subtler methods of steering deals. Caprice Nisei is "definitely not" a telepathic clone, but she is, nonetheless, extremely good at helping you determine exactly what another corp intends—so that everyone else can respond accordingly.

Alex Westlund and Hernando Cortez

Given all that the game's assets can add to your corp—and the fact that each is unique—sometimes the best talent you can hope to recruit is the talent that someone else already won. But since those assets aren't headed back to the bargaining table, if you really hope to win their services, you need to first win the services of people like Alex Westlund and Hernando Cortez. Both of these gentlemen allow you to snare assets from the other corps.

Sunny LeBeau

Finally, we have Sunny LeBeau, the Net's top cop. She grants access to two Action cards each time the city's threat rises. But why? Is she helping you find ways to quell the threat? Or is she secretly working for the Federalist and trying to profit off of the increased threat? Either way, two more Action cards are two more Action cards, and that's all good.

Now Hiring

In New Angeles, the world's greatest megacorps are always on the lookout for the next great talent. But when you consider that a city of nearly one billion people yields only thirty-four talents worthy of your attention, the bidding wars are bound to be fierce.

If you want to convince these people (and androids) to join your team, you're going to need to show vision, you're going to need a clear strategy, you're going to need to be able to demonstrate your ability to execute, and above all, you're going to need to prove that you've got a plan to make a fantastically giant pile of money.

New Angeles is on its way to a retailer near you. If you haven't already, be sure to pre-order your copy today. Then be sure to check back for more previews and other New Angeles news!

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A Work in Progress

Published 21 October 2016 | New Angeles

A Work in Progress

The Developments, Outages, and Orgcrime of New Angeles

It has been nearly six months since the Water Riots, and activist groups are calling for someone to be held accountable. They claim that prisec forces under corp control indiscriminately opened fire on innocent civilians. A city attorney’s investigation found insufficient evidence to level any charges…

In New Angeles, you become the head of one of the world's largest megacorps. It is your responsibility to transform a vast—nearly unfathomable—fortune into an even greater fortune. To do so, you need to be shrewd in the deals you cut with the other major corps, and you may need to take some role in the city's maintenance.

Typically, as we saw in our earlier previews, all you need to do to keep the city running smoothly—and your deals laser-focused on profit, profit, profit—is to produce the right goods in the right districts. This requires you to pay attention to a number of different resources all at the same time, but it's no big deal for one of the world's most powerful CEOs.

Sometimes, however, things get a little bit more out of hand, and extreme situations may call for extreme solutions…

Send in the Prisec

Officially, the population of New Angeles is just over 500 million, but most estimates place it closer to one billion. Officially, the city is governed by an elected mayor and city council. But the reality is that the corps run the town—the corps and their prisec armies.

As it turns out, one of the challenges to running a city of roughly a billion people is that some of them inevitably decide to do their own things. You can give them all the entertainment and tech and energy and consumables in the world, but you'll still find a segment of the population that wants to protest. Or steals from you. Or strikes for better wages. Or simply just expresses its discontent as an unhelpful, unproductive malaise.

In New Angeles, these malcontents and their troubles are all represented by different tokens, minis, and game states. And while a good number of these can be resolved through some simple media conditioning, some may require a bit of advanced biotech research, and others may require you to deploy a small army of privately contracted security officers.

Dealing with Social Unrest and Power Outages

There are six different production modifiers that can change the ways the city's districts function. The simplest of these is "protest," the first stage of unrest.

As we addressed in our last preview, you can only exploit the resources of a district where you have one of the android tokens that represent your android workforce. Since there are only three android tokens, one of your jobs is to make sure you're getting your androids to the districts where you need them most. Beyond that, however, you will also find yourself responsible for dealing with the lingering animosity directed toward the city's android workforce.

Anytime you exploit a district, you increase that district's unrest by one step. A district starts out "stable," without an unrest token, but then shifts to protest the first time you exploit its resources.

At the protest stage, the district still produces its resources normally, but doing so will again increase its unrest, moving it to "strike," and forcing you to flip the yellow side of the unrest token over to the red side, which signals a halt to your production.

