Discerning the Metagame: Spin Cycle

StimHack.com
22

Speaking of disagreements…

Calling Gabe and Andromeda “God-tier” was, I think, a bit of an exaggeration. I noticed you almost-randomly decided to put Kate at A-level, even though her win rate isn’t really that far behind Gabe 'n Andi. If a new-ish player reads this seeking guidance, they’ll probably just play with Crims and ignore everyone else simply because you unequivocally declared them “Godly”, even though Shaper is overall a better faction.

Yes, they are really good, but let’s be honest, it’s because they’re Criminals. Powerful cards like Account Siphon and Desperado are propping up what is at the moment an otherwise mediocre faction, in the same way that Anarchs have great programs but everything else about them sucks. Seriously, try to imagine playing a Criminal without Siphon/Desperado/Inside Job… you can’t do it. Criminals just happen to have the most “meta-defining” cards, and that’s what makes them the best. I challenge the top-tier players to try and come up with lists that don’t involve the “Criminal Crutches.” The Criminal ID abilities aren’t even that outstanding… yeah, Andromeda gives you a great start, but she’s blank after Click One, and Gabe eventually blanks when it becomes too difficult to hit HQ. Kate is just pure economy, and she never really stops being awesome. The other Shaper IDs encourage unique and innovative playstyles, but who cares? Who needs a rig? Who need subtlety? Just play Criminal, and you’ll probably win.

To be fair, from the opposite perspective, one faction can’t have it all. Shapers literally have an answer for everything, and can go get it quickly, and bring it back easily. I guess that could lead to them running the show if Criminals didn’t have some awesomeness. What I’m trying to say is that Criminals need some variety, and I hope that they get it with Honor & Profit. However, I don’t think that will happen, for the simple reason that they already have some of the most powerful cards in the game. They’re currently leading the pack, so why fix what isn’t broken?

23

I think you exaggerate the article a bit, the data speaks for itself and the rest is just an interpretation… take it for what it is, stimhack harbors the best minds in netrunner because its a place safe from being “dumbed down” and over-simplified for mass consumption.

I must respectfully disagree with your critique, I normally wouldnt comment but for me to not defend this kind of article would be criminal.

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24

I cannot agree with this, it is just empirically untrue by every metric we have.

It also seems to contradict you later:[quote=“Legate_Damar, post:22, topic:1006”]
Yes, they are really good, but let’s be honest, it’s because they’re Criminals.
[/quote]

You then go on to talk about Account Siphon and Desperado, and you are right; they are the two best runner cards in the game. Having the two best runner cards in the game is a very big component of why Criminals are the top runner faction.

I must fundamentally disagree with your evaluation on Andromeda. Her ability is insanely good, and criminally underrated. If she was a Shaper ID she would be the best printed Shaper ID currently in the game. The idea people have about Andromeda being blank after turn 1 is something I will continue to say is completely wrong.

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25

This was by far the hardest part of writing the article. I wanted it to be digestible without stating the obvious for everyone here. And yeah, I probably shouldn’t have put Criminals on “God Tier”, and should have thought the rating system through better (such as with the empirical one I mentioned above).

Also, I’ve wished Reina had Andromeda’s ability several times. Of all factions to want a strong start and a quick starting draw, it’s Anarch. I’ll take solace in predicting their deluxe expansion IDs will be off the wall, as there’s a lot of design space there.

“Whenever ice is trashed, draw a card”.
“If the corp has zero credits at the end of your turn, gain 3c”.
Oh how I dream.

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26

You should start working for FFG.

I aggree that Andromeda should have been in Anarch. But I am just hoping for an anarch card that let you get your icebreakers quicker like special order or SMC. Then the anarchs will get finally better.

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I guess a lot of my statements are from " outside looking in", as I play Shaper exclusively.

You’re right, Sneaky. Andromeda is pretty great. I guess card draw and a strong start isn’t that big a problem when you have Diesel and Quality Time. By “blank” I only meant the ability “You draw a starting hand of nine cards” literally does nothing after start of game, unlike Kate or Gabe that give you continual benefit. However, it basically lets you play out a whole hand of cards and still have a whole hand of cards, and can get you going quickly. As Lysander said, Anarchs would kill for that…

Personally, I do think Shapers have better cards overall than Criminals, as they have great economy (Opus, Modded); great tutoring (SMC, Test Run); great events (Indexing, Levy AR); great recursion (Clone Chip, Scavenge, Test Run again), and some interesting solutions to ICE problems (Deus X, Sharpshooter, Atman, SMC again).

