This is an introduction/discussion thread for the LCG edition of Netrunner. If you're new to the game, this thread introduces you and will grow with resources and so on over time.
What is netrunner?: Netrunner is a fairly old card game with a cult following that has been updated and re-released by FFG under their LCG format. It was designed by Richard Garfield, the man behind Magic the Gathering, so it shares quite a few basic structural similarities
Netrunner is an assymetric game- one player plays the defensive 'corp' the other the aggressive 'runner' . The corp wins by holding off or crippling the runner, the runner wins by penetrating the corp's defenses and wreaking sufficient havoc. Due to the way the game operates, a runner is much more likely to win, so formal matches involve two games, each player playing each role once.
In terms of gameplay, netrunner is heavily based on imperfect information, risk taking and mindgames. Most corp abilities revolve around traps, lures, bait and switch tactics and so on. Because of the LCG format, all players have access to the same cards, so deckbuilding isn't based around what you have but what you want. Because of this, it's a bit easier to predict what sort of cards and strategies your opponent is holding or planning, but in turn it's also easier for them to bluff you.
Unlike magic, netrunner has a dynamic turn. Players get a certain number of 'clicks' per turn. Clicks can be used to draw cards, make money, play cards and so on. So in a turn you could draw 3, gain 3 credits, play 3 cards or any mix of these and corp or runner specific actions. As such, it's a lot harder to get utterly screwed, setbacks are generally of the more temporary nature and consequently the game revolves a lot more around maintaining and controlling tempo rather than drawing out perfect combos with reliablity.
Corp breakdown:
The corp tries to secure their 'servers'. Their hand of cards, library and discard area are all considered servers, as are some cards you play, which are played face down. The runner attacks these, and if they do so successfully they get to look at cards and can steal or destroy them. The runner wins by stealing a certain amount of the right cards, so the corp must prevent this as much as possible. This is done by using Ice, cards that are placed in front of a server which the runner must run 'through' to get at it. Ice has a variety of effects, from stopping the run cold to setting the runner's brain on fire or wiring the back of their eyeball to spam them with viagra ads. A corp can also set up trap servers that look like juicy targets but end up being an even harsher kick in the balls.
The corp wins by scoring agendas- server cards that you can spend clicks and money on. Spend enough and you score it, getting victory points and usually a powerful in game effect. The corp can also win by 'flatlining' a runner. A lot of ice or traps deal damage, which cause the runner to discard cards. If they have to discard and have no cards, they instantly lose.
Runner breakdown:
The runner's job is to steal agendas, either while they're in play being built or while still in the library or the hand. They do this by running against the servers. To do so, they need the right tools to break through the ice, so a runner's game mostly involves scouting a corp's defenses, getting the right tools and exploiting vulnerabilities. A corp rarely has the resources or tricks to cover all their bases, so a runner needs to ruthlessly exploit any weakness.
There are several factions of both corp and runner in the game, each with a few identity cards. Identities are an always on effect that gives you a slight bonus in one area, used to synergise and give direction to your deck. Most cards also belong to one or another faction and players can only include a limited amount of cards from outside their faction in a deck. Powerful cards count more towards this, weaker ones less.
neutral cards are grey, and can be used freely by any faction, though corp cards can only be used by corps and runner cards by runners, of course.
Corps:
Haas-bioroid(purple): an AI/robotics corp that revolves around efficiency and economy. Their faction cards are generally synergistic and improve the corp's capabilities or drain the runner's clicks. Haas economy is more about lowering costs or adding time than directly generating money.
NBN(yellow): A media corp that revolves around surveillance and intelligence. Their faction cards are generally about getting a 'tag' on the runner and once this is done, using this to power their game up. NBN economy often comes from being run against, since their ice often gives the corp money when it's run through.
Weyland(grey-green): A financial/construction corp that revolves around economy and tradeoffs. Their faction cards often have a downside or are very expensive, but are incredibly powerful in the right circumstances. Weyland economy is mostly about using once-off cards to generate fat wads of cash until reliable moneymaking schemes come into play.
