ChiLo City Grudge Match, final reminder

Tournaments and Events
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The second annual ChiLo City Grudge Match is this Saturday!

In addition to reminding anybody who had forgotten, I wanted to give the newest information and answer some of the criticisms we have received since announcing the event.

First, the logistics. The tournament is on January 24, 2015 at Bluegrass Magic and Games in Louisville, Kentucky. Entry fee is $10. Registration starts at 10 AM and the tournament will start at 11.

Our prize support–I think you’ll agree–is as good as any Netrunner tournament in recent memory. Due to the combined contributions of quite a few people from the Midwest Netrunner scene, we have prizes as follows:

First place: a Louisville Slugger “punitive counterstrike” bat trophy, a Chronos Protocol playmat, an alt art NBN, an alt art Gabe, Kate, and Noise
Second place: An alt art NBN, Gabe, Kate, and Noise
Third and fourth place: an alt art Gabe, Kate, and Noise

We also have alt art Kati Jones and some winter kits to distribute. All players will receive a special edition ChiLo 2015 token.

After swiss, the elimination rounds will be run on a best-of-3-games format, rather than the double elimination system used in the last regionals and world’s tournaments. In our testing, we found it to work very well without leaving large breaks for any players.

For purposes of this tournament, Astroscript Pilot Program has been errata’d to read “limit one per deck.” Unsurprisingly, this change has generated quite a bit of excitement and anger from some players.

We don’t hate NBN. We are not trying to ban fast advance or get rid of decks that we can’t compete against. We aren’t protesting FFG or taking a symbolic stand. We don’t think that Lukas is a bad designer or that we could do his job better than he can.

We made this change because we think it will be good for the game and provides a better tournament experience for all players. NBN is widely considered the most powerful corporation, and astroscript is easily its strongest card. While this is not a bad thing, the fact that so many players agree on this point means that a disproportionate number of players are incentivized to play the essentially the same deck. While we certainly hope that NBN (even fast advance) will be healthily represented at our tournament, it is likely that fewer than 40% of players will be playing it due to this change.

With that said, we think that our change to astroscript has been moderate and in keeping with design precedent from other cards. Other FFG games have restricted lists, and one may or may not be coming for Netrunner in the future, but all of our attempts at creating one felt too heavy handed and limiting. Altering astroscript to make sure it couldn’t advance other copies of astroscript (limiting the “astrotrain”) sounded promising, but there simply isn’t a precedent for it within the game itself, and the change seemed more complicated than what we settled on. Ultimately, we hope that this restriction will feel no more draconian than the restriction on Philotic Entanglement.

Our tournament last year had over 40 participants from 6 states and we suspect that this year’s tournament will have at least as many participants as last year’s. We are proud of the work we have put into this and excited for this Saturday. We hope to see you there!

Thank you for all of your input, criticism, and commentary. We invite your continued feedback at our email address: chicagolandnetrunner@gmail.com or on this forum.

If any of you would like to come but need a ride, please comment here or send an email. We have quite a few cars traveling between Chicago and Louisville on Friday and Saturday and could perhaps manage to facilitate a ride.

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Tournaments with restricted lists like this are VERY bad for the game (at least competitively) and I hope you reconsider. Decisions like this hurt the Netrunner tournament scene greatly.

Imagine if instead of banning (2 copies of) AstroScript, it banned the Shaper faction. Would you be happy? No! Of course you wouldn’t! The field will be a lot less diverse, hostile to newer players (note that it makes it impossible to play NBN with only the core set), hostile to competitive players, and in short, you shouldn’t have to ask whether your (legal) deck is allowed at every tournament you go to.

I urge everyone to avoid supporting this tournament, though I fear it’ll still get big numbers because of the prize support.

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Xenasis,

I think you might be thinking more abstractly whereas we are thinking more pragmatically. As far as I’m aware, there simply aren’t dozens of independent non-FFG Netrunner tournaments. We aren’t opening a Pandora’s box, we are planning for our tournament.

We aren’t banning shaper, we are restricting one card because the overwhelming majority of people who we have asked about this tournament thought it would be a good idea, especially given the skew in the meta toward NEH. I’m not sure if you’re in the Midwest, but trying to motivate others not to go to a tournament seems bizarre to me. For each negative comment or email I’ve gotten from people, I’ve gotten at least one thanking me for providing at least one tournament environment which isn’t the same bloody thing.