Once a district moves into strike, it's either time to transfer your android workforce to another district or call upon NBN's Spin Doctors to whip up a Media Circus and deflect attention.

Of course, there's a cost to nearly every action you take, especially in New Angeles, where you have so many forces competing for attention. Your Media Circus will summon forth a Human First unit—one of the game's other production modifiers. Those Human First activists will accelerate the district's unrest from stable to strike every time you exploit it. And then you'll need to deal with unrest again.

If you can't deal with that unrest, the Human First activists will riot and throw the district into "outage," another of the game's production modifiers—also negative. Like strike, outage prevents the district from generating its resources.

The main difference between strike and outage lies within the ways the corps can respond to the two. While NBN's media outlets may be able to resolve a strike, it takes some of Weyland's construction work to repair an outage—such as Budget Renovations or Gentrification.

The other difference between the two production modifiers is subtler. Both production modifiers demand solutions, but the solutions benefit different corps. NBN gets rich off media-based solutions to unrest. Weyland gets rich off construction-based responses to outages. And as you can imagine, one may pursue routes that lead to unrest while the other pursues agendas that lead to outages. And then you have the two offering their solutions all over again.

Stomping Out Orgcrime

In addition to the production modifiers presented by protests, strikes, Human First units, and outages, you also have those presented by developments and orgcrime.

Developments are the sole positive production modifier in the game. Each development token increases a district's primary resource value by one. For example, if you were to develop La Costa, you would generate two consumables, instead of one, each time you exploited the district. You would still only generate one credit.

And while developments are good, they're easily negated by orgcrime units. Wherever orgcrime takes root, it prevents a district from producing its primary resource, even if that resource is developed.

This may be a boon to the Federalist, for whom timing is everything, since a single orgcrime unit can shut down a developed district like Quinde right before the corps hope to exploit it, and if it does, the corps will be hard-pressed to find energy elsewhere.

Accordingly, you'll want to remain ready with your security responses. Action cards like Gentrification and Riot Control allow you to use your prisec units to control the city's enemy units—both orgcrime and Human First units flee any district in which you deploy your prisecs. Still, while your private security forces may offer swift responses to the troubles of one or two districts, you may sometimes find your city flooded with criminals and activists. And you may feel the need to take even more drastic measures.

For whatever reason, then, everyone seems to look at Globalsec and Weyland as though there were some secret understanding between the two. And in totally unrelated news, Weyland Public Relations Officer Farid Ahmadi may announce the Consortium's plans to develop one of the districts. Then Globalsec's accountants will acknowledge the receipt of a tidy sum of unmarked funds. A small army of prisec units will conduct a Scorched Earth cleanup of the district. There will be some Gentrification. Farid Ahmadi will smile and wave to the cameras, he'll tell everyone how pleased the Weyland Consortium is with its latest designs in sustainable arcologies, the people will turn their attention elsewhere, the corps will continue to profit, and the city will go on living.

That's life in New Angeles. Everything's always moving. Everything's a work in progress.

Profit from Your Activities

Whatever the problem, there's a solution. Whatever the solution, there's a corp that stands to profit. Can you make sure that corp is yours?

Credits, lives, city districts—everything's negotiable in New Angeles. Prove you have what it takes to run the show when this dramatic board game of corporate ambitions arrives at retailers. Head to your local retailer to pre-order your copy today!

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Pacify the People

Published 12 October 2016 | New Angeles

Pacify the People

A Look at Quelling Unrest in the World's Largest Megacity

Tragedy struck today at the New Angeles premiere of the second season of Friendship, Upgraded when violent demonstrators linked to the terrorist Human First movement attacked and badly damaged bioroid star Ronald 5. This is the third time Ronald 5’s public appearances have been disrupted by similar protests.

