Now that the “HB Komainu” is coming in the form of Brainstorm, I wonder whether there are options out there for the other two corps.
Bouncer
Weyland(***)
ICE - Sentry
Rez 5
Strength 3
"When Bouncer is encountered, it gains ->End the run for each card in the Runner’s grip. "
Something like that? Don’t know what an NBN equivalent could be. Tags seem maybe too strong, maybe ->Lose one credit?
Yes, this is an issue. If we get more untrashable/anti-AI ICE then essentially what will happen is dumble will get hit and we’ll find that there is no deck capable of keeping all the diverse corp strategies in check. So, they would need to ally this with some new powerful runner cards, either new tricks or even new archetypes – and this opens us up to power creep and/or massive complaints down the road about abusive strategies (which people are complaining about now). Not an easy job this designing lark.
If there’s one thing Weyland doesn’t need, it’s more high-cost, low-strength ICE with nothing more fearsome than ETR on.
IMHO, one of their biggest weaknesses is lack of deterring a run, especially early game, in faction. No face check penalty = no fear.
Hitting Architects or Ichi last click or other such things make HB a concern, Jinteki is packed with punishment, NBN really only uses ICE as a speed bump to slow you down a bit and cares more about other things. Weyland was supposed to be the land of big barriers but… they don’t deter the run, cost a lot and are easy to deal with.
Yeah it would replicate a lot of existing stuff if it were a barrier. I think a multi-sub sentry has the potential to be interesting, even if it’s “only” ETR. If it were something more aggressive it would probably push the required fair cost out of the “playable” range, especially in the faction of Scorched Earth (and with the “add subs per card” encouraging risky play inherently).
This topic interests me greatly. I think a lot of the current dissatisfaction we are seeing among the community is due to the fundamental mechanics of netrunner - i.e. the ICE/ICE Breaker interaction - being circumvented by different means. This is changing the fundamental nature of the game. Now, I’m not saying that change is bad or that I hate everything, but I am saying that I fell in love with a game, and increasingly netrunner doesn’t feel like that game any more.
I feel that a LOT of this is to do with AI being an answer to almost everything in conjunction with ICE destruction making ICE a seriously problematic investment. Add to that Blackmail, DLR Mill, Apoc, and suddenly it just doesn’t feel like ICE is worthwhile any more as there are so many ways it can be removed or just rendered irrelevant.
Asset spam IMO is the answer to the issue of ICE just not really working well any more.
So yes, I do think we need more ICE, and I think we need more ICE that has some resistance to AI and destruction. Honestly, ICE like architect. Architect is a beautiful card in terms of design - maybe not balance, it might be a little too good for the cost, thus why I think it’s addition to MWL was entirely justified - but it is a interesting piece of ICE which is relatively taxing to AI, doesn’t die and leads to interesting choices.
Personally I want to see more ICE that has some combination of:
The last one is a personal bugbear of mine. It drives me nuts that David and cutlery have wiped big ICE almost entirely out of the game. The only things seen these days are Booth and Assassin. Big crazy ICE is so much fun, and yet so unplayable. I only hope for the day something like booth 2.0 comes out that is actually worth playing (preferably in poor old weyland!)
I think it would be interesting to have big ICE that can’t be broken by D4, but can’t returned to HQ or something like that. That way, you could have your cake without Blue Sun eating it.
‘Weyland Komainu’ would have to be either “-> Gain 2c” or “-> Trace3, if Successful, Tag the Runner.”
Both are in Weyland’s wheelhouse. (Yes, they do have tagging ability with Shadow, Checkpoint, Posted Bounty.)
I honestly think I like the ‘Gain 2c’ one better. The NBN version could have the Tagging sub, or potentially ‘May draw a card’ since that’s also a thing they do.
EDIT: Searchlight, not Checkpoint. Got my binder fodder confused.
The only card that can build a board state faster and for longer than the Anarch card pool can delete it is Mumbad City Hall, and there’s no Mumbad City Hall for ICE.
We needed more ICE when ICE let you weather Criminal credit denial, but having better ICE is only marginally helpful at allowing you to weather Anarch ICE and economy denial. You basically need City Hall and Museum for that.
Checkpoint doesn’t tag, you are thinking of searchlight.
ISTM that Assets are doing what ICE used to do: increase the amount it costs for the runner to do things. ICE creates a situation for the runner where you can’t afford to run through it (or you just get ETR’d if you try), and once the runner can no longer afford to pay for it, the corp starts winning. Then as we all know, D4V1D put a hard upper bound on the runner’s cost to get through high-strength ICE, Parasite put a low cost and a time limit on low-strength ICE, Faust put an alternate cost on midrange ICE, and the cutlery turned Faust and D4V1D into a one-time payment.
I see a trend that started all the way back when San San City Grid first came out: cards that sit rezzed on the table that are too dangerous for the runner to ignore but really hard to trash. Eve Campaign is another example, but they’re both balanced by their rez costs. I think Sundew was probably the first instance where they explicitly designed in this idea of “you have to deal with this or the game will get out of control”, but at (2 rez, 2 trash) it still needed something else (ICE, playing RP, or both) to tip the resource costs against the runner.
