KoS Rule Set: The Netrunner 'Fix List', Going Forward

Arguably if a deck wants a 4/2, they’ll usually be willing to spend the influence to make it GFI, too. And since there aren’t enough 3/2s to fill out your slots…

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Yeah, the power curve for 5/3’s seem to be so far in the dumpster even Exile won’t touch it. GFI mostly seems to stand out because everything else is coated in feces and moist garbage and just too risky to actually use in a environment where a runner can sneeze and get into a server.

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I think ANR is in a better place with GFI than without, all things remaining equal. It’s necessary to give anything bigger than the 3/2s either some serious juice when you score/advance them (Oaktown, Corporate Sales/War) or defensive options (GFI, TFP, NAPD) or they need a bit too big of a scoring window than the corp can usually afford or add an unpleasantly high amount of variance into R&D access. Anyone who played extensively in 2012-2013 knows what I’m talkin’ about :slight_smile: .

I keep coming back to this feeling that the basic agenda ratio in ANR is unstable, but I haven’t explored that as rigorously as I have R&D variance over various agenda spreads.

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Playing draft recently where economy is a disaster on both sides, we’ve had a fair amount of scoring 5/3 and 4/2 agendas. Maybe the problem is not the agendas but the economics of the game.

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That’s honestly pretty on the nose.

Though, Draft Netrunner is pretty similar to Core Set Netrunner where you dealt with Scoring Windows more than Rig/Asset set up speed. (Not counting SEA-Scorch.)

I think this is wrong; plenty of decks can and do score Sales Team for the money, and those decks aren’t going to spend influence to turn their tempo 4/2 into a 5/3 they can’t score.

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The wonderful thing about GFI is that it also gives you money - by virtue of the additional deck slots.

Yes, there are some decks that aim to rush out agendas and use that directly to increase their tempo. CST may be better than GFI in these cases.

But I would add that if you’re scoring 4/2s, you can probably score 5/3s.

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If we are adding cards just based on that reason, then Jackson would have to go on there as well. I don’t think either of them should be on the list though.

With cards like Freedom Through Equality and Mad Dash, the whole “runner has to steal 4 agendas while you only have to score 3” thing is not so much a problem (in fact, the runner can combo these cards to only have to steal 2 agendas). I see the main advantage of GFI as it saves you deck slots - instead of 10 2-point agendas, you can get away with 9 agendas so you can add that card you always wanted to but just could not find the deck slots.

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GFI is good, I’m happy it exists. Its ubiquity is irritating, though.

What if all 5/3’s had some sort of built-in defense? Typically they’re designed the other way around, where they help you win, whereas GFI helps you not lose, which is often more important.

Say, a cost to reduce the point in Runner’s area on nearly every 5/3 agenda that is thematically similar to the ability. So GFI is the default (pay 0 to make this worth -1 point to the Runner). Priority Req could have “if the Runner steals this, you may trash an installed piece of ICE to make it worth -1 point in the Runner’s score area.” For High-Risk, “if the Runner steals this, you may pay credits equal to the agenda points in the Runner’s score area to make this worth -1 point.” For Datapool, “if the Runner steals Datapool, Trace2 - if successful, this agenda is worth -1 point in the Runner’s score area.” And so on.

I mean, you want to actually balance them beyond my 10-second thought process above, but I think giving 5/3s a way to become less damaging is pretty important. They have never been easy to score, so the “when scored” abilities are often borderline worthless as you’re likely in a winning position already.

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That would be tricky to track. How do you mark agendas that have been point reduced?

I guess you could do, “If [condition to activate defense], place one agenda counter on [Agenda]. [Agenda] is worth one less point while in the Runner’s score area if it has an agenda counter on it.” But then Turntable and EoI get much weirder.

I certainly think most of them should, and the ones that don’t need to be at least as good to score as, say, the better 4-2s

I feel like NAPD is the more interesting model to follow. Like, always offer the runner a choice. We’ve got ones that cost a psi game or damage to steal for Jinteki; we could have ones that cost clicks from HB or a credit swing/tags from weyland. There was that ONR agenda that required memory slots. Hell NBN will need something after Beale leaves.

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Like, imagine a Weyland 5/3 or 6/4 “Oaktown’s Finest” that costs 3 tags to take and gives them some money if they actually score it. It recreates those moments of looking at your opponents face gloating, “yeah that’s NAPD,” without being just raw better than everything because it’s Weyland swingy.

‘As an addition cost to steal this agenda, Runner must tear up one of his or her installed cards.’

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As an additional cost to steal this agenda, ante your playmat.

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Right, the Weyland one could have the runner pay 4 credits to steal it. And then to make sure Weyland couldn’t get all the best things, you could also give it some drawback tied to how much Bad Publicity the Corp has.

… Oh, riiiiiiiight.

But yeah. A cycle of 5/3’s that are faction-related difficult to steal would be interesting.

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I thought recently about a cycle of defensive 2 pointers: Fetal AI is kinda already there but maybe after it rotates we get a min-Obokata 4/2 that costs 2 net to steal, there should be an NBN one which costs 2 tags to steal, & a HB one that costs a click to steal. But then what’s the dynamic for Weyland? NAPD should’ve been a Weyland card.

Something something meat damage bad pub?

Tracking System Test
Weyland Agenda, 4/2

When you score Tracking System Test, give the Runner two tags.

When the Runner steals Tracking System Test, you may do two meat damage. If you do, take one bad publicity.

The system for tracking tests of the tracking system sometimes catches other useful data.

Meteor Mining should have read “If the runner has at least two tags when they access Meteor Mining, do 7 meat damage”

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Yeah doing meat damage makes it just feel like a clone of the Jinteki one, though. Your TST is more interesting. Also now that I think more about it, Weyland color pie is making money while NBN’s is taxing the runner. Maybe additional cost to steal is the corp gains ten credits?

Or what about this clause: “As an additional cost to steal, the runner must suffer two meat damage for each bad publicity the corp has.” I’d love to see more cards like that, which turn bp on its head in much the same way DLR does for tags.