In New Angeles, you have one overriding goal, and that's to turn your megacorp's gigantic fortune into an even more gigantic and influential fortune. The key, as we touched upon in the game's announcement and our first preview, is to work deals to your benefit. To do so, you might cooperate with the other players, or you might coerce them. The tactics don't matter much—so long as they're effective. Outperform your rival, and your shareholders will happily dub you a winner.

You will, however, find more to consider during your deals than the simple acquisition of capital. Ultimately, the acquisition of capital is what drives you, it's what defines you, and it's the key to your success. But there are threats with which you must deal lest they prompt the U.S. government to rear its ugly head and consider revoking the special business privileges you and the other corps enjoy.

These threats—and your response to them—are the subject of today's preview. In New Angeles, you and your rivals need to work together well enough to keep the city running smoothly (smoothly enough, at least) so that the U.S. government continues directing its attention elsewhere.

What the Others Want

The only thing you "have to" do in New Angeles is watch your bottom line. Still, while you're brokering deals, the other corps are likely to remind you that you "have to" help them meet a set of demands. These demands change throughout the game, fluctuating along with the circumstances of the city, and you'll find them defined by a series of Demand cards.

Like Network Disruption, each Demand card identifies five different categories of resources—Energy, Consumables, Tech, Entertainment, and Credits—and assigns a target number to each of them. You reveal the game's first Demand card during setup and use these target numbers to set the demand track, placing tokens over the target numbers in each category.

Then, as the game progresses, and you try to manipulate the other corps throughout the Action phase, these target numbers on the demand track provide a haunting reminder of the different expectations other people may have of your corporation. If you can't get the other corps to produce these resources—or don't take action yourself to ensure that they're produced—the city's threat rises by the indicated amount.

It's important to remember, here, that if the city's threat ever reaches twenty-five, you lose (unless you're the Federalist ). Accordingly, you find yourself under a certain amount of pressure to acquiesce to the demands of others and to contribute to the city's well-being, even if it's absolutely clear your efforts should never be mistaken for altruism.

You don't check your production against demand every round, only in the special demand rounds indicated by the board's demand spaces.

Maintaining Production Values

New Angeles is divided into twelve districts, but only eleven of them are found on Earth. The twelfth is Heinlein, on Luna, which was reaffirmed in its status as a part of New Angeles by the Treaty of Heinlein. Of New Angeles' eleven terrestrial districts, ten are represented on the New Angeles game board, and these are divided into three "tiers," each of which is identified by a different color outline. Tier one is blue, tier two is yellow, and tier three is red.

As one might expect of these districts, they don't all produce the same resources. Each produces a different set and number of resources as indicated by the icons and numbers at the top of the frame. However, to produce the resources from any of the city's districts, you'll need a workforce—only districts marked by an android token actually produce any resources when you complete the Action phase and make your way to the Production phase that follows.

Accordingly, you want to exploit the right districts each round so that you can meet your production demands. Likely, this means making deals with Efficiency Experts or devising other Labor Solutions during the Action phase.

It also means that you'll want, at times, to deal with the orgcrime units that block a district from producing its primary (left-most) resource and to resolve any strikes or outages that would completely shut down the production within a vital district. But the real trick, of course, is to get the other corps to deal with these problems while you focus on more profitable endeavors.

No Battle Plan Survives Contact with the Enemy

The standard round in New Angeles moves from the Action phase to the Production phase, and then it moves to the Event phase. Here, you'll encounter any number of unpredictable and generally hostile influences upon your regular production schedule.

During the Event phase, you reveal and resolve the top card of the event deck, and as with Crumbling Infrastructure, each Event card introduces both a certain measure of the flavor of the Android universe, as well as a number of Human First units, orgcrime units, outages, and illnesses. You'll find these are all accompanied by the districts on which they are to be placed.

Additionally, the top half of each Event card outlines a potential threat increase. If you fail to avoid the trigger—such as spotting an orgcrime unit when Pistoleros Hit Squads Strike! —then you'll be forced to raise the city's threat by the indicated amount.

Finally, each Event card indicates the number of players who will take turns in the following round. This is notable because your game rounds in New Angeles can be of varying lengths. While the active player always passes clockwise from player turn to player turn, there's no guarantee that each player will be the active player in a given round.

