Core 2.0: Everything Old is New Again

No boxes were harmed or made useless by the release of Core 2.0

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Any Core 1’s bought without the purchase of packs from the first 2 cycles are wasted. You will have to buy 3 new cores to get playsets of everything if you don’t have the first 2 cycles, and that will mean you get 3x anything that was in the original core 1 boxes, thereby making your core 1 purchases a waste.

Useless is the wrong term, you’re right.

But Core 2.0 made buying Core 1.0 much less appealing.

If a new player just bought Core 1.0, that’s really unfortunate! If they get into Netrunner and want a full cardpool now, they are either going to need to buy most of Genesis and Spin, or just buy Core 2.0.

Now, I think that’s an unfortunate side effect of some changes that were really good for the game. But because we had whisperings of Core 2.0, to some extent we could mitigate those side effects (though not that much).

“Hey, I’m really liking this game… what should I buy first?”

“Oh, maybe just hold off on waiting Core 1.0, there might be an announcement soon.”

So what I am trying to say here is that the sooner we know about a new box the better for people trying to get into the game.

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On the gripping hand, buying 3x Core 2.0 is cheaper than 3x Core 1.0 + Spin+Genesis…

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I’m alright with the power level lowering a bit within the revised set. The old cards may have been the earliest defining features for those factions, but they won’t be the last ones.

As experimented with BB45, the removal of high-powered cards incentivizes players to find new lines of play with cards that are closer to each other on the power curve. I’m personally in the “asset spam is not real Netrunner” camp, and BB45 somewhat returns to “real Netrunner.” If there are fewer ways to negate ice, ice becomes a more attractive option over asset spam. For reference, 12 cards on that list are cards not included in the revised core that are in Core.

For some perspective on where I’m coming from, although I’ve played a number of Jnet games with full sets, I don’t actually own physical copies of the deluxe boxes. This means my in-person games have been without insta-parasucker and using AS six times a game. The revised core did the same thing, but from the other angle. I have the signature cards, but without the ones that enable abuse. FFG went the route of keeping the repeatable cards, but now they are to be used on less powerful options. I really think that CC and SOT enable an undesirable amount of use of powerful cards at insta-speed. I enjoy my games that don’t have that Abuse/Eject button, so I would be one who wouldn’t want those repetition cards included in the future.

Card games are always going to have good and bad cards. I believe it was a link someone posted on these forums where I read about the MTG card pool and good/bad cards. In short, suppose you were to take the best MTG players, and have them collectively select the best 500 cards from which to deckbuild, there would still be good and bad cards.

With all that said, the seemingly lower power level of the revised set does seem to invite more importing from the datapacks, which could make this revised core a bit underwhelming. The way I see it, we’ve already received the intended replacement for Parasite in Cutlery, but we’ll still look for a replacement of sorts for Account Siphon. (Maybe a new version isn’t in blue’s future, and we’ll see them take on a less bursty econ denial game instead.) Even when the power cards were removed in BB45, leaving the less powerful options, it still shook things up nonetheless. There are still plenty of useful cards in the revised set that I foresee them being worth a few slots, even with upcoming datapacks.

Interesting Thought: Will Faust be more painful for the runner now w/o Wyldside (more fair overall)?

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I’m wondering about tempo a lot looking at the cards left. So a corp starts the game and has a preset goal, and they tend to set the tempo. But tools like medium and syphon allowed the runner to rob the corp of their tempo and force tough decisions out of the corp. that’s almost entirely gone.

the corp install-advance-advances? Cut their money down or run R&D three times and suddenly they have to decide if they should score or purge or money up. I don’t see a lot of tools like that in the new core and it makes me feel like corps will have maybe a little too much ability to set the tempo of the game.

I might be wrong (I often am in fact), but this makes me a little nervous.

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I’m super bummed that Kit + Yog + Dedicated processor + a flock of Egrets is dead. :cry:

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I too will miss the most bullshitty bullshit that has ever or will ever be played

Edit: this sounded meaner than I meant so just to be clear: I love the bullshit you described. Three cheers for yog bullshit.

