I’ve been thinking about this a bunch lately, with the Data and Destiny spoilers. At this point we have a pretty solid reason to believe that we know more or less every rotation-proof card. As we move forward into the Mumbad Cycle and beyond, I have to wonder if telling new players to pick up the deluxe boxes might be more valuable than “grab What Lies Ahead and Opening Moves” just because of how those will cycle out before a casual player might be ready to step things up to tournament level.
To that end, I’d kinda like to throw together some decklists that only use rotation-proof cards. Ideally, I want to do up 3 lists for each faction (ideally using at least two different IDs, for variety), with one for each of the mini-factions (though with the huge cut in neutral cards they may have it the roughest by far already).
This yanks most of the biggest Corp IDs out of the game (no RP, no BS, no NEH, though ETF survives), but also takes away some of the tools that make other IDs less viable. Even if it doesn’t end up being useful/viable for new players, I think it could be a neat format for a tournament or two every now and then just due to the interesting deckbuilding and meta challenges it presents.
- Jackson is gone. Shannon Claire is 2 inf. There is much fear and alarm.
- Everyone loses a 3/2, making pure FA somewhat harder (and leaving poor Weyland with none).
- I’ve Had Worse and Crash Space are about the only Scorch Protection around.
- No Midseasons to make stealing agendas scary. Or Punitives, for that matter.
- Shaper is back to having few good breakers and no VoicePads for Kate.
- Clot and Film Critic are both gone.
- NAPD, Batty, and Caprice likewise vanish.
- Lots of shakeups with regards to Ice options.
- Sunny loses Underworld Contacts, sadly. At least she keeps Data Folding?
- Val likewise loses Blackmail.
- The only Runner currents are for Anarch (with Bad Pub required) or cost influence. Corp-side, only Weyland and NBN have them at all.
Rough ideas on the different factions and IDs under the circumstances:
Anarch on the whole remains fairly strong, I think, because they mostly got power in O&C and the Core Set.
Noise, obviously, is the stand-out Runner. Without Jackson to keep him in check in every matchup, and with access to things like Eater? He’s a credible threat.
MaxX should still have her Reg-Ass legs, mostly. Oog.
Edward Kim might have the edge over Val since there’s more Ops reliance and she loses Blackmail.
Shaper loses a bunch of their supplemental stuff, and while C&C was good to them the Core Set was… less so. Worse for them is that most of their common archetypes draw heavily from datapacks, and they’re suddenly the only ones needing to (pay influence to) import Scorch protection if they want it.
Kit or Kate with Atman seem like the most obviously viable things for Shaper.
I don’t play enough Exile to know what could be done with him here, but he seems more viable here than the poor Prof if all those mem boosts and programs get yanked away.
Criminal is probably happy enough. They have a lot of power in the Core Set alone, including one of the only ways to protect against meat damage, and they keep Desperado-Security Testing.
Gabe is probably the standout for Criminal, with his solid ability.
Tenma miiight have enough run events left to be viable-ish, and has the extra influence.
Silhouette’s decksize advantage is more significant in a field without other 40-card runners or Andy to compete with.
Stirling might be too slow, still, but without a strong FA presence… I dunno, never played much of him to start with.
I dunno how the Mini-Factions would do in this environment, I dunno how they’d do now. Losing so many neutral cards is a bit rough on them, though.
NBN comes out okay. They end up needing more agendas than they might like, but they’ve got some ways to protect and to land/take advantage of tags.
MN remains a solid choice with so many meaninful traces to make, I’d say.
New Angeles Sol becomes even more preposterous given that there are so few Runner currents.
Spark and Sync might both flounder due to lack of core pieces, but Sync’s ability to slow down tag removal helps in a Scorch build.
Weyland’s a bit unhappier about agendas and the lack of punitives, though unless Showing Off becomes a thing there’re ways to mitigate that with Shannon Claire and Government Takeover. Two factions still have some meat damage protection, but big W has more ways to give it out and there are no Plascretes to supplement things with.
BABW’s strong transaction econ is probably tolerable, I guess, but they have to splash for Successful Demonstration and/or Medical Research Fundraiser, neither of which are ideal.
Gagarin might actually have enough assets to work with to be playable, if it can import enough of NBN’s money denial…
Titan is… doable? It only has two agendas to select that might care about counters. Still, the 17 influence is nice.
Argus might be one of the better IDs at that point. Meat damage is hard to avoid, and tags are pretty costly to deal with when they can still import Data Raven and Snare.
HB didn’t get the most help from C&C, either, but they still have EtF and a strong presence overall, I’d wager.
EtF is maybe the best Corp ID in the game, and it’s not like that changes, exactly.
NEXT doesn’t have access to as much cheap ice, but could still try for Mushin shenanigans with what it does have?
CI may have trouble from the one Runner current, but beyond that it’s probably got what it needs for non-Combo builds to be worth a shot?
Custom Biotics has access to a bunch of decent Weyland and NBN cards. With the smaller card pool, that might actually give them something of an advantage, because there’s less Jinteki stuff to feel the hurt on passing up. Especially with the NBN cards from D&D.
Jinteki is also sitting pretty happily, though the loss of RP and Caprice is a bitter one.
PE has all the tools to make Cambridge work again, as even with Eater around Keyhole is out.
Harmony Medtech gets Future Perfect and Global Food Initiative. It’s the happiest they’ve ever been.
Tennin still has plenty of advanceable ice to steal, but no commercialization or tricks of light, so… maaaybe some kind of glacier?
Nisei just doesn’t have enough Psi stuff, I don’t think. Maybe I’m wrong, but some of the best of it is gone either way.
On the corp side, Medtech, Making News, and Argus interest me most, while I’m drawn to Noise, Kim, and Kit on the runner side of things. What about you? What decks would you try putting together for a format that doesn’t include the datapacks?