Largest possible "kitchen table meta"? Contest!

I started just over a year ago with A:NR. I had no real exposure to CCGs, LCGs or TCGs, neither were my playing partners. we started with a core set, then 3, then the Genesis cycle and so on. we usually tried to build our own decks and once we had enough we netdecked old tournament decks and played some more until we moved to the next cycle/big box.

Recently we jumped a couple of cycles and went straight to the latest pack and we realised that we don’t like the LCG system, waiting 6 months till finally that one card comes out which enables an Archetype or playstyle that one of us is looking forward to, only to realise that the deck is Tier 3 once built is quite disappointing.
And we don’t really have the luxury any more, to try to build our own decks play with them and once we are done with those try to netdeck. With the limited card support (only having X data packs out of the six), some decks are just too challenging for us to build so we usually straight go and netdeck.

So we decided that after the Kitara cycle we will wait till all 6 data packs are released and buy them all at the same time, thanks for Reign and Reverie, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. :smiley:

We right now have a “pre”-built deck for every ID and quite often one of us simply picks a random deck (which sometimes even has rotated cards like Noise and GRNDL) and we just have fun at the kitchen table.
Quite often the older decks (like Spark or Nero etc.) have a disadvantage to newer ones (like GPI Net Tap Silhouette or Azmari Edtech, or Wu Dyper etc.) which leads to short and frustrating games. Updating the prebuilt decks is quite labor intensive, figuring out which cards need to be proxyd and then creating those proxies takes some time.

My question is: Could you help us create a really large “meta”?

We have 75+ deckboxes and 75+ packs of sleeves, it would be awesome to create 50 (or if that is not possible 40, 30, 20 etc.) decks that are kinda on the same powerlevel (all tier 3 or something), if that means that some decks need to be tweaked down or some decks need to be “erratad” (like Syfr is unplayable right now and Null isn’t played that much, but his breakers seem to be really cool, but without Syfr it is kinda bad, same with Khan and Temujin contract) or even rotated back (some old IDs look to be awesome like Andy, RP and GRNDL and we see no reason not to play with them in a kitchen table setting) we would be happy to do so.

I was even thinking about creating a contest with prize money to help you creative folks give you some motivation, but I honestly don’t know what approach would be the best or easiest or most liked etc.

So I thought I ask you!

Could you create an A:NR experience with kinda similar power level decks with as many varied archetypes or IDs or cards as possible? You could use all of the printed A:NR cards and being able to errata any of them in any way or even come up with supplementary (new) cards if needed?

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I like this exercise, even as a thought experiment. I would think with a near complete card pool + 3x Core and if the goal is to get a bunch of Tier 3(ish) decks, the goal you probably really want to shoot for is theme.

So before hunting for deck lists, I would think of some of the main themes you want. Something like:

Corp Side:
Brain Damage Deck
Tag and Bag
Tag Annoyance Deck
Rush Deck
Shell Game
Bioroid Deck
Jinteki Glacier
Psi Game Deck
On Encounter ICE Deck (tollbooth, jua, troll)
HB Glacier Deck

The strongest decks in netrunner are never really “theme decks,” so I think the inherent power level will be much lower if you try to build from a Theme. I’ve got a 3x Nu Core Set Tag and Trace Annoy deck that is def. Tier 2.5, but is a blast to play against other Tier 2.5ish decks.

For Runners you could use themes of:
Ice Destruction
Hand Disruption
Good Stuff Blue
" " Red
" " Green
An Apex Deck
An Adam Deck

Again, since you aren’t going Super High Competitive Power Level (SHCPL as some like to call it), your really have access to tons of cards that would never see the light of day.

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