Ruling — Android: Netrunner

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Android: Netrunnerbg-124742-en-1e

To play Android: Netrunner, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Choose Sides: Players decide who will play as the Runner and who will play as the Corporation.[1]

2. Place identity cards: Each player places his identity card faceup in his play area and takes a corresponding deck.[1]

3. Create Token Bank: Gather credits, advancement, brain damage, tag, bad publicity, and generic tokens into piles within reach of both players.[1]

4. Collect Starting Credits: Each player takes five credits from the and bank.[1]

5. Shuffle Decks: Each player shuffles his deck, then offers his deck to his opponent for further shuffling.[1]

6. Draw Starting Hands: Each player draws five cards from the top of his deck.[1]

7. Mulligan: The Corporation may choose to shuffle his hand back into his deck and draw a new starting hand; after the Corporation decides, the Runner may also decide to mulligan.[1] If a player takes a mulligan, he must keep the second hand as his starting hand.[1]

8. Finalize: When satisfied with starting hands, each player places his deck facedown in his play area.[1]

**Turn Structure**

The Corporation and the Runner alternate turns, with the Corporation always taking the first turn.[2] Players take actions by spending clicks during their Action phase and must spend all clicks in each Action phase.[2]

**Corporation's Turn Phases**

1. Draw Phase: The Corporation draws one card from R&D; this does not cost clicks, but if R&D is empty, the Runner wins immediately.[2]

2. Action Phase: The Corporation uses three clicks ([ [ [) to perform actions.[2]

3. Discard Phase: The Corporation discards down to his maximum hand size, if necessary.[2]

**Runner's Turn**

The Runner begins his turn with four clicks ([ [ [ [).[2]

**Actions and Mechanics**

* **Corporation Actions:** Possible actions include drawing a card from R&D, gaining 1<, installing an agenda, asset, upgrade, or piece of ice, playing an operation, advancing a card, purging virus counters, or trashing a Runner's resource if the Runner is tagged.[3]

* **Runner Actions:** Possible actions include drawing a card from R&D, gaining 1<, installing a program, piece of hardware, or resource, playing an event, making a run, or breaking an ice subroutine on a piece of ice with 0 or less strength.[3]

* **Playing Operations:** To play an operation, the Corporation pays its play cost, places it faceup in his play area, resolves its effects, and trashes it.[4]

* **Advancing Cards:** The Corporation can add one advancement token to an installed card for the cost of [ and 1< (for agendas/certain cards) or [ (for others).[3][4]

* **Scoring Agendas:** When an agenda's advancement tokens equal or exceed its requirement, it is fully advanced.[4] The Corporation can score it right before his turn begins or after completing an action by turning it faceup and placing it in his score area.[4]

* **Rezzing:** To rez an installed card, the Corporation pays its rez cost and turns the card faceup; this does not cost a click.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook · p.5 · Setup · The Golden Rule · Starter Decks · Corporation: · Runner:

[2] RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook · p.12 · Playing the Game · Turn Overview · Corporation's Turn · Rezzed and Unrezzed Cards · 1. Draw Phase

[3] RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook · p.4

[4] RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook · p.14 · Playing Operations · Advancing a Card · Advancing Assets · Trashing a Runner's Resource · Purging Virus Counters · Triggering [ Abilities