This is not to be confused with the idea that you can't play an active part in the deals being brokered!

You can always bribe, bluff, and badger your fellow corps. So long as you have an Action card in hand, you can always propose a counteroffer to someone's deal or lend your support. But you are likely to play through rounds in which you don't make the initial offer. And this only serves to reinforce the importance of your negotiations and coercion.

Outsource the Dirty Work

Unless you're the Federalist, you're going to need to invest some time, energy, and resources into managing the city's health and mollifying its populace. Of course, the question is always how much you should be responsible for matters versus how much the other corps should be taking the lead.

Can you convince a room full of corporate CEOs to do your dirty work for you? If so, you should play New Angeles. Head to your local retailer to pre-order your copy today!

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Collaborate / Manipulate

Published 7 October 2016 | New Angeles

Collaborate / Manipulate

A Look at the Deals and Victory Conditions of New Angeles

Humanity Labor has once again denied any connection between the advocacy organization and the violent movement Human First. This comes in the wake of another spate of vandalism in which dozens of androids, both bioroids and clones, were destroyed by sledgehammer-wielding activists in “Robot City.”

In New Angeles, you gain executive control over one of the largest megacorporations from the Android setting. You command a nearly unfathomable wealth of resources, and you carry the crushing weight of your shareholders' expectations upon your shoulders. After all, you're running a megacorp in New Angeles, the greatest business district in all of history. There are fortunes to be made. And then these fortunes are to be traded in for larger fortunes.

There are, however, two problems. Actually, there are a great deal more than two problems, but you can file them into two general categories.

The first is that in order to keep doing business, you need to work with the other corps to keep New Angeles and its citizens in order. Not only is it hard to work efficiently and effectively if your commute takes you through the midst of a riot, but there's the very real possibility that the United States government would reconsider the special business privileges the megacorps enjoy in New Angeles.
The second problem is just as pervasive; you need to maintain and grow your market shares. You cannot make the same mistake that others have made—thinking that the megacorps are somehow aligned as a group. No, there is a finite amount of capital circulating in the economy, and your job is to collect as much of it as you can. There's no room on the corporate food chain for "peaceful coexistence." There's only predator and prey. It's your job to make sure you look like the prey… and eat like the predator.

Semi-Cutthroat

When we first announced New Angeles prior to Gen Con, a number of veteran boardgamers were quick to note what they recognized as the game's "semi-cooperative" elements. In essence, the idea is that the players need to work together to meet a few basic goals, but then the game would diverge from those cooperative roots as players pursued their individual goals.

Those veteran gamers were only partially right.

There are, in fact, collaborative elements in New Angeles, but they only come into play on the heels of individual player goals. The principle that drives the game forward isn't the cooperation between corporations as they attempt to maintain order within their city. The game is driven by each corp's pursuit of profit. Specifically, each player wants to end up richer than one of the others.

There's also a chance that one of your friends is secretly a Federalist, working to ensure that the U.S. government decides to intervene in the city's affairs, but we'll address this player's unique role later in the article. For now, we'll let it suffice to say that no other corporation shares your company's goals.

At the beginning of each game, you shuffle together the Rival cards for all the corporations represented in the game, plus the Rival card for the Federalist. Then you distribute one Rival card to each player and place the last remaining Rival card facedown beneath the edge of the board, unseen.

At this point, you and your friends have now been set against each other. It's true that you only need to outearn one other corporation to win (unless you're the Federalist or have drawn your own Rival card), but the first shadows of suspicion and doubt have been introduced. And these will fall heavily over every deal you and your friends attempt to negotiate as the game proceeds.

There is no altruism in New Angeles. You are not out to save the world. You're not even out to save your city. You could scarcely care less about riots and orgcrime and the city's citizens, except that they all have some minor impact upon your bottom line. You're not looking to make friends with the other corps. You're only looking out for yourself; the other corps—if you play it right—are merely useful tools to help you earn more capital.

