Yeah I’ve just read that article. It’s pretty horrible advice in general. It’s basically some guy saying “I was expecting to do badly at the dice rolling game so I took a d20 and rolled a 20 and that makes me smart”.
That’s not even close to what netrunner deck-building should be thinking about. I really liked the part where he said Gabe was better than Andy if you drew some good cards and ignored the FOUR FREE DRAWS Andy has on top of that.
I have taken high variance decks to tournaments before and upset some matches that I should not have had I been playing a consistant deck that leveraged my skill. The decks that WIN or LOSE hard in either direction can get you a higher standing than other decks, but if the WIN percentage isn’t high enough, you aren’t likely to make it through the elims regardless. If your goal is just to place higher than you normally do, decks like this can get you there and require a bit less skill to do so. But you’re not likely to achieve the perfect play required to win a tournament, or a luck streak long enough to make it through elimination rounds.
“Jank that gets you through the swiss won’t hold up in the eliminations.”
I guess this is why I’m not a gambler. It sounds like betting on long-odds horses because the payout is better.
The idea is more that you’re comparing dice with the same EV, so like rolling 11d4 vs 5d10.
I get that, really, but I don’t necessarily think most people (if anybody) can reliably evaluate the EV of any given deck they come up with.
Long term, yes, it is not a winning strategy. Aspiring world champions should be looking to improve their play and reduce their deck variance. For those who realize that they are either unwilling or unable to put in that work but still want to occasionally pull upsets in competitive play its a flexible way to look at it.
Lets imagine that likelihood of winning can be plotted on a bell curve. This curve is defined by two parameters, position, and spread. In this analogy, player skill is represented by the position parameter and deck variance by the spread parameter. The bell curve of high skill players will be shifted in the positive direction while deck variance will increase the bell size in both directions. If someone’s bell position is lower than their opponents, they have very slim odds of winning with a super consistent deck since the bell is so narrow. The only chance of pulling off a win against stiff competition without shifting the curve right is to increase the spread.
It is not the best way to play netrunner. But, let’s say you have the goal of playing against better players for some reason or another. A high variable deck may get you higher in the tables so that you have the opportunity to see how those players play and perhaps learn something for the next time you go to a tournament. It may also encourage players to think you are better/worse than you are, which may also color how they treat you the next time you meet at a tournament.
Perfect play^TM and Perfect decks^TM are better for the long haul and for the win. But if you’re just in it for the ride/the fun/the experience high variability might be better for you.
What’s more, high variable decks and play can lead you to some really amazing decks if you have the experience and knowledge to make them consistant. If a deck “goes off” in 40% of your matches, but you can play it in the other 60% you may be at a better advantage than playing a deck where you must play it 100% of the time.
In this case Noise is a perfect example. It’s a highly variable deck that can “luck” wins, but still provides you a method for playing normally and winning that way. Recognizing that the deck will just win a portion of the time, may make it more desirable. You’ll spend less brain energy over the course of the day and be able to use on that percentage of games where you need it. Your rounds may go quicker too. Same reasoning can go with NEH; and I think to a point RP or HB FA. I’d actually argue most great corp decks have that variability built into them with enough redundancy for the other games where they must resort to plan B.
High Variability plays
NEH: Astro Train
HB: ABT
RP: Nisei Chain + Psi wins
Weyland: Early scorch win
There’s almost always 2-3 paths to victory, but the Titan deck posted here takes it to an extreme. It probably doesn’t have a 2nd mode to win reliably. Instead it has two high variance plays: Atlas Chain & Government Shutdown. And those two plays are a lot more strait forward than managing an ABT or a Nisei token/Psi game. They’re also a bit less interruptible.
I wouldn’t encourage anyone to play this way, but if you’re that guy whose not winning a lot and just wants a chance to luck into it and have that win thrill, maybe its the right option for you.
@gumOnShoe so what is the average win percentage you aim at when playing a deck?
Are you happy with 50%? 60%? 75% ? What is the percentage you want a deck
to averagely perform?
Experience from my Regional Season was, that the last player that made it to the top cut won one more
game than 50% (so 12 points after 5 rounds, 14 after 6 rounds). That is merely over 50%.
So, granted the sample size might still not be sufficiently big to pass a significancy test, including today
this deck’s OCTGN performance is 42 wins and 26 losses, i.e. 62%. This is more than the required
score to end Top 8 Regional.
And for what reason should this not be good in eliminations? First of all, you play approximately 50% runner games. So assuming you actually lose the first elimination round and go down to lower bracket (top 8) you play the deck two more times. Why is it so unlikely that you are lucky in only two more games?
