I would be careful associating decks that good players have had reasonable success with top-tier decks. I especially would be careful associating highly-rated decks on NRDB (where the only mandatory requirements is a meme and quirky write-up) to top-tier decks.
Netrunner is a very niche game, with only world’s attracting triple digit player counts (maybe some nationals broke 100? Uncertain). Going into world’s this year, there was a rainbow of various factions and IDs that had won regional and national titles. From a rudimentary analysis of NRDB on the matter, you’d think Netrunner was quite balanced at the time. It’s not until you get the competitive international meta together that you see the problem.
But I’ll also yield that you could be right; I’m a little out of practice, with the majority of my Netrunner interactions lately being purely theoretical discussion on this forum. However, given what I’ve said above, and with consideration of the cards that have been released since world’s, I remain skeptical.
I brought up those examples because I’ve played with them and faced them extensively, I agree that it would be risky to just pull popular decks off netrunnerdb and assume them to be good - I think many are quite bad.
It’s just my general feel that ice is currently scarier than it has been in a while, so was curious about whether most people feel the opposite (fwiw, I much prefer a meta where ice feels meaningful). Probably a discussion for another thread.
Fair points. I’ll yield that DNA and fair.0’s have made face-checking a more crippling proposition (I’d need to look at the lists your referring to specifically before I’d be able to make a more-specific statement about them).
But I also don’t feel that they are particularly problematic to most well-constructed runner decks. And, worse still, this new console is a counter to the problem ICE that the corp just got. It’s specifically meant for crippling high strength ICE (which DNA and fair 2.0+ are). Shaper’s best game is likely stealth, which doesn’t have any particular issue against the aforementioned (using Houdini for the unique fair is a little rough, but I still like Refractor anyway). Crim derez is on the rise coming up (which will hurt expensive ICE builds), but until then they’ll just whore out for whatever breakers work.
I guess, to summarize, I do feel like ICE is getting stronger (which needs to happen), but I also feel like ICE counters are ramping up too (which doesn’t need to happen). Asset spam is going roughly unanswered (and even getting answers itself, with high places). At least they printed Aaron to stifle CTM a bit.
Sifr de facto renders all big ICE in the game unplayable at a cost of 5 credits. Reducing the strenght of any piece of ICE, no matter how expensive it was to rez to zero every single turn of the game is insane and so beyond any previous cards released with similar effects that it’s ludicrous.
And that’s not even the best part. The best part is that it works on every other piece of ICE too! Ichi? Strenght 0, so you can break it with Mimic. Wraparound as AI hate? I don’t even need a fracter now. And man, does it help Yog, now not even Archangel or Fairchild are out of reach.
Still not convinced? Don’t worry, because Sifr gives you more! Two memory for free! Wee! And it’s only one influence so every single deck in the game can splash it. Now everyone, Shaper, Criminal or Sunny can enjoy the thrill of rendering half of the ICE pool unplayable.
I don’t know what attracted you to Netrunner, but a game in which ICE is meaningless, assets are eaten up by Whizzard and upgrades are blanked up by Rumor Mill was not it.
Back in september, I almost quit and stuff like this makes me wish I had.
I think if SIFR is going to be a problem, it will be a problem out of anarch.
I’m very skeptical that most criminal decks will start playing it over Desperado. It allows them to save a few credits on one run each turn, while Desperado installs for less and adds up to alot of credits over the course of a game. I don’t see any particular synergy with Shaper either, what archetype wants to run this? Stealth decks are currently taxed more by multiple subs than they are by high strength ice.
It does have some pretty clear synergy in-faction, I just don’t think it’s clearly overpowered given the cost and the lack of solving the biggest anarch issues (it’s their early game, not the lategame that struggles). Breaking Ichi with mimic for 3 credits doesn’t seem remotely overpowered and is pretty easily achieved with existing tools anyway, the biggest source of complaint is going to be Yog.
I think it’s more likely to cause some change in ice selection/placement than it is to cause the sky to fall on our collective heads
I guess I’m not so much on the “SIFR is making the sky fall train”, and more on the “the sky has been falling for awhile” train, and SIFR, at best, isn’t helping.
