After two picks in a draft you usually want to have settled upon some sort of strategy, and then make sure you follow it. In this instance we’ve gone for cheap and efficient ice early, so it’s probably worth following through on that and taking the Himatsu Baku. We’re short of economy, but I don’t think burst is going to cut it at this stage so we should look out for a more sustained source in a later pack (ironically, like the Adonis Campaign that just went by).
The runner pick has to be Magnum Opus, though it means we’ll need to be wary of memory limits when picking other programmes and hardware.
Being flexible and not fixated on the first few cards you take has been historically a really strong strategy in other games I’ve drafted Nema, I tend to disagree with what you said, and think your line of reasoning can get you in trouble. You usually don’t want to settle too early on a strategy. Getting tunnel visioned into one direction can really destroy a draft in MTG, Solforge etc. I tend to reason it would be true here as well. Not having any strategy at all is also bad :). I also don’t understand why burst won’t cut it, were only 3rd pick in and our ice is fairly cheap. We still are far away from the half way mark.
On the other hand Himatsu is a fine card. I would not be unhappy if we end up taking it here. I tend to prefer the beanstalk myself but both are flexible cards that can fit into about any draft deck I would imagine.
I agree that you shouldn’t get locked down in to a strategy, but at the same time you shouldn’t be oblivious to what’s being passed your way and what you’re passing on. This is only the third pack we’ve seen, and the second one that’s been passed, but already I suspect that the two players to the left are reasonably happy to pass on small ice and are instead focusing on taking other things. I think that either pushes you one of two ways; either you hoover up all the good cheap ice and try to starve the people on your right, or you start trying to work out what’s going to be hard to get hold of (economy? fast advance? draw?) and try to plug any likely gaps. That’s what I meant by having a coherent strategy; I firmly believe that the sooner in a pack you can do this the better your draft will go.
At the same time, Netrunner doesn’t have colour problems, or anything like the same restriction on costs that something like MTG has, so you can be a lot more flexible.
I’d steer away from burst economy because you really need a lot of it for it to work; probably at least 6 cards in your 34 card deck, if not 8. I don’t like the logic of passing up Subliminal Messaging in pack 1, and then taking Beanstalk in pack 3.
On the other hand, there is the strong possibility that I’m completely wrong about some or all of the above.
I would definitely get magnum opus for the runner pick here as it is the most robust runner economy card in cube. For corporation i think himitsu bako is the best choice. It just does everything and is immune to pesky parasites!
Even if we take Bako here, there are still two strong pieces of cheap end ice remaining in this pack(Victor 1.0 and Draco). When only 2 cards are missing it’s hard to get a feel for what people are valuing/taking, for all we know first 2 cards were absolute bombs. Taking a balanced set of cards instead of only ice seems stronger to me than trying to cut small ice,
Again, Bako is still a fine pick though.
Also after thinking about it, I think Alex took Kati Jones first pick.
Magnum Opus seems like a slam dunk at first but it also has some drawbacks. First, in order to run it we are forced to draft some additional MU. Not that having some extra memory is bad, but without Opus it was more of something we could simply draft if it as a late round value pick. Second, if we install it early it makes early face checking a bit riskier. In constructed you can put down a sharpshooter or SMC along with your Opus and feel safe. Since we can’t count on that we probably want to lean towards a higher number of sentry breakers to protect against a surprise Roto/Grim. With all that said we definitely still want to take Opus. It’s a great economic option if we get it early. Although I think Darwin has some merit as well. AI breakers are very valuable in this format but Darwin requires some solid economy to support… like opus lol.
For the corp side of things there are a couple of good picks. Himitsu-Bako, NEXT Bronze, and even Viktor 1.0 are all great picks for ice. Out of those 3 I think that Himitsu-Bako is the best. Beanstalk is also a solid economy pick but I think Bako edges it out by a slight margin. I understand what bluebird is saying about wanting to stay balanced. It’s definitely something we need to be aware of going forward.
Today had some of the most lopsided voting yet.Himitsu-Bako took 50% of the corp vote with Beanstalk in second.
On the runner side Magnum Opus took a commanding 95% of the vote, leaving the other contenders in the dust. Opus is certainly one of the top picks in the game.
