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Radish posted:The biggest issue though is the price. It's now absurdly expensive to get into the game. I've gotten some people past the initial hump of learning the basics and then when they see the price tag on building current decks they decide they aren't that interested. NetRunner and LCGs in general may be expensive compared to board games (though even this is suspect, at $60 a pop for a game you maybe play 3 times ever because everyone keeps cancelling on you/wanting to play something new), but they are loving free compared to Magic.
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Jun 6, 2017 03:39
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Idk, I wasn't making competitive decks or anything but I could make a decent mtg deck to play with friends for like 30 bucks. I think my first netrunner deck that I actually wanted to make needed like 2-4 datapacks, and the core set. To be fair I guess I could make a bunch of other decks with those datapacks, whereas the cards I bought for mtg were pretty restrictive outside their decks. I think that netrunner just has a different deck building philosophy. Buy a couple datapacks with cards that're useful, build something, figure out what cards would be useful, buy those datapacks, etc. Compared to magic where you just design a deck and buy those very specific cards.
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Jun 6, 2017 05:00
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I really think the answers to a lot of FFG's competitive LCG problems are: A) An aggressive rotation schedule i.e. Core Set + latest two cycles + latest two deluxe boxes B) Support and card design for differing formats i.e. Standard rotation (see above), Legacy (all cards ever), maybe some kind of Limited format (in their latest podcast, Team Covenant suggested draft packs with a few all-art cards in them to add some incentive to buy cards you already have playsets of from regular packs) C) Official support for the above formats in tournament and game night settings with an actual judge program Rotation is what makes or breaks Magic, for instance. Right now, Standard is in a bad place because Wizards hosed with the rotation schedule, so cards that were supposed to rotate out by now are still in Standard. Cards that are coming into rotation were designed years ago with the knowledge that certain cards and card effects would have rotated out already. Since they altered the schedule, some cards have been around way too long and people are bored with them, and cards that would have been at a reasonable power level without the oldest set are borderline broken because it's still around. Really, though, since all cards are designed months/years in advance in both Magic and LCGs, the rotation probably needs to be determined from the outset. Netrunner taking almost two years to have a rotation after one was announced obviously meant that they had most of the cards for the next two years already in the pipeline, so they couldn't necessarily alter them to account for cards rotating out.
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Jun 6, 2017 05:21
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Yeah with the possible exception of agenda flood issues I don't think there's a fundamental problem with Netrunner that can't be fixed with a different cardpool. I've been having a ton of fun just playing with BigBoy's six starter decklists with my brother and it works really well
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Jun 6, 2017 05:50
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I actually don't think the World Champ decks are that great a solution because they devalue the other packs a bit. You don't need six copies of Architect, so you feel like you're getting less value from the ordinary data packs when it comes time to buy them. Totally agree that silver bullets are a really lovely design philosophy, though. And I agree that aggressive rotation would be good both for lowering the buy-in cost and allowing tweaks to game balance, or at least ensuring that nonsense like Rumour Mill doesn't stick around for too long. edit: also the more I play the more I have an irrational hatred for Film Critic, another stupid anti-fun card that's splashable by everyone and utterly neuters ID abilities that some Corps rely on as their win conditions. Zephro fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 07:56
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The game should have started rotation the second Mumbad was done. Makes the card pool smaller and a lot of power cards in later cycles are really helped by poo poo like Hostile Infrastructure. I'd honestly have Lunar rotate out at this point too.
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Jun 6, 2017 08:32
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:This is the wrongest thing on the last page. Netrunner is absurdly cheap, even without going on Craiglist/any of a billion trade sites/hell even Facebook, there's always someone selling out for 50% of retail, and the cost of every card ever printed in NetRunner is still less than the MSRP on 1 booster box of Eternal Masters, from which you can play 1 draft. ...Also how the gently caress do you get every card ever printed for under $240 anyway?
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Jun 6, 2017 08:35
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The other problem with the World Champ decks is that, by definition, they're the acme of powergaming and powergaming is often degenerate. If my only experience with Netrunner was Val DLR (which was the 2015 Runner deck) then I probably wouldn't be at all keen to buy into the game.
