Metagame Dominance and other LCGs

Netrunner General
21

PE is definitely great right now, but the runner can still take a gamble and win a guess. Against the popular Fast Advance and Glacier varieties the runner doesn’t have such luxuries. Those decks can generally just autopilot to a win without taking risks. That’s what puts them at the highest level. Assuming good play their losses generally only come from bad draws that they can’t work out of.

The corp metagame has shifted because some new decks have arrived that are even stronger than their counterparts a year ago. If you look at actual cards being played in runner decks, not much has changed. I’d have a hard time naming more 10 or so runner cards printed since creation and control that I would expect to see having regular play (and being splashed out of faction) in competitive decks.

I think the MTG cycle concept makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t seem too portable to the FFG LCG model. For a big shift in the meta game FFG needs to power creep or print a restricted/banned list. Power creep has definitely happened for Corps but Runners still need to catch up. Maybe in the big box, or next cycle?

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22

Just because a certain archetype has won tournaments doesn’t make it tier 1.
I think Jinteki PE is a pretty good example of tier 2. It has potential to beat tier 1 decks, require a very strong player and has a bad match-up against a pretty common runner (Noise). It’s redeeming qualities comes from being able to punish inexperienced players, players with limited playtesting against it as well as gaining a significant edge if players are affected by mental fatigue.

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23

I was totally gonna call you out on this but it seems you’re right. I count (in an arbitrary fashion) 5-10 significant runner cards since C&C: Knight, Prepaid (marginal), Keyhole (marginal), Lucky Find, Legwork, Security Testing (rarely splashed), Overmind, David (marginal), Cache, Inject (we’ll see).

As I’ve mentioned before, however, Lukas has said that the next cycle will focus on giving the runner more options (like the Lunar cycle did for the corp). So I think the designers are heading in the right direction.

24

I pointed to 3 large tournaments. But, maybe because Chris Hinkes played the deck well in two of them, then maybe he’s just a Tier 1 player no matter the deck.

@GreedyGuts asked for tournament results that shows a deck is Tier 1. I provided 3 examples from the last 4 months.

Are we ignoring some results because it doesn’t match up with our opinion of the level? What is the criteria for a Tier 1 deck in terms of tournament success?

If a deck has a high-skill requirement and therefore not as popular does that make it lower level deck?

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25

Hmm … Knight, D4v1d, Cache, Inject, Lamprey, Legwork, Overmind, Oracle May, Keyhole, Sharpshooter, Prepaid Voicepad, Lucky Find, John Masanori. Security Testing, Passport. And i’m not even talking about those situational card who need to be built around (like Deep Red/Pawn, Fall Guy, Torch, the stealth breaker + stealth chip, etc).

It’s true that the corp metagame got a lot of new toys and the runner fall a little bit behind in comparison but it’s not fair at all to affirm there’s no new power cards for runner since C&C. A couple of them (Legwork, Security Testing, PPvP + Lucky Find, Oracle May) have created a couple of new competitive archetypes and other have really improved some decks who without them, wouldn’t fare really well (Cache and D4v1d for Noise mostly).

4 Likes
26

He never said there are no new power cards for runners since C&C. And are Lamprey, Passport and John Masanori etc. really cards you would “expect to see having regular play (and being splashed out of faction) in competitive decks”? Don’t get me wrong—they are all fine cards—but they’re no NAPDs.

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27

Niche imports
Hostage
John masanori
Oracle may
Rook
Donut

Power cards (import)
Knight
Prepaid
Black mail*
Key hole
Sharpshooter*
Lucky find*
Legwork*
Logos
Security testing
D4v1d
Cache*
Switchblade
Astrolabe
The supplier
Refractor
Leprechaun

There good stuff, but import influence is taken by econ, breakers, and access in that order. Much of this stuff doesn’t fit those categories

28

I would argue that the below 9 cards from C&C alone are more important to the current runner meta game than that entire list of everything from nearly two cycles and one big box.

C&C:
Scavenge
Levy AR Lab Access
Clone Chip
Atman
Self-modifying Code
Professional Contacts
Dirty Laundry
Daily Casts
Same Old Thing

Going through the list of winners from Nationals (7 large tournaments) we have the following new cards:

CT, Kate & Andy:
Legwork

Andy:
Security Testing
Passport
Planned Assault

Noise:
D4v1d
Cache
Scheherazade

Reina:
Knight
Overmind
Rook
Deep Red

If you add Prepaid Kate to the list just throw in Lucky Find, and you get 12 cards.

If you think about what would be the biggest runner meta update for someone who dropped out of the game after C&C it would most likely be Reina with Caissa, and even she seems to mostly depend on playing like a criminal.

This is why I’m hopeful for a big shakeup in powerful runner cards in the Anarch box, because it happened in C&C and it’s benefited the game greatly since then.

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29

Where do you think Blue Sun fits in this dynamic?

30

A dark horse contender is Tier 2.

It’s a good deck, and I’m not claiming otherwise when I call it that. Most good decks are Tier 2, vastly moreso than Tier 1. It’s not presence of results alone that makes a deck anything, it’s the consistency of them. There is consistently an NBN player in the top four, often more than one, at least that I’ve seen. Last cycle MN was winning more games as an ID than entire factions were.

Again, Tier 1 stuff is the stuff you need to be able to beat, no matter what, because you’ll see it more than once. Teching against Tier 2 things (PE, RP) is a good plan because people will bring variety, but any deck that consistently loses to Andy, say, or NEH? Not worth bringing. Tier 2 stuff takes advantage of that, and puts up good results, but being well-positioned is a different sort of good than raw power.