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 96 ms · ask 8805 ms · total 8903 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8903 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "To prepare a game of Android: Netrunner , carefully follow the steps below. Choose Sides: The players decide who will play as the Runner and who will play as the Corporation. Then, each player places his identity card faceup in his play area and takes a corresponding deck. Note: New players should u", "headingPath": "Setup · The Golden Rule · Starter Decks · Corporation: · Runner:", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "For [ , the Corporation plays an operation from his hand by paying its play cost. He then places it faceup in his play area, immediately resolves the effects of the operation, and trashes it. For [ and 1 < , the Corporation adds one advancement token to an installed card. Agendas can always be advan", "headingPath": "Playing Operations · Advancing a Card · Advancing Assets · Trashing a Runner's Resource · Purging Virus Counters · Triggering [ Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046486, "snippet": "In Android: Netrunner, the Corporation and the Runner alternate taking turns. Android: Netrunner is unusual in that the Runner and the Corporation are governed by different rules. Players should familiarize themselves with the rules for both sides. The Corporation always takes the first turn of the ", "headingPath": "Playing the Game · Turn Overview · Corporation's Turn · Rezzed and Unrezzed Cards · 1. Draw Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "In Android: Netrunner , the play areas for the Corporation and the Runner differ significantly from one another. However, both players have a credit pool, identity card, score area, and click tracker. Each player has a credit pool where he keeps the credit tokens he has available to spend. Spent cre", "headingPath": "Play Areas · Credit Pool · Corporation Play Area · Central Servers · Research and Development (R&D)- · Runner Play Area · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "For [ , the Runner installs a single program, resource, or piece of hardware faceup in his rig. An installed Runner card is active and does not have to be rezzed like a Corporation card. Note: The Runner's cards are always installed faceup and in a vertical orientation. ProgramsTo install a program,", "headingPath": "Installing Cards · Playing Events · Removing Tags · Making a Run · Triggering [ Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.042397, "snippet": "Players should become familiar with the following terms before reading the rest of the rules. Refer to the 'Glossary' on page 30 to look up other terms as needed. Active : An active card's abilities affect the game and can be triggered. Inactive : An inactive card's abilities do not affect the game ", "headingPath": "Important Vocabulary", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.042163, "snippet": "In a Living Card Game, players can customize their decks by adding and removing cards, creating a unique play experience.", "headingPath": "Deckbuilding", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.041292, "snippet": "The Runner's turn is divided into two phases, which he performs in the following order: Action Phase: The Runner has [ [ [ [ with which to perform actions. Discard Phase: The Runner discards down to his maximum hand size, if necessary. In his Action phase, the Runner takes actions by spending [ [ [ ", "headingPath": "Runner's Turn · 1. Action Phase · Drawing One Card · Gaining One Credit", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · The Golden Rule · Starter Decks · Corporation: · Runner:", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the Game · Turn Overview · Corporation's Turn · Rezzed and Unrezzed Cards · 1. Draw Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing Operations · Advancing a Card · Advancing Assets · Trashing a Runner's Resource · Purging Virus Counters · Triggering [ Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 279}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 279 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 279 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89880 of 2510 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 11:24

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Setup · The Golden Rule · Starter Decks · Corporation: · Runner:	p.5	0.048387 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Playing Operations · Advancing a Card · Advancing Assets · Trashing a Runner's Resource · Purging Virus Counters · Triggering [ Abilities	p.14	0.046635 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Playing the Game · Turn Overview · Corporation's Turn · Rezzed and Unrezzed Cards · 1. Draw Phase	p.12	0.046486 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Play Areas · Credit Pool · Corporation Play Area · Central Servers · Research and Development (R&D)- · Runner Play Area · …	p.6	0.046244 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Installing Cards · Playing Events · Removing Tags · Making a Run · Triggering [ Abilities	p.15	0.044337 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Important Vocabulary	p.5	0.042397 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Deckbuilding	p.24	0.042163 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	121
#8	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Runner's Turn · 1. Action Phase · Drawing One Card · Gaining One Credit	p.15	0.041292 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Why deckbuild?	p.24	#9	0.028783 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Setup · The Golden Rule · Starter Decks · Corporation: · Runner:	p.5	#1	0.048387 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)		p.4	#10	0.027619 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Important Vocabulary	p.5	#6	0.042397 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Deckbuilding	p.24	#7	0.042163 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Playing Operations · Advancing a Card · Advancing Assets · Trashing a Runner's Resource · Purging Virus Counters · Triggering [ Abilities	p.14	#2	0.046635 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Playing the Game · Turn Overview · Corporation's Turn · Rezzed and Unrezzed Cards · 1. Draw Phase	p.12	#3	0.046486 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Why deckbuild?	p.24	#29	0.020513 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Setup · The Golden Rule · Starter Decks · Corporation: · Runner:	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Playing the Game · Turn Overview · Corporation's Turn · Rezzed and Unrezzed Cards · 1. Draw Phase	p.12	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Android: Netrunner — Rulebook (corpus doc 279)	Playing Operations · Advancing a Card · Advancing Assets · Trashing a Runner's Resource · Purging Virus Counters · Triggering [ Abilities	p.14	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 96 ms · first delta 5319 ms · total 8903 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 96 ms · ask 8805 ms · gateway work 8903 ms · total 8903 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3011
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 728
tok/sec: 205.7 tok/sec — 728 output tokens in 3.539 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 17s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 207), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.