I agree also that the game is in a better spot, but it’s the cumulative effect of the above points that I think is really causing people to leave. People don’t only care about the metagame.
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I agree. Finishing first in Swiss at Gencon got me one Bhagat. The deckbox was nice, I suppose.
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That Bhagat probably really tied the room together though, man!
I am interested to watch how their OP structure for L5R unfolds; it seems like they’re trying to take a huge leap up from what they’ve been able to do before, and it sounds like the sort of thing that we’d wanted for ANR forever.
Well, that and official merch 
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I’ve been slowly buying data packs over the past 4 months until I finally got caught up yesterday, kicking off the first half of my collection with some discount bundle on ebay.
I don’t mind the slow rotation, in fact I prefer really big formats with large card pools, but introducing Cache Refresh as an alternative instead of pushing cards out earlier is the right direction imo. You guys talk about lower buy in to a competitive scene but that trades off with the feeling that the cards you buy will be worth something. Compared to mgic where singles cost a fortune and you have to rely on the secondary market, it’s relatively easy to buy your way into a variety of semi competitive decks. I guess we’re at a point in card game culture where people are ready to buy and play for a few weeks and be prepared for their stuff not to be worth anything as the meta changes but I personally really enjoy the way things have been handled up to now. Dominant archetypes change often without getting killed to the point where old decks can’t come back, new cards affect the overall pool in second and third order ways, and the most wanted list doesn’t seek to ban cards but cost them appropriately.
I don’t think it’s so important to make the competitive scene easier to access at the expense of complexity. I also don’t think it’s important to cure specific deck archetypes (prison, combo, asset spam, flatline…) from competitive play because of new player experience or some kind of intuition about “real netrunner”. Balance considerations aside, I think it’s unhealthy on average to try and fix a competitive meta so players play how you want them to.
What i really miss, and it’s hard to fix this problem with the LCG format which has so many other benefits, is a well supported limited format. I taught a lot of people magic over the years, and it usually starts with teaching decks and a person with a lot of cards making more complex decks for their friends. Netrunner has that kitchen experience down, especially with Terminal Directive I was able to introduce the game to a lot of folks in my friend group. That next step experience, the store presence, just isn’t there though. I’d never ask someone i taught magic to even shell out $100 for a standard deck, I’d take em to a draft where everyone is on a level playing field and just knocking around in a competitive fashion.
Maybe it’s something about CCG culture in general now, people don’t even draft magic where I live anymore and it’s just standard. People aren’t really looking to go to a comic book shop if they can avoid it. But the fact remains that netrunner isn’t really designed to support a limited format and it shows. Either you have to buy in enough to start playing with your local meta or like me your local meta doesn’t even exist. That can be a pretty big ask.
I love this game and I’m ready to get into the competitive scene. I just hope it stays alive, FFG keeps communicating, and the rich cardpool doesn’t get compromised in the process.
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I actually just played netrunner at a microbrewery for the first time this weekend, and it was glorious. I could see it being a lot easier to get people to come and play at a pub setting than a comic book shop, and the games are less serious/intense when they’re played over a couple of beers.
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The community has created lots of fun formats, but these formats are much more appealing to die hard fans than newcomers. Alt format tournaments happen in person at most once or twice a year in a given city. Constructing a new deck using new rules for a once a year tournament is fun for die hard players who are bored of the current metagame, but it’s just extra work for a newcomer.
For an alt format to actually bring in newcomers, it would have to be officially supported by FFG and happen about once a month. I suggested something like that here: Making Netrunner work for infrequent / lapsed players
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I’d say that exactly this happened with Cache Refresh. I’m glad that they’ve finally given us an officially sanctioned entry format. It’s not ideal imho, but we finally have one.
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Now if they only banned Sifr and Rumor Mill and put Moose and Moon on the MWL, Cache Refresh would be aces (It’s still pretty great).
There have been 3 or 4 official cache refresh tournaments run across the entire US, all of which required for you to also sign up for a regional championship (not a casual friendly event). CR didn’t bring anyone into the game. If a CR tournament was run in every city at the release of every pack, then yes, it would help encourage new players.
I totally agree that strapping CR to Regionals was a strange decision. They made something that should offer a lowered barrier to entry less accessible (over the top hard, one might say). On the other hand; introducing a new format isn’t the easiest thing, so I won’t begrudge FFG’s decision to structure things this way. Certainly don’t agree, but I probably don’t have all the information that went into that decision anyhow.
I personally expect FFG to detach CR from Regionals and similar events in the future. In the meanwhile; TO’s are free to run CR events on their own (either with bidding or not). The 2 quite large scale CR events I’ve ran lately have given me hope for the future.
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so…did Jenteki and Octagon before it kind of ruin it for actually recruiting new players at the “comic shop” level? Everyone I talk to just plays on there. they don’t actually have to buy any cards, or even put on pants, to play Netrunner…There are always people in the shop playing magic even though MTGO exists…but not Netrunner
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because mtgo sucks and needs money
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I guess thats what I’m kind of saying, does the fact that a free version of a game exists hurt that game in the long run because the company who makes it is trying to sell it?
There’s actually been eight in the US and one in Singapore. I assume the reasons for attaching the first Cache Refresh events to Regionals are that it’s probably easier for them to get feedback from big tournaments than GNKs, and that they wanted to do a small number of tournaments first in hopes of catching anything they’d missed that might break the format.
Since the last of those official tournaments was a week and a half ago, hopefully they’re now looking at the feedback they’ve got and deciding whether to make any changes.
It’s possible I’m giving them too much credit, though.
I’ve been running Cache Refresh leagues in my local meta. I think something that encourages players to iterate on their decks between releases is a better plan than tournaments only immediately after the cardpool changes.
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Oh wow, didn’t realize Netrunner had 8 two day regionals. Game of Thrones only had 3.
I feel like if FFG had any kind of plan for CR beyond regionals, it would’ve been at Nationals, Euros, and Gencon.
For me, probably would’ve stopped playing over a year ago if I didn’t have online play. Living an hour away from the next closest person that plays Netrunner (that I know of) it is not convenient to make it to the weekly evening catchup. Without the online games between the 4-8 weeks between real world games I probably would’ve just lost interest.
I don’t think the kitchen type players would be not buying any cards but just playing online, it is just as much about the catchup than playing the game. And the people who do take the game more seriously and play online still need the physical cards if they are going to a tournament.
So yes there probably people who only play online and do not buy cards but I think there would be many more that are still interested in Netrunner and buying cards because they can have a game of Netrunner online between the real life games.
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CR was at Euros and is at most EU Nats.
LCGs won’t ever last more than about 3 years and FFG knows this. They have realeased new LCG every year. LCG format is excelent as new game hype but it doesn’t last long term. I think FFG had the plans already earlier to start diminish Netrunner and start focusing on L5R so some of these issues are not a surprise. FFG could had handled the situation much better though and they still have a big issues about supporting their games. Card games come and go (MTG and Pokemon are only special cases). Netrunner actually had very good run with about 5 years which is not common.
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I really really hope this is not true, as someone who has recently got into the game and loves it a lot! I’d be really sad if the game went away, or even stopped developing and moving forward. 
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I don’t think Netrunner is dead yet but I wouldn’t expect much support from FFG. I have played card games about 20 years and Netrunner has one of the best game systems and mechanisms. L5R seems to be more about MTG core creature combat mechanisms with some changes and appealing theme. I haven’t played the new version but didn’t find the old CCG so special apart from changing story and theme. I would still highly recommend Netrunner if you have a playgrouop because game mechanism and beginning card design has been excellent. For card game fans Netrunner is easily the best LCG.
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