It’s not a matter of being mean, and it’s not something I practice during casual play. I take my tournaments seriously. There are quite a few interesting sources on the subject. Most are Magic related as it is the grandfather of these kinds of games, but it can easily be applied to Netrunner.
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No, I feel that our skill levels are probably pretty close to even, so any edge I can get isn’t a bad thing, especially when you factor in the fact that I could be getting a particularly bad draw and you could be getting a particularly good draw. It’s part of competing.
No. I wouldn’t ever get mad at someone that is trying to throw me off my game. I’d get mad at myself for getting thrown off. That actually happened recently to me at a game night kit tourney because I wasn’t expecting someone to be hyper-competitive, especially on the bottom half of the swiss rankings, which is where my testing decks ended up without creating an edge. In the moment, I suppose I was a little frustrated with the opponent, but looking back on it a bit later, I got upset with myself for getting thrown off.
I’m not trying to make anyone mad. I’m trying to win. My goal is for the opponent to make poor decisions and not allow my opponent to cause me to make bad decisions. Otherwise, all we’re doing is playing to see whose deck is better rather than actually evaluating competitive skill.
That being said, I’m with @Dstinct in that I wouldn’t practice throwing others off in casual play. It’s more of a tournament play thing and even then, I’m talking store championships or higher (hence why I was thrown off at the game night tourney that I mentioned).
For me, if something is allowed, I’m going to do it to compete.
Yes, but where does one draw the line between “being competitive” and “being an asshole?”
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This is exactly it.
I hope that most players have the health of their local tournament scene foremost in their minds. If you could win a store championship in a way that would disband the whole tournament scene, would you do it? This is a hypothetical, let’s not get bogged down by whether that’s possible. The point is, there are some things more important than winning. If playing Netrunner isn’t fun, what’s the point? You could be spending your time far more effectively. We’re all playing because we have fun playing this game… the game only thrives if people enjoy it… therefore being a dick to people to get an edge is a good way to bring down your local Netrunner community.
Do you see pro Magic players being dicks to their opponents? No. They’re perfectly respectful, and rely on their skill and abilities rather than cheap shots. Even Mike Flores doesn’t advocate dirty tactics.
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You all are completely out of your minds. The frequency of times in netrunner that your opponent acts like an asshole is like 1/1000 games.
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At my local store, there’s a guy who’s a regular part of the tournament scene. Neither I nor my brother enjoy playing him at all. He’s at every event. He’s arrogant, mostly because he’s called upon to act as a second judge quite often. Does he know his stuff? Yes. Is he a good player? Yes. Is he arrogant as Hell about it? Yes. Does it make for a very fun game against him? No, because he spends most of the game exhibiting an impatient attitude of “Just hurry up and get your turn over with so I can win.”
Generally, I agree with Chill that most people are pretty cool, but personally I’m pretty sure that qualifies as more than “one in a thousand games” for me.
I disagree strongly with this implication. IMO competitive skill has nothing to do with dealing with “mind games” from your opponent, or the ability to dish out said “mind games.” In ANR, competitive skill is decision making; that’s it. IMO decision making is the single component of skill in ANR, and that’s why I take issue with any attempt by players to disrupt their opponent’s decision making. You can say you’re doing it to compensate for poor draws, but IMO “mind games” are often poor sportsmanship, which is a crutch for poor competitive skill.
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I agree completely.
In one of the Magic articles above the author brags about abusing semantics to counter a spell when no real counter was available, and in my opinion that’s the epitome of unsportsmanlike behavior. Can’t imagine being proud of that, and especially wouldn’t encourage others to do that. Glad the majority of netrunner players are all pretty cool
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I fail to see how any of the above equates to dirty tactics. If I can get you to make a sub-optimal play via misdirection or other legal means, why shouldn’t I? I never equate "mind games’ with cheating. Sometimes a mind game is nothing more than just sitting across from your opponent stone-faced and only responding directly to the game at hand. No small talk or smile.
There is a difference between what I am advocating and just being an outright dick. In fact, most of the time I am extremely courteous to my opponent, unless given a reason not to be. I find this works better to my advantage, causing my opponent to over-relax and make play mistakes. I usually employ the stone-faced technique above if I feel that someone is trying to game me. If I can’t get a good read, I’ll just put up my defenses and stay the course.
I agree. Decision making is a large part of Netrunner, making it to my advantage to cause my opponent to make poor decisions, like running on the wrong server, playing the wrong icebreaker, etc. The game is not played in a vaccum, and part of the decision making process is evaluating the information your opponent is giving you and being able to filter it into useful or BS. Most competitive games have some sort of mind game to them; poker, chess, ccgs. We get some crazy mind games going on when the family gets together for scrabble or jenga.
Which article was that? As long as the player wasn’t cheating or belittling their opponent, what was the problem? Either the spell would be countered or it wouldn’t, calling a judge if there is a difference of opinion. I’ve often gotten runners to run on useless servers, or get a corp to waste click installing ice, only to run a keyhole or sneakdoor. I may point out that a play probably just “cost them the game” even if it was a good play. They end up so focused on the play that they may end up making an actual mistake. I’ve also caused a corp player to “tilt” by making it look like I was top-decking all the ice breakers I needed at the right time, even though many were in my hand already. He became flustered and desperate and made mistakes that won me the game. Would a hacker not try to misdirect the security of a Corp in order to get an advantage and hopefully get whatever they were after?
