There have been endless conversations, arguments, rants and outcries about Faust - even the mightiest among us have succumbed to declaring the card an enemy of the game and taken to Slack to talk about Farmville or other games, so dead is Netrunner.
But wait. It Faust really the universal issue here, are there not card to stop him? Yes there are! Some bright sparks who’ve risen above the roiling mass of bile and hatred have noted that this card in isolation is not so bad - it’s the addition of D4v1d and Parasite - the unholy triumvirate that rule all, no one piece a master without the other two.
I posit brothers and sisters, that D4v1d is the problem. Without it, how would Dumblefork decks fare against the mighty combo of Wraparound + Tollbooth (or Archangel, add in a Little Engine if you want)? Would Weyland not actually be Not Bad™ if Wormhole actually did something occasionally? What id Blue Sun could get an oversighted Curtain Wall back to hand for once? Could Grim be worth playing once more?
Let’s face it fellow executives, D4v1d is the problem here, not Faust. How many Goliath’s must fall before we do something about it? Will no one think of the giants?
yes D4v1d is the problem (Faust seems quite balanced in say, criminal).
there are some hard counters coming up, namely Navi grid (seriously why isn’t this a weyland card?), it will be interesting to see if it gets much play both in and out of faction
interestingly Aghora seems like it could fill the D4v1d role post rotation, albeit at a much reduced power level.
Rather than D4v1d, I actually like to ponder what the game would be like without Whizzard. Were all these new assets released with Whizzard-balance in mind? Or were they balanced without considering a world in which Whizzard was played constantly? Neither is a happy thought.
Either way, we’re deep into a meta of asset spam territory, and surely having one ID (and just one ID) that gets three credits per turn for dealing with them (and you must deal with them) is not good for the game.
We haven’t had one rotation yet. I don’t even dare consider rotation that far in the future.
There are a gazillion of these threads about which part of anarch engine right now is the real problem. And the answer as it normally is that it’s the sum total and not any specific part.
I prefer targeting Faust and wyldpancakes because I find them to be the most problematic parts (Faust for warping the nature of gearchecks against anarch, and wyldsides + pancakes for being powerful variance mess that close to autowins if you open wyldsides and econ). D4vid is strong and dodges some of the taxing ice that would otherwise hate on Faust only decks, but it’s an interesting effect and a good one for anarch to have. It also has weaknesses and can’t solve the majority of ice.
Or, more bluntly getting rid of Faust or wyldpancakes ends the deck, whereas getting rid of David makes the deck worse and hurts the rest of anarch a lot.
if we are looking to neuter anarch via MWL without hurting the other factions, then the cards which are not splashed should go on it. namely, adjusted chrono / wyldside & D4v1d. Faust is a good card in criminal and shaper but not a broken one, I’d like to see it remain viable for those factions.
Wyldside only. This one is never splashed and Anarch decks play 3 copies.
Adjusted Chronotype is splashed in many innocent decks (Game Day/Beach Party Shaper, Sunny with Globalsec Security Clearance, Shaper with doubles and Starlight Crusade). D4v1d is sometimes splashed in Shaper, I think 4 influence is already a fair price, even with all the recurring possibilities available).
They’re only splashing 1 Faust anyway (and shaper decks splash that many also sometimes). I’d like mwl Faust and chronotype ban/restricted as my ideal solution. But chronotype mwl is fine if we refuse to do bans.
Faust is warping even outside of anarch, but building around drug dealer had real drawbacks.
The more I think about the worse the idea of mwling David seems terrible. How does anarch deal with curtain wall blue sun? The cards getting upcoming hate anyway. Like it stupid for the same reason desperado is a stupid include, because it just acts as 2 or 3 influence tax on 95% of in faction decks.
Sooner or later there will be “Pancake,it’s your fault,not D4v1d and Faust” and other threads like “Should Noise be banned?”,“Should Whizz on MWL?”,“Should NBN cards redesigned for Weyland and give Faust to Criminal?” and finally “Damon,it’s your fault,not Lukas or FFG.”
Personally the only problem I concern about Anarch machine is Pancake.This is the real problem,and deal with Pancake would end all the problems you guys would be complain.Wyldside is never broken before Pancake,Pancake is an almost useless card unless pack it with Wyldside,and this machine feeds the Faust and D4v1d to make them so strong.Just imagine how it would impact the Faust decks if you draw 2 cards and automatically losing 1 click every turn,it would bring down there power level.1 click per turn is much huge hit then every other things.
Without D4vid and Parasite, there would be a whole lot of awfully oppresive sentries for which Anarchs and Shapers don’t have any great answers.
Komainus and Tour guides are obnoxious without Parasite keeping them in check.
