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I’m way out of date with the meta but it looks to me like Anarch took a real hammering with this release.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! 
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. 
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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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…and in Cache Refresh, no Levy!
Incidentally, Maxx was fairly well represented in @FightingWalloon’s excellent online CR tournament using core 1 (2 deja vu, no levy). My feeling with minimal recursion Maxx (63-card frantic mopus) from this tournament is that Deja Vu can be the difference between winning and losing, Levy would fill that same gap (albeit less efficiently), and Medium/Parasite do a TON of work. Not sure whether it could be adapted to a non-CR, post-rotation setting without losing a lot of its mojo.
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I think the two most common points of analysis for ice were
- Is it Yoggable
- Does it die to parasite.
On the first point, code gate design and use has been incredibly warped by Yog since it completely nullifies anything lower than four strength. Any code gate with lower than four strength needed to be as cheap as possible and/or have an an encounter effect to justify being blanked by Yog. With Yog out of the picture, the difference between 0, 1, 2, and 3 strength is more relevant; in addition, more expensive, lower strength code gates can be played.
As for every runner’s favorite doomblade, it made low strength ice much weaker. Parasite also affected the way we think about encounter effects. They were more relevant with parasite when datasucker was used, but less relevant since they could be destroyed and wouldn’t stick around for every run. There are some ice that were already good, even though they were weak to parasite (e.g., Komainu) which I expect to become much better. Likewise, there are some weaker ice that weren’t played due to parasite which might see play. Without parasite, trash-resistant ice like Lotus Field, Architect, and Magnet become worse, Lotus field especially so with the loss of Yog.
tl;dr: Two of the main points of ice analysis are no longer relevant, changing how we judge ice.
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I told you it was in 2 days ago! I sent you the link and everything!
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A long post of conjectures and personal FeelsBadMan:
It feels like aggro running is dead for the time being. Being a diehard fan of this style, I have no idea what to play right now. I personally hate the ‘calculated’ style of running, where you make less than 10 runs a game and the rest is spent durdling and amassing credits.
Our meet-up last night was almost entirely Jinteki and Shaper, as I expected. Laguna Faust feels like possibly the best deck right now. I brought Inversikit and was bored out of my skull, clicking Opus like a mindless zombie waiting for something to happen in the game. Then when you do run, everything is guaranteed. Shaper has always been the ‘safe’ faction and that’s not my style. In 3 years I’ve rarely touched the faction except for jank, but with every style of aggresssive Anarch and Criminal neutered for the time being, I can’t think of what else to play.
For me, cards like Parasite, Yog, Siphon, and Desperado enabled aggressive Runner play. You punched a hole in a server and exploited it until the Corp responded. That style of play feels like it has vanished overnight. Siphon, Parasite, and Medium incentivized face-checking. I’ll gladly eat a DNA Tracker once if it means I can burn it down with all the Sucker tokens I have managed to build up. Same goes for Siphon: I may get stuck with some tags or have to click a FC3, but if the ICE is at all porous I’m still getting my money. Right now it doesn’t seem like there are any reasons to risk subroutines firing.
I hope the new cycle quickly resurrects aggressive Runner play, because I personally will quickly lose interest in a game where the only strategies are slower, safer, and less exciting. What some call ‘calculated’ I call mind-numbing.
I also think people are underestimating how dominant code gates are going to be. Viktor 1.0 and Fairchild 2.0 just went from trash tier to insane pieces of ice for 3 and 4 credits, respectively. Anarchs simply cannot pay through code gates over and over, and this is one of many things that may keep them out of the meta for awhile.
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I do think low strength code gates are going to be wild. A LOT of Gide gates are really good in a world where you can’t yog through it. But I do think there is a counter-balance between that and inversificater (which I feel like is going to see more play than ever). Popping cheap ice over to servers you care about and away from ones you don’t is going to be a strong play and has to be considered.
For me the biggest limitation when it came to Code Gates was not Yog, but Gordian Blade and the overabundance of good options. In fact, I haven’t build with Yog in mind in a long while.
Consider this, I’m not playing Eli anymore and Eli is better. Two Elis one behind the other is a solid tax and forces a breaker. Two Viktors are less taxing and you can’t actually score behind them because they can choose to take 1 brain damage.
Fairchild 2.0 main flaw to me was never Yog, but the fact that it’s hard to build servers with it. It doesn’t end the run, it doesn’t force breakers and, while taxing, it’s not as punishing to facecheck as, say, Architect.
Inversificator is also a big worry.
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I gotta agree with you here. I think Shapers definitely got the sweet end of the rotation deal now that they have the best breakers and the best multi-access. Splash in a few Temujins or smash the Opus button long enough and I think you could argue they have the best economy too.
Anarachs and Crims are really wearing gloves now after years of bare-knuckle boxing. I can’t say I’m thrilled about all the changes so far. Parasite and Yog probably needed to go, but losing Medium and Account Siphon feels terrible. From your post, I would assume that we have similar playstyles and I don’t know what to do when I’m not trying to deny the corp somehow. I also find late game inevitability pretty boring and usually wind up throwing games because I make a run when the right play was just to take 8 credits and pass turn.
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I’ve said it elsewhere already, but I’m really surprised (and a bit disappointed) not to see Opus leave the game, given that it clearly seems to have been an aim of core 2.0 to get rid of cards that lead to stale and uninteresting game states. I’d happily have seen Opus out, Personal Workshop in.
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