Remote Control - Giving Techies Something New

One of the things that we planned on doing with the release of our Live & Direct expansion was to give new things to some of the roles that seemed to be left alone when building decks. The Rockers, MedTechs and Techies played second fiddle in almost every build to the Solos and the Nomads. We had already planned on changing the rules to allow only Techies to recover Equipment and Cyber, and allow the Fixer to effect the cost of Operations and the ability to use Long Range.

In conjunction with the rule change we were going to introduce a new Vehicle type called a Remote that could only be controlled / attached by a Techie, and would make them more valuable in a Skirmish situation. A player would pay the cost of the Remote, attach it as a piece of Equipment, and then at the beginning of the Battle phase, have the Remote take their place in the Skirmish. If the Remote is trashed or burned, it goes to the discard pile instead of the Techie.

Some of the rules that would have applied were as follows:

• A Remote Vehicle can only attach to a Techie
• A Techie can only have one Remote Vehicle attached to him at any one time
• At the start of the Battle Phase, a player may use a Techie to detach the Remote Vehicle and have it join a team
• During the Damage Control Phase of that players turn, the Remote Vehicle is re-attached, but used
• If a player chooses to use Movement on an attached Vehicle at the end of a Skirmish where there is a Remote Vehicle in the team, that Remote Vehicle is immediately used and re-attached to the Techie. Remote Vehicles cannot be used on multiple Runs
• While detached, the Remote Vehicle and the Techie use their respective stats when targetted
• While the Remote Vehicle is attached to the Techie, the DEF, SR and LR of the Remote Vehicle are zero - it is considered inactive
• All Remote Vehicles have a Movement and Carry capacity of +0

There were some advantages to using Remote Vehicles because of their special abilities that could be used while in the Skirmish. Some could lower the E-Sec or M-Sec of the Hit or Run being made, others could destroy pieces of Cyber or Equipment, while another was able to be sacrificed to remove a target runner from the Skirmish.

In all we felt that it was an interesting addition to the game and gave the Techie a lot more value to players. If you choose to use this rule concept in your games, please email me and let me know how it went.