i have never given half of a fuck about not having a valentine but i saw a gay cowboy card at target and now i’m discovering inner weakness
:(
[I.D:A paper card with an ilustration of two cowboys on horses. They’re standing on a hill, the sun is setting behind them making the clouds pink, and there’s blue mountains on the distance. One of the horses is rearing, standing on it’s back legs, and the cowboy throws their lasso in the shape of a heart. Text under them reads “Our love can’t be wrangled”. End I.D]
As ever, late to the party. Art by DelBorovic, though I must admit, I didn’t find it on their pages - I found it on netrunner art instagram , who seem to be doing the same thing I’m doing but better! If you like my blog, but like regular posting, follow them! I’d love to know where they found it, as it’s new to me, and I’d like to know if there’s any other ones I don’t in their source.
In announcing their upcoming products at Worlds (hopefully still for 2020, but it’s been such a troubled year this may not be the case), Nisei also dropped the above playmat art of the re-imagined runners for their Update set, 6 FFG characters provided with awesome new art for a Nisei-produced set. It’s great to see this continuity, and existing characters maintained and updated, some retired ones returning, and all looking good to boot.
Nisei also has an article showcasing of some of their art and their artists, with links to their website here - a great resource for me as well! There’s really a lot of great stuff in the sets Nisei have produced so far.
While I have been posting intermittently, particularly recently, I think it’s fair to say I haven’t given this blog all that much attention since 2018. Part of that, it must be said, is because I’ve fallen in and out of Netrunner (I’m more in recently - as I’ll mention later). Another part of it is tumblr kind of imploding - I think less and less about tumblr these days, but this is getting off topic - this is a post about something I’ve mentioned in passing, but have yet to dedicate a proper full-on post to: Project Nisei and the continuation of Netrunner
If you’re seeing this blog, you probably already know this, but in late 2018, Android: Netrunner was officially terminated by Fantasy Flight Games - people will always speculate why they weren’t able to renew the Netrunner licence, but the why didn’t matter - a card game many people loved was going to end.
Except not. Because the fans are passionate people, and they weren’t content to just have enjoyed one of the best games ever produced and occasionally play with old collections. They weren’t ready to retire their cards, so a portion of the community (and Netrunner has always had a great community) came together and resolved to not let the game end - first they organised, got together on the social spaces surrounding the game and coordinated, and then, in 2019 not only did they take up running the game (organising competitions and tournaments, balance and ban lists and so on), they then took it upon themselves to produce new cards, to continue the game as a fan-run enterprise, all as volunteers, all at their own expense and effort. They called themselves Project NISIE. There’s a really good article about all they’ve accomplished here (dicebreaker), but I’m sticking with the blog to talk about my one thing - the awesome art of netrunner.
When Nisei began producing these fan-made cards, they tried - and in pretty much every case succeeded - to keep up with the standards set by FFG, for cards - for mechanics in the game, of course, but also for card art. That’s a tall order, both because of the very high quality of FFG Netunner, and because they’re doing this as a voluntary organisation. All the art in this post has been produced for (in some cases by) Nisei - every bit the equal of what came before
To talk about organising Nisei has thus far managed two World Championships for netrunner - I wasn’t really playing the game last year, but this year I took part (and was able to do so due to the unfortunate current situation making the event online-only), and I had a blast! I didn’t even finish in the top half of player (of which there were nearly 300!), but the event, and the practice leading up to it, really got me in the netrunner mood, and I’ll be playing more - and when I play netrunner, I tend to post more here too. I’ll be posting both Nisei cards and FFG cards in future (I’ve already posted some), as long as I can hunt down the pics, but as you can see, they’re all of comparable quality. Long live Netunner! Long live Project NISEI
Last post was horrible things corps can do to runners, so I thought it’s only fair to show some of the mean things the runners do back (the most mean things, unfortunately, I don’t have the full arts for). Cards: Run Amok, Clan Vengeance, Bhagat, Cyber Threat, Escher, EMP Device, Hacktivist Meeting, Compromised Employee, Account Siphon. Artists:RC Torres,Kate Laird,Matt Zeilinger, Shawn Ye Zhongyi,Maciej Rebisz, John Ariosa, Mitchell Malloy, and Outland Entertainment LLC
I’ve posted this before, but Emilio Rodriguez basically is the set designer for like 80% of corp IDs - and The Outfit (the mob gone corporate) is one of my very favourite IDs in the game. Also he just posted this the other day, which gives me hope that some of his older designs will filter though onto his artstation over time
To keep things short with this, I’ll stick to the basics: FFG in the last couple of years has made their own generic/toolbox RPG, Genesys - there’s a basic rules framework and you can do whatever you want with it, in practically any setting. I’ve played it, it’s pretty good. It’s based on their Star Wars RPG system. Not too long ago, they released Shadow of the Beanstalk, a setting book for the Android Universe (New Angeles specifically), with a load of lore, some NPC/Enemies, Android-Universe specific gear and so on. And then there was nothing, until FFG opened up the Genesys foundry, where users can post content they make (at the cost of FFG being able to use it if they like it), and to help content-producers along they dropped a free art pack. Many of these are Android Netrunner cards, and some I’ve already posted here before, but it’s all very cool - though unfortunately none of the pics come with names or artists credits, so I can only give the ones I know are Netrunner cards.
3 Pieces by the rather excellent Andreas Zafiratos (one of which I think I’ve already shared, but it’s being unrotated and boy oh boy do I need to talk about Nisei and Netrunner and WoA still as well, geez)
