Casual Night Tournaments

Netrunner General
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We have a habit in our meta of running “just for fun” tournaments at our casual nights every few months, usually with some kind of unusual format attached. It’s always good to mix things up a little and we like to experiment with different formats. I thought I’d share some of these tournament ideas for people to try and to share their own formats.

Stealth Operative
Each player is given a role at the start of the tournament. Most are blank, but there is one corp operative and one runner operative. These players are trying to lose their corp or runner games respectively. For their given side, they get 0 points for a win and 5 for a loss (normal players get the usual 3 for a win). A secret vote is held at the end where players vote for who they thought the operatives were. If the majority guess correctly that player loses their points for that side.

Easter Egg Hunt
Every player is given a 3/0 agenda to add to their corp deck at the start of the tournament. This does not affect deckbuilding in any other way, it’s simply added on top. If the runner steals this agenda (the egg) they keep it and must add it to their corp deck. Corps can score the agendas to keep them safe. At the end of the tournament, each egg you have is worth 2 prestige points.

Roulette
Build a standard 45/15 deck for any faction you choose, usual deckbuilding rules apply. At the start of each round a selection of IDs are distributed randomly to each player. Pro tip: don’t include Nasir, it’s mean.

Team tournaments
We’ve done a few of these with different themes. Essentially, players are split into teams ahead of the tournament and build decks along a theme. Boys vs Girls was based on the runner IDs (Apex and Quetzal were allowed either side). HB vs Jinteki is self explanatory. There was also secret santa where players would a play a different teammate’s deck each round.

We’ve also done deck swaps, jank tournaments and custom ID tournaments, but I think the formats for these are reasonably well established. Do others have unusual tournament formats they’ve had fun with?

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Besides draft, I think my next favorite way to play has been in Team tournaments in any form. I once played in one where ID’s had been ranked based on recent competitive results. You were allowed to take any ID, but the “better” it was the harder it was for you to score prestige (where as “worse” ones got more).

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I like the egg idea. Might steal that and modify it for some our local stuff.

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I’ve thought of a fun way to do a team tourney as well.

Basically, you share deckbuilding among the two/three decks in the team. That means you can have a total of three copies of any one card among your decks, or one if it’s a “limit 1 per deck” card.

You also share influence among the three decks. Let’s say you’re building one Omar Keung, one Haley Kaplan, and one Sunny Lebeau. That means you have a total of (12+15+25) 52 influence points to share among your three decks.

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I haven’t tried this yet, but I think that Mutual Aid Society looks like an interesting format for a team tournament. Would need some updates - mostly “if your partner is playing NBN, you may not play Weyland.” And maybe randomize which member of each team goes first each game, to hamper Apocalypse/HHN shenanigans.

Aside from that, my main concern would be that the games might be long. I might see if I can talk people into trying it after I’ve tested my one-game-round tournament software, so I can use that to keep the tournament length down. Though I guess I should try to run one or two test games first, so I know if length is even an actual issue.

For those who don’t want to read white text on a purple background, Mutual Aid Society works like this: It’s a four person game, with two Runners and two Corps. The Runners are one team, the Corps are the other team. For one side to win, either both players on that side must get five agenda points, or both their opponents must be flatlined/decked.

Turn order is Corp #1, Corp #2, Runner #1, Runner #2, repeat.

Each player’s board state, credit pool, deck, hand, etc are kept separate, but each player has the following new click actions:

  • [Click]: Transfer any number of credits from your credit pool to your partner’s credit pool.
  • [Click]: Transfer any number of credits from your partner’s credit pool to your credit pool, up to a maximum amount set by your partner.

Each team may confer on strategy, share information, etc.

Tags apply only to the Runner who received them, and can be used by either Corp for actions against that Runner. Bad pub belongs to the Corp that received it, and can be used by both Runners on runs against that Corp.

If you have five points but your partner doesn’t, you continue to play.

If a player is flatlined or decked, their partner continues playing alone. If the flatlined/decked player had at least five points, their partner can still win by getting five points. If the flatlined/decked player had less than five points, their partner can only win by decking/flatlining both opponents.

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I remember reading about that a while ago. Always wanted to give it a go. Do let us know how your test game goes.

We actually started looking at another idea along these lines yesterday. It still needs refining, but here’s the basic idea.

Alliance tournament
Players split into 2 teams. Each team is given a set of special ability cards to share among the players, one each for corp and runner. These are all designed to help your allies at your own expense, for example: click & spend 5 credits to give one of your allies 5 credits or click and tag a tag to remove a tag from one ally. You have to swap your ally power each round and they’d probably have to have limited uses.

We’re thinking 35 minute rounds to play one side. Timing might be tricky, so that’s something to work out.

If people have ideas for the ally powers we’d love to hear them.

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My take on the Alliance idea would be roles to spread throughout the team which could/should be swapped between rounds. Each role would have 3 counters on it which they can use to benefit their team mates.

Players would need to meet a specific criteria in order to activate their role and spend a counter.
Current Ideas for the Corp side:

The Investor: If you have more than 20 credits at the start of your turn you may spend a counter to give another member 5 credits, they receive this at the start of their next turn.

