This is a fun idea. You could have HB:ETF read: “The first time each turn you install a card, gain 1 credit. Then flip this card.” / “The first time each turn you install a card, draw a card. Then flip this card.” Still fits the idea, but it definitely has a downside if you need some recovery.
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Still, the more I think about it the more convinced I am that it’s not so much that EtF is superstrong as it is that the other HB identities are…well, bad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing identity but all its rival are way below average.
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Here’s a thought exercise: What if Blue Sun was HB instead of Weyland. Would ETF still be ‘the generic go-to’?
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Uh, I hate to be the guy that just points out overpowered speculative synergies (twice in two days!), and I totally get that this thought experiment is totally the angle you’re aiming to approach it from, but sweet Jackson the Adonis Campaigns and Ichis please no
I mean, HB Blue Sun might just be the most OP corp-ID combo (yes, NBN Titan, sigh…) out there, which speaks more to Weyland’s overall weakness than to Blue Sun’s power level. Funny isn’t it, how much bullshit can come out of a single faction swap, but that’s opening a whole 'nother can of worms…
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reminds me of something i heard recently about Hearthstone. it’s a totally digital thing, and they could just do balance passes on stuff without players having to do anything. the main reason they don’t is because people don’t like it when things they have get changed.
[quote=“Taurean, post:61, topic:5747, full:true”]
What’s the solution, then? A long, complex tournament errata of the core set? An embarrassing reprint that enrages everyone who bought multiple cores? Allowing proxies of Core 2.0 cards? Or the continued crippling of the game (or at the very least, restriction of the design space) by overpowered cards and IDs that don’t rotate?
[/quote]i’m fairly certain they’re taking the approach of never rotating, balancing, or changing the core ever. maybe a version with updated graphics and art maybe, but i think even that is unlikely. i think any mistakes from the core will just be in the game forever.
i also don’t think the balance was too bad. it has of course informed how the game developed, but i think balance in a general sense is pretty good, and they’ve shown in the last and upcoming cycle, that they’re willing and able to print more powerful cards instead of the conservative under-performers (Stronger Together, BWBI, Salvage, etc.)
Yeah, the game is fine, Kate is fine, we don’t need a new Core set. There are always going to be some cards in the game which are the strongest, and there are always going to be a LOT of cards that are only good for the casual players after their first month of availability when all the competitive players have tested them and decided they’re not good enough. IDs just stand out as the most visible cards in the game, but it’s possible for there to be two good Kate decks that don’t necessarily feel the same as each other just because they’re using the same ID. Every Legacy deck in Magic: the Gathering that needs a red burn spell uses Lightning Bolt because it’s the best red burn spell.
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Except for when they use Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile for removal instead. Or use Sudden Shock because they need to deal with hatebears under counters. Or they add in Chain Lightning and Incinerate because they are playing full on Burn.
Lighting Bolt is a great example of a generalist card that does not edge out similar cards that fill a more niche role. Kate is a generalist card that is still better than all of the niche cards.
If Kate were played no more often than Burn is played in Legacy, this thread wouldn’t exist.
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We do certainly need a revamped core set if you want the game and community to improve. I’m not saying the core set design is poor, it was great for the start of the LCG but after the years, issues and problems with the design of some cards surfaced and you need to fix that stuff to keep your design space wide open and a healthy variety in the top meta. It’s how card game markets evolve.
I agree. There are simply too many cards in the core set that might as well not exist for anything remotely approaching competitive play. And more than a few which overshadow too many other cards, or are too easily exported into other factions.
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Legacy players never complained about Burn. Only Modern players complain about everything. Standard players dont care because they’re participating in rotating format. Unless its Caw Blade.
I gotta disagree with the idea that the Core Set IDs are still balanced. BABW is just head-and-shoulders worse than EtF, it gets the same sort of economic benefit in a much more heavily restricted set of circumstances. Kate has the same issue.
Because Kate and EtF both get boosts to almost all installs, there’s no way to print cards for those factions that don’t work well for them outside of more ops/events/resources. Kate handles events well with PPVP, and Shaper really ought to get a bigger resource push than they have if they want Kate to not be overwhelmingly relevant but that’s out of their pie and unlikely. ETF doesn’t have the same means to boost ops econ, but they have enough other options (and just a need to install ice) that makes that much less relevant.
Meanwhile, again, BABW only works on one type of card, and not always. If it reduced the cost of all operations, or gave you a credit after playing ANY operation, it’d be the busted core set Corp ID we’re discussing.
Saying “this ID isn’t overpowered, they just haven’t printed anything that makes other IDs equivalent” is kinda… ridiculous, really. They haven’t done that because balancing around Kate is proving to be all but impossible, so anything that benefits others more still is built with her in mind and therefore is too expensive elsewhere.
Kate is definitely overpowered in comparison to other Shaper IDs, and given what some of those IDs are it feels like that means that Kate is just locked in place as the most powerful Shaper ID. Nerfing her, even slightly, (possibly in addition to buffs for other runners like Kit and Exile) would be the easiest solution.
Sure, maybe then she’s not the best ID for “good stuff” Shaper anymore, but even if her ability was limited to just her turn or she had 0 link she’d still be good… and she won’t rotate. So Hayley, say, even if she becomes the new top tier shaper and dominates everything, will eventually be gone.