This isn't some semi-cooperative game where you're looking to preserve the peace and beauty of New Angeles as you bounce along some jovial path to prosperity; this is a game where you'll let nothing stand between you and your capital—least of all the corporations, one of which is almost certainly your rival, one of which is trying to outmaneuver you, and one of which is likely trying to ruin the city's special business district zoning for you and everyone else.

Getting What You Want

The hard truth is that in order to run over all the other corporations and collect the capital you ultimately desire, you're going to have to play the role of a "cooperative and friendly business partner." How much you have to adopt this role may depend on the strength of your position, as well as the strengths of your rivals' positions, but since you need to make deals in order to make money—and since you need the other corps to support your deals—you can't afford to make too many enemies.

Each round, during the Action Phase, players take turns proposing different deals. These deals begin with the game's Action cards.

When it's your turn, you'll draw the number of action cards indicated on your Corp sheet. There are five types of Action cards, and each corp other than Melange Mining draws two Action cards of the type with which it is primarily associated, and one Action card from another category. For example, when you play as NBN , you'll draw two Media cards and one Biotech card at the beginning of each of your turns. Melange Mining, as the exception, is able to draw its choice of three Action cards from among all the different categories.

After you draw your Action cards, you'll reveal the top card of the Asset deck. Whichever corp ends up resolving a deal gets to claim this asset, and since the game's assets all provide different benefits, it's easy to envision ways for all of them to fit into your corporate designs.

As the active player, you get the first chance to pitch a deal to the other corps. You do this by selecting one of the Action cards from your hand and placing it on the board to the left of the asset.

The player running Weyland Consortium offers to share the return of her High-Risk Investments in order to win the services of Bernice Mai .

Here it's worth pausing to note the different ways that your business deals can shape the course of the game:

You can turn a quick profit by cashing in on your High-Risk Investments .
You can keep the city functioning smoothly. For example, you can use Budget Renovations to open up a district where business had been choked by outages, but doing so will create unrest. Still, you can reduce that unrest by hiring some Spin Doctors to go to work on the public consciousness.
If things are going really badly in the city, you might use Scorched Earth tactics to deal with unwanted orgcrime and human rights activists.
Or you might simply make a bid for the asset at stake by offering players access to more possible actions through the use of Full Deployment or a Puff Piece .

No matter which deal you hope to make, you'll need to find some way to get it past the other corps. Proceeding clockwise from you, after you play your Action card, they all have the opportunity to propose a counteroffer. The first person looking to play one of these alternate deals simply places it to the right of the asset, opposite your proposal, but for each subsequent player looking to play a counteroffer must discard Action cards from his or her hand equal to the number of faceup cards in the counteroffer position.

As an example, after the Weyland Consortium offers to share the rewards of some High-Risk Investments, three other players decide to play counteroffers, all hoping to lure Bernice Mai to work for them. Accordingly, the third player to play a counteroffer must discard two Action cards from her hand before she plays Clinical Trials , hoping the other players (and Bernice Mai) will recognize that his contribution is more valuable to the city's continued prosperity than the Weyland Consortium's self-interested investments.

In order to counteroffer with Clinical Trials, the Jinteki player must first discard two cards from his hand, one for each of the two faceup counteroffers already on the table.

However, once every player has had the opportunity to make a counteroffer, the corps can wheel and deal, and things tend to get murky—even when it's so apparently simple as a choice between what looks like an offer that's good for Weyland and a counteroffer that's good for everyone.

First of all, as Weyland might note, the company's High-Risk Investments pay out for three different players, and while you might expect Weyland would want to collect the maximum of three capital for themselves, the Weyland player might declare her intention of paying out three capital to the first player to support her, two capital to the second, and one to the last. In fact, depending how badly the Weyland Consortium wants to recruit Bernice Mai, the Weyland player might even offer the other corps a few points of her own capital.

Next, the Weyland Consortium might cast aspersions on Jinteki and the so-called "selflessness" of their medical efforts. After all, as everyone knows, Jinteki has their fingers in just about all the city's biotech, and as indicated on her Corp sheet, the Jinteki player stands to earn a couple points of capital when the illness token is removed by her action.

