The Changing Nature of Words

Update: As of July 12, 2016, the Netrunner FAQ has "Swap" as a defined term, wherein two cards exchange position simultaneously,  thereby explaining how swapping devas doesn't count as installing the new one.  Of course, the cards with swap on them that have the word install still count as the new card being installed, because that's how that works.

As such, the lesson is, "Words only mean what the designers say they mean."

If you play Netrunner, you've probably come across (or at least, have heard of,) the Android: Netrunner Comprehensive Unofficial Rules, or ANCUR.  It's a fairly useful resource, allowing players to come up with rulings on cards that have not yet had official rulings on their usage.  Still, I'm of the opinion that they don't always get things right.  Allow me to explain.

On the unofficial ruling page for Democracy and Dogma, there is a ruling from Damon Stone, the lead designer, on Sadyojata.  His claim is that swapping Sadyojata with another Deva icebreaker does not count as installing the new icebreaker.  And while normally his status as lead designer would normally give him a free pass, this particular ruling seems to contradict how they have defined the term "swap."  But to get a better grasp on just how this particular word is used, let's run a search on NetrunnerDB for all cards with the word "swap" in their game text.

And the results are:
Aghora
Allele Repression
Exchange of Information
Jinteki Biotech: Life Imagined
Midori
Mumbad City Grid
Raman Rai
Sadyojata
Surfer
Synthetic Systems: The World Re-imagined
Tenma Line
Toshiyuki Sakai
Turntable
Vamadeva

So let's ignore the three Devas for now, since that's what we're trying to understand.  Also, let's ignore Exchange of Information and Turntable, because agendas in the score pile are not installed.  Still, we need to establish some sort of baseline definition for the word "swap."  To do that, let's start with Jinteki Biotech.

This seems fairly straightforward.  Before the first time of the game, we can switch any copy of Jinteki Biotech for another copy of Jinteki Biotech one time.  Of course, identity cards also aren't installed, but this does give us our baseline definition for "swap:" to exchange one card for another.

With that done, let's examine the remaining cards for understanding.

This card allows the Corporation to switch 1 card in their hand for 1 card in their discard pile for each advancement counter on this card if the card is rezzed and the corp trashes it for cost.  Again, the cards aren't installed, but this allows us to see how swapping works when swapping cards between HQ and Archives.

These three cards all involve swapping installed ice.  Tenma Line specifically says "swap 2 pieces of installed ice."  Mumbad City Grid allows the corp to swap a piece of ice that the runner just passed with another piece of ice protecting the server.  Surfer allows the runner to swap a piece of barrier ice currently being encountered with another piece of ice directly before or after it.  In all three cases, two installed cards are being swapped, so logically, we can deduce that the cards are not considered to be installed when swapped if they are already installed to begin with.

Now it gets interesting.  Both Midori and Toshiyuki Sakai say that we can swap an installed card with a card that is from HQ.  This differs from the previous scenarios where we are swapping two cards that are already installed, or swapping cards that are not installed.  Now we are swapping an installed card with a card that is not installed.  But what I think is most telling is the official ruling on these cards from the Android: Netrunner FAQ.  Specifically, page 8 for Midori reads, "Ice that is swapped is installed, but the install cost of the ice being swapped does not have to be paid," and page 10 for Toshiyuki Sakai reads, "The card that is swapped with Toshiyuki Sakai is installed."

So if we were using Midori or Toshiyuki Sakai with Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future, these cards would trigger the effect of that identity if it was the first time we installed a card on the Runner's turn.  Based on this, we can logically determine that swapping a card from hand with a card that is already installed means that the new card is considered to be installed.  Yet somehow, we are supposed to believe that the definition of the word "swap" is now different for the Runner than it is for the Corporation.

Of course, all of this is just my opinion.  Damon's ruling stands until the FAQ is updated, which I don't think will happen until Fear the Masses is released.  And to be honest, I'm just hoping that it will turn out this way so that a Deva/LLDS Processor deck would be viable.  As such, take what I say with a grain of salt, and hope that creativity wins out in this case.  Granted, I now see why A Game of Thrones: the Card Game Second Edition needed a Rules Reference Guide which defined practically every term that would be used.  And yet, players still debated on the meaning of "Limited."

Until next time, update your definitions.  Your words no longer mean what you think they mean.