Then we started seeing cards with powerful effects and really lopsided rez/trash costs: Daily Business Show, Team Sponsorship, Turtlebacks and IT Department are all examples of this type. A few things happened here:
The trouble is that Anarch has Whizzard and all the breakfaust club pieces, so corps need to tax even harder to keep up the asset game. Enter Museum of History and Mumbad City Hall.
I think ICE destruction is a good thing to have in the game, but its current form was too easy for the design team to fall into given the templates set up in the core set (Parasite and Datasucker). The strength of modern ICE destruction shuts out a lot of the interesting things you can do with derezzing (e.g, Emergency Shutdown, Forged Activation Orders), a design space restriction that disproportionately hurts Criminal. Let’s take a quick detour into tagging: because SEA Source and Scorched Earth were both in the core set, the maximum game state change a single tag can inflict is “you lose”. A healthier design space for tagging would be something like:
Scorched Earth constrains tagging just as ICE destruction constrains derez. The real design challenge here is that the core set versions of both tagging and ICE destruction were quite reasonable, but they have made a hard corner for FFG to design themselves out of. (Similarly, Blackmail has constrained the design space for bad publicity.)
Back to ICE and assets. Assets have become better than ICE at the only thing ICE was designed for:
What does this mean for ICE? I think ICE are cards that hurt the most when considering deck slots. For ICE to be relevant in the current game (especially against the perverse incentive of Mumba Temple), it has to become more versatile:
In conclusion, I think that FFG should do the following to make ICE great again:
possibly the best post I’ve ever read on the forums.
The response to Damons most recent interview led to an awful lot of rather unsavoury trash talk aimed at the man himself (on slack). This analysis is exactly the kind of constructive criticism of the design that im sure he is aware of and even if he isn’t, it’s the sort of thing that is hugely helpful. There are a number of threads which address this theme and at some point should be consolidated into an article about the state of the game.
I think that to a large extent he has inherited problems from the initial design, the same way a football manager inherits problems from the previous manager. He has had only a few months so far to stamp his mark on the game and that’s primarily been through the MWL – which all in all has been a big positive for the game. We wouldn’t judge a new manager on his results over the first few months (although in reality that does happen thanks to the media circus) and it will take a couple of years at least until his changes filter through into the game. The new Weyland code gate that has been spoiled is a clear attempt to address some of the problems within that faction and another step forward. I think he does listen to the community even if his outward persona doesn’t acknowledge that directly. All in all, we should reserve judgement and trust in him to deliver changes to the game that will be positive in terms of mechanics, balance and strategic depth; posts like this offer a constructive critique that is hugely positive in shaping that discussion.
Really great post. You brought together a ton of concepts I’ve been thinking about too.
I think it’s worth remembering the effect assets had on the meta at the time these cards were being designed. The only asset anyone ever ran was a defended Adonis or Eve Campaign. Anything you put out naked would be trashed by the superior runner economy - putting out and rezzing a Pad Campaign typically just cost you a click and a credit, and Bank Job/Security Testing just made that even worse. For assets to be relevant they probably did need to ‘do more’ in some way. But maybe the implications were not properly worked out.
Nice analysis. However there is also a significant difference between ICE and assets:
The whole strong alliance asset engine introduced in this cycle represents a clear power creep, and I’m affraid it will be creating a lot of problems for the game for coming months and years.
The answer is clearly not making ICE as good as assets, that would be insanity.
I would recommend a step back approach.
Museum of History and Mumba Temple are both a huge design mistakes, and their “restrictions” are clearly not doing anything. Both cards are breaking the fundamental parts of the game (Corp decking winning condition and the economical balance of reccuring credits).
They will always create problems for the game and give incentive to create more power creep as long as they exist.
The Netrunner designers should finally swallow their pride and introduce Ban list. These 2 cards should be the first entries there on the way to make Netrunner a healthy and balanced game, again.
I feel like a heel for picking this out of your great post, but I really don’t think SanSan is costed correctly, the trash cost should be lower…
However, that said, good points in your post! Making ICE more interesting would definitely be good. I’ve been playing with Grail recently and on-encounter powers or other such things are all very cool and mix things up for the game. There are only so many combinations of strength/sub-type/rez cost we can have.
I think given the MWL, FFG would agree!
I didn’t see the Slack stuff, but my comment on what Damon was saying would be a mild concern that he didn’t buy into Tiers of deck, but Tiers of players. I’d hope the designer would be aware that some factions or archetypes are fundamentally stronger than others (otherwise, as someone else mentioned to me, he’s doing himself out of a job if the cards don’t matter).
However, we’ve not seen any of his datapacks yet, and encouragingly the spoilers we have seen include ICE with new mechanics on, so there’s a good chance some decent change is already in the pipeline.
The Weyland code gate looks just what the doctor ordered, although it’ll not be out until late in the cycle, regrettably.
I think what he states is true though – we all know that the a top player with an average deck can generally overcome an average player with a top deck. It’s a good job too – else the game wouldn’t be worth playing if this wasn’t the case.
He also went on to state that his goal is for each faction to have a viable tier 1 archetype/deck within it. Balancing the entirety of the game is essentially an impossible task but I think if we give him a couple of cycles he will deliver on this promise where each faction has something viable – he may well overshoot but he has created a valve with the MWL to allow him to be more aggressive than his predecessor was.
Which interview was this?
The latest episode of the Run Last Click Podcast.