Jinteki(dark-red): A biotech/cloning corp that revolves around traps and mind games. Their faction cards revolve around nasty tricks and dealing surprise damage to flatline a runner who takes one risk too many. Jinteki economy is fragile, the faction mostly relies on slowing down and crippling the runner to keep pace.
Runners
Shaper(green): artistic/impulsive hackers in for the thrill of accomplishment. Shaper cards are generally expensive to play and moderately expensive to use, but with a supporting suite of cards designed to lower the costs and get things rolling without crippling your economy. Shapers typically make their money passively, without having to run. Shapers are the late game faction, powering up slowly to become unstoppable at the expense of early game threat.
Criminal(blue): In it for the money, Criminals are a tempo faction. They run early and often and have a set of cards designed to mitigate the risks of constantly diving through ice blindly. They make money through successfully running so they're a very snowbally faction. If a criminal deck gets rolling early, they're very hard to stop. Criminal cards are typically cheap to play but comparatively expensive to run.
Anarch(orange-red): Anarchs are trolls and black hats, all about causing chaos and destruction. Anarch cards have wildly differing styles, but generally revolve around destroying things and messing up the corp's careful planning then exploiting the chaos. Anarchs don't have many good ways of making money, but their cards are often very cheap to use once played, with the downside that they aren't very versatile, so an Anarch game often involves wild swings in power.
Buying in: Netrunner uses the FFG LCG format. There's a core box that costs about $30 US which comes with around 250 cards, with 3 instances of any one card. There are also a few cards with only 2 or 1 of each, so buying 2 starter packs is generally a good idea if you want to get into serious deckbuilding.
From there, there are booster packs that cost around $10 and come with 3 instances each of 20 cards (60 in all) Currently there are 4 such packs, with new ones being released every couple of months. A full buy in to the game for US folks would probably be around $100 for two starter packs and one of each currently released booster. This will let you build 2-3 corp decks and 2-3 runner decks and gives you access to all the currently available cards for competitive deckbuilding. The big advantage of the system is while the buy-in cost is high, you'll have enough cards to provide decks for friends to play with and have enough variety to be able to mix up your play whenever you feel like it, unlike magic where constructed building takes time, money and effort each time you want to change things around.
You can also play the game online for free with OCTGN, though the legality is shady.
Basic corp strategies:
Weyland tag and bag: Tag and bag revolves around scorched earth, which does 4 damage to a tagged runner. getting a tag on the runner in such a way you can play scorched earth is normally tricky, so tag and bag is full of tricks to make it happen. One shot, one kill.
Weyland fast advance: relies on low cost agendas to be scored consistently with relatively low risk, reducing the need to invest in a huge amount of ice to protect remote servers. Fast advance is competitive because, while it doesn't win often, it reliably scores a few agendas. Since an overall match is a combination of runner score+ corp score, reliably getting a few points is better than actually winning but with far less frequency.
Haas click advantage: Click advantage relies on scoring a mandatory upgrades which in turn allows the corp to play, advance and score other agendas in one turn so the runner has no chance of stopping them. Usually advance trick cards like trick of the light and biotic labour are used to help ensure a scored mandatory upgrades
Jinteki horizontal expansion: relies on one of jinteki's identity abilities that forces a runner to run on a central (hand/library/discard) server before they can run on a remote ( agenda/asset) server. By stacking central servers with cheap and nasty ice, horizontal expansion can lay out unguarded assets and agendas with traps mixed in, making life incredibly dangerous for the runner.
Jinteki flatline: the traditional jinteki build that aims to use a swath of net damage effects to surprise the runner and melt their brain. Playing against jinteki flatline is a terrifying experience for the runner, because you create situations where they have to run blind into a thorn garden. Even if they get through, they might end up hitting a snare or a project junebug and eating even more damage
NBN ecocripple: all NBN decks are about early game speed. Ecocripple uses a suite of ice, ambushes and assets to drain the runner's economy and force them to back off and rally for a turn- which is all you need to make a score.
