A lot of the death of aggro runner is due to Core 2 (which I think you’re saying). Desperado, Siphon, and Parasite were all aggro cards in their own way, or at least enabled aggro playstyles. The deck I was testing for Worlds was Mining Accident Desperado Val and it was sweet and wanted to run every possible click…that’s pretty dead now. RIP John Mas who was great there, too.
Anyways, just a comment in agreement. It’s interesting to see so many huge changes to Netrunner in such a short timeframe—the meta is about to be vastly different but it’ll be hard to attribute causes amongst rotation, core 2, and whatever the next MWL/banlist/etc iteration is.
I totally agree about NetDurdler, for what it’s worth. Never liked facing down a lock Shaper. My guess is that more cards supporting an aggressive Runner style will be coming out in the next cycle or two, but they had to deal with a bunch of problem cards first. It’s a Living Card Game after all, we can expect the meta to shift around a whole lot.
I agree with you,I do really hate NetDurdler.So called Silver Bullet Shaper is one of the most boring deck I’ve ever came across with.I believe this type of thing should be dealt with harshly.
Ban&Restrict list means that if you play with Mopus,you can’t access to many counters and the only thing you can do is play Clot+Saccon.Now it leaves to 8th Cycle to give Corp a really good early game plan like Breaking News/Sansan/Astro once did,to punish those Durdler for playing NotRunner.
I personally believe the real reason behind aggro death is Fairchild 3.0,an ICE that saw tons of play and completely deny any good thing an aggro player can do.Temujin’s goal to encourage runner to do more runs thus became a completely disaster,they just start with it for insane amout of econ and still go on the same Durdler game.
I used to love play good stuff Leela in Foodcoats meta,but I refuse to play much Crim since Temujin came out.I firmly believe that most Andy deck we saw last year is basically the same thing as NetDurdler:get rich,install thing,get even richer,prevent corp from scoring,win,except they can get even more insane amout of cash than Shaper.I don’t see any aggro element from that.
I miss the good ol’ Gabe era where you are richer because your clever and calculated runs thus making corp poorer for rez ICEs,not “temujin,run 3 times,your turn”.
With all the hits against recursion, I sometimes wonder if the Conspiracy breakers are a problem that might need to be looked at in the future. Especially coupled with Opus.
I played Mopus MaxX for months.Its main breaker is Eater,and its plan is Vamp and Keyhole so you don’t have to really spend much money on ICE.Even so,every now and then I break some ICE with MKUltra/Black Orchestra,and I just whisper to myself,“shit this really sucks”.
Certainly agree on many points, but as you said, Econ was a reaction to ICE which started snowballing, design-wise. Criminal economy just got gutted but all the good ICE is still around. Facechecking Jinteki isn’t the same these days; you could lose your hand to Cortex Lock or 3 cards and 6c to DNA Tracker. You can only facecheck HB on 3 clicks or with an empty board. NBN rarely loses tempo now with ICE rezzes, and Weyland… well okay, you can probably still facecheck Weyland, assuming you aren’t going to get HHN next turn.
So many things have changed Corpside since the classic style of Gabe/Criminal aggro, while all that really changed for Crim was the economy. They still have crap breakers (Turtle aside), they have even more reliance on Resources without Siphon, and they don’t have the in-faction resilience to damage that Shaper and Anarch have (recursion and IHW, respectively).
I think what we’re seeing is FFG’s long-term gameplan to rebalance Runners against Corp.
When the game came out, it was quickly apparent that Corps were not able to stand up to Runners. Jackson Howard was a band-aid solution to that problem (and a brilliant once). Since then, FFG has been laying the groundwork for Corps and Runners to be balanced without a card like Jackson by increasing the strength of ICE, and now, with Jackson leaving–reducing the power of the Runner’s options in some areas.
I’m just saying, before we conclude that this is all headed inevitably for NetDurdler, we should see how it shakes out without Jackson involved.
When MaxX just came out, I did this too! MOpus, eater, cutlery, just blow everything up! It was punk rock the way it was meant to be. Super-weak to rush decks, but hey… at least it didn’t durdle and do nothing while setting up siphon recursion into DLR
Not the same as it’s been, certainly, but the way it should be. As shown in FFG’s Netrunner Tutorial, the runner installs a breaker only after seeing what type of ice the corp has in hand. Because of this, I believe the intent of the game is to include some element of risk. As it is now, almost all runners can (or could) run unprepared and escape virtually unscathed because they conjured a solution out of thin air. That removes any risk, which I believe to be bad. Why bluff if the runner can deal with anything the corp throws at them? Runners ought to be cautious when facechecking, otherwise why have hidden information at all? The faster, more aggro runner certainly has exciting/fun qualities to it, but I believe it makes for a better game when the corp has an opportunity to bluff and forcing the runner to take some calculated risks (or play Infiltration).
