Post-mortem - Current Thoughts and Foreshadowing of the MWL by Guest Author Asher Stulman

Originally published at: Post-mortem – Current Thoughts and Foreshadowing of the MWL by Guest Author Asher Stulman - StimHack

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Cards will be added to the MWL until deckbuilding improves!*

* and by improves we mean gets really really weird*. Stay thirsty, my friends.*

** I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Auroras breaking Ice Walls off the shoulder of Orion… I watched Old Hollywood Grid glitter in the dark near the Edge of World Cell Portal…

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I don’t think RP needs any nerfing. Like, at all. It barely sees play and it has some pretty noticiable shortcomings.

I mean, it can’t even spam Eli anymore but it now costs 2 influence. And it needs Caprice, otherwise it autloses to Valencia.

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FFG could say updates would be announced January 1, April 1, July 1, and
September 1, and these would be effective two weeks after annoucement.
It’s important to have consistent times for these announcements so
players can prepare adequately for competitive events.

I didn’t think about this before, but that actually makes a lot of sense. Wizards is doing the same thing with the M:tG banlist, and the same thing would work for Netrunner too I think, only without all the butthurt about card prices changing.

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Some of this was already discussed in the Faust thread, but the MWL really does open a slippery slope of people demanding cards be added to the list, which in turn just makes other cards go to the top of the pile and be considered “too strong” for competitive play. Even in the article it admits that the Corp list is fine as it is, but if we add more runner cards to the list, we would have to examine the effect it would have on the corp’s game and potentially add cards to their side of the list as well.

Right now, I think that a restricted list would have been healthier for the game, but I’m mostly reserving judgement until after the SC season to see how the meta looks.

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“Less diversity, not more.”

Exactly as I thought it would be. It’s just all-Faust, all the time now. Hell, it was that way in the Durham scene before the MWL…

This was poorly-implemented from the start. Instead of simply adjusting quantities and Influence values, he totally destroys the integrity of the Influence system by adding in ridiculous “Ghost Influence” Here’s what the list should have said:

ERRATA:
CORP: Astro, Eli, Architect, SanSan, and NAPD Contract are now unique and Limit one per deck. Caprice is also limit one per deck.
RUNNER: Yog and Parasite are now 4/5 Influence. “Lady” now only has two counters. Lucky Find now costs 3 Influence.

Leave it to Damon to be such a heavy-handed incompetent and just turn this into his personal pet peeve list… This is a slippery slope. All that’s going to happen now is that more and more cards are going to go on this list.

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please, off the shoulder of Orion works just fine here

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I’ve assigned myself one demerit for forgetting about Weyland’s Advanceable Ice Champion, and edited the post.

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I wouldn’t be surprised to see cards come off in time. Keep in mind that this is just an opinion column, not anything even remotely official. That being said, if the list becomes this enormous thing like you suggest it’ll definitely reduce my enjoyment a lot.

Also, until the MWL who else in Durham was putting Faust in everything besides me? Serious question.

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[D4v1d should] be an AI icebreaker so cards that interact with those can interact with it

Then Criminal could Special Order for it.

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It’s already reduced my enjoyment a lot, but @xiebelvoule and I have already made our opinions quite well-known on the store forum.

I can tell you there were at least two people at the last Atomic tourney I went to - before the MWL -who were using Faust as their primary breaker.

I’ve seen enough of Faust in my SC prep to know that the game is quickly becoming “Faust presents Faustrunner, also starring David”…

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This is ridiculous. I’m sure it would destroy the game as we know it. The MWL is far more elegant (from a practical point of view) than any errata would ever be.

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Errata to make these cards cost more influence, or cut down on the quantity in the deck works within the established mechanics. Extra ghost influence for cards that are in your own faction circumvents the established system and completely invalidates the influence system concept.

Everyone always criticizes the archetype diversity impact of the MWL. But archetype diversity was never the stated goal of MWL. Card diversity was always the stated goal. When Damon talked about it on podcast, he talked about Eli and Architect being in every deck, not Eli and Architect causing every corp deck to have the same ID or same overall strategy. Eli and Architect appeared in glacier, fast advance, and butchershop, so of course, he wouldn’t say such a thing.

The Desperado nerf very clearly had no intention of creating a more even mix of blue orange and green, so it should not be surprising there’s an uneven mix of blue, orange, and green.

MWL forces ice suites to be diverse, funny thing is, guess which Icebreaker subtype does really well against exceedingly diverse ice suites? Faust dominance is a bill of good health.

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Not a sign of good health if one program can deal with the majority of ICE in this game.

If Damon’s rationale is that those cards are in “a plurality of lists,” and Faust ends up in a plurality of lists due to its’ raw power, when does Faust go on the list?

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Next draft of the MWL, guaranteed. Whether or not it’s the best means of re-balancing Faust is going to go on the list. Faust won worlds, Faust is too easy to build for, Faust is winning all the store champs. It’ll happen.

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Has there been any solid indication of when updates will be done? I’m hopeful that Faust will be there (less hopeful it actually does anything), but if MWL isn’t going to be updated for 3+ months that’ll be disappointing. With the ease of info dissemination and the wealth of data coming in from tournaments, I really don’t see why a monthly update couldn’t happen (if deemed required). Sure people would have to tweak their decks each month, but … don’t most tweak more often than that?

FFG is always behind the curve because it just wouldn’t be feasible for them to adjust on the fly. Based on their prior turnarounds I’d be surprised to see it in a month. Two at soonest would be my guess. A new list every month would be a nightmare to deckbuild around anyway. There’s a big difference between releasing a datapack every month or so and errata-ing all your stuff.

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Unfortunately, I don’t think it will even help. All people will do is drop other things so they can save the extra influence for Faust.

Better enjoy “God Mode” while you can, D! LOL

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Man, I play blue IDs. The only time anything feels good on the runner side is when I get to chain siphons.

Real talk though, if people are losing influence per copy of Faust it’ll make a pretty decent difference in deckbuilding. The real problem is that Anarch, as a faction, has tools for literally everything. More of their stuff needs to go on the MWL block if Shaper still has to import solutions to money/barriers and Crim has to import all of their breakers. As it stands I bet you could build a SC-worthy Anarch deck with a 10-inf ID.

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