Since the amount of failed design won’t change much, this means a tight meta.
I have no problems with the idea, the only thing I don’t like much is the ID rotation. I like being surprised by a 4 year old ID 
There should be more Noah Ark operation like we saw with CT/Reina.
Yes, I do miss Andy, even if I almost never played more than 15 games with her. I liked fighting her (ah, that T1 Clic 1 Komainu headplant…).
I would like to see a 0 link Andy, and a first virus install Noise.
I hear non-turtle reptilians gravitate toward IG Suffocate Decks. This is the first clue you are playing against a Reptilian. Said deck reminds them of previous evolutionary stages of their ancestors.
Now, Turtle Reptilians appear more amenable, maybe even playing some decks that are fast and loose, but that is just a sign of their place in society and their hope to be more free one day.
I have no information on the Chameleon Reptilians at this point. Sssneeed more input about them.
I’m happy to hear some general agreement about banning cards that make the game less fun/interesting, but I think you might be a little hard on the designers. Although I don’t know any of them personally, the design and evolution of Netrunner is a fantastic feat. 20 years of refinement and still managing to keep it fresh enough that players still want to discuss new cards and new packs is just amazing. Every living game is a work in progress and, although never perfect, always impressive in how balanced they manage to be with such a vast cardpool and variety of strategies. The fact that out of over 1000 cards the ban/restricted list is as small as it is impresses the heck out of me.
I just think that the evolving meta that Netrunner has is comparable to a game like Starcraft, where the game is so amazing because the designers have the flexibility to see how the elements they designed fare out in wild, in the hands of the player-hivemind. Tiny patches in Starcraft-type games have made constantly refreshing improvements to those games. By it’s nature, a printed card game could never have that level of flexibility but it’s best tool to get close will always be the ban list. Thinking long-term, any idea that was fun but didn’t totally work out as planned is a fun design space to consider for future cards, while they will always be needing to figure out anyway.
As far as faster rotation, I love that idea. People have different opinions on optimum card-pool size but a smaller pool size so that certain types of decks that match up in really exciting ways for short periods of time sounds like a really fun way to keep it fresh as well as make entry to the game less intimidating to newer players. Less cards to learn, less of a massive back-catalog to feel like they kind of need to play, faster rotation of problem cards and it would have to be easier to balance less cards in the pool than more cards.
I mean everyone was FINE with it when corps had sssnek, but now runners get turtles and everyone’s complaining! I’m sick of the hypocrisy obvious in your clear anti-reptilian agenda!
Something I was noodling around with in my head was if they could do something like what they did with Core 2.0, but with the Deluxes next time rotation comes around.
Not in a 1 to 1 replacement box sort of way, but wipe them ALL out and reprint the Healthy And Good Stuff they want to keep around into one big core-sized Deluxe Expansion 2.0 box. (D&D being the odd-duck out and maybe have the mini-faction stuff get reprinted in their own box or pack.) Maybe pick up a couple of cards that might be worth keeping around that’d be rotating normally, and cut the chaff. It wouldn’t be required to pick up if you own the cards already, but it might be able to sell to people easier than having to get three or four boxes separately.
If there were a box you could but that was basically just ‘most of the good cards’ the game would blow up.
Since the bid boxes technically are never supposed to rotate, isn’t that also sort of problematic in some ways?
More than the benefit of people not having to get three or four boxes separately is that it would drastically cut the number of permanent cards from deluxes that people need to learn. If we assume that “core-sized” means ~250 cards, but that a core-sized deluxe would have full playsets, that’s about 83 different cards. Or maybe 90 or so, if they manage to put in single copies of IDs. Currently we have 220 different cards from deluxes, which is way too many.
I think you’re right that the mini-factions would need a separate product, though, because although I really like them, they shouldn’t take up 24 of 90 slots in such a deluxe. But that would reduce the cardpool reduction. Maybe if they waited a few years they could fold the essential cards from TD into the new giant deluxe, too, so we could just have Core 2 + new giant deluxe + mini-factions pack as the permanent cards.
The players have been treating them that way, but really it’s just that they don’t have a predetermined rotation schedule. Nothing FFG has said would be inconsistent with them announcing that they’ll start rotating once the next deluxe arrives, or with retiring them all in one fell swoop.
