How do we save Netrunner?

i think duel decks are a no-brainer for many reasons:

champion decks get put together and released, and then aren’t legal anymore by the time they release due to MWL
champion decks are usually pretty complex, needing a much higher understanding of the game to pilot (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but for a true beginner, it can be very daunting)
they aren’t necessarily balanced with each other

duel decks solve so many of these problems. players get an introduction to a faction’s colour pie and has a matchup that is (hopefully) balanced and fun. they’ll likely be legal for longer since they won’t necessarily have really overpowered cards. the complexity can be tailored.

with the cardlist (and potential modified rules), veteran players can keep a set on hand for introducing new players to the game.

also RE: the completion packs for the core sets. i think FFG has gotten away with incomplete cores for so long that they don’t think they need to have these
’you only need to buy extra cores if you’re competitive’
even the most casual person will still want 3 Hostile Takeovers, for example; hell, i wanted 3 toolboxes when i got into the game. i think the argument that ‘you only need 3 copies of the core if you plan to go to tournaments’ is a a huge copout, especially considering the lower attendance lately

but i’m not in on the FFG marketing team and don’t know the kinds of research they’ve done. i don’t know the actual production costs or logistics, but all i see is we’re getting champion decks but not introduction decks, we’re getting more and more expensive OP kits, lower numbers for weeklies and tournaments, and TD was apparently some great casual event that was actually really fun, but overall the experience was very rushed, unfulfilling, and are they actually planning to do more casual support?

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I’d like to thank you all to not remind me how much I have actually spent on this game.

Granted, I acquired 3x Core, C&C, and most of Genesis and Spin by selling a handful of Magic cards, but still.

Let me keep my “subscription” mentality and not have to choke on the total cost. It can give a person heartburn.

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Buying the full card set is not cheap, but it costs much less than a competitive Modern deck.

MTG costs so much more.

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i think it could be said that MtG cards are worth a lot more (and also that worth is fairly volatile, depending on card bans, reprints, and new cards that combo with older ones, etc.)

getting a competitive magic deck is a lot more expensive, but you can sell it on at some point and have any instance of losing a great deal of your money to even making a great deal of money

there are also a lot of magic players who basically just show up for friday night draft, get some cards, sell whatever’s worth anything, ditch the commons, and hopefully make money on the evening. at the end of the day, they have no actual collection themselves.

these kinds of things are just possible or fairly comparable in netrunner by virtue of being and LCG model.

By playing it to have fun, and learning how to involve new
people in it. Play the game. Invite newcomers. Ahhh

I think the community is fairly misguided here. There’s definitely a jump, but there’s no reason the next step is buy everything or even buy all deluxe sets, usually a second core, C&C and 2-3 targeted data packs is all you need to get serious GNK/SC decks. Total you’re looking at ~$100 additional investment on top of your first core set. We had a new player join our meta recently. We recommended he pick up C&C, Sovereign Sight, and Breaker Bay along with a second core set. From that smaller investment there’s a decently strong Hayley and ASA list that can be played (note the ASA has a few additional cards since the player bought some packs before consulting us lol).

Hayley List
ASA List

Then once you get bored with those decks all you need to pick up is a faction box and another 1-2 packs to build a different runner/corp deck. For example you may branch into H&P next and then buy Blood & Water for Jinteki (Obakata, Miraju, SFT) and for Crim Quorum gives you PIOT and Taps along with several strong Corp cards. Alternatively you buy TD and Crimson Dust (PriCon, Breached Dome, MCAAP, Aumakua) to go Crim/Weyland.

NBN’s a bit trickier as you probably want HHN + something else right now, but you can probably make a solid sync kill, or EdTech deck with D&D + Down the White Nile (NGO, SSL, EconWarefare, Jua, Jinja), 23 Seconds (HHN, CtM), and then a 3rd pack based on which of the above you want to play EdTech is obviously council (Degree Mill, ID, Death and Taxes) or Escalation for Sync (Boom, Scarcity, FC3, D2D).

If you took the above 3 purchase points you’re looking at $80 for 2x Core, $60 for HB/Shaper, $60-70 for Crim/Jinteki or Crim/Weyland, and $60-75 for NBN. At this point you’ve spent $260-285 MSRP and have at least 1 solid deck for 6/7 main factions. That’s less than half the cost of the entire set and it makes some super viable decks. Assuming the player is interested after the first jump they’re also probably picking up the new packs as they release which gives even more options.

TLDR: It’s pretty easy to buy into the game slowly in $70-100 increments after the core set. We just don’t do a good job as a community of helping new players.A good diverse & competitive collection can be built for under $300 including the initial core purchase.

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There are also, unfortunately, people exiting the game. You can sometimes snag a complete collection up to latest cycle for about $300 on FB or eBay. I’ve recommend that to some of our new players.