Advanced corp strategies
Weyland fatcats: uses influence to buy all the big ice you can fit, a card based economy and lots of small agendas to stymie the runner's normally strong early game and go for a scoring win rather than weyland's typical flatline strategies
Basic runner strategies:
Shaper eco: standard shaper deck built around getting a full suite of efficient breakers like gordian blade, battering ram and mimic out, plus cards like mangum opus, underworld contact, cyberfeeder and so forth to make running less of a drain on the economy. Unstoppable late game, just has to be very careful getting there
Chaos theory power: uses the shaper identity chaos theory to run a smaller deck, with deck thinning and drawing cards like rabbit hole and wyldside. Draw out your whole deck (a runner can't deck themselves), get a full suite of hardware, resources and programs and just eat through anything the corp puts down.
Criminal tempo: standard crim deck based around hitting from the first turn and just keeping on hitting. mixes in anarch cards that make trashing assets easier and emphasises criminal cards that work off successful runs. Deny the corp money, keep wearing away at them until you have an unbeatable advantage
Noise archive runner: anarch deck built around trashing cards off the corp's library, forcing them to guard their archives in case you trashed some agendas. Forcing them to use precious ice to keep you out and then putting constant, heavy pressure on them to keep them off balance. Noise can quickly win the game out of nowhere if the corp is not incredibly careful.
Whizzard demolition: anarch deck built around using cards that allow you to trash anything, even things that normally can't be. Eviscerate the corp's hand, blow things up cheaply, sow chaos and exploit mistakes.
Advanced runner strategies
Medium dig: either shaper or anarch, working off the card medium. Medium dig is an all in style deck that sets up for a single turn of runs that can 'dig' 6-10 cards deep into the corp's library. This is risky against some decks but is often enough to win outright. If not, reconsolidate until the corp has drawn through the cards you exposed, then run another dig turn.
Hooray! I've been toying with the idea of making a thread about Netrunner for a week or so, nice job (and thanks for saving me the effort). One point I'd like to stress for anyone reading this that doesn't play already is that Netrunner has more player choice in it than any card game I have ever played. Player skill and proper decision-making are by far the most important factors that go into who wins a game. Being an LCG and not a CCG means it doesn't suffer from the "I lost because my opponent's deck costs twelve times what mine does" effect, and the way turns are structured means that randomness in your deck's shuffle doesn't really have much impact on the game at all (Magic players, that means no mana screw/flood).
Anyone with even a remote interest in cyberpunk-ish sci-fi and/or card games should give this a try.
Have had the core and next 3 expansions for a few weeks, playing with my brother. Don't have much to say other than it's extremely fun. The fact it's not a CCG so you don't have to pay hundreds/thousands to get a few 'rare' cards was a large factor in me trying it out. Deck-building is really diverse, asymmetrical play is awesome. Would recommend if looking for a high quality card game, but need one cheaper to play than magic.
indeed. I've only played a few games myself but it's a fantastic psychological game. I'm really looking forward to heading out to a tourney sometime and getting a feel for blind play. I've been doing a lot of deckbuilding and optimising in the meantime my two current decks are
a weyland fatcats deck: archer, tollbooth, wall of thorns, chimera, hadrian's wall, wall of static> all ice designed to stonewall the runner to block crim/anarch economy
hedge/beanstalk/green level/oversight/shipment from kaguya > all transactions all the time. oversight guaranteed to be good with my ice set, shipment good for powering up hadrians and keeping costs down, but still not sold on running it.
hostile takeover/false lead/priority req/atlas: low score agendas to drain the runner's eco, power archers and make easy money.
akitaro/experiential: server support. Aki+ chimera is one of the best combos in the game and experiential data helps shore up the deck against late game anarch and crim breaker sets.