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Jun 6, 2017 09:23
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 WALL OF TEXT TOURNEY REPORT INCOMING Saturday 3rd was the Netrunner Regionals for Adelaide. The field was sixteen players, the top half of which would get a playmat, with the top player getting a bye at Nationals. There were also alt-art cards (Smoke) and counters for all attendees. I had originally not expected to go due to a scheduling conflict but after juggling things around I freed up my Saturday and I was off to Regionals! Due to this change in expectations I had not actually done much preparation for the tournament. I was determined to bring the HB: Architects of Tomorrow deck that I had been working on for a long while, but didn't have any plans for Runner. I have a staple Leela Logos deck that I've brought to previous tournaments and with some encouragement and helpful advice from workmates I made some needed improvements and dusted it off for yet another tourney. In short, the HB deck is the culmination of an idea that I've been working on for a long time, which is that bioroids work best when they are cheap and stacked deep, allowing for extreme tax and crippling never-advance plays. The Leela deck begins by pushing the Corp over and stamping on their neck, playing hyper-aggressively and trying to land high-impact run events. When the attacks run out of steam it then abruptly changes course by installing Logos and building resources, biding time until the Corp scores an agenda and you can punish them with devastating counter-punches. Decklists will be in another post, probably tomorrow. Game 1 vs Beck (Jinteki: Power Unleashed & Andromeda) Runner vs J:PU This game started with something resembling the Leela deck's best-case scenario, with unprotected central servers leading me to land multi-access run events. Stolen agendas then let me strip the ICE from another central where I land more blows, including Siphons. After a few turns I had largely dismantled the Corp's board state, drained their money and stolen two agendas, a Medical Breaktrhough and Fetal AI. The Fetal burned and triggered the J:PU ability, and I would also get stung later by a Bio-Ethics and follow-up Neural EMP when I ran to trash it. But without House of Knives and with the Corp too poor to Snare, the J:PU ability didn't end up taking much of a toll on my Stack, and the biggest batch of damage I took at once was a never-advanced Philotic Entanglement score hitting me for 2 damage and a mill. Instead, the real damage came in the form of a Harvester on R&D that I didn't expect the Corp to rez because I forgot that Jinteki have decent ICE they can rez for 1 credit after you Siphon them. Hitting the Harvester without a breaker and with a full hand resulted in the loss of 6 cards from my stack, and although my grip markedly increased in card quality from this, the loss in potential hit points was felt. My deck is a very poor deck so I would hit the Harvester again, this time intentionally, when I had a good window to land a Maker's Eye but didn't have enough credits to install and use an Abagnale beforehand. This cost me another 4 cards from my stack and in fact exhausted it, and I was now in the dangerous state where my cards in hand are all the hit points I would have from then on. Still, with my strong start and the Corp kept poor, I was able to pick up agendas where I could until I landed an Indexing through a DDoS on R&D to find the final points I needed. Corp vs Andromeda This was an Andy deck that didn't need much time setting up, playing Dirty Laundry and ditching cards to avoid the typical lack of pressure of an Andy opening. In fact the runner kept the pressure up and had a huge amount of credits quite early due to Daily Casts and Liberated Accounts, and set about installing most of her breakers. For my part I opened by setting up a taxing scoring server, and by baiting runs on this server I was able to start rezzing ICE on my centrals. Despite the fledgling scoring server I Biotic-scored my first agenda, and shortly after a second. These were both Accelerated Beta Tests, feeling risky for the first one I fired it and wound up with 2 free ICE and no trashed agendas. I kept my good luck by not firing the second one. A little while into the mid-game Andy returned fire by setting up a Sneakdoor on my undefended Archives and started raiding HQ. This was worrying as it occured at a time where I held quite a few agendas in hand and Andy ended up stealing two of them. I tried to draw heavily into ICE but none was forthcoming, although I did get an Ash. By now the runner had drained most of her credits from installing and using breakers so I installed the Ash on HQ as a decent bulwark against the Sneakdoor. I actually went off to check with the TO because I wasn't certain whether I needed to install the Ash on HQ or Archives to have its ability fire. The TO decided on HQ but if he was wrong then it's probably not a huge deal as I could have freely installed it on either server to achieve this goal (unless Sneakdoor somehow avoids Ash entirely). This had a desired effect as the Sneakdoor runs abated for a while as Andy began moneying back up. At this point, though, time was fairly close to being called and at 4AP to 4 I wanted to have a shot at the timed win. I IAA'd (Install-Advance-Advance) a Global Food Initiative in the scoring server and passed my turn quickly, praying that the runner wouldn't have a dirty trick to get in and that I would have time to score out. At this point Andy was still thankfully low on credits and didn't contest the server. She saved up for a last ditch Sneakdoor run and missed the sole agenda I had in hand. Next turn I scored out the GFI for a full win. Current Score: 2 - 0 Game 2 vs Andru from Brisbane (HB: Ending the Fun & Andromeda) Corp vs Andromeda Andru had a stack of Criminal IDs sitting alongside so I knew that there was a Rebirth floating around somewhere in his deck. For this game I drew into a lot of install economy (Lateral Growth and Advanced Assembly Lines) quite early so I was able to quickly set up decent ICE on most servers, and shortly made HQ too expensive for Siphons to be worthwhile. This Andy also started developing early but didn't install any breakers, instead opting for repeated Earthrise Hotels to work his way through his deck quickly. I drew into a Biotic Labor and ABT fairly early and although I could score it I held off from doing so for much of the early game to focus on keeping my credits up. Eventually I built a strong scoring remote and baited an expensive run by installing a Caprice, with Caprice then bouncing the run. The runner seemed to lose interest immediately in contesting that remote, and after some Hedge Funds and Blue Level Clearance I had enough credits for a decent scoring attempt. I installed a 3/2 and Ash into the scoring remote and the runner didn't try to contest it so I scored out. I then continued the pressure by IAA-ing a GFI and then runner simply let me have that as well. Instead the runner was focusing on