How should knowledge about opponent deck contents be handled?

This sums up my feelings from reading this thread. There’s definitely a huge disparity between playing with a friend, who you know checks every remote you create, and sitting down opposite a highly ranked player at the closing stages of a tournament, who you suspect has an idea of what you’re running, and will probably take the best approach to combat it. In each case, you have the opportunity to use that presumed information you have about your opponent and their level of knowledge (rather than their deck) to your advantage. You could argue, as the OP has, that those are two different types of Netrunner. Personally, I rather like the different feelings those scenarios inspire - and the fact that they do feel different from each other - but I can see how some people want unity of experience.

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Sideboards was one of Magic’s best inventions, since it actually opened up the deck variety.

Magic is also played as a best-of-three, and I think we can all agree that that would be a terrible idea for Netrunner.

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I disagree, best of 3 for top 4 should be the common thing. A one game final has too much variance and is quite boring to watch tbh.

I think this is problematic because it means you have an advantage to having a clique of multiple friends also doing well, such that you can discuss your opponents. People not part of this clique will thereby be disadvantaged because this information is prohibited from them.

The main problem here is how vastly unenforceable this is. You can’t stop people from talking in private about what they played, and it just gives an advantage to people who try and circumvent these rules. It also makes the tournament experience a lot less fun and exciting for everyone. Nobody wants to have to stand outside the venue in sombre silence because they’re not allowed to talk about how their match went. The chats in-between rounds are really nice and tournaments wouldn’t be nearly as fun without them.

If there’re rules put in place to prevent scouting, discussing in-between games, or whatever else, it makes the tournament less fun for everyone and practically encourages players to go and discuss in secret or, hell, even via text or similar.

There are distinct advantages to having information about somebody’s decks, yeah, but it’s impossible to prevent this information from getting out, so it’s a better idea to make this information symmetric. I’m very much in favour of releasing decklists for a cut, if only to try and remove the stigma from hidden information and level the playing field. It stops cliquey circles of friends from gaining an advantage, an advantage that is only increased when a TO tries to ban scouting or similar. Keeping ‘scouting’ unbanned ensures everyone can play on the same level.

It’s not as if tech loses all possible value if your opponent knows about it (they may play around it even if you’ve not got it in hand/unrezzed). If this was the case to begin with, it probably wasn’t very good. It’s easy for players to argue that they’re losing because of factors other than they played bad or their deck wasn’t up-to-snuff, but that doesn’t happen in reality.

It’s also quite easy to mention anecdotal evidence about “wow, hidden information helped/hurt me here”, where, indeed, a similar advantage would have been gained by the opponent if they knew what you had in your deck. Does that Noise player have Clot in their deck, and how many? How many IHW does this player have? What type of NEH is that? What breakers does this Kate deck use?

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I said WE because WE (stimhack) are most of the best players (I think?). Of course it’s unenforceable, just don’t do it anyway! If people want to cheat to win, then they should go play another game, and if someone is scouting excessively, word WILL get out and we can scold them appropriately.

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Relatedly, I had a deck for a while that I was doing very well with… until I played against people who didn’t know what was in it. They never considered I’d have a quadruple-advanced Junebug or Overwriter out on turn 1 in NEXT, so they just ran the agenda instead.

People who knew, I could game relatively well beyond that. People who didn’t just did whatever and I was too slow to learn how to read them.

cough More on topic, I don’t think handing out decklists is necessary, but I don’t much care if my opponents know. The bigger thing with being watched isn’t the chance to see my decklist but to see how I play and get to know my style of running the deck better. Outside of tournaments or with people who know super-well already I don’t care much, but in a more competitive event with newer people it bugs me a bit more.

Your story reminded me of a match where I (Jinteki Biotech) IAA on turn 1, a couple turns later I advance it two more times, and eventually score out a Braintrust with 2 tokens on it.

My opponent had to read the card to see what it did with two agenda tokens on it. After I scored a Genetic Resequencing, I was able to rez all of my ICE for 0-2 credits. Then the real fun was not rezzing ICE when the runner was running a deep server, knowing I run Edge of World.

A big part of the game is gauging your opponent, what they know (or think they know) about your deck and your plays, and pressuring your opponent into making bad moves.

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Yomi deck requires high skill play from both side.Against someone who don’t know your deck,you just can’t read that person because he simply doesn’t know anything.Anyway,I think if your deck relies on Surprise too much you might have a poor deck.

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What’s more important than Super Secret Tech at the competitive level is NEHes that are either on Scorch or on Biotic Labor. Their both tier 1 and both will win against the runner several % points more or less if the runner knows whether to mulligan away plascrete, steal an early agenda, or play IHW as a draw power to help them set up.

Netrunner is the only game where, in a tournament setting, I’ve specifically asked people to walk away from a game I was playing for absolutely no reason other than they were standing there watching. It’s also the only game where I expected them to do precisely as I asked them to. That’s because watching a game you are not a part of is scouting. Period. That you may be friends of one or both of the players is irrelevant. Scouting isn’t about “intent”. It’s about acquiring information that you should not otherwise have.

Is it possible to prevent all acquisition of information outside the context of gameplay? Not realistically. You’re going to see stuff that people next to you are playing. Someone is probably going to talk about the deck that they played the previous round etc. But, at least in my experience, that happened far less at the events I took part in.

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Ever since I lost a “walking race” indoors when my mother told my brother and I not to run in the house, I’ve despised competitions that devolve into a measure of who can violate the rules of that competition the most. I’d prefer netrunner not be one of those, but it seems most people don’t mind if it is.

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Maybe you just needed a Nintendo.

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