Core 2.0: Everything Old is New Again

Yeah, I loved the obvious attitude and just general dickery you got from Noise. Whizz and Noise feel like they exemplify the anarch philosophy really well, so it’s a shame they’re going from a thematic point of view.

Maxx is the only one really keeping the flame alive: all the other anarch IDs are some flavour of freedom fighter, essentially, which is fine but not really what I want the faction to be defined as.

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Interesting. I like that they’ve combined Core 1.0 and the two cycles rotating out and i think it’s possibly a very good way of evolving the game. On the other hand i think this might be too late. For example, i think it’s good that Corroder is out, but does it resolve anything given that Paperclip is around? I’d be interested to know what those who still play standard netrunner think ( both of you ) and to see how the game is shaped by this change.

Thematically, I also love the idea that some Runners are getting older and retiring (ie. Kate).

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Rotation is widely regarded as too late in general, but this core set refresh is absolutely necessary. The game wasn’t designed originally with rotation in mind for a long time so some of the necessary staple cards getting turned evergreen is great. It’s also an opportunity for them to further rotate early, powerful core set cards that have been huge problems for the design space of the game (Breaking News, in particular, but also Noise and others) and should be positive effects going forward.

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I think biggest difference by far will be the absence of Siphon, followed by breaking news. As both these cards could prevent your opponent from playing Netrunner this seems like a positive change. Additionally Medium. For my money this enables both slower runner decks, and trappy jinteki decks :stuck_out_tongue:

Personally I hope they hold off for a little while on printing anything like a direct replacement for any of these cards, as I think the game will be broader without them.

I’ve just realized that we’ve all missed the most important change here: it looks like the box is a slightly different shape.

Looking at it next to the picture of the original core set, it looks like it’s either flatter or wider, but it’s hard to tell which without a scale. Either one would be good: flatter would mean less empty space, while wider might mean they’ve sized it to hold all the un-rotated cards at any given time.

Alternately, the proportions look similar to the deluxe expansion boxes, so maybe they’ve taken the criticism of Terminal Directive’s box to heart and made this much smaller. I’m not sure how they’d fit all the tokens and the rulebook in, though. Deluxe boxes will fit six piles of cards, so if they divided the cards into six piles of 42 or so, I guess there would be some space on top of them. But it’d be a tight squeeze.

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Maybe they will reduce the box size to mimic game of thrones and Arkham horror new cores.

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Now that you mention it, that does seem a lot more likely than any of my guesses.

COMBUSTIBLE LEMON TIME! ELIZABETH IS BACK, BABY!

Seriously though, this is amazing.

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For me the four main changes are: The removal of Siphon, Breaking News, Medium and Engineering the Future. Chances are the removal of Scorched Earth is also huge.

Breaking News is the most obvious: It means NBN no longer has any good agendas and it must work towards its tag punishment instead of just dropping facedown cards. Decks no longer need to have anti-tag meta.

Not having siphon will weaken Criminal significantly. They have always been the “Siphon into trick” faction and I do not believe they’ll be able to use many of their tricks so effectively.

Medium was the R&D pressue card in the game and we don’t have R&D Interface anymore. This means R&D access will now be event-based. You no longer can drop Medium down and win by hitting hard with it. I’ll miss this card a lot.

Without Engineering the Future, I believe CI will become the default HB identity. They are the only two that are not below par. I mean, what’s the next best one? The Foundry? Not really that useful.

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Getting the new core just so I can play a Gabe that looks not ridiculous!

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Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people happy that EtF is going, but I’m hoping the faction gets some good cards to make up for it. HB has been carried by that card forever and I think it’s now going to become clear how subpar non-CI HB is without a credit every turn.

On top of everything else, the icebreaker changes are really interesting. Archer and Flare are very different cards in a set whose only killers are Mimic, Faerie, Femme, and Pipeline. Likewise Hadrian’s and Heimdall with Corroder replaced with Morning Star.

edit: I also love Viktor and Hudson’s flavor text synergy

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With revised core set, any chance we’ll see revised rule set too?

My guess is that we’ll get a new rulebook that incorporates most or all of the changes from the FAQ and rulings, but no actual changes.

Edit: Maybe we’ll also get the rules divided into a Learn to Play book and a Rules Reference, which would be nice, especially if they manage to make the Learn to Play book fairly clear. But again, I wouldn’t expect actual changes out of that.

I am very down with this! It’ll be nice to have a Core Set that’s more even throughout.

Faerie + Emergency Shutdown was the death of Archer, and both of these are now in the core, and also do well against Flare.

I’m a little surprised they doubled down on unplayable junk icebreakers like FoN, Pipepline and Aurora, but I’m so far out of the loop right now that I don’t really remember what decent icebreakers are available from the first two cycles. I suppose they already considered Snowball “too good” compared to the new Anarch standard. Did anyone ever bother figuring out if Pipeline or Creeper is worse?

I would have liked for Knight to stick around, but I can understand why it didn’t.

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I bet Aurora can’t believe its luck.

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I really dislike the meta this Core 2.0 creates and as it removes most of what is fun and powerful about the Anarch and Criminal factions. I’m going to try to remain positive and hope that the 8th cycle replaces all the cool stuff Anarch and Crim just lost, but this is a bummer for Worlds 2017 IMO. I also don’t know if it will be as good of a Core-only experience for new people, as two of the three runner factions lose so much of what made them interesting.

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I think it’s good for the Core to emphasize that each faction has one ice type they’re good at breaking, one they’re ok at breaking, and one they’re lousy at breaking. FoN, Pipeline and Aurora are really good at conveying that.

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