Caprice Nisei: Exactly as influential as predicted?

This is what you all get for not running Vamp. If the corp has no money, they can’t play psi games. Too easy.

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Copycat works against Caprice too if anyone uses that.

Also Quest Completed.

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So, Self-Modifying Code is gendered ?

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Played against plenty of people that ran both of these, in the two regionals I took RP to. Here’s the thing: they only really work before the first Nisei gets scored. Afterwards, the token hoses them really badly - sure, you then lose the security blanket of “they have to win twice to even get in, trolololo”, but seeing how much commitment both of those plays need, it was unnecessary in the first place.

Also, two other things I used to outright demolish people that were on either of those plans were Crisium Grid on HQ, and my personal favorite: a de-rezzed Excalibur on HQ which I’d only rez during a Vamp run. Most people can only Parasite it, which means that it returns de-rezzed again. Thus, it’s either a failed Vamp play or an insta-Parasite to get rid of it. Combined with MHCs, even getting Vamped to zero isn’t a huge deal then, you can still score.

Played against Vampers almost exclusively, they all had more money than I did, and the only things I lost to were:

  • my own fatigue/stupidity
  • 4 agendas right on top of each other during a hail-mary run on RnD

(in that order)

Caprice is almost necessary right now, in the same way having some FA decks are necessary. If runners could build exclusively for remote lock, they would utterly dominate every corp. There’s very little you can do against such a deck except bluff, and that’s never been a reliable strategy - Cambridge PE is about the only deck I’ve seen break remote lock through fear of flatline! Though in the past, Weyland might have once managed it. It would be good to see that again.

Caprice and FA both serve to break remote lock, forcing runners to at least include tools to pressure centrals (even if they never use them during e.g. a Caprice-less game).

People grumble about TFP, but if you think it’s random so are random accesses. It’s a strong card, but at its worst it’s best seen as reducing the agenda density of the deck.

Psi games are not random though.

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The problem is not so much that certain cards are overpowered, but more that psi is such a terrible game mechanic in general.

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I used to think that. But I actually think it’s pretty good, mostly for the reasons @erinrockabitch posted earlier in this thread.

I actually don’t particularly like playing psi games. But I prefer it to the alternative, where a runner who has enough money simply wins.

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@MasterAir Of course Caprice is good, nobody would argue that she isn’t, the question is whether she is fun and healthy for the game! As you even say, you used to not like it. I would hazard a guess to say that you still don’t really like it, but that you see its necessity (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong XD).

The problem with caprice, and now batty, is that in my mind she is lazy and bad game design. She takes an unfun mechanic - which most people really do not like! - and uses it to balance the problem that no corp can make a decently protected server any more. IMO she patches a hole in the game, and she does so badly. I really wish they would try to fix the core underlying problems that lead to us needing caprice to help the corp out rather than just simply shrugging their shoulders and adding more random mechanics into the game. We can argue all day over how random psi games actually are, but I don’t think anyone would argue that they are 100% skill.

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They’re a lazy solution to a real problem, but I don’t think that they really help the game in general.

Card games aren’t 100% skill. I agree psi games are pretty random, and probably too high variance. Some people love them, some hate them, some are ambivalent.

I actually don’t think they are lazy. My only problem with psi games is that they lower the enjoyment of the game for some players. It’s easy to remember streaks, one way or another, if you go on a bad streak it’s easy to get grumpy. Losing 3-4 psi in a row is similar to accessing 10 cards and seeing no agendas. Or losing to a turn 2 Maker’s Eye for 5 points. I think mechanically psi games are pretty sound.

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As always the fix to it would be :
a - release a ridiculously good silver bullet
b - re-release a Jinteki Caprice / Ash / sort of “gtfo” card to balance Jinteki’s partial etr problems.

The strange thing is people playing plascrete but no tool vs Caprice in all their decks. A runner psi-1c rec neutral ressource would be very nice to replace those 'cretes.

The real problem is that even small imbalances in credit generating efficiency between the corp and runner make it that the corp can never play the remote game or glacier style (if the imbalance favours the runner). This is not a solvable problem. To balance credit generating across two asymmetrical sides and seven different factions that are all supposed to ‘feel’ different is a Sisyphean task.

So given that the underlying problem is an inherent weakness of any asymmetrical resource-based game the next best solution is to solve the symptom, namely glacier scoring remotes. The game needed a card that protected a server, where whoever had the most credits weren’t guaranteed to win, but that wasn’t invincible. Caprice does these three things. If she trashed like Marcus, or let you access only her like Ash, she’d simply be another credit generating card (and a slightly unreliable one). The psi-game while it feels random and frustrating, keeps runners out, but doesn’t make the server invincible because of the high credit need. For these reasons I say Caprice is good design. Could there be better? Sure, but that doesn’t make her bad design.

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How about tfp then? I really think it’s the main culprit here.

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You are the Runner. The Corp has installed an ICE and advanced a card behind it.

You have Corroder, Gordian Blade and Faerie in hand. You can only install one of them before running.

So, the question is, did the Corp install Wraparound? Or did they install Quandary? Maybe they installed Guard.

Choose right and you get the agenda. Choose wrong and the Corp scores it.

How does this fundamentally differ, in principle, from the mechanic of a Psi game? Isn’t the whole hidden information part of the game like a big Psi game in effect? If you object to Psi games on principle, do you dislike any use of the hidden information mechanic?

I have always thought that Netrunner is pretty neat in appealing both to people who like the interactive bluffing and probabilistic approach of poker, and also those who like the contained, deterministic linearity of a logic puzzle (and it’s interesting to see how people’s innate approaches tends to see them gravitate towards different factions and playstyles). If you hate Psi games, doesn’t it just mark you out as a Shaper rather than an Anarch? Either way, there will be people who specifically enjoy the game for the parts you dislike and are less enamoured with the bits that you gravitate towards!

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If you’ve reached game point with no breakers, you’re playing a very strange game.

You can play film critic when Old Holywood comes out. You can play Imp now. TFP is good, really good. But it has counters. If the corp wants to score it, they have to install it somewhere. Then it’s a blank 5/3.

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Doesn’t solve anything until film critic is released. If you have to pay let’s say 3 creds to access the archive and make a psi game, it’s exactly the same as not being able to steal it from R&D or HQ. And if the corp want to score it, you still have to play the remote psi game on caprice. The main weakness of TFP is most of the time covered by Caprice / Nisei mk2.
As the runner, except if you play noise or some weird milling deck, ultimately you still need to steal 7 pts to win. If almost half of the corp 20 pts is protected by a dice roll on central because you can’t reliably steal in the remote courtesy of caprice and another dice roll… Well that just sucks hard. At least against fastrobiotic before Clot, you could win the race on R&D as the runner. It’s not the case against TFP decks.

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Not really. If it’s in HQ you have a 1/5 chance of touching it for a psi game. If it’s in the archives it’s certain.

Archives is typically less well defended than other servers.

The corp can’t score it if it’s in archives - which means either Jackson or Interns is required. If you use interns on TFP that’s one fewer caprice/sundew I have to deal with, and it has to sit on the table for 2 turns.

Unregistered S&W '35 is already an answer to Caprice. I never see anyone play it, even though tactics against Caprice tend to crop up in the thinking about any Runner deck!

Yes, it’s a somewhat laborious, niche card but it’s a bit greedy to expect to completely ignore one of your opponent’s main tactics and get an efficient, all-round utility card all in the same package!