Between the tournament organizers, we have squared away the newer players, helping them build their decks, loaning or giving them our extra cards, and giving them rides to the tournament. We will also have all of our cards to help out anyone else who accidentally comes with a deck that isn’t legal at our tournament. We don’t speak on behalf of FFG, and you can rest easy that our house rule won’t suddenly become the norm everywhere. Coming to ChiLo isn’t a vote against Lukas or FFG. We aren’t trying to cause a schism. We are merely hosting a premier tournament because we love this freaking game. It’s been a good use of month’s worth of my time, and I can guarantee it’ll be worth a day’s worth of anyone who wants to come and play with us.

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No, I don’t think that’s the case. That’s indeed the problem.

Having different little rules between TOs who think they can design Netrunner better than Lukas everywhere could become the norm, though. You’re normalising it.

You’re not banning a faction overtly, but you’re banning them in essence - there’s no reason to play NBN at your tournament. Banning SMC or Special Order or something wouldn’t ban its respective faction, but it would make whichever was banned significantly worse than the other.

I agree than NBN is strong but it’s hardly like you go to tournaments and everyone’s playing NBN. It’s maybe 25% at most (outside of World’s). Its inclusion in the metagame does make deckbuilding harder and more challenging, though - and a metagame without NBN is significantly different than one with it.

Artificial metagames built around what random TOs think is good/bad for the game via unofficial errata actively hurts the game, whether you want to admit it or not.

There are more than plenty GNK tournaments that aren’t run by FFG.

I get that you don’t like NBN, but this isn’t the way.

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Setting my opinions aside for the moment, I think it is important to realize that this is not a restriction in the LCG sense. Rather it is a restriction in the Magic: The Gathering sense. Restrictions in LCGs do not follow the same approach. While in Magic: The Gathering you are permitted to play one copy of a card that has been restricted - a method limited to the Vintage format - in an LCG a restricted list is created. From this list players are permitted to play the standard amount of a chosen card, but those players are forbidden from playing any number of copies of any other card on the restricted list. What has been created here is an errata.

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I think we will agree to disagree on most of this, but I take issue with your last sentence. I don’t hate NBN, and I take issue with you telling me what I think or believe.

I’ve hosted plenty of tournaments here in Chicago with random house rules (core only, HB vs. Shaper, cube drafts). To me, this isn’t a violation of netrunner. It IS Netrunner. Netrunner is a constantly shifting game with a constantly shifting meta.

I’m not sure how you think you can just imply that NBN will only be 25% of the meta. At both nationals and worlds we saw significantly more than that and not much has changed since then. But whatever. You can believe whatever you’d like, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

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I think you’d probably be better off looking at other GNK events rather than nationals and worlds if you want to estimate how much NEH will be turning up.

It’s worth also noting that not only do you pseudo-ban NEH FA, but you also completely wipe out TWIY Grail, which is one of the more interesting decks to have appeared recently.

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Nothing anyone does will please everyone. If APP was fully legal (as it has been at every single other tournament… ever?) someone will be unhappy that an OP card was left unchecked.

If you ban it- well then that’s too much and people will bitch.

If you restrict it- its either not enough, or too much people will bitch.

Bottom line people will bitch. Frankly I think the reaction in this thread has been a bit over the top, okay a lot over the top. If you don’t like it don’t come, more chance for me to get a baseball bat.

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You know, as a compromise, you could always restrict the use of APP to 2 – the amount that’s in 1 core set. That way, you don’t completely kill fast advance NBN, but it’s harder than to chain 3 of them together…

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Can you provide factual evidence that limiting AS to 1 provides better balance than the rules as published? Thought not.

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I think the main problem with the rule is that it’s too close to the standard format. It seems more like a “let’s fix Netrunner” rule than a “let’s have interesting deckbuilding restrictions and see what happens” rule.

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Actually, I’ve been testing this restriction in the weekly GNK tournaments I run to great effect. NBN decks are still strong, but relatively fewer people play them. So. Keep your snark.

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Too late to do anything about it now, but I think that if you wanted a small tweak to shake up NEH Astro Biotic, you could have done it in a less intrusive way.

LCG Style Restictions (Choose 1, can’t use the others) with any combination of

NEH, Astro, Biotic Labor, Fast Track, Jackson

(My choice being Astro and Biotic Labor)

Or a card errata in a different way. Less influence on NEH or making NEH need 8 to win.