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Hey, complaining about the loss of Account Siphon is one thread over…

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except you dont get maaany cards, not everyone plays only competitive/wi9thout old cards

Morningstar + Dedicated Processor + a flock of Egrets is back from the dead though!

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I’m way out of date with the meta but it looks to me like Anarch took a real hammering with this release. So many powerful cards gone. I guess it’s just a testament to how powerful stuff was in core as everyone and their gran has been splashing anarch forever.

In general though, so many game-defining cards just gone, a real shake up. Pretty much all of them I can understand however as they fall into either ‘powerful’, ‘useless’ or ‘not fun’ categories. Really surprised to Scorched Earth go, but to be honest we stopped using that card almost entirely so I don’t miss it at all. It created tense games, sure, but once we knew it was that kind of deck the game just lost something and it created such a disappointing finale in my opinion.

It’s also really interesting that it’s retro-active changes and means they can actively reduce power levels rather than just printing weaker cards and waiting for them to cycle out. Imagine what core set 3.0 would look like with probably 4 or more sets to cherry pick cards from. That’d be an absolutely stunning core set by that point.

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Yeah, Anarch is taking a huge hit with the loss of Yog, Corroder, and Parasite. With those gone, the game is completely different. We will have to reevaluate pretty much every ice. I think people are underestimating how much parasite’s absence will affect ice.

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I think equally as important is the loss of Deja Vu. You can no longer inject/frantic/peddle without fear of permanently losing cards. Ignoring the loss of strong anarch cards, the anarch downsides just got a lot more serious.

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The low-end Code Gates in particular are ready for renewed life. This also makes NEXT (and Grail) more usable, and this is when no-ETF HB looks a little behind.

It’s my hope that without the instant ice destruction threat from CC+Para, running at ice will have to be more calculated, as it’s more likely to be effective. There’s still Cutlery for destruction, but typically only after the ice has had one effect. No Jackson for the Corp, but they do get more reliable ice. As an Anarch primary, I’ll confess I’ll miss that card, but I think for the sake of the game and returning to “real” Netrunner, Revised is on the right track.

In what ways do you think folks are underestimating; how do you see the future of ice?

Maybe. With respect to Peddler, Deja Vu’s use vs Retrieval Run is to retrieve two viruses. With Noise, Parasite, and Medium out, I don’t feel like there’s enough viruses remaining that make getting two of any better than installing a program in your heap for free and on the same click. For Frantic, I feel like that may almost be ideal for RR, provided you wanted a couple programs and you had to trash one. Now you can tutor just like a real Shaper! :wink: If you wanted a non-program in the bin, then you may not want your deck’s strategy to revolve around resources (for instance). Finally, with Peddler, you do get to choose what goes in the heap, so it’s up to you to install your most important cards from that selection (kind of applies to Frantic). I feel like Anarch relies on CC too much as a safety net, when what it takes to use RR over CC is some foresight.

To be fair, with ice on Archives, a RR gets more expensive, but that typically means less ice on the other servers.

If only Yagura were here to see this glorious new world. :cry:

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Yagura is in Core 2.0, so it will be!

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the loss of deja is highly significant for spamming out events (although what those events would be now is questionable). I think inject + retrieval is still solid play, though so not all is lost.

Eater seems significantly less strong in the new meta. Before it enabled keyhole, syphon and vamp And did incredible work in that regard. Now I don’t see a strong use case for it. (Analog dreamers deck maybe? Lol)

Seems like a reasonable design choice to me. The conspiracy breakers allow you to use all the fun draw/install + trash cards without getting totally locked out by ICE. Reducing the amount of condition-free recursion means that trashing is not necessarily as good as tutoring – with SoT, Deja Vu, and Clone Chip, stuff was generally more accessible in the heap than in the stack.

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I wholeheartedly agree with you. I was merely pointing out that I think this may be one of the biggest changes in the anarch play style. I sat down to build a MaxX deck thinking she would be the strongest anarch post rotation and then thought, huh… how do I do this without Deja Vu? It gets a lot harder for sure.

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