Yep, good point. Reconstruction Contract a more timely example I suppose.
If you install one naked and rez it, hoping to get counters later, then you see the Runner is going to use it to farm Aumakua counters, I’d think you can’t trash it to move zero counters since zero counters doesn’t change game state.
Oh, that’s fair. I’ll agree with that.
Hm. So is being able to trash an empty RecoCo an issue?
I would, again, argue that simply trashing it is changing the gamestate.
I basically just want to err on the side of ‘players know what they’re doing’ rather than ‘try to prevent nebulous abuse case’. I feel like “You’re farming it for counters? I’ll trash it.” “You can’t, there’s no gamestate change.” “What?” is playing ‘Gotcha’ not Netrunner. (I honestly kinda dig that interaction. You’re banking on using it later, so you leave it out, so the Runner can happily farm it up. PLAYER CHOICE.)
I think if you were re-releasing Netrunner from scratch then you would definitely want to build it such that the “doesn’t change the gamestate” rule is not necessary. But that wasn’t NISEI’s task, and I can understand them keeping the rule in place given that simply removing it would be a significant functional change to the way the game plays.
In the more extensive Rules Update article, the gamestate rule is on the chopping board, but it’ll take a bit to get there:
We have a bunch more rules changes planned that we hope will simplify several of the game’s systems and make the rules easier to learn and master. But we’ll be rolling out those changes later, because they’re more expansive revisions that will have a larger effect on the game as you know it…
…And we’re going to look at removing the infamous “no-change-in-game-state” rule, which prohibits players from using abilities based on arcane criteria that might or might not actually reflect whether using the ability is going to do anything or not.
Great job @jakodrako Jamie, and Rules Team.
EDIT: Link corrected.
That link appears to go to an NFL related blog. Apologies if there something else in there but it just looked like hand-egg* and a bunch of adverts to me.
*this is a joke pic. Do not take seriously. 
Good spot! We’re lucky that @tvaduva was just looking up some NFL stuff rather than the potential alternatives! 
Oops. Thanks @Lunchmoney and @RealityCheque. Link corrected.
But, in fairness the University of Michigan Wolverine Hand-egg/“Football” Defensive Players did dominate their in-state rivals that it’s worth sharing even with the Netrunner community. And I have the charts to prove it.