hitting my centrals and building up Turning Wheel counters but with each run I was able to rez another bioroid and so by the mid-game every server was very expensive for the runner, with lots of high-strength Code Gates that the runner had to break with Abagnale. I also had some decent luck at the tempo of my agenda draws, with the runner Legwork-ing me at a time where I had no agendas in hand. To finish up the game I installed a Crisium Grid on HQ to protect my credit reserves against Siphon and try to Fast Advance the final two points. The runner hit HQ and trashed the Crisium, giving a clear signal that a Siphon is incoming and it lands the next turn. At that point I had a Biotic Labor in hand so I focus on protecting R&D and have to click for credits for a couple of turns. The runner then begins to focus on R&D but it is far too expensive to achieve any meaningful lock and in one of the gaps I draw into a 3/2. With exactly 7cr in the bank I Biotic the agenda to win. Runner vs HB:EtF It was interesting facing another player with Criminal and HB, and I was keen to see what his gameplan was for EtF. It turned out that unlike my Corp, his did not have a huge amount of ICE or wasn't drawing into it. He wasn't stacking ICE anywhere near as deep and so I was able to get very far with early game run events by clicking through them, so long as I was happy to let some ICE become rezzed. Early on I click through a Fairchild 3.0 to land a Maker's Eye, steal an agenda to strip away his HQ ICE, and then land a Legwork to steal more agendas. This gives me a brutally strong start and I am up to 6AP to 0 by around turn 4. With Siphons I have kept the Corp very poor but he gets to work trying to stabilise his board state. This is slow progress as an Employee Strike is denying him the drip credits from his ID. Now with a commanding lead I decide to make the transition and I hold off the speculative attacks in favour of developing my board state and set up an powerful post-score counterpunch. At this point I am double-tagged from an earlier Siphon and hadn't cleared the tags because I wasn't fearing tag punishment and needed my credits to keep my momentum up. I even have a Temujin Contact and Same Old Thing installed that the Corp could trash but doesn't. Later when I clear tags the Corp tells me he forgot I was tagged and would have trashed my resources if he had realised. A shame but I don't feel like I tricked him or anything. I clearly took the tags and never cleared them, and I don't think it's my job to remind him each turn that I'm tagged? After a short while the Leela counter-punch board state is in effect, with both Logos and Aaron Marron. By now the Corp had set up a decent scoring remote with Caprice and expensive ICE but I never plan to contest it. After the Corp uses it to score out a 3/2 I Logos tutor for my Indexing. The Corp is now being careful to score out on click 2 to replace the ICE bounced by my Leela ability. With this behaviour I see no point stripping back his R&D ICE since I gain nothing by revealing my game plan so I use my Leela bounces to strip back HQ ICE, bluffing that I intend to Legwork or Siphon. The Corp then IAAs in the scoring server shortly afterwards and with this quick pacing I start to think that his previously depleted HQ has refilled with agendas. The Corp hasn't been doing much other than installing ICE and clicking for creds and I figure that it's because I've been keeping him poor, but now I suspect it might be because he is agenda flooded. I land a Legwork and access 3 non-agendas, and follow up with a couple of single accesses that also reveal nothing. The Corp finishes scoring a Global Food Initiative in the scoring server, scoring it out on click 1 so I once again strip away a HQ ICE and he replaces it, and I Logos tutor a DDoS. I spend a few turns forcing the Corp to rez remote ICE and crediting up. The Corp is on match point but I have a plan to close the game. The plan is to install and play DDoS, pay to get through the rezzed Fairchild 3.0 on R&D to land an Indexing, then Planned Assault an Inside Job to snatch the winning agenda on the cheap. Unfortunately my math (basic counting?) is wrong as I would need 5 clicks to 1) Install DDoS, 2) Install Passport, 3) Indexing, and 4&5) Planned Assault. I realise this and desperately figure out an alternate plan, and the new plan is to fire the DDoS, install the Passport and then use the installed Same Old Thing to play a Maker's Eye. My opponent is surprised at the unexpected hit on R&D and tension is high enough that I get the feeling that the game will come down to this. Three cards are accessed and none of them are agendas. My opponent then ends the game with Biotic Labor and a 3/2. After the game my opponent tells me he was pretty heavily agenda flooded for most of the game, which would explain why his playstyle was so constrained (not due to econ denial) and why he could offload agendas into the scoring server so readily. I had held a Sneakdoor in hand for half of the game and could have raided HQ at any time but I didn't because I had decided HQ was bare after hitting it with a Legwork and finding nothing. Turns out that there were 2 agendas in hand at the time, either of which would have handed me the game, but I had missed them both. It seems like very poor luck (10%) on my part and I think my conclusions were right with the information that I had, and I couldn't have known better, and installing the speculative Sneakdoor would have stumped my fledgling economy at a poor time. So I think I still made the right call based on what I knew at the time? Current Score: 3 - 1 Game 3 vs Steve (Weyland: Gagarin & MaxX) Runner vs Gagarin This was a Gagarin deck with light ICE on centrals (Enigma & Tour Guide) and then a huge amount of naked assets. It had lot of asset econ, recursion with Friends in High Places and even included Museum of History spam, and at one point the TO came to tell the Corp that Museum was erratad to become unique and so the Corp had to trash one. His R&D had been left initially undefended and single accesses picked me up Hollywood Renovation. R&D was later defended with a Tour Guide that I could jump over and keep the Corp too poor to rez. Once his asset econ was set up, though, the Corp became very rich in a short amount of time and although I installed Mongoose to deal with Tour Guide, the sheer amount of installed assets made it seem to double in subroutines every time I approached it. About 1/3rd of the remote servers were unrezzed and despite my poor economy I made it a goal to check the face down remotes intermittently to make the Corp unconfident about trying to Never-Advance agendas. I also played my Freedom through Equality to aim for winning off another 5/3 but Corp promptly dispelled it with Paywall Implementation. I think I would later end up on 5 agenda points so it might not have mattered. By the mid game the Corp had a presumably strong remote server, possibly Tour Guide, but I didn't end up contesting it at all. I instead focused on trying to win out of the lightly-ICED