Dunno if I’m explaining myself very well here.

To put it another way: the difference between a Tier 1 and Tier 2 deck is consistent finishing placement. Some of this does boil down to popularity (which is part of why, until Blue Sun, I thought my Whizzard deck had the potential to be Tier 2, but was definitely not actually so), because the more people pore over the same lists, the more improvements they make, and the further things get pushed.

But without that push, and that consistency, Tier 2 is still a pretty good place to be, because Tier 2 always has a real chance of winning still, especially with a good player at the helm.

@Kingsley I think Blue Sun is looking like it’ll definitely be a Tier 2 deck, and I genuinely think it has the potential to be Tier 1. It seems even more frustrating to deal with than Red Coats in some aspects, and is, in my experience, pretty quick. Once people start running it through tournament gauntlets I have no doubt it’ll evolve into something very nice indeed, especially since its ability and card selection so effectively seems to hate out many Anarch builds – effectiveness against the field is a big difference between 1 and 2, to me.

ETA: Roommate just put it in much clearer terms.

Tier 2 is “I would not be surprised if this wins a fair few tournaments.”

Tier 1 is “I would be surprised if this doesn’t win a fair few tournaments.”

Whizzard or Ken winning a tournament isn’t a massive shock, generally. PE or RP, now, similar. But if Andy/NEH/MN failed to win at all for, say, twenty (or even ten, in Store Championship season) tournies in a row? I’d be taken aback. If PE doesn’t place for the next twenty tournies? Sad, but not really gobsmacked.

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31

I think that’s a clear description of Tier 1 vs 2. And, it makes sense. If you want to include popularity in the classification because that means it’s been refined by a lot of players, I’m good with that.

I do think that several of the previous posters would not agree with you on RP being Tier 2.

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32

That’s fair. I’m sure lots of people disagree with me on lots of things. It’s a side effect of having developed my thinking during the season where we had ~100 tournaments, many of which were for serious prizes, in one month. The scattered results between packs recently seems comparatively insubstantial, although we’ve still got OCTGN data and whatnot, at least, I guess.

But I’ve got a pretty narrow personal definition of Tier 1, which is pretty slow to expand, because of it, even if it might be larger in reality than what I’ve got in my head. RP definitely feels more solid to me than PE, although it’s also easier to deal with in terms of composition.

33

Definitions are everything, and Tier 1 is meta-dependent. I’m pretty confident that their are Tier 1 options for every faction at this point. There’s a heck of strong Weyland deck lurking in Blue Sun and that was the last piece of the puzzle for me.

34

Why not? The rate of card printing is slower, yeah, but that just means rotations would happen less often. I’d really like cycles being released at once, personally.

35

Netrunner seems just large enough to ensure effective cross-pollination of ideas; e.g. that “the internet meta” doesn’t miss anything major, and further that the list of “top-shelf ~whiskies~ er decks” is paired down a bit through play. In an ideal world, there would be one or two such decks per faction amidst a pool of solid, tourney-worthy-but-definitely-not-top-tier ones. Ideally, these decks would rotate in popularity, not because silver-bullet counters (herro there plascrete / whatever they come up with to stop people’s APP bitchin’) have shut down previous lines of play, but because previously underpowered lines of play received some great support.

I only follow a couple of other such games—but not super-close—and in all cases there is a handful (or fewer!) of top-tier decks at any given point. One of the nice things about Netrunner is that, across a tournament, it really punishes poor play / rewards good play, so playing the game still matters.

Sharp influence limits coupled with remaining adamant that the factions are super-stereotypical (for instance: lol shapers with all the decoders) have been hugely restrictive for the types of decks we’ll see at the top.

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36

Uh, what… Ken winning a tournament is a much larger shock than PE or RP winning a tournament. Not many people even play Ken. Assuming an even skill distribution, then, it becomes very unlikely that Ken will win a tournament, if 5% of the players show up with him, as opposed to 30% Kate players or 50% Andy players. IMO Tier 1 decks are determined by 2 factors: bandwagoning (everyone decides to play the deck, thus increasing its meta saturation and the likelihood the archetype will win tournaments, by sheer representation), and consistency/variance reduction (Andumbeda and Not Even Hard typifying this currently).

37

The thing about this is it’s surprising when (using current examples) NEH/Andy doesn’t win any given tournament because in most cases, they are over-represented in the playing field. If 1 person shows up with Lightning Tennin and wins, that person and/or deck are pretty goddamn amazing, considering they beat out the 20+ Not Even Hard decks.

38

I just have to say I love the Not Even Hard name :smiley: :smiley:

39

I pointed to 3 large tournaments. But, maybe because Chris Hinkes played the deck well in two of them, then maybe he’s just a Tier 1 player no matter the deck.

He may be just a great player; I think we’ve seen plenty of that over the course of this game. I think PE is very strong and competitive; I just don’t think reliable enough in and of itself to call it Tier 1. A good player can pilot it to success, though; in the right meta.

I think what’s probably more telling when a player wins a tournament is what their runner is doing. Winning as corp is relatively easy in comparison. So, all of these winning tournament decks, the stronger of the two listed decks within the meta is likely to be the included runner.

40

So you think his Vamp Kit deck was stronger than his PE? Nobody has made a peep about Hinkes’s Runner deck.

Personally I had vastly better results playing his PE and the Kit never did anything for me…

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