The thing is you won’t face a Tollbouth in 2017 Netrunner.
You may be flatted very much with one corpo card.
A runner must have the money for 21 dot something central accesses to win with 50% chance. You talk about risks, ok but for what reward exactly : a mono-access costing you twelve clic-credit of preparation ?
x 22 ? Vs unbanned Tollbouth-Ash for exemple ?
That list is stupid. Removing MOpus / Aesop / Jones or any kind of infiny money is stupid, since hundreds of ices and protection means of corp were designed, tested & balanced in an environnement where those cards existed.
Late game is suposed to be runner’s : now with risked facecheck, cheap nasty ice made early even more big for corps, medium is still runner clicking cred/card and late is when the corp scores behind Chiyashi / Tollbouth / Ash / Whatever.
The game won’t be better moving from “take 8 go” to “take 4 go” :
if the runner need those 22 central accesses, then you will click maybe 100s of times on credit before having those 22
if the runner tries to remote lock (since people quotes “take 8 go”, because that’s a remote lock move), have fun with Ash Memory.
I don’t know what kind of game they want it to be but perma money had a purpose, and never were a problem reported by any competitive or half competitive player like am I.
When the corp has to install into the remote to win the game, I imagine the runner is getting rewarded with “mono-accessing” agendas on the table. A lot of FA tools were lost to Revised Core, so I expect more agendas to be sitting for one runner turn in the coming times. Corp also doesn’t have Jackson, so HQ is now a plausible target.
If you want MOpus, you can still use MOpus. Nothing wrong with that. But when you can have it all with money and no fear of ice thanks to CC, or 1000 Cuts with LARLA, and still be able to shut down corps with ES…that’s when it’s too much. This is the “SanSan” Anarch issue but spread over the whole game. Each piece is at a reasonable power level on their own, but together they make one master of the nets.
HQ is really, really juicy right now. If you can set up some sort of remote pressure, corp has almost nothing to do but try and make a better remote. If they’re doing that, HQ will almost certainly contain agendas.
And who the hell can play Boom any more? The only reasonable tagging mechanism is HHN, and you just have to remain at 5 or above credits for that. Not even 8, since all you have to do is drop 3 tags, since there’s no longer a lethal punishment for a single tag. Just click for a credit up to 6, and drop them tags. It just feels fairly easy to remain in non-lethal range vs Weyland right now, so long as you don’t over-extend.
I think it’s weird to say FA is less strong. We lost Astro, which wasn’t that powerful anymore anyways some you can’t run three anymore, and San San. What was picked up? Every faction has a 3/2 now, and there is a LOT of event economy to power your tools. FA jinteki and FA Weyland (which was doing well before these changes) will be Fast advance now instead of NBN. Trick of light, shipment from tennin, audacity, success, and our good friend biotic are really good cards. FA with trappy decks (or cheap, high impact gear check ice) seems powerful.
A week or two of paying attention. Everything here is just an opinion:
Everything on a list deserves to be there
Gang Sign is in the wrong category - Strongbox is tech now, I suppose
The state of the game is better; as in it’s not broken, but it’s overall less interesting
I think this gives them space to expand responsibly; but, it’s not sufficient to draw me back since I don’t have room for a lifestyle game, which is on me.
Cutlery are super strong in the meta, but it’s hard to play them multiple times with any deck I’ve built. Corps have it rough aside from a couple lingering strategies. The loss of jackson puts the game pretty much back where it was, and rush is this half-alive zombie thing that might compensate for that, but probably won’t.
Just slot the clot, lock the remote and be able to hit HQ hard once a game and you probably win.
It’s not only that it removes aggro, it removes late runner stability. Because instead of asking them to clic econ, clic econ, run, clic repair, they’re asking to clic draw+having luck drawing econ to clic event econ, then clic run then clic repair.
I fail to see when Mopus was oppresive enough to any competitive player this last two years.
Instead, pushing cards OOG (like perma econ or Jackson) that mitigated the luck factor to boost the strategic factor seems to be a pretty bad editorial move, but I’d recon I have to reserve my judgement after seing the next cycle.