Because Jinteki receives two capital whenever an illness token is removed from a district, the corp's interests in the health of New Angeles' citizens are never entirely altruistic.

Perhaps, at this point, the NBN player remains neutral. His primary concern is keeping Bernice Mai at home, rather than seeing her take her talents to either Weyland or Jinteki. Since the head of NBN had his counteroffer cancelled by Jinteki's, he's inclined to support Weyland, but he keeps that idea to himself and states that he'll support anyone who's willing to give him the asset. In fact, he'll even pay out five capital in order to get the asset.

This bold move could then startle the Globalsec and Haas-Bioroid players, both of whom start to question, openly, whether NBN is secretly the Federalist. Why else would NBN offload so much of its capital—putting itself in a weaker position—just to win a single employee's tenuous loyalty? The truth is that Globalsec is actually the Federalist in this game, but the Globalsec player recognizes the opportunity to deflect suspicion and to shift perception in favor of Weyland's offer—an offer which does nothing to quell the city's unrest or to keep it functioning smoothly.

After a short debate, the players without offers on the table all have the opportunity to decide whether they'll support one or the other offer. To support an offer, a player places one or more Action cards face down beneath either the active offer or the counteroffer. The offer with the most Action cards beneath it is successful, and its owner wins the contended asset. In the case of a tie, the active offer wins.

After all the negotiations have concluded, the players place two Action cards in support of Weyland's offer and only one in favor of Jinteki's counteroffer. Weyland wins the deal and collects the Bernice Mai Asset card.

The Government Stooge

As mentioned earlier, your victory condition is handed to you in the form of a Rival card. Since it's possible for you to emerge victorious by earning more capital than, say, NBN, even while NBN wins by earning more capital than Haas-Bioroid, it is possible for more than one player to win a game of New Angeles.

It is never possible for everyone to win. There is always at least one corp that will fail to meet its goals, and because the Federalist is positioned against all the other players, the Federalist's role adds a significant measure of tension to the game.

For the Federalist to win, he or she needs to earn only an extremely modest twenty-five capital by the time the city's threat hits twenty-five and the U.S. government decides to intervene, temporarily suspending—perhaps even revoking—the special business privileges the corporations have long enjoyed within the city. This means that while the other corps are turning a measure of their attentions away from their holdings and investments in order to assess the city's needs, the Federalist is looking at how those needs can be met as ineffectually as possible.

Simply raising the threat is not a winning strategy for the Federalist. No one wants to be outed as a snitch. It's bad PR to tip your hand as the force behind the city's unrest. It's just bad for business to get caught, and taking direct measures to raise the threat is likely to get you caught.

Instead, the Federalist needs to play clever. A government stooge in corporate skin. The Federalist needs to be out for him or herself, just like all the other corps, and might just be a little more self-interested at inopportune moments. Better yet, the Federalist might play the role of good business partner.

As the Federalist, you might see a pair of offers and recognize that if Haas-Bioroid has its deal pass, its bioroids will spur more of the manufacturing that the city needs, whereas the Action cards that NBN hopes to share with everyone won't help the corps meet their demands for the round. In turn, you might look at your hand, look at the board, note how the city's residents aren't getting enough entertainment in the Nihongai district, and offer your support to NBN, recommending that others follow suit, so that you'll find some way to clear the outage in Nihongai and get the district's entertainment back in motion!

The flip side, of course, is that when you aren't the Federalist, you read the other corps differently. One of them is secretly working against you, so you need to be suspicious. There's no trust in New Angeles. There are no true shared goals.

Look Out for Number One

Set in the not-too-distant future of the Android universe, New Angeles is a compelling game of corporate greed for four to six players. As you and your friends look to transform your corporations' massive fortunes into even greater fortunes, you'll need to keep an eye to the health of your city, even as you negotiate your way through rounds that are full of wheeling, dealing, bluffing, bribing, promises, and backstabbing.