Having said that, I don’t think that saying " I think Shapers are better overall" and " Criminals are the most powerful" are mutually exclusive. Again, from a non-Criminal player’s perspective, I think Criminals win mostly because Siphon hits the Corp where it hurts the most (their wallet) and Desperado rewards you for doing what you should be doing anyway (running successfully).

Yeah, Criminal has some other neat tricks - Femme, Faerie, Inside Job… I guess what I’m saying is it looks like they’re mostly winning because of two cards. Maybe it’s not as simple as all that…

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It feels like your argument is “average card strength” vs. “power cards” would that be right?

So, Shapers have more good cards, but Criminal have individual cards that cause the power of the whole deck to spike. Remove Siphon and Desperado and they start to flag, while you could yank any two given Shaper cards and still leave yourself with the possibility of functional decks – is that about accurate?

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29

I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. Criminals don’t have this great pool of cards… they just have the two most powerful cards in the game, and those two cards are SO strong that it carries them to victory. When looking at the Criminal card pool and the Shaper card pool, from my point of view the Shaper pool seems stronger. There’s more good stuff in Shaper, and I usually only cherry-pick the Sentry breakers out of Criminal, as Siphon is too much influence and I’ll take 3 Datasuckers over one Desperado. In fairness, you could say the same thing about Anarchs, but nothing in Anarch is uber-powerful.

Yes, I KNOW that Criminals win more than anyone else… I’m not disputing the data, although I would like to point out that OCTGN isn’t exactly the same as the real world. My point is that Criminals win more mostly because of power cards, and to a lesser extent Andi, and partially because more people play them - which is also due to those two power cards.

As you said, remove any two cards from my Shaper deck and I’ll probably still have a serviceable deck. Pull out Account Siphon and Desperado, and see if a Criminal deck still works.

Maybe part of this is personal opinion, maybe part of this is the fact that the Shaper card pool is almost twice as big as Criminals, at least until H&P comes out. Even then, we know almost every card in that, and I still don’t see anything that wows me…

30

One particular build I’m playing around with is Jinteki Fast-Advance, you know, the kind with Trick of Light that nobody plays anymore.

In particular I am interested in builds with x3 Trick of Light combined with x2 or even x3 Biotic Labor and/or SanSan.

The specific reason I think this kind of build will get a lot better is not Tennin, although the advancement credit will of course make Trick of Light better. No, The specific reason is the presence of the new Jinteki agendas.

Jinteki and Fast Advance should go hand in hand. The lack of Jinteki EtR does not lend itself to true scoring remotes, and the existence of Expose effects alongside the ease with which Runners can mitigate Net Damage makes the Shell Game better as a way to tax the Runner over time than actually score Agendas or get a Flatline win.

Fast Advance benefits greatly from slowing the runner down, which is something Jinteki does pretty well, but historically Jinteki has had 2 big problems preventing Fast Advance from being a legitimate strategy.

The first problem was the lack of burst Economy. We all know that Fast Advance is expensive and that Jinteki is cash poor. I think that the relatively recent introduction of Restructure and Celebrity Gift has tipped the scales here, and that there should be a reconsideration of Jinteki fast advance for this reason alone.

The second problem has been the Agendas. There has been minor help in this regard recently. Clone retirement provides that critical 7th point without eating Econ or FA tools, but Unorthodox Predictions is rather ill suited to Fast Advance strategies. Honor & Profit changes this, pushing Jinteki decks from from 6 points in 2/3s to 8 points in 2/3s, which I think is a tipping point. Medical Breakthough pushes this even further along, with up to 14 points of 2/3s and pseudo 2/3s. These shape the Agenda landscape vis a vis Fast Advance in a big way, but The Jinteki agenda I’m most looking forward to in JFA is House of Knives.