centrals. After a short while I prepared for a possibly game-winning move by building up enough econ and then paying heavily though the now-12-sub Tour Guide (not outrageous with Mongoose but still bad) to land an Indexing. Unfortunately this did not turn up any agendas, so at least I didn't have to pay for another access. I think he was likely running a minimal-agenda deck (I would assume Hollywood Renovation is for that purpose and also to possibly FA out with a Mumbad Construction Co?) but he wasn't dumping any cards to the bottom of R&D with Sensie Actors Union so I'm guessing I was just unlucky with the Indexing. I spend much of the game with low money, landing multi-access that doesn't find anything. I don't bother trying to contest the remote because it had two cards that are likely to be defensive upgrades so I figure it would be a waste of time (I had swapped Interdiction out of my Leela deck before the tourney and now maybe think I should have kept it in). Before long the Corp has outrageous money and solid defenses and is able to score out in the remote server before I can find victory. Corp vs MaxX The very first MaxX draw dumps a Severus Stim Implant in the heap and I strongly suspect that this is the same deck that a workmate has been running, or at least very close, where the plan is to draw a lot of cards with Duggars and then spend them on Severus for powerful multi-access digs. A few turns later he installs The Emptied Mind and my suspicion is confirmed. I work to ICE up R&D as much as possible, and get a strong scoring remote in order to bait runs, and HQ is only moderately defended. Early on I see a Levy AR Lab Access land in the heap from the MaxX ability and Ark Lockdown had showed up in my opening hand. This strikes me as a strong opportunity so I plan to wait as long as I can and then Ark Lockdown the Levy. The timing is important as if I play it too early then the runner can still attempt a deep dig with his remaining cards, but if I wait too long then runner might trigger the Levy early to be safe. Eventually the runner has 1/5th of his stack remaining so I Ark Lockdown the Levy and hold my breath. A turn passes where the runner doesn't have enough cards for a full Duggars draw and I wonder if I've won the game in one fell swoop. Unfortunately the runner had been holding on to a Levy since the start of the game and plays it to reset his deck. Although I didn't knock him out in one blow, it appears that he didn't have the influence for a third Levy and had blown through the first cycle of his deck while setting up. This meant there would be only a single (and diminished) deck for him to work with, and this would end up resulting in only two full Severus digs on R&D. During his set up I had managed to Never Advance an agenda in my scoring remote, rezzing my R&D ICE on his run and protecting the agenda with an Ash. I aimed to drain his econ with costly runs to prevent him from setting up properly while he MaxX'd through his remaining deck. He didn't take the bait much longer and focused only on setting up, allowing me to Biotic out another agenda, and the Biotic would later get cycled back in with Pre-emptive Action. The turn came for the first Severus dig and I had 4 taxing ICE on R&D. Not having the spare clicks, he had to pay for all the Bioroids in full with his recursion breakers, which ended up being extremely expensive for him. The full 6-card dig landed and each card was revealed with baited breath. The result was 2 scored agendas, taking him to 4 agenda points against my 4. At this point I was extremely poor and worked to building up my credit reserves so I can afford to rez my remote server ICE and keep shoring up R&D. The runner seemed mostly expended so I put a 5th ICE over R&D and would end up with 6 on my scoring remote. He did some tentative runs at HQ and thankfully managed to avoid to steal the 3/2 I was keeping in there, with each run allowing me to rez more ICE on R&D. A few more turns and all the ICE on all my servers were rezzed, probably the largest ICE fortress I have ever built in this game. Without a need to keep money to rez ICE anymore I am free to Biotic another 3/2 to get to 6 agenda points. My plan is to wait for another Biotic and 3/2 to show up and then Fast Advance the win, as the runner didn't seem to have Clot or any other form of interruption. While I focus on drawing, the runner has by now saved up enough for another Severun run on R&D, made cheaper with Sifr, and lands the second and final 6-card dig. I had used Jackson a few turns earlier to return operations economy into R&D to thicken it out. I announce that "I'm going to get away with it" and show the runner 6 cards, and among them is only one agenda, bringing him up to 6AP. I had gotten away with it. I rebuild my credit pool and play Friends in High Places to retrieve an Ash and install it on R&D. I have a Biotic in hand and just need to keep the runner out of R&D and wait for a final 3/2 to arrive. The runner performs a final Severus run on HQ and drops 4 cards in order to get 3 accesses, and I try not to let on that there are no agendas there to steal. After this dig the runner is now completely spent with no cards in hand. This gives him 5 clicks a turn (from Emptied Mind) and he makes single-access runs on HQ, clicking through both a Ravana and Eli. But there are no agendas for him to steal and when I mandatory draw into a 3/2 I Biotic it immediately for the win. Current Score: 4 - 2 Game 4 vs Justin (NBN: SYNC & Hayley Kaplan) Runner vs SYNC Between earlier rounds another player had told me that he was killed by a Boom and couldn't shake the tags easily because of the SYNC ID. This was probably a light form of scouting for me, then, but it had just come up in conversation rather than me trying to seek anything out. Regardless, with this news I quickly suspected that this Sync deck was on kill. I began by hitting the Corp hard with multi-access, stealing an agenda from R&D then bouncing the HQ ICE and Siphoning. I was happy to float tags, but only in the early game and when the Corp was completely poor. I ended up dismantling the Corp's board state in a few turns and made it to 4 agenda points before he started getting his credits up. I made sure to install an Aaron Marron just before my last multi-access and the steal gave me Aaron counters that I used to shed the Siphon tags. The Corp spends his early game on light defence and scoring out 2/1s, first a 15 Minutes then a Breaking News, so I begin to fear the 24/7 News Cycle kill. Luckily my Aaron is safe on the table and the BN score gives him two counters that I preserve jealously, hoping the Corp has no way to trash him. I stop running and install Logos and breakers to get ready to perform a counter-punch after the next score. I don't have any damage prevention yet so I avoid running for about five turns in a row, spending the time working on econ and giving the Corp no excuse to land a Hard Hitting News that I had seen on top of R&D in the first few turns. I draw into a Plascrete and my plan now becomes clear, I will