I wouldn’t mind seeing them go (especially C&C), but I don’t particularly see any reason to rescue anything except the minifactions. But if our main concern is cardpool size and the learning curve, all they need to do is introduce a no-deluxe format; call it “Cache Refreshest” or hopefully something not as dumb.
I’m not sure if this thread is still about the BR philosophy, but… I find the most interesting thing about restricted cards is the breaking up of power combos or decks. IG biolock can’t play Bokata Pizza or GFI… Hayley can’t eternally Levy Aesop’d cards.
I think that broken cards will always be printed and the system seems good enough, though certainly not perfect. The main problem is FFG continues to be slow to update the list. If VLC and UVC were restricted, for example, CI would be weakened and we’d avoid BS Jinja decks.
Obokata… Protocol?
There’s definitely things I’d like to see stick around, but I could live without them. I suppose the cycles after the bog boxes were retired would have replacements as needed.
Would you keep TD around, or retire that too?
We’ve been doing one Revised Core + Kitara at my local weekly meetup, and I think it’s been going quite well. It was a little annoying when there was only one pack out, but still somewhat interesting. If Cache Refreshest had the latest two cycles, it would get rid of that problem.
My feelings about rotation changed a lot when it actually happened. Losing Kati was especially painful, but then I was like “…y’know, they can always design more econ.” I’d pour out a beverage for Spark and I’ve Had Worse and a few other fun or interesting cards, but none of them are indispensable (and if they were, that would probably be a bad sign).
I don’t have strong opinions either way about TD. It certainly adds some things that the revised core lacks, but if the goal is a minimal cardpool, an evergreen four-faction expansion could make that a bit lopsided. My dream scenario is that they do a (better?) Anarch/NBN/Jinteki campaign expansion, and then those and the latest two cycles can be a thing.
My main issue with rotation/core 2 is that this just hasn’t happened. We lost a lot of important effects and we have not seen a ton of replacements. Crim is a joke, as is Shaper draw in non-combo decks.
We wouldn’t have to lean on fucking tapwrm of all things so much if they designed some proper econ alternatives.
I don’t disagree, but we’re about to get Diversion, and PAD Tap, and Falsified Credentials, and, God help us, Zer0, and surely other things. It would have been nicer if everything had been in place beforehand, but we’re getting there.
So the list is out and I thought it interesting to ban Violet Level Clearance but not UV Clearance.
If their testing says it is enough to address the CI imbalance, then they would know better than I. But in the write up it seems like Boggs (in so many words) was really saying that the main reason they didn’t ban CI is that it would cause so many in a certain camp to moan about it.
I get his reasoning well enough, why upset your core audience when you don’t have to. I will give it the benefit of the doubt and see if it shakes out, but UV Clearance is a pretty good CI card.
Kind of surprised to see tapwrm get restricted. I always found it such a cleverly designed game-mechanic. That is the death of Leela-Gang Sign. I know a lot of people hate that archetype anyway, but I always thought it interesting and will miss it.
The aim wasn’t to completely gut CI, but to make it less dominant while retaining playability and hitting the fewest archetypes. So Boggs targeted the clearance that is only played in CI (UVC is good in Asa and other HB IDs, especially with Jinja) so the other archetypes are not as impacted.
I think you’re editorializing Boggs’ explanation a bit there. 
I’m not really a CI player but I think CI enables combos and I think combos are a fun thing to have in the game, as long as they are not dominant. I will paraphrase / editorialize someone else - I’m pretty sure it was Kenny Deakins - who said on a podcast somewhere, “Your steak and potatoes needs a little spice to make a tasty meal, but if there’s too much spice it ruins the whole meal.” I think FFG is raiding the spice cabinet - Whampoa, Brain Rewiring, Mother Goddess - but, also, by banning VLC, they’ve halved the “reg CI” econ engine and made room for decks / meals that aren’t CI / steak. I’m glad CI can continue to exist for (less efficient and pervasive) combo decks.
It’s funny that Tapwrm is restricted - “we missed a Runner econ card - quick, hammer it!” - but also it’s really dumb that we don’t have any, like, straightforward runner economy cards. RFG Key / Find the Truth is just as convoluted and I really hope we get a card that says “this card makes the Runner money without a convoluted combo” soon.
Like, Sure Gamble?
Yeah and Daily Casts and Armitage Codebusting, but all of those eventually run out. Maybe my Algo Trading + Dadiana Chacon deck isn’t so bad any more.
You would like a runner econ card that never runs out and gives the runner tons of money?