I think House of Knives is an excellent card for a variety of reasons, but the key to making it work is to score it early and reliably. Packing 5 or 6 FA cards between Trick of Light and Biotic/SanSan provides the opportunity to use Fast Advance on 1/3 agendas, with House of Knives being one of the best of those. Using FA to score these reliably is going to put a reliable Damage Tax on the runner that we haven’t seen anything quite like before.

Anyway, I hope that H&P gets people questioning assumptions about Jinteki, especially the idea that Jinteki can’t Fast Advance when there is a lot about the Corp that lends itself to such a strategy and that now has the fundamentals to finally make such a strategy viable.

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31

I really hope you’re right. I already have a Tenin Never Advance deck fully built and proxytested with decent results, but I can’t for the life of me get a consistent Harmony Medtech deck built. What’s your proposed strategy for making it work? I was operating under the premise that it needs to be equal parts kill and FA, otherwise it won’t stand up to HBFA and TWIY.

My problem is that there’s no freaking deckspace for most Jinteki builds across most IDs and archetypes. For example, I’d love to have a PE deck that utilizes Cerebral Cast/Scorch. That’s 3 Cerebral Cast, 2 SE, 3 Neural EMP, and 3 Snare or Shock. This’ll eventually leave me little recourse but to sacrifice ice or economy. The same premise has applied to Medtech.

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32

Harmony Medtech FA?

x3 Biotic Labor
x3 Jackson Howard

but i don’t think Harmony Medtech is particularly well suited to Fast Advance. It is a rush ID, and the key to getting it working in Jinteki is probably a combination of Quandry and Guard, alongside Chimera and the other solid neutral EtR. This should leave the deckspace for lots of Biotic Labor to kick out that 6th point in the mid-game against quick building Runners.

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^ This isn’t just your problem, it’s universal. Jinteki just needs too many enablers, and I don’t really see that changing much. H&P provides many of those enablers, but the fact is you still need to find deckspace to include them. I think the biggest difference is going to be that Jinteki’s agendas are now starting to synergise with their strategy, rather than just being blank. Again though, if you’re running a lot of them you have less deckspace for other things and you lose that much harder to R&D lock.

If the Runner is employing good economy control (Siphon, Vamp) so that the Corp can’t afford his snares and ICE then R&D is pretty safe to dig into. It becomes almost obligatory to put Caprice in there.

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I think it depends on the pilot. The kill condition is a backup, it’s still primarily trying to win through 7APs. You have to play with the expectation that you’ll bleed agendas and concede some points. But in so doing you create scoring windows and force the runner into taking risks.

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QFT. I know people have said this before, but deckspace is getting very tight.

I know 45 and 49 are the sacred numbers for most runners and corps, but the community may have to eventually rethink our hard limitations on deck size. If FFG releases a bunch of cards that folks just can’t play without, players may have to eventually expand their deck size beyond the bare minimum…

36

Which one do you mean?
(research for my thread on CI :P)

The one I long most to see printed as an Anarch would be:

“2 recurring credits, only usable to install Resources”

Just think about how much better it would make a lot of their cards, and how it would actually enable this “I want to be tagged while not running resource-less” vibe the Red Dudes are trying to have going at the moment.

37

2 is a lot. And makes them seem like the money faction. I’d rather see

“The first time a resource is trashed each turn, gain 2 credits and you may install a resource from your grip.”

Kinda wordy, but I think fits thematically and does something similar to your suggestion, but imo is more balanced.

Good article.

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I don’t really feel like 2 is too much - compare with Kate, who also has a link and her ability is easier to leverage, both in scope and during the Corp turn.

If you really wanted, you could go down to 12 inf and it’d be totally fine.

To be completely honest, I probably wouldn’t play your version over the existing identities until he had either a link or a higher influence count (17+) - it’s an ability that needs me to draw TWO resources before actually does anything at all. And to top it off, either one of them needs to be Aesop, or it has to be a self-trashy thingie, or a DLR/Josh. Sure, the synergy with Aesop is amazing, but that’s a card that costs inf.

39

true, good points.

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The one that combos out seven points (edit: in one turn) sometime between turn 8 and 16

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I actually meant the non-combo builds that PeekaySK and I have been using :). I will not play a combo-win (~Power Shutdown into Jackson + Accelerated) deck on general principles.

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