avoid tags until the next score and then hit hard, installing the Plascrete and going full tag-me. I think I end up with 8 tags by the end of the game. In the mid-game the Corp sacrifices the 15 minutes to 24/7 and lands two tags on me, and I clear them immediately with Aaron. He doesn't have another agenda scored, and I don't see how he can 24/7 past my Aaron as long as I have him installed. I figure the Corp will likely try to bait me into runs to drop the Hard Hitting News. With regular Hedge Funds and Sweeps Weeks he has the ability to win the HHN trace if he needs to. I then notice my moment has arrived and I pop DDoS and raid R&D with a Maker's Eye and encounter a Data Raven. I not only take the tag but I don't even bother contesting the trace for the Data Raven counter - I am now in Tag-Me Land. The Maker's Eye picks up another 2 agenda points, bringing me to 6. I run Archives and pass an ICE and through a Pop-Up Window. The Corp announces his defeat, but then realises that I'm still tagged and the 2 Quantum Predictive Models in Archives go to his score area instead of mine. It seems the outer ICE on Archives was a Data Raven to keep the QPMs safe and my DDoS had filled him with dread, but it seems the game hasn't ended yet. I finish the DDoS turn with an Account Siphon, thinking the Corp can't Boom me if he can't afford it. It doesn't take long for the Corp to bounce back from the credit situation and I'm very concerned about Boom so after more random accesses on R&D I finish the next turn with another Account Siphon. The Corp rezzes a Turnpike and ends up with a single credit. I just take the Turnpike tag and think about a regular access before I decide to Siphon the Corp for his last sole credit because 1cr is within striking distance of Boom if the Corp plays Sweeps Week for the first click. I check Archives and see that two Sweeps Weeks are accounted for. The Corp tells me he has been counting Sweeps Weeks too. I now plan to transition to the next phase of my plan, which is to keep my handsize up and install Plascrete, hopefully enough to survive two Booms (barring shenanigans like Best Defence). I begin the turn with a speculative run on HQ hoping to close the game before it gets to that. The Corp offers his cards to me at such an angle that I catch a glimpse underneath them and can tell which one is the Boom. Honesty overrides my desire to win and I inform my opponent about this and he shuffles the cards and re-offers them to me. I pick a card randomly and it turns out to be the Project Beale that wins me the game. Corp vs Hayley My opponent informs me has considered playing Architects of Tomorrow in the past and mentions that he wonders what it can do, and I respond that I'll show him. I'm off to a strong start with flowing install-econ that I use to set up strong defences on my centrals and I also drop a SanSan City Grid that he doesn't check. I rez it and score out an ABT, seeing a potential rushing window as he doesn't have much econ and needs to set up his board state. Sure enough he leaves the SanSan alone while he sets up and I top-deck a second ABT that I immediately score out. This is a very strong start for me that convinces the runner to hurry up and trash the SanSan. My opponent shortly recovers his econ situation but by that time I have a double-ICEd remote that I install into. He runs the remote, and I hard rez the unique Fairchild (Mother Fairchild / Fairchild Prime / Omega Fairchild). The run isn't fruitful as my install was only an Ash and I announce that I plan to install something in this new, very taxing server every turn. With some Shaper trickery he searches for and installs a Cyber-Cypher on this remote but even with that efficient breaker it costs him 8 credits each time he wants to check my server. I begin installing into it every turn and my bluff game is strong, risking nothing but inducing him to check it a few times, greatly draining his once-vast credit pool. At one point he runs on the remote it seems he is too poor for him to break in, and the plan turns out to be triggering Dean Lister and then spending cards to boost Faust. Now I had read the Unofficial FAQ a few days beforehand but my opponent wasn't aware that Lister had been UFAQ'd to update its strength boost when the number of cards in hand changes. An honest mix-up but I didn't offer to let him take the run back as I had critically revealed information by rezzing a Ravana 1.0. My opponent was slightly crestfallen and I offered to show him the UFAQ but he was satisfied to take my word for it. Unintended stuff-up on his part, and I'm sure that neither him nor I felt good about it. By the mid game the runner has several Daily Casts, an Aesops and Kati Jones and as such is able to generate vast sums of credits on short demand, but even this can't keep up with the relentless toll of checking my server every turn (now 11cr per check). Eventually he stops checking and my timing is perfect as I score out a the Project Vitruvius I had risked on a Never Advance play. An earlier R&D dig had been fruitful for him so we were on 6AP to 2 and I'm feeling confident. My defensive upgrades had been expended and then trashed from using them as remote server bait, but I then draw into a Biotic and aim to close the game the next time I draw a 3/2. I see the runner has a Self Modifying Code installed so I half-expect that a Clot might appear. I am fine to take the risk since, if the attempt fails, the agenda will still be in the expensive scoring remote and can work to help bankrupt the runner again. I Biotic and IAA the agenda in the remote server and sure enough the runner fetches a Clot. There is a Cyberdex in the deck but I was playing aggressively to make the most of my strong lead and wanted to catch the runner out on a prospective scoring window rather than waiting any longer. Unfortunately the unexpected then happens as the runner begins his next turn by moneying up and then playing Mad Dash to get into the remote. I had expected the runner to fetch the agenda but figured he would still need to steal two more to win. With Mad Dash he now only needs one more agenda to win the game - unexpectedly putting him on match point. This would greatly influence my baiting potential. The runner then finishes the turn by installing a Sacrificial Construct - a wise move because I had intended to purge away the Clot to allow for another Biotic (I had yet to see a Clone Chip). My plan from now was to purge every turn until the Clot dies, then maybe Ark Lockdown it, and then Biotic out the final agenda while keeping R&D prohibitive to get into. I purge away the Sacrificial Construct and on the runner's turn they money up and land a Maker's Eye. The third card is an agenda that wins them the game. It was a shame to lose this game after getting off to such a strong start but this was the mistake of the Biotic play. I had known full well that Clot was a risk and was fine with the repercussions. What I had not expected was the risk of Mad Dash giving me one less agenda steal to play around with. Final Score: 5 - 3 Conclusion