A shaper 'power uplink' deck:
won't go over the card list, but it's pretty standard kate deck with a bigger emphasis on link with rabbits/dyson/toolbox/underworld contact and cards which make running cheaper (personal touch, icecarver etc). All designed to mitigate shaper's problems early-midgame with running. The deck is really, really hard to tag without using posted bounty or similar, and you can run against small iceforts for very little so you force the corp to double up across the board, meaning you can keep pressure on throughout the early game.
op should add something more detailed about OCTGN online play (theres youtube tutorial vids i believe)
game is fun, me and a few local people play at least once a week. lots of good games and interesting strategies that pan out, even if we dont adjust decks between our play times.
i play a unusual nbn (not tag n bag, not fast advance - strong ice, and designed to never advance anything unless i can score it that turn. runs snare and a lot of assets to take advantage of this) and a unusual kate (crypsis focused deck. all the other ice breakers compliment crypsis's problems and i use things like crescentus to keep the corp behind my pace)
Anarch gets some more nasty virus synergy Shaper gets some nasty new options for hardware specialisation, especially by splashing the new crim hardware Crim gets a new identity which leans towards a card based economic headstart rather than a tempo based economic boost.
HB gets yet another stupidly good asset along with a meh operation Wayland gets a decent sysop and a really bad bit of ice NBN gets more tagging options, but still has nothing to do with them Jinteki gets a really solid upgrade and finally that 'force the runner to go through your chum+katana combo' ice they've been waiting for.
Anyone got anything interesting for the corporation side for the current metagame, I'm expecting lots of Noise and Gabriel, and maybe a few people trying out Andromeda. I'm playing in a tournament tomorrow and I'm playing Workshop Noise, but I'm not sold on either of the corporation decks I've got built right now. :/
On May 18 2013 16:56 NeoIllusions wrote: Workshop Noise is so boring. Obviously really strong for tournaments but it's so cut and dry.
Likewise for corp, you can just run Fast Advance HB for safe and secure way of scoring agendas.
Edit: I obviously enjoy Jinteki the most. ;o NBN probably second.
I like NBN as well, and will probably play it in tournaments once project beale comes out. Having 3 advance, 2 agenda point agendas is too important for decks. NBN having a second one will be nice since astroscript is amazing.
I finished second place, which was nice(got the prizes I wanted), It was a "warm up" tournament for regionals, so 17 people, we had 4 rounds using the silly prestige system, don't know if I like it yet or not.
I totally agree with you about Noise.. I played boring workshop noise, I did not interact with people. I did not run remotes that were not rezzed, I was never under enough pressure where I had to stimhack a remote that could possibly be an agenda. I only used stimhack once all 4 games., I took advantage of medium and did not lose a game with Noise. I only had to run archives in 1 game, I usually use it as a last resort if the corp is putting pressure on me(they have 4 points and some $), as a way to close out the game.
My corporation deck did ok, I didn't play HB "Fast Advance" per say, but it's pretty similar so you might as well call it that, but instead of trying to FA everything from hand you try to get two things rushed through a remote early(a 3 pointer and a 2 pointer) before the runner is prepared, and then finish the game off with San San or Biotic Labor and a 2 point agenda. I got the idea from some people talking on the BGG forums about this so called "HB Rush" strategy that doesn't play trick of light or archived memories, and is much faster and I guess better against Noise? Idk I was taking peoples word on it, what really mattered to me was that the games ended fast, since this was my first tournament I did not know how much time 65 minutes really is when playing 2 games. When i play with my girlfriend at home we can take 90 minutes to finish an intense game!!! And I knew Noise could take some time if I played cautiously. So I reconstructed the deck based off of some information about it in posts as well as a pm I sent asking about key cards. I didn't put Chimera in my deck though, cause I hate that card.
