I agree about slums. The counterplay is fine.
Just jump on Jinteki.net and ask for an IG / Gagarin Museum deck - youâll find match-ups all bloody day.
Those decks can be countered and beaten (miserably), but it requires narrow tech that leaves you horribly exposed to other match-ups. And youâre playing anarch. There are multiple Stimhack threads, with hundreds of posts, detailing these points ad infinitum.
People conflate the NPE soft-bannedness with the power level of the deck in a way that gets themselves confused. Hate cards tend to feel more narrow and painful to incorporate when the deck is very powerful, but you face dramatically different strategies in four fifths of your actual games.
3 Likes
For one, great news! TwoâŚcan I get a link to where this new format is detailed, please?
There are multiple problems with IG Bio-lock decks. These problems might not be apparent at first, but will be very clear after you experience any highly tuned version of the deck in hands of a skilled pilot.
First of all it is a big NPE to play against. The deck is never trying to actually score any agendas, and is purely focused on preventing the runner to meaningfully interact with it.
Only a Whizzard with a bunch of hate cards has actually any chance to keep the assets under control. All the other runners can just try to slow them down and find enough agendas before the lock is established.
This further worsens the problem with lack of diversity on runner side. Where previously we had Anarchs + Faust decks dominating, now we are basically left with just one runner option.
Denial decks have always been frustrating and unpleasant to play against. IG is bringing the denial strategy to a whole new level.
Also note that this is the key difference between IG and for example NEH FA. NEH is also very strong deck, but it allows both players to play an actual game of Netrunner, where you try to score, steal, build defenses and rigs, find or prevent scoring windows, all the stuff. That is the reason why people were never this upset with NEH, as they are now with IG.
The second major problem with IG decks is that the core engine consisting of Mumba Temple, Museum of History and Mumba City Hall is simply stupid powerful. It is breaking several basic game rules and rendering most of the runner strategies pointless and inefficient.
Letâs go through the sins of IG asset spam one by one:
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It breaks the normal dynamics of the game where Corp must try and score agendas. Instead the Corp can sit down and just install assets until it has enough of them to lock runner completely out of game. 2-3 Hostile infrastructures and 2-3 Bioethics will usually do the job, with some Ronin thrown in to accelerate the runners demise. For draw-happy runners there is Genetics Pavilion to put a stop to their silly ideas.
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It breaks the fundamental rule saying that assets can be trashed. In theory runner can still try and trash them, but whatâs the point to pay all those extra credits when the asset will be installed again straight from the deck a turn later? Even trashing non-alliance cards is very temporary thanks to Museum recursion and Tech startup providing additional tutoring.
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It breaks the basic economical balance of the game. Mumba Temples can provide up to 6 reccuring credits each turn and they can be tutored from the deck. This means the deck can operate on very little actual credits and economy cards. It also means that traditional economy pressure cards such as Account Siphon and Vamp are not efficient. And those Temples cannot usually be meaningfully trashed (see point 2.).
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It breaks the fundamental Netrunner rule saying that Corp will lose if they are not advancing agendas, by the means of running out of their R&D deck. This also renders Noise inefficient, where in the past Noise was the runner who usually kept the degenerate combo Corps in check.
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Museum of history and Mumba City Hall enable all kinds of degenerate combos which should not be possible, and are not possible for any other deck types and engines.
Such as drawing 3 cards in one click every turn using the Heritage committee.
Or discarding the runners most important card every turn using Salem Hospitality.
Or having runner to pay 5 credit tax for Mumba Virtual Tour every time he runs whatever server the Corp finds important a the moment time.
Or gaining 5-10 credits (depending on the number if additional support cards) in two clicks by using the Mumba Virtual Tour and Product recall (again both tutorable and reshuffled every turn).
Honestly all these combos are simply absurd and mind boggling and leaves us to simply wonder what kind of design and testing process could produce themâŚ
Personally I think the Museum / Temple / City Hall combo is threatening the basic balance and viability of the game, both now and for the future. The only solution which I see currently is to completely ban either Museum or Mumba City Hall. Just putting them on MWL or similar soft nerf wonât be enough (but itâs still better than nothingâŚ)
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The âcommunityâ did not do anything, a handful of people have.
And a different group of people could ALSO take matters into their own hands. After all, if nobody is willing to do anything about [insert cancer card here], why shouldnât they create their own rules? Perhaps the guys in France are tired of Adjusted Chronotype and they decide to nerf that card instead of Faust. And who is to say they are not right?
In fact, thereâs a bunch of Spanish people talking RIGHT NOW about making their own rules though Whatssap. The catâs out of the bag, either alternate âcommunityâ rulesets fizzle, or the community fractures.
PD: And I agree that Mumbad City Hall is stupid, that the best part of Museum is the endless tutoring and Faust is overpowered.
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Let not forget the best one of all, the MCH and Heritage interaction! Using MCH allows you to see the top 3 cards of your RnD while deciding what alliance card you want to fetch and install/play. If you like them, then get Heritage so you can draw them, if not, then snag some other alliance card, shuffle your deck and try again.
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I completely agree that it is not ideal for community to step in and try to fix the game. It should be FFGs job.
But as long as they are not doing this job, I welcome the community efforts.
Who knows, it might even push FFG to finally move and take some actionâŚ
Power to the people! Fear the masses! 
1 Like
I think the concern is a little overblown so long as the changes are contained to deckbuilding and not actual separate modes of play. Itâs more like a gentlemanâs agreement to not play certain cards because theyâre not fun.
If a serious tournament was proposing an in-game rule change or card errata, Iâd be against it, but IMO deckbuilding restrictions are fine.