The reason Shaper seems to be so frustrating is that while there’s reason to play around with different Kate lists there really doesn’t seem to be much reason to play with other IDs in the long term, because they all always pale in comparison. Even Hayley, who comes as close to Kate’s ability as one really can, is substantially less well positioned and less powerful.
But a decent Nerf doesn’t need to be the overwhelming things you tend to see. Small stuff like one link up or down really can make a massive difference, I think, over the course of a game.
If Kate had 0 link and both Hayley and CT had 1, I think we’d see a lot more out of the two of them than we do now, even if it’s not something most people would consciously choose them for. They’d just start doing a bit better on traces, and her a bit worse, and patterns would shift. She might still be the best, but there would be a shift.
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There is one thing that BABW has going for it that is better than ETF: the fact that it can trigger multiple times in one turn. Do I think they are on par with each other? No, but that difference is something that can be leveraged.
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I just thought about my feelings just now and decided that if Kit had 0 Link but 15 influence I would actually play the PPVP shell out of Kit rather than Kate.
And this could actually be where giving Kit 15 influence is bad.
Could have been. The issue is that ETF’s ability can (now) trigger on the Runner’s turn, and also functions regardless of the cards in the deck. BABW’s ability requires you to play a certain set of cards, almost all of which are out of faction or not particularly powerful even with the boost.
BABW makes econ cards of a certain type slightly better. ETF makes playing the game into an econ engine.
In other words, as said above: You have to build to leverage BABW’s ability and even then it doesn’t really shine. You just have to play Netrunner to get the benefit of ETF’s ability, which is why it stands strong. The same goes for Kate: she stands above, say, Gabe in part because she hasn’t got any constraints on what you do with her. Gabe needs those HQ accesses or what’s the point.[quote=“gh0st_b1rd, post:93, topic:5747, full:true”]
I just thought about my feelings just now and decided that if Kit had 0 Link but 15 influence I would actually play the PPVP shell out of Kit rather than Kate.
And this could actually be where giving Kit 15 influence is bad.
[/quote]Why is that bad? She’s still slightly less efficient economically and it pushes Glacier decks to stack ice rather than rush with very little and/or find ways to handle parasite.
It’d make Kit stronger, but I don’t see it making her impossibly strong by any means, even if she could finally actually run ice destruction. Her ability still triggers once per turn for a single run, she’s by no means impossible to shut out, particularly with the current crop of corp options.
Having IDs that might be better than Kate sometimes is not a bad thing.
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I actually played PPVP Kit at my lgs and was extremely surprised by how much easier to solve problems with PPVP Kit than it was with Kate. The only concession you make is that you actually have to run additional econ cards.
By the end my deck ran a Kati and 2 Daily Casts but at the same time her innate actually forces them to play poorly to the point where decks had to rezz their bad ice on their outermost servers not mention the absurd install cost they had to pay just to retain the viability of their big ice.
What I was mainly trying to get at with my previous post was, is Kate the problem or is the existence of the Prepaid shell the real problem.
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Surely the big issue with kit (when they were building her) was account spam? If you could run every sever that only had one ice with minimal risk, it would be easy to get an early headlock and then R&D dig.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree. It’s just that many forget that BABW isn’t restricted to once a turn. In some fantasy-land where Weyland could make a deck with almost all transaction operations (like, if they did things other than just give money, like draw or installs), then BABW could be on par with ETF… ugh, I need to wash my mouth out now.
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That is a real problem.
And it makes sense. But let’s say Kit’s ID was 15 and you cannot include cards from the Criminal faction. What would you do?
Yeah, if just one of the Clearances was in-faction, along with Lateral Growth, aaand maybe if Shipment from Kaguya was a transaction? That right there would make BABW a real contender. Even just one or two of those three. The ability to Beanstalk while installing something would be huge in helping Weyland rush early on, as would drawing a card while Beanstalking… gaining a credit while advancing two things less so, but it’d still help a little.
Unfortunately, they haven’t gotten a genuinely solid transaction that doesn’t take any influence since… Restructure, back in Second Thoughts?
Diversified Portfolio requires a horizontal build BABW can’t really manage well. Paywall Implementation’s a current, and I’ve never been too impressed, but it’s the best since if you had to pick. Back Channels could be okay, but the only influenceless targets other than agendas are Shattered Remains, GRNDL Refinery, and Contract Killer… one of which is straight-up downgraded in the process and one of which you can almost always benefit from firing, leaving just SR as a trap that might “miss”. So it ends up needing the help anyway.
I feel like they’re again so worried about making Weyland too strong that they won’t let themselves print things the faction really needs to be powerful. They’ve kinda forced us into accepting assets and horizontal play when that’s never really been the faction’s strength before, but they aren’t giving older archetypes the support to keep up at all.
If they won’t give Weyland strong in-faction tagging, they should at least make sure we can afford to splash it without hampering the deck overmuch in the process.
The answer to that is to not print SMC so that there’s no 90% guarantee of finding a decoder for the T1 siphoning. Or push resources for Shaper, too, making tag-me less viable all-around. Or double-ice HQ turn one, depending on the deck and what angle you’re talking about.
I can see why at the time they might’ve worried about her being too strong, the issue is that right now she’s one of 4 shaper IDs that aren’t going away… and she’s one of three that are kinda bad, especially in comparison to the power of Kate.
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To be honest, I only really need 8 influence in Kit. The other two are just sorta floaters that I don’t always use. If any faction can survive low influence, it is Shaper.
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