That’s the biggest issue is that there is no regular update schedule.
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It wasn’t when I tried building it. If you’re right, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I think it depends on the deck, but Levy is 3 influence out of shaper. 3 clone 3 parasite 1 levy would just be 2 3 clone 3 parasite 1 levy 2 career fair with Levy being MWL. Criminal would never touch the card, shaper would have even less reason to be run over Anarch. I hate seeing Levy as much as any Corp player, but Levy isn’t cheap or easy to play. I feel I’ve played enough against it that decks which include it, Levy isn’t incredibly broken. Outside of 3 clone chip, 3 parasite dumblefork ultra
Absolutely. It’s all about using the right tools for the different jobs. There is not one tool that effectively does every job in the world. You might use a screwdriver to get a nail into the wall, but not to great effect, and possibly ruining something along the way.
Using this logic, there is no ‘one size, fits all’-solution that can be applied to fix all the problems netrunner has at any given time. The MWL does a brilliant job at slightly nerfing powerful cards that are a little above the curve (Eli, NAPD, etc.), but does really no good thing about combos such as Wyldcakes/Faust and cards like Astroscript.
My suggestion would be a MWL for certain powercards that need an influence hit (a couple of decent suggestions earlier in the tread), a combo list for illegal combos (Wyldside-Faust, Parasite-Clone Chip, Museum-MCH, etc.) and if necessary a few erratas (like 1 per deck) for especially problematic cards like Astro.
The designers should strive to give us the best game possible, using the necessary tools.
Even if FFG starts adding 1-per-deck restrictions, I’d hope not to see it on any core/deluxe card. I know high-level play assumes 3 copies of everything, but restricting core/deluxe cards will hurt the initial buy-in for new players.
Yes, I know MWL and restricted lists are for tournaments, but there’s a drive for new players to play “the right way”. That usually means tournament-legal decks you can bring to a game night without worrying that someone will complain that your deck wasn’t fair. Not that anyone I know would complain about a new player having a non-MWL deck now, but again, many still want to learn to do things “the right way”.
I’m not personally a fan of “1 per deck” on much of anything. It’s high variance, and I think that they lead to very frustrating situations where you feel like your opponent happened to draw the 1-of in their opening hand, and won.
@SimonMoon suggested that anarch are 1-2 MWL cards to be in line with other factions. That may be the case, but that feels like using the MWL to target specific decks, not specific cards. I worry that using the MWL that way narrows the options for a faction a lot.
If the MWL had Wyldside and Faust on it (or even worse, d4v1d), would it significantly change the style of anarch decks that would be played? Or would it just nerf the faction as a whole?
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That is a good point. And it seems to me that in the end Runners are much more debilitated when their key cards are being put on MWL, than the Corps.
This was demonstrated clearly right after the MWL went to effect and Shapers and Criminals have seen a strong rapid decline.
And at the same time NBN and HB have adapted very quickly and returned almost to their full pre-MWL efficiency.
As people already mentioned, this has also a lot to do with a lot of great new ICE being printed, which allows the Corp to spend much less of their influence there as they used to.
And based on various objective and subjective measures, Corps already do have advantage on runners currently (for example the Jinteki.net stats were showing 55-45 for Corps).
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I meant specifically that anarch Faust decks were stronger (and dumblefork in particular) not anarch as a faction.
Hitting Faust and wyldpancakes help make regass anarch decks relatively better. David does the opposite though and woild be a disaster to mwl
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Yeah, the other option I think is banning Beale. Without 1 of those two fastro is going to survive any amount of mwl and bringing it down in line kills fun neh decks as a side effect if you hit 8-9 yellow good cards with mwl.
I agree that it sucks to errata core set card but I don’t think anything else is a good solution (killing Beale hurts psycho midseasons decks and is the lower variance part of neh anyway)
It seems to me that problem cards can broadly be fitted into two groups: things the MWL could effectively fix, and Astroscript. I think Astro will always be broken in of itself, but hopefully once rotation hits it can be ‘contextually balanced’ by the absence of Beale and future card design.
It seems this is the general consensus of the thread. It might be interesting to shift the discussion here a bit. What cards fall into each of these camps?
MWL:
- Parasite
- Clone Chip
- Eli
- Architect
- NAPD
Not MWL:
- Astroscript
- Faust
- Levy?
I actually think there are 3 different categories here. 1) cards that are a little above the curve and need to be brought in line ( good MWL candidates). 2) Cards that are degenerate in a way not fixed by adding them to the MWL (astroscript, maybe museum of history, maybe faust?), and might need to be banned to improve the state of the game. 3) Cards that are not degenerate, but that do warp the format around them, so that having them leave the game at some point would open up new options or playstyles (levy, parasite, yog.0, scorched earth). These cards aren’t necessarily a problem, but I’d find it interesting to play in a meta without parasite, or without scorched earth so that tagging could play out a bit differently, and so on. But since many/most of them are in the core set, they will never rotate, so the only way to explore this space is via bans or core set 2.0.
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I think this is a great breakdown of cards in question. Except parasite, never leave me parasite:sob:
You know, I think Parasite wouldn’t be so bad if it either would blow up when the corp purges virus counters, or if it only checked for destruction at the end of the turn.
Or we could always go back to the source, Pattel’s Virus, which only gave out a counter when you broke all the subs on the ICE.
The sub clause would make Datasucker necessary, but most Parasite decks run it anyway. The purge clause would remove some edge case stuff, but the card still kills instantly, again with Datasucker.
Anway… I don’t like those changes. Parasite is my favorite ICEBreaker. 
Very much agree with moistloaf, FA is necessary for the game, and while NBN has some good ice it still lags behind other corps in its ability to keep the runner out, so it’s appropriate that they should be better than other corps at drawing past r&d lock and scoring out of hand.
NBN is not the only fast advance deck, it’s the only fast advance deck with a broken power level. CI7, Mumbad Construction Co strategies, and ETF/Jeeves FA are all other mortal FA strategies that would make it such that FA remains an element of the game.
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I agree 100% too. FA is needed for the game. Otherwise the runner meta will be slow decks that do not run in the first 15 turns and just setup. Once they have setup, they can walk into any server and will just win. FA keeps this (non-interactive) style of runner in check.
Some of my favourite battles have been against FA. Corp scores an early astro. Runner gets Clot. Corp purges. Runner gets Clone chip. Corp can’t find CVS but installs a card behind a piece of ICE (is it another Astro or a Jackson?) Runner can probably play SMC and get in but then will not be able to afford Clot the turn after…
It is not always like that and sometimes you will just lose to NEH getting their Astros at the right time but I do believe having Astro is better for the game than not having Astro.
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As a returning player I tend to agree that combinations of cards are the real issue, and these could be largely resolved with a restricted list similar to what they did with AGOT 1.0, maybe adjusted to prevent certain pairs.
The MWL is also welcome in conjunction, for extremely powerful cards.
Let’s be honest. Asset-based FA are too clunky to ever be anything but tier 2. CI7 is an interesting deck but too obtuse to keep the meta in check in the way that NBN does. Unless I’m mistaken, Beale will rotate, at which point I don’t think Astro will seem as unfair as it does to some people. Personally I don’t think it is unfair currently. Granted, it makes EOI extra powerful, but I don’t think that’s problematic.