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All the Runner can do is steal agendas? Isnât that kind of what theyâre supposed to be doing every game?
You might not like the kind of steady, strategic game that the archetype supports, you might prefer quick fire-and-forget-games, but it certainly doesnât prevent interactivity. On the contrary, it forces the Runner to interact, and punishes the Runner for not interacting through net damage and recursion!
The only difference is that it punishes insufficient interactivity through flatline, while other archetypes punish non-interactivity through points loss.
It might be difficult to fight down all of the assets, but itâs equally difficult to fight down all of the fast advance tools against the âAstro-b***ocksâ style decks. There are specific tools for disrupting the Corp plan in each case, but even without them, you can still interact with both types. Go steal their agendas!
(The difference, as you say yourself by your comparison with NEH is that you see flatlining people as not ârealâ Netrunner, while you see Corp points wins as ârealâ Netrunner. I donât see how that is anything but a personal preference.)
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I see that you are one of the few IG fans, but Iâm affraid that your arguments are simply false.
IG is definitely NOT promoting interactivity. On the contrary, it is doing everything it can to discourage runner to interact with it:
Run assets? Whatever, you canât trash them, and if you will, you will suffer net damage, and I will tutor it again.
Run archives? Fine, take those Shocks in the faceâŚ
Run HQ? I have some nice Snares ready for youâŚ
Run R&D? OK, pay a fortune to get through my Hives and Komainus. But you wonât find too many agendas there because I play only 8 in 54 cards deck, and 5 of those have built in protection. And also Iâm hiding a bunch if them in HQ and Archives, which you cannot afford to run very often. And even if you do, I have a Jackson ready, which you cannot afford to trash.
This is not what I consider promotion of interactivity.
In IG matchups, it is the Runner who is providing all the initiative, while the Corps is just sitting on their lazy arses laughing at their pitiful attemptsâŚ
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Iâm not trying to sound pedantic, but doesnât the Corp have to find all those cards first? I understand that the MCH tutoring power is really strong, but you still have to draw the tutor, and even then it only tutors the recursion and money cards, not the spiky death lock stuff. What happens if they donât draw Shocks? What if they canât find any ice? What if the runner has alternate ways of scoring via Notoriety or Freedom Through Equality?
A lot of the arguments Iâve seen against this deck assume a fully developed board state, but is it seriously so flawless of a deck that one canât possibly keep things from escalating that far? Iâm not being rhetorical, Iâd really like to know if people who have experience against it find that to be the case.
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[quote=âpj1, post:113, topic:7470, full:trueâ]IG is definitely NOT promoting interactivity. On the contrary, it is doing everything it can to discourage runner to interact with it:
Run assets? Whatever, you canât trash them, and if you will, you will suffer net damage, and I will tutor it again.
[/quote]
If you see this as preventing interactivity, you must concede that a glacier archetype allows you to run their servers, but by the act of rezzing ICE the Corp is âpreventing interactivityâ. Or that a rush deck allows you to Medium dig their R&D, but they are âpreventing interactivityâ by having scored out three turns ago.
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Yeah, the card that is crucial to making the assets really awkward to trash, Hostile Infrastructure, needs Tech Startup to find, not MCH. Likewise all the plethora of cards that actually make use of your âtrash lockâ are only searchable with Tech Startup.
Yes, in theory installing and rezzing Ice is also discouraging interactivity.
However the key difference is that breaking that ICE is the Runnerâs day job, and they dedicate 20-30% of their decks for this task.
I suppose if they would dedicate 20-30% of the deck just to combat asset spam, it might work against those decks. And then lose to everything else.
There is also another key point which IG is missing. The act of Install + Advance an agenda is the main way how the Corps normally encourage the interactivity, and how they are exercising their initiative. IG never does this.
[quote=âpj1, post:117, topic:7470, full:trueâ]
Yes, in theory installing and rezzing Ice is also discouraging interactivity.[/quote]
No itâs not.
The balance between the Corp trying to install strong enough ICE to keep the Runner out, and the Runner trying to get enough resources to get in is the interactivity!
The balance between the Corp trying to hide the agendas and the Runner trying to find them is another type of interactivity.
Another would be the balance between the Runner trying to destroy the Corp board state and the Corp trying to build/recur it.
(I think itâs people that naturally gravitate towards âShaper-styleâ thinking that have most trouble getting their heads around decks leveraging mass assets. Theyâre less used to that particular kind of interactivity where they disrupt the Corp game, and less accustomed to including tools for that purpose. Anarchs on the âNetrunner personality spectrumâ might equally need to get their head around it, but instinctively understand it a bit better as âa slightly different Corp thing that needs destroyingâ.)
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Well sure, if you pretend that IG can somehow lock up all three central servers with only nine ICE in their deck, then yeah, thereâs no way for the runner to win. But in the real world, one or two of those centrals is going to be wide open, and the runner wonât be deterred by a Shock! or two in Archives, or the small possibility of hitting a Snare! in HQ.
The deck gets set up very fast, because once Mumbad City Hall hits the board, they can pull out several key cards on demand, and itâs hard for the Runner to get out ahead of things. Trash MCH? Theyâve already installed Museums of History via MCH, so itâs going to get shuffled back in anyway. Trash the Museums, too? Jackson, letâs do it all again - hope it wasnât too hard for you to come up with 12 credits for all that. And Tech Startup lets them get MCH online pretty quick.
Itâs not flawless, no, but if you havenât played against it, you may not understand just how consistent it can be.
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This ia great. I recently asked @jakodrako to run local gnk tournaments with Faust and Museum banned. I sincerely hope we all in solidarity oppose these cards for the good of the game.
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