Or just say No NEH. TWIY is a weaker deck than NEH, and NEH isn’t unbeatable… even something like that lets NBN players do their thing, but should help shake it up.

Personally its a weird spot and since its an unofficial tournament I commend you for trying something… but a Limit 1 errata on the faction’s core card was not the way to do it imo.

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If you’re going to post on Stimhack, you’re going to get some snark.

I say to all of you- If you don’t like it, don’t come. Who are you or anyone to say what is good for the game, or more specifically this tournament? The Facebook page already has 60 people attending- that is as much as most of the regional events last season. What that says to me is that whether or not it is based on the change, a lot of people support this tournament and want to go have a good time. If this isn’t your idea of a good time then simply don’t attend. The tournament organizers have already decided what they wanted to be part of their event.

Am I happy about the restriction? Not particularly, but it’s because I like the game as it is printed.
Do I think NBN (Read NEH) has some issues now? Yes
Do I think this tournament is setting a dangerous precedent? No, unless you’re talking about the precedent where when good prize support is provided people show up to tournaments. The danger of that being that the game may actually gain popularity!

TL;DR: Shut up and either come play or sit at home, but don’t tell other people what to do with their event.

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I’d go if it was closer, but forums are a place for discussion.

It isnt my place to say they are wrong, nor do i personally say that. I am offering my feedback to the idea in case they do it again and might like my idea better than what they did already.

Personally I love restricted deck rules, even if I just do it to myself.

I just think limit 1 per deck was one of the less appealing choices and I am making my opinion vocal.

And don’t use number attending as anything unless theres a “Yes, but only because of your custom restriction” and a “Yes, in spite of your custom restriction” option when you hit “Attending”

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He didn’t post the event as a point of discussion, simply as a final reminder that the event was happening. OP even went as far as stating why they made the change. He didn’t ask for public feedback, he didn’t ask how to make it better and provided you a contact method if you wanted to leave this feedback.

The number is relevant, despite not having granular reporting, because when you’re able to organize a 60+ Man tournament with altered tournament structure that says a lot about the structure regardless.

I wasn’t really talking to you or anyone specifically. There isn’t a way to convince me that a non-FFG tournament with this sort of turn out is anything other than beneficial for the game.

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Talking about two different points. I agree tournaments and getting buzz up is good for the game.

And I don’t think numbers at the broadest level are relevant, because I would go to a tournament, without hesitation, if you banned every purple and green card… when HB and Shaper have been my mains (and my tournament standard decks) for over a year. I think most people just love the game, and even if you banned their best, they would just go and play something new and write it off as a fun day of deck exploration.

And just like he wasnt asking for feedback, he can just as easily ignore all of it. Why not put it out there, especially in case someone else wants to follow suite and do a similar idea?

I get your angle though.

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I posted here in part to remind, but in part to defend our choices (I should note here that not all of the tournament organizers were happy that I posted. They think that our best advertisement should be the fact that we ran a good tournament last year, and that the best way to shut up the trolls now would be to host another this year, rather than engage them). I absolutely welcome any feedback, but private is certainly better than public. For every person like Xenasis here or Screambear on Reddit who posts criticisms, I’ve gotten way more private messages from people who are happy about our plans (but don’t want to engage with the Internet ragers). The average observer sees that as the first comment and gets the false impression that the detractors are the majority. They don’t see that I’ve been researching this question for months and months, getting feedback and ideas from people like DJHH about how we can host a tournament that people like him would like to attend.

I pushed back against Badeesh because the comment was ignorant and flat out wrong. I’ve been testing NBN decks for months, and so have quite a few of the Chicago area players to make sure that NBN can still be competitive even with this restriction. I’m in charge of the most popular GNK tournament here in Chicago and I’ve put these ideas and logistics to the test. I sincerely appreciate commentary and ideas, and I take them seriously. I’d love to see competitive Netrunner become even better than it already is. I’m open to trying new things, taking new ideas under advisement, and listening to what the community wants. But there has to be some order to how these things happen. Flame wars online, false assertions about my motives, or petulant attempts to get others to boycott ChiLo don’t help anything, as far as I’m concerned.

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Support to Daine. No dog in this fight (though I wish I could go). But it’s your tourney, run it how you want. People will vote with their feet. If turnout is down (which I doubt), reassess. As far as Internet haters, opinions are like assholes…

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That’s pretty authoritative.