So, answering to @maznaz, you do not bring a deck that only wins 30% of the games but at the end rewards you for being incredibly lucky, you bring a deck that is at 60% and should already on average make it to the cut, but that has, due to the higher variance, good chances of performing even higher.
Yes, I do know those 60% are not sufficiently proven. But they are the current value…
It is if the you have a runner deck that chooses between those dice, and corp decks that roll 7-10.
If you’re a weaker player, too, such a situation can pertain.
Maybe it should be important to note that while I certainly am not the best player out there, I made it Regionals Top 8 repeatedly plus won a GNK tournament. There are many players out there who are certainly better, but I mean to say I know the game quite a bit.
I haven’t looked very hard into it. I’m a fan of 60% from the sound of it, but that’s no guarantee to get through the elims if your other 40% is a hard loss. I know plenty of people who never get to play one side of their decks during elims. And there’s no guarantee you’ll win 2/3, just a likiihood. Also worth thinking about is the quality of your OCTGN games. High variance decks usually have a weakness and people at the top generally have the skill to exploit those. If your sample on OCTGN is the general OCTGN populace then when you have to face several extremely good players in a row, you may not have that 60% anymore. And it’s not that you’ll win 60% of your games. Its every time you sit down you have a 60% chance of winning. You still have that 40% though. It’s possible to get multiple losses in a row.
That’s been my general experience. This particular deck is weak enough to clot shenanigans that a good player may turn one of your hard wins into a loss at top levels. But, I think you’ll still hard win a few games if you’re given the opportunity to do that.
I think NEH is the best performing high variance deck we’ve ever seen. So I’d start there for target numbers.
And one tiny more thing. I won 50% of the games by Atlas chain alone. That does sound like this deck
can make it work consistently. Additionally, there are those games I win by flatline.
Context matters with this sort of thing. Compared to OCTGN, a regional tournament will have much stiffer competition: people will be running better decks on average, they’ll be sober and focused on the game, and the caliber of player will be either the same or higher. A strong player winning 62% of the time on OCTGN over 68 games tells us the deck works, but is the deck viable in a large tournament with a strong field? I don’t think we have nearly enough evidence to say.
More to the point, one issue I noticed while playing GRNDL Supermodernism (which this deck bears more than a passing resemblance to, IMO) was that your win percentage falls off a cliff after the cut: the top 8 players in a tournament know how to play around meat damage and manage your aggression, they probably have at least an inkling of your strategy if not a full list, and if you’re not in the top half of the cut, you’re going to get counterpicked.
edit: I want to be clear, this is a sweet list and I’m going to give it a whirl (I love[d] Supermodernism), but my experience has been that it is hard to win tournaments with this type of strategy.
Of course there is no guarantee of those 60 % (I don’t even know, if this number stands 
). And yeah,
playing against strong players will be what will bring this to a test. However, I found Clot shenanigans absolutely manageable. That’s what the 3x Cyberdex is for. Against Kate (100% CLot), the deck is up 4-3.
Glad you’ll give it a try Just remember: be ballsy xD
I actually loved GRNDL Supermodernism, too. This deck probably fewer ICE and usually doesn’t bother building a remote.
Oh and btw, I am onlie on OCTGN for probably the next 4 hours. So if anyone wants to test against this,
talk to me in the chat. @marsellus
This type of thinking is really the bigger point to take away. The questions to think about are how easy is it for the opponent to disrupt your gameplan and how easy is it for them to figure out the gameplan? In this case, losing either a Biotic or an Atlas are pretty severe disruptions, losing two is probably a game loss. The moment you slap down a biotic anyone with a passing familiarity with the game will know what you’re doing and try to stop you.
I’ve tried this kind of deck when O&C cames out and found out that it isn’t nearly as consistant as I would like it to be. Also, I can’t see how you can reliably win against a good kate player, this kind of deck clearly doesn’t have enough econ to make the punitive kill if they can’t reliably score a hostile takeover and the FA gameplan seems a bit sketchy to me. I would love to be proved wrong but I don’t really think it can hold against strong players who respect what your deck can do.
If you got some time tonight, I would love to play a couple of games against 
This is why during SHL4 I often played sacrificial construct instead of clone chip. 
I wagered that the backup plan would be weak when the FA got turned on. Sac’d a whole host of options for that, but had a high win percentage vs FA. Cuts both ways!
@Calimsha Certainly, just whisper to me in the chatroom
@gumOnShoe Luckily Sacrificial construct does not work against will’o
edit: now i get what you mean xD yeah, clot
@Marsellus What are you targeting with Interns? Virus Suite?
Edit: just saw that you mentioned Virus Suite, Jackson, and Will-O. Sorry, I missed it.
But is that even worth it? Those are some narrow targets.