Vikrams and Assassins would be way too cheap and strong without good answers such as D4vid.
I would not want to play in such meta.
These powerful ices are designed around having a balancing cards such as Parasite or D4vid in place.
Corp is already in a very strong shape, especially against any runner who is not called Whizzard.
Vikram and Assassin are played principally because they tax both Faust and D4v1d heavily (2 counters on D4v1d, and a nasty facecheck means you get value on the initial run and the repeat run to destroy it). We’d possibly see more Tollbooth/Archangel than Vikram/Assassin if D4v1d/Faust wasn’t around.
Or Crim, that mini-faction everyone forgets. Except they can’t import D4v1d either. Hm.
I agree completely, Chronotype is the problem. draw 2 cards for a click is a pretty reasonable exchange once per turn and forced. $3 for a resource that gives a click every turn, (what chronotype effectively does) is overpowered. The problem is putting it on the MWL costs 2 pips instead of the 3 Wyldside would cost, I still have a problem ‘blaming’ the wrong card.
As far as D4, its really strong but I think its needed now due to other cards that came out after it. A buddy pointed out Crick is crazy to break without D4. Same with Parasite is needed for things like Tsurugi, Komainu, Tour Guide. There are many cards that ended up the way they are because D4 and Parasite exist, and they’d be too strong without them. I’m back on Faust being the main offender, because its the bridge between, it covers everything else in the middle, the stuff you’re using 2-3 cards to break.
As a BlueSun Glacier player, you all know how much I hate David. But I doubt it’s the problem here .
David is part of the gear checking plan in regass Anarch match up and I’m fine with it. Getting the influence to use 3clonechip makes it too powerful pre-mwl and we already solved that. In this particular match up though, what faust annoys me is it brings double sucker farming plan online way faster than it should. With the pancake engine and IHW for power turn, it’s too efficient when it works so your deckbuilding goal is solely to find them asap.
Anarch deck building use to be so much fun when you try to spend inf on atman, smc or even desperado legwork. They use to have the sweetest breaker suit+support (corroder mimic yog sucker david) and that no lotusfield plz spirit XD
BTW, we just had a fun non-official KOS tournament yesterday and very few people bring faust decks. BlueSun went undefeated with all sorts of gear checking and mother goddess madness. I even slot back pri-req.
It was such a good time.
Really, I’d like to see Wyldside nuked from orbit because best case scenario no one uses it, worst case scenario it sticks around as one of, if not the most, biggest sources of variance in Android Netrunner. If you run 3 Desperado, and your deck is designed to kinda work well with a Desperado out but you didn’t draw it, well, you still probably got that Sec Testing your deck is designed to work well with out instead, or one of the right breakers. If you run 3 Wyldside, and your deck is designed to work well with Wyldside out but you didn’t draw it, you don’t have any of the things you need because Wyldside is supposed to be drawing them for you (and sometimes you, correctly, run fewer copies). Even during time periods when noise has a healthy 50% winrate, I’m like, it’s not very fun that half of these are “Sorry you couldn’t draw Wyldside”, and half of these is “Wow, turn 1 trinity, seemed pretty hard to figure out a way to keep up with that”. (to exaggerate a bit)
On the one hand, we do want to avoid a situation where the runner runs up against some really difficult ICE and avoid stale ICE compositions. On the other hand, we want diversity in the cards that are present in the game, so that not everyone has all the answers in every situation. It’s certainly an interesting idea to present D4v1d as the MWL recipient, and at first I thought it to be the right idea, but in the end, I still land on Faust.
Although Faust may be balanced in a vacuum, I’d suggest that it is the most effective AI breaker so far, especially considering Wyldside + Adj Chrono. Crypsis is terribly inefficient and Overmind’s power is dependent on a couple factors. Atman is pretty great, but very focused. This primarily comes from Faust’s ability to reach the Strength-4 ICE effectively. IMO, that’s Atman’s territory.
We can’t do anything about it now, but if Faust either cost 2+ more to install or had the following paid ability scheme, I feel like that would have fallen more in line more with the previous AI breakers, but overall I do think it’s a power creep (again, due to Wyldside + Adj Chrono).
1 Card: Break 1 subroutine.
1 Card: +1 Strength if currently at less than 3 strength.
1 Card: +2 Strength if currently at 3 strength or more.
This won’t be so bad once Adj Chrono cycles out, but that’s in a couple years.
Ya know, if waiting on Adj Chrono to cycle out is what would make this Anarch dominance balance itself, maybe it should receive the MWL nomination. Sure, some innocent lists may be hit, but if they’re using Wyldside too, then I think that’s a well-deserved 2-Inf tax at this point.
