NetRunner CCG

Netrunner is the 1996 cyberpunk CCG designed by Richard Garfield, his second major design after Magic: The Gathering. Wizards of the Coast published the original run from 1996 to 1999 before letting it lapse, then Fantasy Flight Games revived the game as a reconfigured LCG in 2012, running it through 2018.

The game

Netrunner's signature innovation was asymmetry. One player is the Corporation, defending data servers with protective Ice programs, trying to advance secret agendas. The other is a Runner, hacking through defenses to steal those agendas. The two sides play with completely different card pools, different resource models, and different victory conditions in the same match. It's one of the most elegant asymmetric designs in tabletop gaming.

The context

1996 was Garfield's experimental year. Alongside Netrunner, he shipped BattleTech CCG and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, each designed to prove Magic's principles could port to new settings. Netrunner was set in the Cyberpunk 2020 universe (R. Talsorian Games licensed the IP to WotC), and the retro-futurist cyberpunk aesthetic landed at exactly the moment Matrix-era cyber fiction was surging back into popular culture.

The FFG revival

In 2012 Fantasy Flight relaunched Netrunner as Android: Netrunner, set in their own Android universe rather than Cyberpunk 2020. The LCG model shipped fixed-content expansions instead of boosters, and the game built a strong competitive tournament circuit for six years. FFG lost the license in 2018, and NISEI, a volunteer player group, has maintained the game through a rules-and-card release program ever since.

The collector angle

The original Wizards Cyberpunk-licensed run from 1996 to 1999 is the retro window most collectors care about. The Limited edition starter and the Proteus expansion are the 90s-era collector targets. FFG's Android: Netrunner era is fundamentally a different game (different IP, different card pool), but the two together form one of the deepest asymmetric-CCG lineages in the hobby.