Because you need to keep the city running smoothly in order to keep the U.S. government out, some early reviewers decided that New Angeles deserved the "semi-cooperative" tag that sometimes gets slapped on different mechanics. Technically, there are "semi-cooperative" elements, but the term just doesn't feel appropriate. The term is too friendly for the megacorps. It's too altruistic. And it doesn't fully address the measure of suspicion and distrust introduced by the Federalist and the game's Rival cards.

There's no trust in New Angeles, and the lack of trust leads away from true cooperation. It leads, instead, toward manipulation and coercion. It leads toward a game in which you want to keep your secrets close and you need to play your rivals as much as you play the cards you have in hand. It leads toward tension, surprises, and excitement.

Step away from the idea that the megacorps are working hand-in-hand to make the world a better place. Step into the CEO's chair and drive your megacorp toward a megaprofit. In New Angeles, you only need to look out for number one.

Stay tuned for a closer look at the demands of running New Angeles and more information about the various talents you can recruit. In the meantime, be sure to head to your local retailer and pre-order your copy today!

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New Angeles

Published 3 August 2016 | New Angeles

New Angeles

The Game of Corporate Greed and Machinations in the Android Universe

Welcome to New Angeles!

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of New Angeles, a board game of corporate greed and machinations for four to six players set in the Android universe!

The largest, richest, and most diverse city on Earth, New Angeles is home to the Space Elevator that rises along its buckyweave tether and connects us to Luna and its invaluable Helium-3 deposits. It is here, in New Angeles, that you'll find the global headquarters for the worlds' most powerful megacorps: Haas-Bioroid, Globalsec, Jinteki, Melange Mining, NBN, and the Weyland Consortium. And it is here, in this shining beacon of human achievement and advancement, that these powerful megacorps enjoy a uniquely fertile breeding ground for their projects and their rivalries.

In New Angeles, you gain control of one of these megacorporations. Then you use your wealth and influence to create more wealth and more influence. To do this, you'll cut deals and forge temporary alliances. You'll leverage your credits and assets to gain financial superiority over your corporate rivals. All the while, you'll also need to keep an eye toward the masses, striking deals with the other corps as necessary in order to keep a lid on crime, disease, and unrest. If you want to maximize your profit, you need to keep New Angeles open for business!

Business Is Good

Business is your primary concern in New Angeles. After all, the city is uniquely favorable to businesses not only because it's the site of the Space Elevator (or "Beanstalk"), but also because the city enjoys the privileges associated with being an unincorporated, special commerce zone of the United States. It benefits from most U.S. federal laws, but fewer Constitutional demands, meaning that its inhabitants—and its corporations—enjoy more freedoms than those within the United States proper. And the megacorps, who benefit from this tax-free arrangement more than anyone else, intend to maintain this status quo.

Accordingly, there are two goals in New Angeles. Your primary goal—and that of the game—is to increase your profits. Specifically, you need to earn more capital than your corporate rival in order to win. Your secondary concern, however, is to maintain order within the city. If it descends too far into chaos, the United States federal government will intervene, the city's special commerce privileges will be put at risk, and you—along with the other corps—will lose.

The key to meeting both of your goals, then, is to conduct good business. Negotiate with others when it works for you. Manipulate others when you must. Keep your ambitions secret. Publicize your positive contributions and mutually beneficial business arrangements. Get others on-board with your designs… and then make more credits than them all.

Envision the Future

As the head of a powerful megacorporation, you'll find there are plenty of different ways for you to lead your company in pursuit of ever greater profit. However, most of these revolve around your ability to steer the city's development to your interests.

Games of New Angeles are played over a number of rounds, and in each of those rounds, you and your friends take turns proposing different types of business deals. These different deals are represented by action cards, each of which comes with its own game effect. At the beginning of your turn, you'll draw a number of action cards as indicated by your corp sheet, and then you'll present a deal to the other corps, choosing one of your action cards to place onto the board as your offer.

Meanwhile, each round will see a new asset placed upon the game board. Each of these assets represents a talented and useful person or organization, and if you can get the other corps to deal with you and support your offer, you claim the asset and stand to reap its benefits for the remainder of the game.