The scores are read out from bottom to top and I am wracked with anticipation as they get to 10th and 9th, hoping I would make the top 8 and score a playmat. I am neither 10th nor 9th and I feel relief that I have achieved the top 8. Then several more names come out that are not mine. The final result is far better than I expected - I am tied for 4th place out of sixteen players. Unfortunately the tiebreaker (Strength of Schedule) does not go my way and I have missed out of the cut to the top four. Regardless, I have finally obtained my first won playmat, playing with it in future will be a sign of this day's success. In fact, my personal goal had only been to finish in the top half of the rankings, and I am very pleased with exceeding this by so much. I am also pleased with the performance of my decks, having gone 3/4 with my HB:AoT and 2/4 with my Leela, and with a "just barely lost" game for each. After having evolved and brought the Leela deck to the last few tournaments in a row I think I am now satisfied to finally retire this fun deck and look into bringing someone else to the next tourney, maybe a Shaper. I am especially pleased with my HB deck performing so strongly against high-level tournament decks. This is the culmination of a very long evolution that began with The Foundry, Viktor 1.0 and Markus. Back then I was mucking around with Bioroids and the cards that ostensibly aimed to support them with click manipulation - Heinlein Grid and Strongbox. This never found any real success and I realised that the clicks and credits spent on those could simply be spent on more Bioroids. In fact, the entire click-to-break downside was most effectively mitigated by simply having as many Bioroids as possible, favouring deep servers of small Bioroids instead of fewer-but-larger ones. As time went on the deck was vastly improved with new card releases. Firstly the caliber of Bioroids was increasing with Ravana, Vikram and the large Fairchilds. These were strong yet also relatively affordable, and very expensive to break with traditional breakers. Secondly the install-econ cards, Lateral Growth and Advanced Assembly Lines, prevent the large amounts of required installs from being a tempo hit. Instead you can install the ICE and become able to afford them at the same time, and as added benefit you can now rebound quickly from one of the deck's worst predators, Account Siphon. The final card release of note was Architects of Tomorrow itself, that not only allows you to double down on the never-advance playstyle for significant profit, and not only allows you to make the most from even Siphon hits, but allows you to protect your servers with minimal amounts of credits. Between the install-econ and AoT I played most of my games with between 3 and 8 credits, but always able to afford all the installs and all the rezzes. The little credit pool I had was almost entirely free for Biotic, SanSan and defensive upgrades. I firmly believe that, with this playstyle, AoT is at least the equal of EtF if not more.
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Jun 6, 2017 10:39
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:This is the wrongest thing on the last page. Netrunner is absurdly cheap, even without going on Craiglist/any of a billion trade sites/hell even Facebook, there's always someone selling out for 50% of retail, and the cost of every card ever printed in NetRunner is still less than the MSRP on 1 booster box of Eternal Masters, from which you can play 1 draft. Magic isn't cheap but Netrunner is expensive when you factor in it has no resale value. The game isn't designed around the second hand market so you are only getting lots from people that have given up the game. I'm not sure why you are comparing Netrunner to an eternal masters draft, that's like the most apples and oranges comparison since no regular person one is doing those consistently. Part of the reason that box is so expensive is because there's the chance you'll get cards that have big value. With Netrunner if you want it cheap you are buying everything second hand, meaning you are not going to have access to datapacks until someone decides they don't want to play anymore. That's also ignoring that you can pay $15 to play a Magic draft and potentially make your money back from prizes or luck into a card you can sell. You may even use those cards in some deck or trade them for stuff you want after playing the game. Even if you come out with nothing you've had an evening of gaming for very little investment; as you say cheaper than a $60 board game you play one time. Netrunner doesn't have that cheap entry point. The only local store near me that even tried to run Netrunner drafts gave up because the owner said she was losing money on it. Also part of my point is that while both games are expensive, one has a much bigger audience with events everywhere and every week so finding games is easier and you can justify the cost better. I have spent a bunch of money on this game but I really would be fine if they cycled out cards more regularly while slowed down releases since it would allow people to get in more easily as opposed to having to either dump a ton of money upfront or hope they can find someone selling their collection. I'm not saying that Magic is affordable if you want to go all in (I agree it's very expensive) but I think Netrunner is way too pricey for many new people to get into since the cards you needs are so spaced out in a ton of datapacks, especially when the community to play it in is much more limited (which sucks since I'd love to play it more). Zephro posted:The other problem with the World Champ decks is that, by definition, they're the acme of powergaming and powergaming is often degenerate. If my only experience with Netrunner was Val DLR (which was the 2015 Runner deck) then I probably wouldn't be at all keen to buy into the game. Yeah I agree. I bought those with the idea of using them to teach my girlfriend how to play and they look fun to me, but then luckily realized that they were not good learner decks at all. I'm glad they sell them since I like the idea but they aren't for beginners. Eggplant Squire fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 13:01
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I think the price of the game would be easier to bear if there weren't so many utterly garbage cards in each data pack. There's usually only one or two good cards and a few niche cards in a pack, with the other 50% - 75% being binder fodder. The CCG model is built around the hunt for those rares but I'm not sure there's an excuse for it in an LCG. If the writers and devs want to tell a story, they should just write a loving book instead of trying to tell it via a card game. Gameplay-wise, the biggest problem I see is how the most competitive decks seem to be really efficient misery engines designed to remove the other player's ability to play the game at all. I get why that would be a powerful strategy but it's not really a fun way for one of the players to spend their time.
