I just disagree with this. I was going to write up a long diatribe on the theoretical weaknesses of Faust decks, but empiricism is better: you see people reporting undefeated corp runs in store champs all over. It’s simply not true that there isn’t a “real answer”. Psycho-SYNC with few assets and Industrial Genomics with few ICE both come to mind. The wildly horizontal Gaga decks are impossible to keep up with. These corps are solid counters to the Dumblefork game plan.
I don’t see why the obverse of what you say here is so awful: corps trying to solve the puzzle of the runner’s rig. Nor is Faust one answer; as I said above, Dumblefork is specifically constructed to lean on Faust while having answers for all its counters (which necessitates Parasite, D4V1D, & Mimic at least). And, as others have mentioned, Atman is an example of when ICE suites were built with a breaker in mind (don’t bunch up too many same-strength ICE).
I agree Faust is overpowered presently, certainly more so than Atman was, but I’m incredulous that it’s impossible to beat. Corps seem to be winning games, I wonder how.
That’s not exactly my meaning though, as these decks are very good against the whole runner field. They don’t counter the Dumblefork gameplan, they counter runner gameplans as a whole. The only exception to this is decks with Apocalypse, who I think are very well positioned against IG and Gagarin, not so much against Syncbiotics though.
After trying out cca 20 different Kate builds since MWL, and not finding any one of them solid enough, my conclusion is that the anarch dominance in runners is a logical result of Shapers and Criminals being too weak.
The corps have shaken the MWL very quickly and are now as strong as ever.
Shapers have been hit hard and currently don’t seem to be able to handle a diverse corp field very well (glacier, rush, FA, asset spam).
Criminals have not received enough help yet (but there is a lot of good stuff on the way at least!).
So Anarch are really the only strong option in runners. And as many have pointed out, it’s not just Faust, but the whole strong card pool.
So please FFG, don’t nerf Anarchs! Rather bring more good stuff for Shapers and Criminals!
I will say that Shaper and Crim are probably underpowered right now, but with so many decks teched against Anarch if you bring Shaper to the right tournament it is really good right now.
I’m assuming you’ve tried ProCo + Hyperdriver Kate, since you’ve tried so many. What issues did you have with that deck? Maybe people over at the Kate thread can help you out. To me that deck seems very solid, it may not be as powerful as the Prepaid version used to be, but still seems very good.
Hayley has also been very fun and a lot of people have had a lot of success with various builds (mostly built around Pawnshop economy lately).
Yes, I have also tried that version and it’s quite solid. What I don’t like is how slow it seems (especially compared to PPvP glory days), and while the matchups are mostly “ok” across the board, they are not great…
I’ve found just the opposite. I feel that Pro-Co Kate is “nigh” unstoppable (there’s a Ben Edlund reference for you old farts like me). In fact, in two SCs, I dropped a single game as Kate, and it was due to fatigue and misplays, not because of the deck.
I don’t think Faust is the real problem here. I actually think D4v1d is a worse design offender in netrunner. It is basically an AI icebreaker, without the downsides they usually have. It is also incredible cheap while most ICE it breaks are expensive. “Oh, you rezzed a 14 cred ice? Thats cute, I break it for 3 creds.”.
Big ice has always been as much a liability as a benefit in Netrunner. Having it merely broken cheaply with a disposable ‘breaker’ is one of the most benign consequences for rezzing it that exists.
You’re probably thinking of Emergency Shutdown as the bigger problem with big ice. But that is supposed to be one of criminal’s specialties. That’s why their breakers all used to have a high strength gain to credits ratio (Aurora, Ninja). If it was still that criminals were good against big ice and anarchs weren’t, the faction balance would be a lot closer.
Or it would get a Parasite on it and Datasucker would help melt it, or it would a Femme token on it, or it would get an Atman at the right strength.
And these are just the competitively played solutions!
For what it’s worth, derezzing a giant piece of ice as Criminal is one of the most visceral feelings in the game (for both players). I wish that would come back. RIght now it’s easier and more effective to destroy ice in Anarch than de-rez it in Criminal, and that’s both daft and damning of the current runner balance situation.
And while I’m ranting, it doesn’t help that the corp reaction to this has been to abandon ice entirely and focus on scoring Astroscript from hand as fast as possible.
Parasite and Datasucker have a harder time killing big ice than small ice. If they were the problem you could just make sure you ice archives and/or use CVS.
Atman still feels fair-ish. It’s more expensive and less likely to hit multiple targets if you want to use it on a big ice.
Femme is another blue card, so that’s not a problem (although her influence cost is pretty low I guess).
Take away d4 and/or faust, then anarch’s easy solution to big ice (cutlery) is not so effective and you might see Shutdowns make a comeback.
Shutdown requires you to make a successful run on HQ and it can be rezzed again. Femme is much more expensive than d4v1d and only works on a single piece of ICE. Atman at high-strength is absurdly expensive, and datasuckers can be purged. And purging with CVS is also instant-speed.
High-strength ICE could be a counter to Faust (and parasite + datasucker), if it wasn’t for D4v1d.
IT Department shouldn’t have been printed. It’s either useless or ruins the game, there is no middle ground. D4v1d should have been an AI ICE breaker with a strength and cost to pump that was efficient but restricted to ICE over str 4.
Faust is dangerous to use for running through 2 or more ICE, but everything else ensures that doesn’t have to happen. I agree faust would probably be fine if d4v1d didn’t exist or was more fair.