Anarch and the MWL by SimonMoon

Fantastic article, thanks @SimonMoon! Great job breaking down this latest MWL and the likely fallout of it. I think the analysis of Wyldside is particularly good, and you’ve convinced me it was fair to be added to the MWL.

I love the anarch faction quite a bit, and I’m really sad to see them hit like this because Whizzard had to go and get the Popo’s attention. I admit a soft spot for Noise as well, but I would have understood if FFG decided they didn’t want his flavor of anarchy around anymore.

I think the problem is that Anarch has a number of cards that can create “feel bad” moments, even if they’re fair in the context of the faction - d4v1d and parasite are good examples of this. I think the dislike for both of these cards is understandable, but I think they also serve a critical role in Anarch, and possibly the entire metagame.

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I’m not sure dude is thinking this the whole way through.

Like, the reason they needed those clone chips, in the final analysis, was that if you didn’t pack clone/clot you got GG’d by the Astro train. But while it is now much harder to get those clone/clots int the deck, it is now impossible for them to get 2 astros.

As far as real breakers red whining…I’m not seeing it . Let’s talk through 3 breaker decks.

Say your breaker suite is gonna be a red fracter, a blue killer and a green decoder.
All 3 colors : Pay influence for whichever of those 2 aren’t native

Next you gotta get 2 or 3 tutors:
Blue special order in faction
Red import special order
Green SMC in faction

Next you gotta get a few install from heaps in case of rig getting killed
Blue: Import special order
Red Deja in faction
Green: Clone chip minor MWL payout

Next, you need multi access in R&D
Blue: Import Medium
Red: Medium in faction
Green: R&D Interface

Most people pack some kind of HQ multi access too (less necessary obvi)
Blue: In faction, loads of it
Red: Nerve agent in faction
Green: Import from blue

And we are mostly out of what I’d call stock influence. Blue looks something like (2 for Corroder, 3 for Gordian, 3 for Medium, 2 for a Deja, 5 for up to you), Red looks something like (3 for Gordian, 2 for Shrike, 4 for Special Orders, 4 up to you), Green looks something like (2 for Corroder, 2 for Shrike, 2 for clone chips, 3 for Medium, 6 up to you).

I mean, you can argue that a lot of what I’ve said is wrong here, but I don’t think running a basic red 3 breakers setup is somehow worse than running a blue one. Green is probably better than either, but its not like red wasn’t better before. Always gotta be a king. Don’t like it? Play an AI deck (where Red is still stronk).

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I agree. I always enjoy playing against Noise, especially as Blue Sun. It is so brutally difficult but also rewarding for the same reason. Usually comes down to a few cards left in RND.

This analysis really only checks out for crims- anarchs are all on pure orange breakers except maybe Atman for regass; regular Kate suite just imports Mimic (although Yog and Lady are both MWL)

Well, dude is talking about 3 breaker red. This is a way to do 3 breaker red. It would be better, obvi, if they could step outside of their color pie for killers and decoders, but I’m worst case scenario-ing it. 3 Breaker red can be, as spec’d above, about as good as 3 breaker blue and a bit worse than 3 breaker green. Dude shouldn’t complain.

I registered specifically to point this out. There’s no worse people than those who say ‘virii’

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Excellent article Kenny, particularly given the quick turnaround on it.

I was pretty happy with the cards they’d chosen to put on the MWL but now I’m less sure :frowning:

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That’s not true though. Anarch has never wanted to import other faction’s breakers, they have the best breakers in the game. They want to import economy and tutoring.

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Best FA decks won’t close the game turn 8 now.
I agree with the article, but I think the author forgot the games will be longer today.

So runner can stay in phase 1 a little more time to install.

(I don’t know end turns of HB FA deck though)

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As a few have said already, D4v1d went on for the same reason as Yog: it warps the corp meta in a really unfortunate way. Damon talked about that with regards to Yog in several places when the first MWL dropped, and as a designer I think he’s right to be concerned about cards like that. 1 sub ICE of strength 5+ is basically unplayable with anarch and shaper playing D4 plus recursion, and only the best multi-sub big ICE gets played competitively, even in decks that can afford plenty of expensive ICE like Palana and EtF.

I do agree that reg anarch needs some way of dealing with big ICE that isn’t just Datasucker, but unfortunately D4 was too good at doing that. The fact that it breaks subs for free just nullifies the whole point of large ICE for the corp - that they let you capitalise on economic advantage by paying a bunch once to make the runner pay a bunch multiple times. If it cost a counter and 2 creds to break it would be a much more balanced card, that filled the hole in the anarch rig but didn’t effectively blank ICE the corp spent 7+ creds on.