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Jun 6, 2017 13:30
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Core 2.0 y'all believe it
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Jun 6, 2017 14:00
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Just want to point out I updated my list of what I'm selling on the last page, because I forgot I have FFG plastic tokens I can offer.
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Jun 6, 2017 16:25
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sonatinas posted:Core 2.0 y'all believe it This is my opinion as someone who's more or less a casual dabbler in Netrunner at best so take it for what it is but I think the time for a Core 2.0 to make a big impact on FFG Netrunner has come and gone. Unless they're planning on paring a 2.0 core set with a new and very aggressively curated set rotation policy I don't foresee it having much of an impact given that while the core set does contain a number of "problem cards" that it's not really the only place you can find stuff like that, nor is it the sole purveyor of cards which encourage people to ignore the assumed gameplay loop of Netrunner in favor of strategies that are more dominant. Yithian posted:I think the price of the game would be easier to bear if there weren't so many utterly garbage cards in each data pack. There's usually only one or two good cards and a few niche cards in a pack, with the other 50% - 75% being binder fodder. The CCG model is built around the hunt for those rares but I'm not sure there's an excuse for it in an LCG. If the writers and devs want to tell a story, they should just write a loving book instead of trying to tell it via a card game. The problem isn't that competitive players bend the game into these "misery engines," it's that the designers allowed that to be possible in the first place. Of course people are going to tryhard in a competitive game, that's the entire point. It's that FFG wound their way around towards making the game reward these sorts of strategies that leads to people making decks like this. The first sign of "Netrunner by avoiding everything about Netrunner" should have been a big red flag and maybe they thought they could silver bullet things back into place, but the number one fundamental rule game designers need to have burning in their brain like an 80 foot neon sign at all times is that when given a choice between something that wins and something that's "fun," people are going to choose the thing that wins 99% of the time so you need to make sure those two things overlap pretty strongly on the Venn diagram.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:19
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Competitive Magic, however, has a remarkably high number of un-fun decks, but they have interaction. Legacy is a format that has 20/20 creatures swinging on turn 2 often enough, but there's counterplay. NetRunner feels like (especially with Siphon spam and the oppressive currents) there isn't any counterplay other than "just having it" (whether that's a corp current or Sealed Vault or whatever). How can FFG increase the amount of counterplay without more silver bullets to silver bullets (like Rumor Mill to Caprice)
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Jun 6, 2017 20:01
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I think Account Siphon and Caprice have a decent amount of counterplay, honestly. Playing around Siphon takes a lot of practice and experience and makes for really interesting decision points, and Caprice is an interesting and pretty reasonable win condition for glacier decks in a world without rumor mill, considering runners can play PolOp/councilman/interdiction (flexible cards which are pretty reasonable against non-glacier decks, but not oppressively unbeatable for the corp), or you can just siphon/vamp/win on centrals/blow up and derez ice. Edit: like, I agree that there are issues with some parts of netrunner' current design, but I had a lot of fun playing the game when andysucker and RP were top dogs, and I really don't understand how strategies which are predicated on making runs and defending 4 separate servers, respectively, are uninteractive. fomo sacer fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 20:08
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Kai Tave posted:The problem isn't that competitive players bend the game into these "misery engines," it's that the designers allowed that to be possible in the first place. Of course people are going to tryhard in a competitive game, that's the entire point. It's that FFG wound their way around towards making the game reward these sorts of strategies that leads to people making decks like this. The first sign of "Netrunner by avoiding everything about Netrunner" should have been a big red flag and maybe they thought they could silver bullet things back into place, but the number one fundamental rule game designers need to have burning in their brain like an 80 foot neon sign at all times is that when given a choice between something that wins and something that's "fun," people are going to choose the thing that wins 99% of the time so you need to make sure those two things overlap pretty strongly on the Venn diagram. This is my point entirely. Obviously cards that turn your opponent into a proverbial goldfish are always going to be really powerful and obviously people are going to use those cards because they help them win. My point was that It seems crazy to me that FFG keeps printing cards that prevent half of the people playing Netrunner from actually playing Netrunner.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:26
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There needs to be: - Core 2.0 to remove problem cards - Faster cycling to make sure bullshit doesn't stay in meta for too long - Outright bans because MWL won't stop anyone from making these lists - Review design policy to figure out whats "good"/"fun" interaction and what isn't - Hire some actual playtesters instead of having volunteers because holy poo poo
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Jun 6, 2017 20:39
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The Deleter posted:- Review design policy to figure out whats "good"/"fun" interaction and what isn't I suppose prison decks are the Corp equivalent of a lot of those Runner cards, but they seem to depend on interactions between a bunch of cards that are fine by themselves. Though I guess MWL'ing Museum of History was a good idea. Card design should emphasise broad utility, trade-offs and interaction between the players. It should avoid non-interactivity, overly narrow applicability and silver bullet-ness. edit: some random cards that seem like good design to me: Temujin (though the numbers need tweaking), Targeted Marketing, Account Siphon, Plop. Zephro fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 20:57
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On the corp side, political assets and alliance cards are all designed pretty poorly. Maybe there's something salvageable in "influence you can turn off" and "assets that can't be iced," but they missed the mark so badly in practice it's probably not even worth trying to save. Edit: they're not really oppressive in the same way that RM and blackmail are, but they encourage such linear deck design that it's not really surprising in retrospect how uniformly dumb they've ended up being. Edit2: basically I don't think it's a coincidence that every prison deck, as well as ctm and etf moon, is reliant on multiple alliance/political cards. fomo sacer fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 21:16
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The Deleter posted:There needs to be: FFG seems like they still lean really hard on the "pay our freelancers like poo poo and don't hire professional playtesters" style of traditional game design which is unfortunate for a company that's rushing to put out as many games and expansions thereof as humanly possible.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:57
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I dunno. The political assets are badly tuned (ie they're too powerful) but that's not the same as being badly designed. The idea of an asset you don't want to ice doesn't seem un-fun, or like it removes decisions or removes a key part of the game. They just messed up on the trade-off and made them too good. Rumour Mill is bad design because it basically reads "a bunch of your cards do nothing" and there's no real way to make that fun or interesting. Cerebral Static is equally bad design even though it's much less powerful.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:59
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Aggressive rotation would be a good way to fix it since a lot of problems are with tuning, poo poo even rumor mill could probably be saved if it was terminal. There's a lot of cards that need small tweaks but there's no good way to fix them.