Here is my list I went 3/4 losing a game to Gabe. I played subpar, but Idk if I could have won had I played better, would have needed to play it out. I beat 2 Noise Workshop Decks as well as 1 Criminal Andromeda.
I am cutting an Ash cause the unique thing came up way too often but I'm probably dismantling this deck anyways since I am not playing in a tournament next month I'll be out of town for regionals.
All of my matches ended with at least 20 minutes left on the clock, I think I played better in the matches where I could see the clock then the matches where I couldn't, cause I felt more pressed for time in those. I'm not too worried about time constraints after playing in an event, but there were some other players that had I played I would be worried about time because of their pace of play, the judges aren't as experienced as they are in MTG so it's harder for them to pick up on slow play etc.
Worst part about Netrunner, unlike Magic your not allowed to "Scout" apparently according to Fantasy Flight tournament rules scouting is unsportsmanlike conduct. This means if you finish first, you have to go sit by yourself and stare at the freaking ceiling unless you have other friends that are already done(you can go browse the merchandise and such but just making my point ). I'm still new to Netrunner so making friends still, so yeah this part sucked , I just wanted to watch some games since it's entertaining. . Also after the first round, between rounds 2 and 3, there were 10-15 minutes between last game finishing and next game starting. Lots of sitting around.
Not sure how effective the scouting rule even is considering we were all discussing the games we played in-between rounds.
Is it better to be runner or corporation first if you win the die roll? I picked Corporation but I honestly don't know.
Your deck is fairly fast Fast Advance if you ask me, haha. No Trick of Light but you have 3 Biotics and splashing in SanSan. Not to mention your strongest/most expensive Ice is Ichi.
If you're set on replacing the Ashes, (and you're set on your influence use), I'd probably sub in 1-2 Aggressive Secretary. Might be the Jinteki in me speaking but I like keeping Runners guessing.
I personally have not played in any tournaments but I dabble in OctGN quite a bit. Not as much since Humanity's Shadow came out. Every expansion just changes the entire landscape of the game. Can't wait for Whirlpool though, haha.
Edit: I'd pick whatever side you're more comfortable with first. Play to your strengths.
On May 21 2013 03:41 NeoIllusions wrote: Your deck is fairly fast Fast Advance if you ask me, haha. No Trick of Light but you have 3 Biotics and splashing in SanSan. Not to mention your strongest/most expensive Ice is Ichi.
If you're set on replacing the Ashes, (and you're set on your influence use), I'd probably sub in 1-2 Aggressive Secretary. Might be the Jinteki in me speaking but I like keeping Runners guessing.
I personally have not played in any tournaments but I dabble in OctGN quite a bit. Not as much since Humanity's Shadow came out. Every expansion just changes the entire landscape of the game. Can't wait for Whirlpool though, haha.
Edit: I'd pick whatever side you're more comfortable with first. Play to your strengths.
Whirlpool is out NeoIllusions, go put it to use .
I think it's a fun looking card, but Crypsis is so popular and it's really hard to "combo" into ice/traps with crypsis everywhere, if you ever get someone to fall for a whirlpool death trap take a screenshot I'd love to see it .
Maybe with crypsis out, you can "trick" people to make them break it then jack out, cause they think its a trap, and then you just score your Braintrust/Nisei and laugh? I think that could be somewhat useful if you play mind games with it.
Yeah I think playing to strength is good, I've seen people pick both, so I'm not sure if there is a best. I'm set on keeping 2 ashes, just removing 1 cause of the unique rule, ash was good to me. But like i said, the meta will change before I get to another tournament, there is regionals on the June 22nd, but I won't be here. I think the new expansion "Creation and Control" will be here by the next tournament I play in. My deck does have fast advance elements, but I usually only fast advanced the last agenda, and had some kind of remote with San San and Ash and ice. The other fast advance HB variant tht I used to play doesn't use it's remote for scoring, usually uses it for assets, and then scores almost every agenda out of hand. I do agree they are very similar though. I play at a store on Saturdays if i'm free, just casual games, but I'm not going to be playing HB and Noise this next weekend, maybe some Andromeda(haven't used her yet and honestly every deck I see with her in it is vastly different) and NBN .
