KING OF SUBWAYS - NYC ANRPC Team Event

Tournaments and Events
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Event page: King of Subways - ANRPC Team Tournament

Announcing KING OF SUBWAYS, the first-ever New York City Android: Netrunner Players Circuit event!

King of Subways will be held at the NYU Game Center on Saturday, March 25th. Signups will begin at 10am, with Round 1 beginning at 11am sharp.

King of Subways is a team event, with each team consisting of 3 players. Each team must have three different runner factions represented (each minifaction being its own faction) and three different corp factions. Prizes at the end will be awarded to the entire team. In the spirit of KoS, table talk between teammates and opponents is allowed and encouraged (although not to the point of stalling/slow play).

King of Subways will consist of 5 Swiss rounds of 70 minutes each, with a final round between the top 2 teams. Round pairings will be between teams with the closest total prestige points, with players paired in prestige order (e.g. the top player on one team faces the top player on the other).

All NYC Netrunner events adhere to the ANRPC Code of Conduct: http://www.anrplayerscircuit.com/code-of-conduct

Outside food will be permitted at King of Subways, and NYU has a number of amenities (small kitchen, vending machines, water fountains, food within walking distance). However, no alcohol will be permitted.

PRIZES:

All participants will receive one ANRPC alternate-art card special to this event, and at least one other ANRPC alternate-art card.

First place: First pick of a set of ANRPC metal/carbon fiber IDs, 65% of the prize pot
Second place: Second pick of a set of ANRPC metal/carbon fiber IDs, 35% of the prize pot
Third place: Free entry into NYC Regionals (or equivalent cash if they don’t plan on attending)

Additional prizes (playmats, ANRPC dice, etc.) may be added at the TO’s discretion; raffles will also be held through the day.

REGISTRATION:

The entry fee for KoS will be $15 per player, or $10 for current NYU students/faculty. Payment will be taken at the door, cash-only. All proceeds will be used to compensate prize or added to the prize pot.

If you have a team ready, awesome! If not, you can register as a freelance player (listing your preferred factions); the TO will create teams based on preferred factions one week before the event and update any newly-teamed players.

The registration system will be live in the coming weeks - we’ll make an announcement when registration is open! Entry at the door is also welcome, although players cannot register without a team that morning.

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We’re pleased to announce that registration for King of Subways is now open! Teams and individual players can register here:

http://emergencyshutdown.net/kos_index.php

We’re expanding the prize pool to include crafts such as psi dice and click trackers, and will announce more as we get closer to March 25th :slight_smile:

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I know the sign up form has a tool for freelancers, but if anyone is looking for a third*, hit me up in the next week or so. I’m partially basing my spring break plans on whether or not I can attend this, so I’d rather know ahead of time that I have a team setup. :slight_smile:

I can fill any faction holes you have, and I’m a moderately competitive player. Regional and a few store champs wins under my belt, top 20 at nats, etc.

  • Fixed!
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King of Subways uses teams of 3, not 4 :slight_smile:

I’m going to make teams from the freelancers on March 15, but if you need to know ahead of then to make travel plans, let me know and I’ll see if I can find you a team.

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Fixed, thanks!

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Important announcement regarding the MWL and banned cards:

There are rumors that a new MWL will be released sometime in the next few weeks; however, it’s not clear if the MWL will be released before King of Subways on 3/25. The metagame, as it stands, is particularly unpalatable to a number of players, and without major changes to card legality I fear that KoS will be a further calcification of the post-Worlds metagame.

As such, KoS will implement the following policies regarding card legality:

  • If the MWL is released on or before March 15th, KoS will use the latest MWL. This will hold even if the MWL does not officially go into effect until after the event (e.g. a March 15th release that goes into effect on April 1st).

  • If the MWL is NOT released on or before March 15th, KoS will use an event-specific list of banned cards. The list of banned cards will be as follows:

24/7 News Cycle
Aaron Marrón
Blackmail
DDoS
Faust
Rumor Mill
Sensie Actors Union
Şifr

The rationales for these bannings were laid out by SimonMoon in the following articles:
https://stimhack.com/netrunner-and-balance-part-1-the-curr…/
https://stimhack.com/netrunner-and-balance-part-2-our-glor…/

24/7 News Cycle was added to the list due to its inherently uninteractive nature, in particular when combined with Breaking News, BOOM!, and Power Shutdown.

We hope that these actions (either implementing the pending MWL or using the event-specific banlist) will lead to a vibrant and diverse metagame at KoS.

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Are there any results coming out?I’d love to see what does meta looks like.

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I’ve posted results and ID breakdowns here: King of Subways Final Results - Google Sheets.

Many thanks to everyone that attended!

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I’m gonna post up my thoughts I have about the impact of the ban list and how I think it should be iterated on.

  1. I think the biggest success of this format was the impact it had on Corp diversity. In every faction but HB we saw a very healthy mix of IDs (and etf had a pretty wide variety of archetypes), and it was not clear which deck was best in any given faction. Corp / runner balance was excellent where I was able to play decks on both sides where I felt I had reasonable matchups across the board.

  2. Runner balance was less healthy, where whizzard and Andy both dominated. There were about 2 decks in each I’d (frantic / temujin - regass / taps). This was negatively impacted by the banlist, as dumble and hate bear were knocked out of existence. However, the positive impact that had on Corp options and overall balance was a greater positive imo, but it’s partially a judgement call. Additionally, each of these factions had options that were proven to be top tier (DLR Maxx, Gabe) and geist also can see play. This is not massively out of line with worlds meta, with temujin whizz / Andy being the top decks being similar to hate bear / temy whizz in levels of diversity.

