This https://imgur.com/a/6Zu0Y got posted in the MWL thread but I wanted to make a new thread to talk about how excited it makes me.
I don’t think I’ve played a game of Netrunner since I went to a Regionals towards the end of July. The current meta is so dumb. Obviously tweaking the MWL could improve it, but a 3 influence slap on the wrist isn’t enough to fix the fundamental problem of “why did they print these ridiculously strong cards” (witness Lock Hayley). And having heard that Boggs wanted a ban list but FFG refused because it’s against their policy, I figured I was probably just done with Netrunner being an important thing in my life.
But then this! Wow wow wow do I ever hope it is true! Just banning the absurd cards - the only way to actually fix the game after the trauma of the Flashpoint cycle (there are 11 banned cards: Flashpoint has 5, Mumbad has 3, Red Sand has 2, and SanSan has 1).
There’s also a restricted list, which is not as important. I still like it more than the MWL, which mostly just limited your ability to play out-of-faction cards.
I cannot understate how exciting this is. To have to make decisions about what cards I’m going to play instead of just “well better play Temu & Moose, because those cards are insanely better than the alternatives”. To be able to play something like Argus without acknowledging that I will probably lose against anyone who opens with Aaron. To consider trashing assets with a runner other than Andy or Whizzard, because that might be a thing worth doing when there’s no Friends In High Places.
I hope so hard that there is substance to this rumor because if it turns out to be real then I will come back to Netrunner in a heartbeat.
I like the existence of a Ban List. I think it’s totally necessary. Aaron does too much, he should be straight up banned. The MWL won’t fix his inherent broken design. Vandis is a poster child for bad design, ban it! Faust has bonkers numbers and is worth it even at +4 influence. The MWL is not effective for Faust, so ban it. FFG leadership are fools if they think they can continue to get away without one.
I still like the MWL as a pseudo-restricted list, though. It effectively reduces deck power levels by reducing the available splash if using MWL cards. Single over-the-curve but not broken cards can get extra inf taxed on, and power combos can both get hit with inf penalties to put more of a penalty on the decks using both of them. If a combo is so powerful that putting both pieces on the MWL doesn’t weaken the combo decks enough then one part of that combo should probably just be banned instead. A restricted list of that leaked format just removes card combinations from other, non OP decks, and those cards might not even be a part of the same power combo in the first place!
Absolutely. Without scoring upgrades other than Ash, the corp really has to rely on taxing the runner out in order to create scoring windows. When running on a server, if the runner can completely neuter my DNA Tracker, or my Archer, etc, then they get in for drastically less than what I need to have happen in order to play. Looking at a more “fair” card, Femme Fatale, it costs 9 credits, rather than 5, to do basically the same thing as Sifr (make the ICE basically break at a 1c to 1-sub ratio). And Femme only does this for 1 ICE and 1 ICE only. Sifr doing it for every ICE on a 1-per-turn basis is nuts, since if I’m really disappointed in Femme I can at least just trash the effected ICE and move on with my life.
As for the situation with the Ban/Restricted list, I’ll just copy what I said on the Facebook group about it here, since it’s easier than trying to say basically the same thing again extemporaneously.
Here’s how I look at it. Broken as hell cards get printed. A monolithic company like WotC still prints completely broken cards and accidentally makes infinite combos, and they test like 3 complete cycles ahead or something. They also have a real, paid group of testers rather than the smallish group of volunteers that FFG has. They still fuck things up to the point where they have to admit they screwed something up on a fundamental enough level that it has to be removed from the game entirely for said game’s health.
The MWL is a really cool approach to trying to circumnavigate a ban list, but, as @Joseki said, it actually doesn’t work very well, if at all. In my opinion, not having a ban/restricted list when someone as huge as Magic: The Gathering does is not only a bad idea, it’s arrogant. It’s saying that somehow, our design is better than every other established card game in the world. It’s not, and I appreciate them admitting that.
I was just coming back to Netrunner but this list doesn’t make me so interested. I haven’t ever been fan of restricted lists. Players will just pick the strongest card from the list and all others are practically banned. I expect about 80% taking Employ Strike and rest is forgotten (maybe Film Critic for a few decks). I thought errata Vanadis and mwl Moon/Friends would had been enough. MWL felt much more elegant. Now Netrunner has practically 25 banned cards which can’t be in your decks. I think that’s close to a new record in card games (still catching up to do for Agot 1.0 close to 90 cards banned).
I’m pro banned list, as long as it doesn’t become a mean to manipulate the meta to sell new packs. A regular and aggressive banned list paired with a power creep design philosophy is what sells Yugioh:
Konami - Hey look at this super strong new card card!
Players - I need that card asap for this huge event, let’s buy packs/box/singles online!
K - (after the aforementioned huge event) We are banning this card, so that deck archetype isn’t playable/tier 1 anymore… but look at this new shiny cards of the next expansion that are as broken as the previous ones!
P - If I want to win the next big event I need those new cards, let’s buy them!
I wonder what is the dominant Aesop + MOPUS deck that made those cards be on the list. I wonder if those cards are not there just to say “hey if you play a nasty card like Larla, you can’t play Aesop”.
I made Aesop LARLA Clone Chip SMC Cache decks. In Shapers, I almost if not invented that. And sorry they are not OP. Those decks were completly eclipsed by Calimsha Kates.