On the NBN player's turn, Jackson Howard is revealed as the new asset, and NBN offers to put their Spin Doctors to work to decrease the city's unrest.

Corporate Rivalries and Key Acquisitions

You may want your corp to direct the city's business and claim valuable assets, but at least one of the other corps is going to want to see you fail. Maybe more than one. And these corps may try to undercut your deals by countering your offers. Or another corp may simply covet the asset that entered play that round, and since all the game's assets are different, its CEO may propose a counteroffer, even if that corp has no reason to see you fail. It's even possible for people to suggest alternate courses of action simply because they think they'll actually help the city—not just the corps.

If there are ever two corps, then, that have proposed alternate deals, the other corps will decide which goes forward. They can support one deal or the other by placing any number of action cards from their hands facedown next to either the offer or the counteroffer. The corp whose action receives more support then resolves the action and lays claim to the asset.

Your actions and assets, in turn, will frequently help you amass capital, especially if you use them to trigger the conditions that innately favor your corporate interests. For example, NBN gains one capital for every point of reduction in the city's unrest while Weyland gains two capital whenever a production outage is removed.

After the Weyland Consortium responds to NBN's offer by countering with Budget Renovations, the other corps divide their support. The active player's offer wins the tie, so NBN claims Jackson Howard and uses their Spin Doctors to reduce unrest by one stage in two districts. Because NBN gains one capital for each point of unrest that is decreased, it moves two spaces forward on the capital track.

For these reasons—and others—it may sometimes even be in your best interests to spend money to make money. New Angeles allows you tremendous freedom to secure the support of the other corporations. You can bribe them with capital, you can promise them your support in future turns, and you can even allow them to resolve the actions you pass. The result is that New Angeles is truly a game of wheeling and dealing, and you'll be trying to manipulate the other players every bit as much as you're trying to make the best possible use of your cards and abilities.

Keep Big Government Out of New Angeles

Running a business is one thing. Running a city, it turns out, is quite another. But in New Angeles, you have to do both.

Even as you maneuver your corp toward greater fortunes, you have to give a perfunctory nod to the little people of the city. It turns out that in a city of several hundred million people—officially 500 million, but likely closer to a billion if you include the disenfrancistos and the androids—things can quickly turn ugly if you don't keep the general populace sated. Accordingly, you'll need to spend some of your time keeping the city orderly and productive. If you can't, you'll see the threat of revolt increase, and rioting and chaos may even lead to U.S. government intervention.

To keep the people happy and the city running smoothly, you'll need to generate a specific variety and quantity of resources as determined by each demand card you reveal. These resources are produced among the city's districts, but only where you have your android tokens available to generate them and only if you're able to avoid strikes, outages, and the detrimental influence of orgcrime.

The android token in Laguna Velasco would allow the corps to generate the district's three capital at the end of the round, except that a district with an orgcrime unit cannot produce its primary resource.

Accordingly, you'll sometimes find yourself forced to detour from more lucrative endeavors in order to keep the city running smoothly. And you may even find yourself temporarily aligned in this endeavor with your rival. However, the alternative is failing to satisfy the city's citizens, allowing them to shift increasingly toward chaos, and flirting with the idea that the U.S. government will come in—along with all its laws and regulations—to take over the city's governance.

This threat is tracked each round, along with each corporation's wealth, and if the threat reaches twenty-five, big government takes over and everyone loses… except for the one player who might be aligned with the feds. If this is you, then your win condition is no longer making more capital than a rival corp; instead, you work to oversee this fundamental change in how the city is governed.

Open for Business

Manipulate, negotiate, and bribe your way to riches. New Angeles is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2016, but you won't have to wait that long for more information. You can learn more about the game from our description page, we'll have additional previews forthcoming, and if you're headed to Gen Con Indy, you can get an even earlier taste of the game's cut-throat wheeling and dealing. Just be sure to stop by our booth. We'll be running demos all weekend long!

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