To my memory, D4 is 1 of only 5 cards costing 4 influence that have seen regular play out of faction, the others being Scorch, Siphon, Midseasons and Caprice. Those cards are splashed because they each let you do something that almost no other card in the game lets you do. Shaper can already do what D4 does with Cy-Cy/Lady/Sharpshooter/Deus, which makes D4 the only 4-inf card ever to be splashed for its raw efficiency. That’s how far above the curve this card is.

The hit to reg anarch is unfortunate, but I think people are crying doom a bit too soon. It’s not all bad - less Astro means less Clot means less Cyberdex, which is a bit of a boost. Let’s see what happens, and hope the next card we get that seeks to fill the anarch high strength hole is better thought out.

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With only Wyldside and Faust added to MWL, Anarch would still be the best faction in the game by a nice margin when you take into account the consequences of the Astro errata. Legwork, the rushiness of Andy’s ID ability, Clot recursion, and Artist Colony rewarded you for not playing red by giving you lots of percentage points on your NEHFA matchup, those percentage points aren’t going to matter anymore. The only way Astros 2 and 3 rewarded you for playing Anarch was Turntable, which hides on the bottom of Anarch decks a lot and consumes the console slot to provide its benefit.
I think the runner’s rankings should change every MWL update, so for this reason I agree with the notion of MWLing at least one other Anarch card this update.

As for whether it should be have been D4vid or something else, I’m not sure.

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But it shouldn’t matter who the best faction in the game is; the MWL is supposed to address individual problem cards, not decks or even entire factions.

If faction balance is seen as an issue, fixing that through the MWL would be like drilling a hole in a wall with a spoon.

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I don’t necessarily disagree with you there. Kind of speaking in the context of the article which focused on factional balance a lot.

This is a great point and probably something I should have addressed in my article.

Even against non rush decks I think set up issues will still plague Anarch, but the fact astrobiotics can’t punish turn 1 gear check fails any more is real.

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This is what makes me help to swallow Wyldside’s nerf.
I don’t like it at all, really at all, I think that card is still well equilibrated. 3c, -1 click, tag vulnerability.

If 3c = 2 cards (deuce wild), then it pays for itself very late:

  • install clic cost 2 cards (wyldside + a clic)
  • install cost cost 2 cards (3c)
    = -4 cards

Then +2 cards for a clic = only +1 card each turn.
Meaning it gets its first benefits turn +6 (with late game credit conversion). OP ?

Now if you put two in a 45 deck, this means you’ll get first one cards #22 or #23 with 50% odds, meaning it’s lategame allready, meaning you can’t play it.
It’s not a minor nerf, it’s -3 inf to Anarchs because they had too much inf, I guess ?

I don’t understand why Shaper can play inf and not Anarch / Criminal. But especially Anarch now. They were 4 free inf, now it’s 0 if you don’t comply. Criminal is still 6. And Shaper 8.
They are just closing the inf system if you don’t comply playing shit anarch like with Genesis => Lunar. Which represent 3 long years.

Shaper have draw, recursivity, access to an 1-inf great fracter. They just have to pay for a killer in x1 because tutor/recursivity land then pay for HQ multi and this is it.

Mimic is not a killer, it’s a tool.

They can choose between 2 decoder (in 4 years, GG), 2 killers that are tools (in 4 years, GG), 3 fracters, 6 AI = 13 breakers.

Meanwhile

  • shaper gets 7 decoders, 3 killers, 6 fracters, 6 AI = 22 breakers.
  • criminal gets 6 decoders, 8 killers, 3 fracters, 1 AI = 18 breakers.

That makes you almost no deckbuilding space there. I’m not sure they expect us to use FoN in 6 month when Zu is rotating out ?
You put Corroder then splash everything including basic B&B Anarch tools.

They removes their draw solution now. With no breakers and no tutor and recursivity (retrun is not functional), no real HQ threat, no real archive threat, no money, all you get is slowlyness, medium and making modern and stupidly expensive runs vs modern and stupidly cheap ices.

D4vid is even a more bad nerf than this. This is just so mean.
There was NO David spam decks. David is just a joker you used, like a FF in a Shaper deck, to help to extract yourself when in a very very bad moment.

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Also that alexfrog article linked is pretty great especially in retrospect. “It will be interesting to see if either VoicePAD or Schererezade (still easy to find new misspellings!) result in new runner economy engines becoming popular metagame choices.” I love reading about old metas.

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Alexfrog articles are still the best!

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Opening hand Deja vs is total trash. You don’t want anything to do with that card for the first 10 turns of the game. Desperado Anarch is dead. It was almost dead before…

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So much this. I only started in Mumbad cycle, so reading the old timers griping about Stealth Andy or whatever is super funny. Like, there was this time when drawing 4 extra cards at the start of the game was just the biggest thing.

Andy is still super good, its just that crims are a little behind the curve. Steath Andy is still A Thing, just not as big. Maybe better post MWL since fastro and assetspam got kneecapped.