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Jun 6, 2017 22:40
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It just sounds like they need to reboot the game with better designers.
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Jun 6, 2017 23:10
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GrandpaPants posted:It just sounds like they need to reboot the game with better designers. I think that's what a lot of people are hoping L5R is.
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Jun 7, 2017 00:17
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Zephro posted:I dunno. The political assets are badly tuned (ie they're too powerful) but that's not the same as being badly designed. The idea of an asset you don't want to ice doesn't seem un-fun, or like it removes decisions or removes a key part of the game. Well, the de facto distinction between competitively playable assets has always been those you throw into a fresh remote, and those that temporarily go into your scoring remote. Which makes the 'drawback' of political assets pretty laughable. DBS is a well-designed card. Sensie is not. Building a second ice-protected remote has never been very practical, and is only really used with assets that help glacier up the scoring remote, like IT Department or Sandburg. And since you need a bunch of more ice than usual in your deck for that, those decks can't be asset spam decks. Ok, there are a few exceptions, and those I do consider 'good' Netrunner, like protecting your Sundews in RP. But the crux has always been, if you focus your deck on assets, that lowers your ice count, which means you can't protect these assets with ice. It took a while for the designers to really understand that problem, which is why a bunch of early designed assets had laughable rez/trash costs. Lunar and SanSan had a slow increase of playable assets which was fine and made asset strategies get interesting, but then Mumbad went way off the rails.
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Jun 7, 2017 00:24
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CirclMastr posted:I think that's what a lot of people are hoping L5R is. If FFG manages to screw up L5R I am done with them.
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Jun 7, 2017 00:51
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For me the ffg lcg thing ends with netrunner, sad to see a somewhat unique theme be replaced just like that. vv Cyberpunk or death Orange DeviI fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 05:27
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please knock Mom! posted:For me the ffg lcg thing ends with netrunner, sad to see a somewhat unique theme be replaced just like that. Arkham Horror LCG is real, real good (and they managed to do it with just their 4th loving try at a Call of Cthulhu board/card game!  )
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Jun 7, 2017 06:04
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CirclMastr posted:I think that's what a lot of people are hoping L5R is. L5R people gonna find out that FFG OP is not up to the task. I'll never get into another FFG competitive game after ANR.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:01
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please knock Mom! posted:For me the ffg lcg thing ends with netrunner, sad to see a somewhat unique theme be replaced just like that. Pretty much this.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:05
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:Arkham Horror LCG is real, real good (and they managed to do it with just their 4th loving try at a Call of Cthulhu board/card game! Call of Cthulhu CCG 2004 Arkham Horror 2005 Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game 2008 Elder Sign 2011 Mansions of Madness 2011 Eldritch Horror 2013 Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition 2016 Arkham Horror: The Card Game 2016 Time to get pumped for Netrunner 8.0 I guess.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:23
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Hannibal Rex posted:Call of Cthulhu CCG 2004 If you are counting board games Netrunner has already had 3 of those now.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:47
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I wouldn't buy into any other LCG past a core set now. Netrunner's really great, but FFG have handed it and other ones poorly so I'm not exactly keen to jump on, or actually keep buying more Netrunner right now.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:57
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The Deleter posted:I wouldn't buy into any other LCG past a core set now. Netrunner's really great, but FFG have handed it and other ones poorly so I'm not exactly keen to jump on, or actually keep buying more Netrunner right now. They have done fairly well with Game of Thrones 2.0 so far. I think Netrunner was just a case of having the wrong designers from the start for something that is much harder to design for than a standard card game. IMO the main issue at the start was they did not expect Netrunner to be as huge as it ended up being and they did not have the support in place for it. I do wish it was not so clear that they have given up now tho with how bad the cards have been lately with needing Errata out of the box from bad editing.
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Jun 7, 2017 14:12
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I don't Lukas was a particularly bad designer, was he? Most of his cards were conservatively tuned but that's fine, especially early in a game's life so you don't get Black Lotuses and Time Walks everywhere.
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Jun 7, 2017 15:18
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Zephro posted:I don't Lukas was a particularly bad designer, was he? Most of his cards were conservatively tuned but that's fine, especially early in a game's life so you don't get Black Lotuses and Time Walks everywhere. His main issue was he designed Netrunner as a board game in place of a card game. Just full on silver bullet design that limited deck design space. The legacy of his design is what has been holding Netrunner back, then Stone's desire to break away from that lead to some really wild power swings that lead to needing the silver bullets again.
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Jun 7, 2017 15:30
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GOT and Conquest don't/didn't show the design issues Netrunner has, although the latter of which has some things that never got proper support (Deep Strike, Necrons in general). The balance is obviously not always there, but I never thought "This is a poorly developed game" at any point.
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Jun 7, 2017 15:55
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edit: never mind
fomo sacer fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 16:16
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| # ? May 17, 2024 09:25 |
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i don't regret my investment, i played this game obsessively for the better part of three years and met some great friends through it. i can't say that about many games.
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Jun 7, 2017 17:09
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