But I think we get each other’s points at this point, so I’ll stop derailing the thread with my theoretical meta rants.
I’m not so sure about this. Hopefully, constant modifiers come in after. I did tweet@jakodrako to see if he can clarify.
If he doesn’t there a few 1 influence ice that can help: Wrap, Lotus Field, and Magnet. Although, the latter is probably not that useful, since they won’t need to Parasite if they have Yog.
It seems to me like SIFR will only really help one (admittedly popular) archetype, and maybe create a new ICE destruction archetype. However before this new archetype could be made, it would have to figure out some consistent card draw. Also, it’s not going to help with the most of the meta since asset spam is still the thing and nothing here seems like it’s going to completely get rid of it.
The bigger card to me on the competitive meta feels like Aaron Marron, since there will finally be an answer to BN bs. I’m hoping this may actually mean we see a different faction other then NBN. Although, they will still be playing asset spam.
Aha! This is how Curtain Wall, Ice Wall, and Firewall make a comeback!
But yeah, I’d be really surprised if SIFR didn’t win on that interaction. I always thought strength of ice was considered a constant, so the ability would override it. And yes, rule people, I’m sure that is some butchered NR rule language.
So I re-listened to the part of the TWA interview where Damon talked about a card getting buffed after playtesting, because I wanted to point someone to the right part of the interview, and I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. Here’s the relevant bit of the interview:
It’s one of those cards that went through playtesting-
[interruption and sidenote]
But it was a card that went through playtesting, [description of how that went], and in the second to last approvals meeting, someone decided that it needed to be ‘sexified,’ and so they upped its power level a bit, and I have to say that I wish I had had the ability to fight back against that.
So now I’m wondering what he meant by “one of those cards.” Are there a lot of Netrunner cards that get sexifying changes post-playtesting that the designer doesn’t approve? Or is “those cards” some other, less worrying category, as in “it’s one of those cards that got last-minute changes, so we weren’t able to playtest the final version”? Or am I just overthinking this?
SIFR may not affect the current meta TOO much, because assets were already more important than ice, but it does crush the hopes of anyone hoping that rumor mill was soon going to be MWLed/banned/etc. and bring back glacier. And it ruins Blue Sun, which was a fun, different tier 1.5 deck.
Also, Aaron Marron means people are going to be pushed away from CTM, which I think is a pretty fun type of asset spam, towards IG and Gagarin, which are less fun. Obviously that’s just my opinion, but in general I haven’t heard as much hate towards CTM as I heard about IG back in its heyday.
That’s pretty much the gist of it-- are there any players that are into the game BECAUSE of asset spam, and not IN SPITE of it? Did we really need to make the little number printed on the corner of the ICE less relevant?
I actually really love asset spam decks. They came out right when I started during the mumbad cycle and still enjoy playing with and against them to this day.
Well, we haven’t seen all of the Corp cards yet. Maybe there will be a region or non-unique upgrade that prevents ice from being destroyed while installed or something.
As a stubborn HB glacier player, I am not very happy about Sifr.
it’s only once per turn, right? was it a mistranslation?
i agree with this completely. Damon said in an interview that if he were to revisit D4v1d, it’d cost around 8 or 9 credits (i can’t remember the exact number, but it was pretty high). he also said please don’t hate him for Sifr, so i’ll give him a pass.
but anyway, so basically it’s roughly 3 credits per subroutine that you’re getting out of D4v1d with the balance suggestion from Damon. Sifr gives you so much more value at the cost of 1 card that is repeatable every turn, and if you don’t have cards up to your max hand size, it doesn’t even actually cost you anything
all for 5 credits and 1 influence. everyone keeps talking about Anarch would or wouldn’t use this much, but it’s very accessible to every faction at that cost
but all of that said, i don’t think this card is super overpowered in the current meta, and that’s part of the problem. we got some really strong high-cost/high-str ICE in this cycle, but glacier is still terrible, and this card completely shits on that even more and just further validates current top-tier strategies