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Yeah, it’s unfortunate but definitely a great way for players to get into the game. It’s the best way to buy into the game if you know you want to dive in completely. If you’re slowly wading in the above method is a great way to test the waters and not commit too much all at once.

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We are right now enjoying a slowly growing group in a very small town (80k ppl), which is great the see for me personally, because all of my fellow players from the “ANR relaunch” 2013 era have quit or moved away and those guys who joined in the last 2-3 years are die hard fans like me.
Now we are bringing decks both in tournament and cache refresh format - in this way, we can test full card pool decks as well as those that are a fair matchup for the newbies with a smaller investment in the game. And that works so good - CR is plain fun - and keeps those interested players in our group. In the past, I think we frightened some new players by harassing them with NPE decks and they left after a few meetings.

I think it’s not only about getting people into the game - we as individual playing communities can do a lot to keep them interested in playing in a group. Hopefully, they start bringing their friends (and so on…) and the game will grow. For me, forming a local gaming community is a great experience.

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Sure, and it was like that here too. But now we have to command these, in most cases. Shipping is that 16% missing to double the price.

If you can’t freely buy it, it simply reflects that the game died here. FFG needs us to buy L5R / CoC / GoT, games that I don’t really care.

ANR has no schoolyard meta…but it could. I bet dual decks would pull in much younger players.

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Since, I keep seeing posts like these:

I think we need to wait a few months and reassess. I’m not sure if their initial production was lower than normal for a Core set, or if the new Core really generated that much interest.

Our local group has a lot of interest in doing learn to play and new player-friendly events, but it seems like we would be spinning our wheels until the Core set is in stock locally.

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Welp, that’s a good problem to have :slight_smile:

Excpet it’s also missed opportunities when someone has money they are ready to spend and they can’t spend it on the things they want to spend it on.

’you only need to buy extra cores if you’re competitive’

This seems to an argument that I hear a lot and I am not sure I agree with it. Personally, I play the game a lot with casual players and they consistently have a lot more fun with tuned, great decks than with more limited decks. Sure, it’s somewhat fun and playable with any amount of cards, but I strongly believe that the best thing for the game is to put decks that are the most fun in players hands as the main priority.

"Cheap compared to Magic’

This is an argument I hear a lot too and I, personally, find it the most unhelpful point to make. If I can’t afford to buy something because I don’t have a high-paying job, being reminded that there is something else that I also can’t afford that costs even more money isn’t really a helpful point to make.

As for the point that you can buy used sets of cards from players exiting the game, I think that must have been true at some point but I have had my eyes on ebay and other sources since October and these sets seem to be extremely rare. The sets that are for sale on ebay almost always include a ton of rotated cards that inflate the asking price and also usually lack the cards from the more recent cycles, requiring you to fill out your set by buying more individual packs after your big ebay purchase.

If someone can ever point me to one of these mythical ‘full sets of playable cards all in one ebay lot at a somewhat reasonable ask’ please PM me a link, I would be very interested.

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I am sorry to hear that. I am never in the market for one, so I haven’t looked in a while. I guess that’s also a good(ish) problem to have? Doesn’t help you, though, which is unfortunate.

For casual play, the World Champion decks might be good options for this. Their main problem for competitive players is that they’re illegal by the time they’re released, but you can absolutely ignore this for casual play. And they are definitely tuned, great decks. They might be too well-tuned, though.

They seem to appear frequently when the game is in a lousy state. The catch, of course, is that if the game gets to a state where these start appearing again, you probably won’t want to buy in any more.

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i have not seen a single Revised Core in NZ ever but see the original core all the time. part of me thinks stores aren’t buying them here because they have the original anyway (which people don’t seem to be buying)

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That is rough.

Our usual meetup spot has the Revised Core, but last I checked they were also still asking full price for the original core. Which I certainly hope people aren’t buying.

Question: We have only had one rotation. Why are WC decks always illegal before their street date? Do they really just ban every winning deck out of existence?

For the 2015 and 2016 ones, they didn’t have a ban list, they had an influence-based restricted list. And yes, they often added cards that were in the WC winning decks to it. For the 2015 Runner deck, I think it actually was legal when first released, but a key card was errata’d to be unique, which nerfed the deck significantly. Then the next MWL update made the deck illegal.

Historically, Netrunner has had a fair number of overpowered cards, and it’s only natural that such cards would feature prominently in winning decks. I would characterize the problem as FFG often not realizing how big a problem some cards are until they see them in action at Worlds, rather than as them banning winning decks on principal. I like to think they are slowly getting the hang of running the game, so it’s not impossible that some year we’ll get legal World Champion decks.

Not this year, though. A card in the winning Corp deck has been banned, and they’ve restricted a card in the Runner deck, which of course already had one restricted card. If they don’t hit more cards in those decks, then they’ll be closer to legal than the 2016 decks or the 2015 Corp deck were on release, at least.

It’s pretty late for them to announce the WC decks this year, so maybe we aren’t getting them at all, which is one way to deal with them no longer being legal.

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