What perma econ makes is :
a - fueling econ to help runner to install in early. One shot event works too, but they rely on draw. And draw involves luck. Now, needing this breaker and this econ event ot instal it and this econ event to run providing you drew the good breaker involves way lots more luck than MO did in early.
b - remove econ check while the gear is assembling until gear check is over. Removing that NPE too.
c - prevent draws in mid-late, so the runner can accel to rejoin the corp and make tension in end of game.
d - makes corps to put ice & assets in their decks insteadof 9 ag / 14 ice then 26 events.
If the tension doesn’t grow with that late race, all netrunner tension is gone. All you’ll have is anticlimatics “I pray to draw my stimhack, I pray to draw my stimhack, I pray to draw my stimhack DRAW Infiltration, yay ! :(” instead of “what you gonna do, I’m 10c ahead, did you remote Jackson bluff or not ?”
The game need VERY precise things to be done like :
So give perma econ to runner before they all switch to some remove-any-scoring-window-stealth/recursive-econ-&-fun-as-being-accountant-in-an-eurogame-compagny-to-play-instead (remind me how much this breaker pump for, err, well, please look away which breaker I’m looking please). Clic econ should alway be quicker to set than a recursive economy.
Solving avancable trap decks weaknesses to central lock by compressing their slots. Dual crap ice / trap cards, that you can instal protecting or in a server for exemple. Dual crap econ event / trap cards, for exemple, that you can play like an event or install in the root of a central (yes, advancables in centrals). Anything that could buy cards you put in your deck that take clic to install, credit/clic to advance, credit to trigger and yet still have chance to fail without other cards to recover and yet again still fail as a whole deck if the runner install a sigle equivocation or r&d locks you.
Giving a nuclear weapon to horizontal spam. Like an Anarch event saying “count installed remotes, trash top that much of R&D cards”. Because horizonspam bended the game toward the same dumb accountant minigame we play since NEH aka “oh you installed 2 new remote, will I run there and trash for 8-10c or let you win ? Oh 4 turns later doing that I lost anyway, what a great game”.
And years after this, it’s not fun anymore.
Jackson. Because (two pages of explanations of what kind of random Jackson removed from the game). Make it costing 2c on rez, 1c on trash, neutral 1 inf. And still being an asset. There, it’s fixed.
Review power level of ices that were calibrated to face the banned runner cards. Because Crick is no more Yogable for instance, and there’s dozens of exemples from Tollbooth to Fenris. Particularly low price facecheck issues in a non-syphon non MO non Kati non Parasite world.
Put more hitting stuff on subs after etr on barriers. Because things like str X rez X sub: etr have been print for str from 0 to 5. Something ala Tsurugi like rez 3 str 2 sub etr then sub tag (or anything) can be fun to explore too.
Put any non unique 3/2 on the limited list, then print dozens of new non unique ones + keep a policy of having no more than one unique 3/2 per faction. That makes corp never having more than 8pts printed on 3/2 AND invoke the right to be wrong about old 3/2 designs AND new deck synergy AND the option to permaban some 3/2 without making the faction loosing their only 3/2 until the next one comes in a store near you (aka 1.5 year ?).
Find non OP uses for Anarch discard. This faction from the start should have been the heap & archive faction (shaper been only the stack & R&D faction). Find non OP uses for Crim hand like a breaker of str = your hand number or something.
Don’t think nerfing icemelt to death is making derezing a better mecanic when it’s worst because of lot more of event recursion solutions now.
Limited list SOT.
Remove from Limited CC as it’s having not many more risk/reward than a construct now.
Remove from limited Aesop-wtf-clic-draw-clic-instal-then-get-3c-trashing-wtf-you’re-doing-there.
Try to down Temujin from ban to limited as math is right compared to other cards. Temujin is not a card to put in any decks. It’s a card to complete a run econ deck, which have weaknesses like using 7 clicks (with 6 in a row) to win 14c and 5 time the same kind of access (unlike MO that is limited). There is a huge problem of bluff perception with that card : it’s slows the runner and makes him previsible and he gains 14c for that. It’s the runner’s celebrity gift.
Remove MO from limited because of lategame toxic luck involved in draw issues. Lategame need tension and a runner comeback.
So, I hear people telling that Core 2.0 + rotation Skorpios with only barriers is the new NPE deck. I can see that decks which target recursion could become a problem if rumours about a restricted list are true.