The Designer: If you have more than 5 pieces of rezzed ICE at the start of your turn, you may spend a counter to rearrange two pieces of ICE for another member of your team.

The Aggressor: If your opponent has a tag at the start of your turn, you may spend a counter to do 1 meat damage to another member of your team opponents at the start of their next turn.

The Recycler: If 2 or fewer cards in HQ at the start of your turn, you may spend a counter to add a card from another member of your teams archives to their HQ at the start of their next turn.

The idea would be to have some similar ones for runners. Trying to keep some team interaction and planning without overpowering the rest of the game.

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I’ve wanted to play 2v2 Netrunner for many-a-year but I have never been convinced it will work. For instance, in the above example, a Whizzard ICE destruction deck can team up with a Siphon spam criminal and go to town on the one Corp. They will eventually get the agenda points they need because a good corp deck can barely withstand Whizzard by himself let alone getting Siphoned every second turn. I guess having the ability to transfer money between partners will alleviate this somewhat since once they get their 5 AP they can build up money and every few turns they can give the corp an influx of 10-15 credits.

The other issue would be if both corps were playing damage decks. Getting one corp to do 6 damage in one turn is a tough ask. But two corps being able to do the 6 damage between them should be pretty easy. Maybe if the turn structure went Corp 1, Runner 1 (cannot run against Corp 2 first turn), Corp 2, Runner 2 that would lessen the chance of that happening.

Maybe I am just going off the decks that are good for 1v1. For it to work well I reckon you would need to not only build your deck around the idea but for it to complement your partners deck. Either way, I think it is something that would definitely be fun to try out.

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There are probably lots of potential problems, but it’s kind of hard to say just how they’d play out.

For instance, even before either of them has five points, the Corps might agree to keep more credits in the pool of whoever has the best-defended HQ if they suspect Siphon. And if either Corp draws a Hedge Fund or Restructure when low on money, they could ask their partner to fund it for them.

Damage decks are probably more of a problem, though.

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I don’t have the rules people came up for it on-hand, but there was the one variant from ONR that some people ported up for 2v2 play, The Big Sell-Out, where each team has one Corp and one Runner player.

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Found them! Here’s the Big Sell-Out for the Original Netrunner, and here’s a version someone adapted for ANR.

Interestingly, it’s not actually for two teams of two. It’s for any number of teams of two.

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I tried the 2v2 variant. It was alright, but definitely felt like the Runners had even more of an advantage since you could ‘Run’ on an opposing runner, as if it were a fourth Central the Corp had to defend.

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As it was our local group who created this thread I thought I would update it with what else we have on, in case he helps give any others ideas.

Next week we are running a Merger Tournament for what we are hoping will be some massively overpowered janky fun on both sides.

How it works:
This tournament is based on the merger of IDs.
Both your Corp and Runner decks need to have 2 IDs.
Both ID card texts will be active.
For deck building purposes the minimum deck size is the larger of the two IDs, the influence limit is the lower of the two IDs.
For the runner the link is the combined value of the two IDs
In the event of both triggering simultaneously from an event, the player of the ID may determine the order of resolution.
Employee Strike & Cerebral Static may only blank one of their opponents IDs. The player of the current may choose.
Rebirth is allowed but can only be used to change one ID into another of the same faction.
You can bring any legal deck from any factions (MWL will apply).
At the end of the 3 rounds all players will receive normal tournament prestige points.
Each player can nominate their favourite opponents decks at the end of the tournament (based on creativity) and each nomination will be worth 1 additional prestige point.
Ties will be split on a Versus then Strength of Schedule basis.

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Two IDs from same faction?

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Yes, both ID’s have to be from the same faction.
So you could pair up CTM with SYNC or Whizzard with Eddie Kim.

We are also allowing mini-factions runners to pair together on the same basis, with both runners in-faction cards being treated as influence free.

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We ran the tournament this week and it went pretty well with people getting pretty inventive with Nasir, Khan and Harishchandra all in the line up.
The winning player brought Builder of Nations/Skorpios and Geist/Andy.

Next up is our third annual Custom ID tournament with all the previously created ID’s legal. Changes to the card pool make ID’s created 2 years ago quite interesting.

Then we have a Rotation tournament waiting in the wings until we have an idea of when it will actually happen. With just Core, Genesis and Spin being legal to play.

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Can you provide some more details? Sounds interesting to me!
What are the rules? Why are people bringing these IDs?

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The full rules are a bit further up the thread, but essentially we allowed players to have 2 ID’s for both Corp and Runner. Both ID’s abilities to be active at the same time.

So every time Builder of Nations pinging a meat damage it meant Skorpios could remove that card from the game.
I played PE/PU which I considered to be super mean and didn’t drop a game all night, unfortunately my Smoke/Kit combo didn’t fair quite so well.

It made some interesting combo’s and previously under played ID’s getting a chance to shine.
I thought the Corp’s would be super powerful but it ended up fairly well balanced.
We added a vote at the end for peoples favourite decks to try to encourage innovation, which also seemed to work well.

We play ‘regular’ Netrunner against each other every week so these tournaments are a chance to mix it up a little and add a little variety and challenge to the games.