I want to make it clear, I never belittle my opponent with insults, and I scale based upon numerous factors. If it’s a kid playing, I’ll cut him some slack. If it’s a face I don’t recognize so they are probably new, I’ll cut them some slack. If I’m beating them badly, I’m not going to add insult to injury. But if I’m on the losing side, I’ll do what I can to try and get back up.
I don’t know if it’s just difficult to explain in a forum, but I’ve never had anyone complain or say something to me about this, and people actively bug me for games knowing I play this way. I just feel the game psychology is an important part of the game itself. I have tons of respect for people that can game me because I’ve been playing card games for decades. I used to regularily travel to the US to play in SCG’s Power 9 series. It was a lot of fun, but extremely competitive. I’ve also learned to never underestimate my opponent and their mind games. I learned that the hard way. Years ago I was in the top 8 of a vintage magic tournament for a mox, and was paired up with this kid who looked no more than 14. I would have been 25ish at the time. Tied at 1 game a piece, I had him dead to rights. He kept talking to me, with what seemed like innocent chatter from a kid, and I proceeded to combo out. He started asking what I had, and caused me to get flustered and miscount my mana, causing the whole thing to fall apart right in front of me. I had the kill, but screwed it up because he got me off my game. He went on to do the same thing to his next opponent, and ended up taking 2nd and getting a mana drain or something. I couldn’t believe I just got jedi mind tricked by a kid 10 years my junior because I underestimated him.
One thing I will touch upon, you should definitely always be asking the other players cards in hand and credit pool. Especially as Corp if you’re attempting any kind of flatline victory. If, as the runner, the Corp has never once inquired about my credit pool or handsize, and all of a sudden they do after drawing cards, that is a tell they are up to something (most likely).
Also, I don’t always shuffle my hand, as sometimes it is preferable to let the runner know I installed a card I just drew into a server, especially if they have a good read on my hand. A couple weeks ago, I got Legworked with 3 cards in hand…2 ICE and a PAD Campaign, which he did not trash. I drew an Edge of World and dropped it into a 3 deep remote without reorganizing my hand, so the runner KNEW I couldn’t be baiting a fruitless run with the PAD, and basically had to run that server to find out what the card was.
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This story is the whole point on why mind games are so fun in Netrunner. I’m thinking if I saw a player, who always shuffled their hand before installing a card, instal a card that they clearly top decked, then that would tell me a lot about what that card is. In the scenario above I’d almost certainly suspect that you wanted me to run on that server, which is the reason you didn’t shuffle, as shuffling would send a message that this could be a fruitless run, or that you are trying to misdirect me by making me think it was a PAD when it’s actually an agenda, or… you make the guess. That is the reason that mind games are so fun in Netrunner. If you pay attention to the minutiae of details you can find a lot of information, or they might just be playing you because they are better than you.
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Well, yeah. But that one time is totally worth discussing, because then it’s particularly bad - if not objectively, then relatively speaking. You’re so used to playing with respectful and all-around nice people that someone who is competitive in a way that borders on being an asshole makes you want to ragequit, rip apart your cards, then choke him with the remains and flush his broken body into the sewer.
Happened to one of our guys at a Regional. Guy was being a douche (objectively, at about “standard-competitive MtG player” level, at least in our local MtG community), but it was a bad enough NPE that our guy in the match very nearly dropped out of the tournament entirely. Took a lot of persuasion in the vein “you’d just reward him for his behavior by doing that” to stop it in the end, and the whole incident left a pretty negative memory in our whole group.
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What was he doing that pissed off his opponent so bad?
I would always put the corp player on having topdecked an agenda in that situation. Corp decks have around 9 to 12 agenda cards, and probably only 0 to 3 ambush cards. That’s 20% vs 6%, tops. I think it’s far less than 20-to-6 as likely for even a skilled player to think up that clever bluff than to forget to shuffle their hand once in the heat of the moment. (It would have to be that likely for it to be 50/50 an ambush vs an agenda, both factors considered.)
It was a rather ugly mess. Our guy ran on an unprotected Jackson, then decided to jack out (because he realized his opponent could do Accelerated Shutdown Sea/Scorch to win the game). The other guy went ahead and played Power Shutdown with the whole combo follow-up, completely messing up the board state. When our guy started objecting that there wasn’t a successful run to base SEA Source on, the dude started arguing (loudly and obnoxiously) that our guy didn’t say “jack out”. The whole thing sorta escalated quickly after that, with the highlights being arguments of:
“I said jack out” / “No you didn’t”
“If I didn’t jack out, why wouldn’t I trash the Jackson?” / “Why would you run and jack out without accessing?” / “Because after I initiated the run, I remembered that I saw a SEA in your HQ” / “I don’t care, you didn’t say jack out and so it was a successful run”
And so on and so forth, ad nauseam. Best part of it was that he accused our guy of unsportsmanlike behavior “because now he’s lying that he said jack out”… sigh.
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Is it really? That percentage of ‘NPE players’ is far lower than the asshole factor IRL. Just deal and move on. Not everyone is cool, or nice, or accommodating. Hell, in L5R, we had a BLIND guy who played, yet was caught cheating. Fucker took advantage of everyone being extra nice to him, or just admiring him.
It’s very easy to be ostracized in a community as small as this. In between rounds, or at the lunch breaks, or afterwards, if no one ends up talking to them because they failed at being a civil human (perhaps not even their fault; we all have bad days), that’s their reward.
TL; DR - people get annoyed by other people. Get over it.
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