They can work, they are fun, but they don’t provide access by themselves and / or autowin conditions : they still cost a card and an install click + credits, and this will bring you only 3c “clickless” : well, nice firework but that’s it for “ultra”-money optimization.
Corpo money alphashots have Hedge Funds, IPO & Restructure, aka +42c printed on 9 cards, and access to IP Blocks, Cortex Lock & other cheap nasty stuff.
Meanwhile, Runners have, well 3x Gambles, no Kati jones, a restricted MO, banned Luckys, influence costing grind economy (or Stimhack and its Brains).
All ices were designed against a runner pool with MO & Katis. Now someone will rez a cheap Inazuma and this will be the end of the game.
Rush & End the run glaciers & Redcoats & Horizontrash will be the next meta, against stealth runners. Other runners may all die a lot to “real netrunner” (??? !!! ???). And this time they’ll die poor.
I have mixed feelings. On Dorks, Damon said that MWL supposed to have different levels - from 1 to 5. So Aaron on MWL level 5 would be super costly. Also - since I am not a pro gamer - it feels much better to me to have an option to play the cards I bought. Yeah - you might say that casuals can play all the cards, but honestly - people usually do not like to play illegal decks during meetings.
On the other hand… It looks like Netrunner is being lookt at finally! I’m all for the ban-list and restrict-list IF SUCH LISTS WILL BE REVISED ON A TIMELY MANNER.
(I still would prefer to have a monthly updated MWL list though)
I suspect people are going to be disappointed. This makes no sense to me. Some other touched on issues in this thread as well, and beyond that it would be a major breach in policy, it would be a rushed one too, which I don’t buy.
Most decisions ffg take, say mwl, datapacks, core 2, this, take about ~3 months. That order of time. That means either this ban list was concieved in a span of weeks (another major breach in policy), or they were considering banning SVA while they hadn’t even sent it off to the printer yet, and limiting aesops while core 2.0 hadn’t even been announced. At that moment you toss it out in testing and start over instead. There’s no particular reason why you’d keep aesops and not some random green card in the entire spin/genesis cycles (like keeping Ares so one of the 2/3’s for HB could be phased out).
Beyond that, I think the hatred for some of the cards you are being stupid about, and there’s no way they end up on a ban list, or the semi ban list that’s the 3 influence bracket on MWL. For example there’s a reason Temujin is strong: crim run economy was too fragile, too easily stopped, and for a long period of time crim couldn’t bring the goods. Temujin put them back in play without making them dominant: that’s a success story in ffg’s book. Now with desperado and siphon gone, and crim reeling, this isn’t where they cut Temujin as well to make sure the knife gets twisted.
Idk, there’s a bunch of other specifics that make no sense to me. At the end, I think someone picked a list of hated cards, tossed in a couple of weird choices, to make the lie seem believable.
They could have been planning a ban list for a while and tacked Vanadis on at the last minute because it’s a really problematic card and can’t be solved with restrictions.
Or some of the list is correct and other parts are incorrect.
I have long argued that a restriction list like FFG uses/used for their other LCG’s was a much-needed solution (and vastly preferable to screwing around with influence), and a straight banned list is a valuable tool to have in the balancing kit, but this list surprises me for its size and scope.
If you have this many restricted cards, you really, really shouldn’t need a banned list of that scope, especially after you just rotated and revised the core set to ditch a bevy of powerful and interesting cards from ye olden days.
I am dubious about this list. If it turns out to be accurate, without some major Real Talk™ from the development and OP teams about what their aims, goals, and vision for competitive play are, I would be extremely dubious about their direction.
Wouldn’t this be an ideal time for a banned list, now that the core 2.0 and rotation has been able to handle potentially problematic cards in those sets? Otherwise you’re left waiting several years before Temujin or Rumor Mill can be addressed, or have to have a revised C&C to address Clone Chip and LARLA.
I’m not buying it either. This list looks to me like this SpoilerKen is the guy at FFG’s who is in charge of bringing the paper trash out. Yesterday he found a paper with this list on it. The list gives me the impression as if it was from the time before Revised Core and Rotation was announced.
Because, like others said, there are cards on it that are not as bad anymore. Crims have lost Desperado and Siphon. Now they lose Temüjin too? Bloo Moose and Aaron as well? Where do they get their money from? MOpus? Ah no, that is restricted, too. SIFR is okayish now since Parasites are gone. Faust is less good without Wyldside. Rumor Mill was intended against Jackson and Caprice. They left the building.
Vanadis needs just an errata, like someone wrote here, like only counting damage from corp cards.
This list looks old, maybe a draft from pre-rotation time. It got dismissed, thrown into the paper trash - and now THAT guy found it. Again: I don’t believe in this list. It’s just too much.
I don’t know if the list itself is accurate but the guy who leaked it has a good track record so I don’t really doubt it.
Why is aseops in the game still? They just did a rotation of problematic cards.
Why is all the best runner economy tools on the banned or restricted list? Is Boggs excited about clicking for an entire turn so that you can install a paper clip?
Why is Bryan Stinson not on this list considering the most common CI deck I’m seeing as a post rotation deck is Bryan + Sandburg
Why is a restricted list + ban better than MWL + ban?