The bioroids seem a bit too slow and porous for the scoring remote, and having flexibility in terms of ice placement effectiveness is important here. Rex Campaign is arguably worse than our default economy assets. A trap like Junebug could be good but the two clicks and two creds to feign PriReq seem a bit much in a deck where we don’t know what our econ is going to be yet. GLC jumps out as a solid option.
I selected Chum. its ability to make the previously chosen small ice more useful through the mid game and its low economic footprint makes it work well with the cards we’ve already selected. If the net damage trashes a key breaker, it might well win us a game in a fairly direct manner.
We just picked Opus so the MU boosters and the Mem Chips stand out here. A well placed Rook could win a game against a player who missed out on econ either in draft or by draw, but places even more pressure on the post Opus memory situation. Spinal modem is a very solid Console. It helps solve our MU problem while also providing a sustained economic boost. Losing a trace and taking a brain damage is also less problematic than usual since i think it could be difficult to draft and draw the appropriate combinations of cards necessary for a flatline kill. Clone Chip is also really good since we will probably only have one copy of our very best breaker and losing it to program trash could spell instant doom without recursion.
I chose Spinal Modem. Consoles are generally very good, and Spinal modem is one of the better consoles in my opinion, with the format mitigating some of its risks. Retrieving our best breaker with Clone Chip sounds great, but Spinal Modem makes all of our Breakers a little bit better and who wants to plan purely out of fear?
I would go for Green Level Clearance and Spinal Modem. The Corp pack is somewhat weak at this stage. As yet we haven’t drafted any strong economy cards. Green Level Clearance is a great card to see, especially early in the game. Given that draft decks tend to have inferior consistency, some money and draw seems like a great pick.
Project Junebug might also be a strong move. In a format largely defined by 5/3 agendas, Junebug can often be very dangerous-- further, if you destroy important cards from the runner’s hand, draft decks tend to lack the recursion that more serious decks take for granted.
Spinal Modem is one of the best Consoles in the game. Its weakness-- already far from significant-- is largely mitigated by the draft format. I suspect this has been a very strong Runner pack to allow Spinal Modem to remain unpicked at this stage.
I think Datapike gains some value in draft as it’s ability is strong, and would be my pick if GLC wasn’t in the pack. I think green level clearance helps smooth out our decks draws, and of course gains us a non insignificant amount of 2$. Leaves our options open for future picks and is a solid card.
On datapike, I think it’s better than enigma in limited. Many times it’s going to be broken by something that needs to pay for each subroutine(unlike yog), and it doesn’t have last click weakness like enigma. Also the 2 credit loss seems stronger in draft vs weaker economies at least.
So after all that, i take GLC.
On the runner side, I too lean towards Spinal Modem. I’m glad to see others leaning that direction at all. We aren’t sure were going to see a stronger console, and we can use the memory. If we do get a stronger console we can just play whichever one we draw first or want for that particular game. Modem makes our awful starter breakers slightly more efficient. It has great synergy with MO. Giving us the memory we need to keep MO out. MO on the other hand, can let us outpace the Corp economy, beating the traces. I think taking a brain damage once or twice won’t kill us either, as long as we play around losing key breakers etc.
Clone Chip is probably my second choice, as it will make future faeries, parasites etc more attractive and can recur breakers. I think if the person were passing too took faerie, they will be very happy to see clone chip.
I’d pick Spinal Modem over any other console in draft. Desperado is only good with several runs you want to be making anyways, of which there is no guarantee here.
Hey, we were just recently concerned about having the MU for MO: Spinal Modem. I don’t like any of these corp picks much, but either GLC or Chum make sense to me.
Chum is outright scary for someone who only has Force of Nature to break it (so that one’s pretty obvious)
Spinal Modem sounds reasonable, although I wouldn’t go for it if we didn’t have MO already - marrying yourself to the necessity to win non-essential traces doesn’t normally sound like a good plan.
Draft a Magnum Opus and get handed a pack of memory. Alexfrog is spoonfeeding us our deck lol. I agree with what everyone else has said. Spinal Modem is the best choice. Link cards gain a little bit of extra value to us from now on. Viper and Caduceus also go up in value for our corp.
For the corp side I like Green Level Clearance. Chum has a couple of key weaknesses that keep it a step behind GLC. Datapike is a good ice too but not quite enough to edge GLC for me. If Junebug didn’t hurt R&D so much I would consider it as well.
(so that one’s pretty obvious)