  3. Temujin is still dumb and busted. However, it’s such an important card to the meta game in terms of stuff like assets and money + hhn / midseasons nbn decks, that it’s hard to know the impact of removing it from the meta game. It definitely can afford more restrictions than it has ATM, and should unquestionably be on the mwl. It’s power level 100% deserves more than that, but you’d need a bunch of testing to make sure op econ midseasons and asset spam weren’t too busted. However long term there is no debate, this card needs to go.

  4. Shaper still has problems with assets. They’re a little bit better but not really enough to get shaper over their issues. However, since the tournament basically requires 1/3 people to be shaper, I got to see a variety of shaper decks on display, and quite frankly I’m glad they’re terrible. The late game powercreep of shaper in the last cycle has been absurd for a fraction that already specialized in the late game. The decks I saw: smoke, noob kit, congress Kate, Nexus Kate have varying degrees of setup weakness and late game strength, and it tends to lead to garbage gameplay (with congress Kate being the worst offender). Versus basically all of these your plan is go fast and try to win before they setup while they try to get setup, which is quite frankly a terrible 2 player game that’s repetive, uninteresting, and non interactive. Tapwyrm, Beth, net mercur, all lead to this sort of gameplay, and I’m terrified in the slowed down post rotation world are going to be dominant. Congress Kate in particular​ is the most toxic deck I have ever seen, and is the equivalent to prison corp decks but worse, and only held in check by the fact it isn’t actually good atm.

  5. Assets didn’t seem incredibly broken to me, seeming really bad against whizz, 50/50 against Crim, and really good against shaper. I think most people would rather them be a bit worse, and fihp seems the dumbest and therefore best target.

  6. Degenerate decks existed (DLR Maxx, hottubs, ci7) but didn’t feel terribly oppressive and I don’t think we’re better than other faction options. Additionally some people do really like to play these sorts of decks and for the most part the goal isn’t to make them unplayable but make them not the best option and not meta warping, which I think was true for all of these.

The changes I would make to the format are as follows:
Ban: friends high places
Mwl on: temujin
Mwl off: prepaid, desperado, lady

Want to make prepaids more even power curve relatively better compared to other shaper decks, want to make temujin less dominant and asset spam slightly worse. I think long term if shaper ever gets good underworld contacts and Beth both need a nerf, and temujin should be banned as soon as rotation happens as we’re losing midseasons and a bunch of operation econ.

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Seems fair, it’d be good to have a reminder of what the restrictions for the tournament were though. I’ve always thought congress was fine, but I tend to play rush decks that force early interaction. Fortunately Underworld Contacts will rotate out, most likely killing the deck if not replaced.

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I still think that Lady is well above the power curve of any shaper fracter you compare her to. She is also well above the other dog breakers, so I don’t think even her limited uses was factored in for the balance of this card.

The fact that all of the support you need to maximize her usefulness is in-faction for shaper just makes the card feel like a mistake as it was printed.

If the objective is to find a way to make Prepaid Kate legal again under an updated MWL, then sure, Lady makes more sense than Clone Chip to come off the MWL. But if we are analyzing the card on it’s own merits in the card pool, Lady is sitting above the established curve and needs to be reigned back a little.

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To be clear, I obviously don’t think anyone is at fault for playing congress, or should be looked down upon for enjoying it. I think ig54 was kind of interesting to play with and against, but the deck was still a massive issue for people’s enjoyment. The issue I’m interested is how do we change the meta game to create a meta where there is a good shaper deck that isn’t doesn’t have the binary “unstoppable in the late game, beat them in the setup or lose” gameplay.

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Yeah I go back and forth myself on lady. It’s obviously above the curve, bit I think it leads to more interesting situations than something like paperclip since with infinite money it’s still taxable. Additionally, I tend to think the mwl should be primarily around balancing decks because it is a during deck building restriction not a gameplay change. However, lady is more interesting (more restricted and taxable) when it is a 1x which it being on the mwl encourages. So I go back and forth in it, and don’t think there is a clear correct answer about its place on the mwl.

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What is the specific problem with late-game Kate in the last cycle?

I’m curious because the complaint that Shaper has a powerful late game strikes me as odd. Without late-game dominance, what does Shaper have?

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Kenny just prefers degenerate gameplay in the other Runners over Green.

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At least they run… Sometimes…

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So like many things when talking about degenerate strats and what is healthy or not, it’s partially a judgement call. I am a known shaper hater and in general I don’t like the faction. However, there have been shaper decks I think are interesting and cool (prepaid Kate, Katman, chameleon Kate, noob kit). Most of these had fairly strong late games, but not oppressively so and you would rarely get locked out of the game. The key is the mostly tried to round out the late game strength of shaper by having nimble rigs that would start working quickly. They would contest something like a turn 1 sundew out of RP, where congress Kate just would use an smc for tapwyrm. This is the huge issue imo, that it’s all about trying to setup fast and trying to build a board where the Corp has no chance of scoring without worrying about what the Corp is doing at all. The key is you want the runner to have a power level where they want to keep the Corp off sundew, Adonis, Nisei, abt, etc because this drives interaction and decisions in netrunner. When you don’t you’re playing a shitty version of Dominion.

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I was not aware until yesterday that there was video recording available. For those who are interested:

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