lA deck being swingy has no relevance at all The only thing that matters is the expected win % relative to expected opposition. Also if a deck has very swingy matchup win rates (say 8-2 NEH 3-7 RP 2-8 Blue Sun 7-3 PE VS a deck with 6-4 and 4-6 througout) the higher vaiance gameplan has a Higher probability of reaching top cut. This is due to having a distribution of records that is much more even than the previous deck, which will have a distribution that is more weighted toward the center. Since we only want the top %age of results anyway (going 0-8 is the same as going 4-4)
I will play VERY swingy decks sometimes, AoA just has so much swing sometimes though It does win pretty often relative to what people would think for such an all in gimmicky deck. Basically Siphon forces them to defend HQ so much that they can’t defend R&D from Keyhole+parasite
Only true if you treat actually playing the game as sitting down and flipping a coin based on what you know the matchup win rate to be. If you think you can out-skill most of the field, but choose to play AoA, all your skill won’t save you when your opponent draws all 3 celebrity gifts. With kate you could still win that game.
I’m not sure this works out exactly right given the way swiss is structured. If you’re a T16 quality player, you’re not going to be playing “most of the field” after a couple of matches.
Pretty sure this thread has unraveled a little, but Siphon is no doubt still a good card in any deck. You can build siphon spam decks in any faction and they will fire successfully fairly often. The corp has caught up thankfully to that game and has more answers than ever to deal with it. None the less, there are still games where I am on 0 credits screaming profanities while my opponent collects there 9th and 10th tag.
My initial reaction when I see this deck is “You’re still playing this?” It’s a relatively high variance style (1 trick pony) and a little bit of an “Easy Button” if you ask me.
IRT worlds… I am pretty sure everyone was understanding it was going to require a helluva lot of skill and luck to get as far as say top 16 and anything beyond, luck and skill are only more important for winning. I believe @mediohxcore can rightfully claim himself the best player in the world, he fully earned it, but what happens if Minh clicks to 4 creds and steals that NAPD in his R&D in the semi’s? Dan was extremely lucky, and Dan played it virtually flawless.
My guess is if we ran worlds 100 times you would see the top 32 not change too much, but a lot of variance in place order. Can I mention again how much of a joke cutting to top 16 was?
I would REALLY want to play Escher in a LOT of Shaper’s deck but the deckspace are so limited because you already need more importants cards for other things And it’s a shame.
I think the groans in the room and comments said a good deal about how the community felt.
Funny story:
I was talking to my girlfriend about what I was reading online about the worlds experience as it was happening. I just read some article on Reddit or somewhere and laughed and said “Oh, now the bitching about prize support is starting.” I looked up from my phone and Ian Birdsdall was like 2 feet away with a pretty awkward look on his face, having clearly heard me. Ooops.
I think they know now, and with any luck, we’ll see things improve to a at the latest Friday start next year.
On topic, Eater decks I think will cause a resurgence of AoA, and make them even more gross when they add Keyhole. This doesn’t help the inconsistency, but it does help get it online better/longer because knight and Overmind are very limited use. AoA is actually getting stronger, not weaker IMO.
For what its worth the best siphon spam decks quetzal actually is pretty legitimately good. Data leak reversal is actually pretty decent archives pressure, but the key is to not lose to not landing sipon. The medium/Mimic/yog.0/ the occasional corroder give you efficent breakers, while Queen’s gambit/Lucky find/Sure gamble/armitage codebusting/Liberated account/stimhack + parasucker give you a decent econ even with 0 siphons landed. Gabe similarly has power, 3 siphon/3 same old thing+ parasites+R&D multi acess is super strong right now. Gabe does have the unfortunate weakness of influence. My influence package for gabe right now looks like this
with Femme serving as the primary sentry breaker and peacock/passport as the code gate (seriously why does alias suck so much ). Since gabe can pressure all 3 centrals pretty reliably, siphon spam works with him.
Landing the actual card account siphon and floating the tags is just a strong play, I actually prefer it when the opponent has more econ rather than less, the more econ they have the more money you make. Trashing assets is annoying but stimhack/imp/Bank job/Queen’s gambit help. Siphon recursion’s real strength is that siphon itself is actually amazing, since 1 tag=10 tags even landing one “blowout siphon” (actual card account siphon that takes all 10 credits and costs you less than 4 credits to make the run on/6 if you are gabe with desperado) gives you a really strong amount of tempo. You net 6 credits and the corp loses 5, You aren’t trying to make the corp completely broke, the goal is to make it so that their ability to tax you on R&D/archives is limited due to parasites/shutdowns/siphons. You won’t make them broke, but you will make them LESS powerful than before. Instead of having the tsurgi and the Komainu over R&D you will have just a tsurgi. Also you get money to make future runs with.
Finally let’s imagine the corp rezz’s assets to go to 0 money, you can trash those assets and be in a very strong position, it’s like you played Vamp and only spent the credits necessary to trash the sansan or whatever. You still are in a great position, The other answer to siphon is leaving unrezzed ICE over HQ to go broke the turn you siphon them, the key is to let that happen, then use that to gain value somewhere else, Maybe you can now use sneakdoor to pressure archives, or make a medium dig through R&D, maybe you completed the run on HQ anyway now you can emergency shutdown them and pressure their HQ some more.
Just because siphon isn’t giving absurd blowouts doesn’t mean it isn’t doing its job
I am 9-2 in tournaments lifetime. I have entered 11 and won 9 of them. Of the other two, one was a plugged-in a couple weeks after I started playing, t8, other was the winter tournament at worlds, got 3rd with decks I wasn’t playing at worlds against a field as strong as most regionals.
I’m not saying I didn’t get lucky sometimes, but really, if you play perfectly, (not saying I do), you don’t need much luck to win at Netrunner.
It does win pretty often relative to what people would think for such an all in gimmicky deck. Basically Siphon forces them to defend HQ so much that they can’t defend R&D from Keyhole+parasite
And it’s a shame.