And if you thought workshop noise was bad enough, try installing parasite off workshop just before your turn begins, so that parasite starts with two tokens instead of one. (if you have grimoire)
Another trick is to just throw as many viruses onto your workshop as you can instead of installing them so the corp doesn't protect his archives, stimhack the empty archives, install all your viruses and mill 12 or so cards off before accessing. If you don't outright win from that, just make a medium run and trash all the ice that you just parasited with your 6 datasucker tokens.
The workshop noise decks I play against never did any of this, so I'm just putting this down in case it wasn't common knowledge.
On May 21 2013 03:41 NeoIllusions wrote: Your deck is fairly fast Fast Advance if you ask me, haha. No Trick of Light but you have 3 Biotics and splashing in SanSan. Not to mention your strongest/most expensive Ice is Ichi.
If you're set on replacing the Ashes, (and you're set on your influence use), I'd probably sub in 1-2 Aggressive Secretary. Might be the Jinteki in me speaking but I like keeping Runners guessing.
I personally have not played in any tournaments but I dabble in OctGN quite a bit. Not as much since Humanity's Shadow came out. Every expansion just changes the entire landscape of the game. Can't wait for Whirlpool though, haha.
Edit: I'd pick whatever side you're more comfortable with first. Play to your strengths.
Whirlpool is out NeoIllusions, go put it to use .
I think it's a fun looking card, but Crypsis is so popular and it's really hard to "combo" into ice/traps with crypsis everywhere, if you ever get someone to fall for a whirlpool death trap take a screenshot I'd love to see it .
Maybe with crypsis out, you can "trick" people to make them break it then jack out, cause they think its a trap, and then you just score your Braintrust/Nisei and laugh? I think that could be somewhat useful if you play mind games with it.
Yeah I think playing to strength is good, I've seen people pick both, so I'm not sure if there is a best. I'm set on keeping 2 ashes, just removing 1 cause of the unique rule, ash was good to me. But like i said, the meta will change before I get to another tournament, there is regionals on the June 22nd, but I won't be here. I think the new expansion "Creation and Control" will be here by the next tournament I play in. My deck does have fast advance elements, but I usually only fast advanced the last agenda, and had some kind of remote with San San and Ash and ice. The other fast advance HB variant tht I used to play doesn't use it's remote for scoring, usually uses it for assets, and then scores almost every agenda out of hand. I do agree they are very similar though. I play at a store on Saturdays if i'm free, just casual games, but I'm not going to be playing HB and Noise this next weekend, maybe some Andromeda(haven't used her yet and honestly every deck I see with her in it is vastly different) and NBN .
I'm actually really kinda annoyed at the state of ANR right now. The ability for workshop to install outside of your turn just made runner way too safe without the need to facecheck any cards. All these tricks and traps seem kinda worthless when you can destroy every piece of ice in front of you with workshop. :<
To counter this corp play has stagnated into tag and bag and fast advance strategies which are no fun at all. Netrunner really needs to bring back the ability to make bluffy/trappy plays or else the game is just going to be extremely boring. You are never going to make runs on remotes for agendas, instead mill HQ or R&D because corp will only score off hand. Simply put some of the cards have simply destroyed the poker-esque aspects of the game which make it exciting.
The last regionals had 2 weyland tag and bags who would not even look at what their opponent was doing, simply text on their phone until they drew a posted bounty and scorched earth and killed their opponent. One of them even made it to the grand final, while not taking a single glance at his opponent and just texted on his phone.
Making runs, calculating risks and taking it on the chin and winning with allins with your back to the wall was always really fun. Now its like, "I am going to run your remote, oh a Janus, wait let me just install my femme off my workshop and bypass it, oh look a 3 point agenda".
