This is a experimental new post series that will be updated daily. We will be doing a mock 6 player draft with my own personal cube. The draft will be all of you combined together against five strong players.
In draft you build a 30 card minimum deck out of a 40 card draft. The game format only requires 6 agenda points scored/stolen to win. You have no real identity and have unlimited influence when building your deck.
The Daily Draft:
Each day I’ll update this post with a new pack of cards to pick from. You will then be able to discuss with each other and vote on the card to draft. The card with the most votes will be that day’s drafted card. I will be secretly telling the other draft players their own card choices and they will be drafting as well.
Starting Cards
Players start with the following “starter” cards that they can add to the cards they draft when creating decks.
(My Cube uses a modified set of starter cards)
Corp:
Priority Requisition x5
Private Contracts x2
Runner:
Armitage Codebusting x2
Force of Nature x1
Aurora x1
Pipeline x1
The End Game
The goal of all of this is to help encourage discussion on Netrunner drafting and give everyone some practice with card evaluation. Additionally, when we are finished with deck drafting, we will be playing and streaming matches between all of the players with their draft decks in a tournament. We will be looking for people who were active during the drafting portion to come and represent the forum decks during the tournament. The more discussion the better!
Cool idea. I take Nisei MK II here. I want agendas, and it’s a fairly strong one. You only need to get to six to win, so if you can score this early, you can secure some more points later.
Subliminal Messaging is my second choice and then Enigma(Cheap, and not as susceptible to yog)
Okay power shudown seems stronger since 3x crypsis isn’t in the pack, I think it’s a strong pick as well now.
EDIT: After realizing the 3 crypsis are not part of the core, I think the pick for me is Nesei or Shutdown.
my gut reaction was power shutdown but i think the correct answer is rather boring - bastion or enigma. without tutors for breakers just advancing priority req behind ETR ice seems strong.
I believe the cards worth considering here are Power Shutdown, Subliminal, Enigma and Nisei Mk II. Power shutdown is a card that can win a game by itself or completely catch the runner offguard and create that timing window you need to score some points. Subliminal is just a free semi-frequent untrashable pad campaign. Engima is rock solid early ice. it does get shutdown by yog but how many yogs will you run into in cube? not alot I would wager. Finally, Nisei is about as good as any 4/2 can be, however I do not think its power level warrants a first place pick.
Power shutdown seems like a bad pick to me! I’ve never drafted netrunner before, but I imagine being able to control the types of ice you draft is going to be difficult. You also will not have nearly as much ETR ice as you want. I feel like power shutdown’s effect is highly uncertain. Also, keep in mind that Corroder isn’t going to be common. Expect to be milling yourself for 3-5 rather than 2. That’s major variance on a server (archives) you probably won’t need to be protecting very much in the format.
Best picks are definitely subliminal messaging (runner is going to have a hunk of junk rig, and will not be able to run consistently), or enigma (suck it, force of nature). Nisei could be strong as well, but I think it needs to be passed up; picking agendas this early in the draft seems like a mistake to me. You already have 5 of them!
Ok, everything else is misinformation from here on out!
i veered away from power shutdown because you wont have jackson to bail you out of bad shutdowns like you do in constructed and you are most likely running the priority reqs. you could very easily chuck multiple priority reqs into archives and just lose.
with all of 1 drafts worth of experience I’d say probably nisei or subliminal. repeat runs are hard when your only breaker is crypsis, but, any agenda you can grab means less priority reqs, which are usually blank 5/3s (read: bad). Nisei is also a good agenda, especially against crypsis runners, so bonus points for that, i’d probably take the nisei although subliminal isn’t wrong
I discount power shutdown here because we’ll be milling 3-5, assuming few-to-no faeries, datasuckers, and corroders. I’m interested in Enigma, Nisei, and Subliminal, in that order.
After three drafts now (still, an expert by no means), I’m on pretty much the same page as asroybal, Hollis and hypomodern here… Enigma and Subliminal Messaging were the two I was going back and forth between when I voted last night. Enigma’s solid early-game cheap ETR ice made all that much better by the unlikelihood of running into Yog in a draft. I’m a huge, huge fan of Subliminal Messaging in constructed decks, but not quite sure how it would do in drafts. I would assume the runner’s going to have trouble running consistently and SM can take advantage of that. I briefly considered Nisei, but in my drafting experience the only agendas generally worth taking early in drafts would be 3/2s and 2/1s, especially with the runners starting out with no Crypsis… So… my vote was Enigma, with Subliminal Messaging close behind.
I would go with Enigma, Subliminal Messaging, and Nisei in that order. You can never have too much good ice.
I really would like Power Shutdown, but would pass on it for the same reason hypomodern did. The lowest mill cost going in is three, and the chance of milling an agenda (especially a three pointer which is what you are stuck with if nothing better comes up) worries me.
Some additional helpful information on the cube for people:
There is only one copy of any given unique card and region. (1 Jackson,1 Midori, 1 SanSan, etc).
Most non unique cards are 2x in the cube, however not all cards. (Some weak cards are 1x, and a few solid cards in a category that is lacking variety are 3x)
Finally there is one cards that is not in the cube due to power reasons: Account Siphon. It was an auto first pick and vastly warped the power of any deck it was in. So yes this is a non account siphon format.
This is a very interesting pick, and I could make a case for Nisei, Power Shutdown, Subliminal, Bastion, Enigma, or even Tsurugi. Nothing clearly amazing, but lots of solid cards.
Some things to keep in mind:
Given that we are playing to 6, not 7, Nisei falls a little in my mind. When you are trying to score 2+2+3, scoring a 4/2 is quite useful. When you are trying to sum to 6, it feels a bit worse.
With a 30 card deck size minimum, youre probably looking at a 34 card corp deck. You’ll probably want about 13 ice. That means that youre looking to take about 3 ice from each set of 10 cards (four sets total). Each pack probably has 2-3 solid ice, and then the quality declines from there!
Tsurugi is pretty good in a format without many parasites! There are only 2 parasites in the whole cube, for 6 people. Still, I think I’d take Bastion or Enigma over it here.
I absolutely cannot see Nisei being worthwhile here - you have to advance it the turn you place it down, and a 4/2 is just… really awkward. Tsurugi, Enigma, and Bastion seem like the far better picks here, as decent ETR ice are going to be hard to find, and all three are easily playable on their own. Power Shutdown would be great if we knew we had good ice, but it just seems way too variable, especially with no idea how many icebreakers are floating around runner side.
That and Enigma are clearly the standout cards, but the pack has three pieces of reasonable ice at a pinch and no other decent economy, so taking the SM nets you a solid card and also decreases options for the other players.