My favorite games have always been the ones down to the wire where I have one card left against jinteki and one turn left to either win or lose the game, after having going several turns of just seriously leveling the hell out of each other.
One time I was reduced to a situation where I had no cards left in deck, a crypsis only, only one card in hand (a diesel), there was a card with two advancements sitting on the remote and we both needed 1 point to win and it was against Jinteki. Basically I saw the corp trash a card and replace the ice in front so I weighed up the odds of running a remote I could barely get through and risk hitting a dunebug/fetalAI and losing, or place my bet that the trashed card was an agenda and I'd be able to get through the unrezzed piece of ice. Either way I was going to lose if it got to the next turn, so I had to allin on this one.
I decided to put one token on the crypsis, bank a couple credits (I was flat broke at this stage), run the archives as my last click and hope to god it was an icewall or something. "no rez", found one agenda in the trash to win the game. Turned out the ice was a wall of thorns which would have killed me if the corp had 2 extra credits (my crypsis wouldn't have got through it), and the advanced card was also an agenda.
Then I put workshop into my deck and I ceased to ever have games like this, because I could trash every piece of ice before it could do any damage.
It's a wonder why that card isn't a unique when you have random stuff like Ash and Helpful AI that are. HB is probably the smoothest or most efficient corp deck (the FA variations) but it's also my least favorite to play. Runners I enjoy Criminal the most. I feel almost dirty playing Noise.
HB with biotic labor, trick of light + sansan just makes for terrible games. You don't even feel like you are playing corp, simply wait for those cards and score agendas off hand, extremely boring imo. Guess who made it to the finals of our regionals, only HB FA and Weyland T&B. Which is sad as they are also the most herp and derp corp decks which require almost no cerebral play at all.
For a faction that can safely score agendas, it seems silly to have gain a credit when you install, the strongest ice, the strongest economy assets which don't take turns to use, and an agenda which gives you extra turns. Lets just give a faction the best everything. Except maybe a cheap agenda which can help you directly score other agendas, not that that is vital when you have an agenda which can help you do that and more. The faction is just way too safe, and unfortunately with the current meta, its one of two factions that are really only viable given CT turbo rig and workshop.
Criminal is really the runner deck that is thematically my favorite. You make lots of runs, and your cards help you to be tactical and make more runs while avoiding bullets and indirectly crippling the economy of the corp with activation/shutdown spam. Ironically its really the only faction that has a good chance against a decent HB player, and probably the only one if HB gets a good start.
Currently the meta is just Noise/WS which is just omg ICE OM NOM NOM now give me your R&D. and CT Turbo Rig which takes as much thinking as following a lego instruction manual. Although a lot of Gabe is starting to appear now that everyone is doing HB FA.
Andromeda also I feel is really out of place, it would be much better suited for Shaper IMO. Whenever I faced Andromeda I would just breathe a sigh of relief while I just advance cards out in the open, meanwhile Andro is stuck with the dilemma of making a run and trashing the cards she really needs, or using wasting money just to get her handsize down because I didn't give her an opportunity to use them effectively. I think a much better identity card for Crim would be a larger handsize and more out of faction event cards, half the time you have so many event cards you just end up having to waste them to reduce your handsize instead of using them at a much more opportune time.
Shaper just feels so boring because they're so dependent on building a full rig. Combine that with the prevalence of FB, it's almost all the more reason not to play Shaper (the build up time). Granted, it's ironic that I've found more success with Kate than CT in my few dabbles with Shapers. Gabe feels like how Runners should be playing the game. Staying richer than Corp and poking at their weak links.
I personally haven't played with the latest expansion yet (still) but I imagine Public Sympathy is quite good with her and it dampens the threat of TnB decks.
You're quite right that there's a minimalistic interaction feeling when playing Weyland TnB but at least there is a possibility of the Runner breaking through and scoring an agenda behind your super server. The safety of HB is just too yawn inducing. All the more reason to play Jinteki obv! :D