Final list fixed for GothCon Netrunner tournament! Main change is adding 24/7 and MWLing EoI as well as letting Breaking News back out again.
I was waiting and hoping for the new MWL update, but there is only a week left, so we have to fix this. I’ll doublepost in the FB event for easy reference.
IMO Aaron has to stay on regardless of what tags are doing. It completely invalidates any kill strategies that aren’t combo-based (going from 5 to flatline in a paid ability window) with the biggest hit being Jinteki.
Elusive, when are we likely to see newer cards enter the list? Estelle Moon? What about Hasty Relocation - I’d like to point out that arguably the strongest deck in the game, CI combo, is untouched with all your bans and actually is buffed with the loss of some runner cards.
Hey,
I put this project on hold immediately following the new MWL. The reason being of course that i would like FFG to take their official responsibility and do this sort of thing rather than us in the community.
This is because they are better positioned to both neutrally analyze, communicate and deal with the different problems by the best action (bans, mwl, new cards, errata etc).
They also have way more authority than any group of community members, and we do not want to split our little community.
Now, i have experienced what you say personally. Aaron is as blunt an instrument as Rumor Mill, Moon is obviously a problem (even though it is counterable) and i recently lost matches at a regionals versus the weighted lottery that is the extremely simplistic new CI7 strategy (which was fun for neither player might i add).
I was really hoping the new MWL (and PS errata) would do it, even though it struck at a lot of right places there are still problems left. I’d argue that 24/7 is also one of them. As is asset spam to a lesser extent (maybe this is Friends). Look at euros top decks for example. Lists with 3 Rumor Mill even though it is Tier 3? Dyper, still? Moons everywhere, and easy-kill with 24/7. I happen to know of at least one Blackmail Val with RM there as well.
Really shows where we are, doesn’t it.
We cannot fault players for playing good things, of course. We have to be very mindful of that in any discussion like this. It is the role of the designer to create a deep and balanced game. Damon’s comments recently were way out of line in my opinion.
To be honest I haven’t decided if this means i need to start asking questions here and reexamine this list again.
I for one am not interested in facing autoloss matchups or being forced into very narrow deck selection into things i do not enjoy playing anymore. Whether that means taking up the fight again or simply pausing playing the game at all i have not decided. I do think we should wait until rotation hits to react however, if FFG did their duty that is where it will all start making a bit more sense again.
I have been mulling over the subject the last couple of weeks, and i do have a lot to share there i think. Might become an article, if i have the energy.
Do you have a link to Damon Stone’s recent comments?
Like totsuzenheni, I am also curious about what comments were made?
I believe that Elusive may have been referring to Damon’s contribution(s) to this BGG thread: At what point did the game change? | Android: Netrunner.
Hmm… I think he gets at some good points there, but I think he ultimately fails to justify that players want a “solved” game and also contradicts himself there. He seems to believe there are ignored cards of a sufficient power level that could be used to combat a given meta, but then also laments that players rapidly “solve” the meta via online testing. If those cards were enough of a power level to combat the “solved” meta, then it wouldn’t be “solved”. I think Damon, in general, grossly overestimates the power of some cards that simply don’t work effectively outside of a vacuum.
I especially disagree with this statement:
“…but I’ve come to realize that a segment of the competitive player base wants a narrow “solved game” and will fight to achieve it at every turn, but immediately demand FFG to give them a new puzzle when their own actions lead to stagnation.”
That is mutually exclusive with a card pool of existing diverse lines of play. If the game is in that state then it is the fault of the Designer who has not included enough viable(!) counter or proactive cards with which to combat certain lines of play. Not pet cards that the designer thinks should work, cards that actually do work. If they exist then they will be used! I think this is something Damon continues not to understand, and I think that it’s telling that the game was reasonably diverse until Lukas left, then became saturated with NPEs and imbalanced power cards under Damon’s lead, and is back to what I consider a much more fair, healthier meta just with Bogg’s changes to the MWL. He didn’t even have to steward actual card design yet to help the game.
This may be a bit unfair to Damon as we can’t know if he would have instituted the same kinds of changes Boggs had, or if he had a part in initializing them. But, based on Damon’s previous comments about design and the Netrunner meta, and some of the cards that have come out under his watch, I think he’s actively bad at evaluating card power levels. He has overestimated the viability of some cards (and lamented their non-use) while underestimating the warping effect of others.
If the players aren’t using certain cards then their design just hasn’t justified their use! You can’t get mad at the players for that!
Edit: If you go to that link, thebigunit3000 made a post that speaks the truth, so hard, and I would guild it if it was a Reddit post.
Yep this is absolutely true. You see arguments about cards like O2 shortage, which doesn’t matter at all because its not tearing up the meta game, but the fact that he’s defending such a card makes you wonder what other mistakes he’s let through because of a lack of understanding of the game - and there are a lot!
You can’t blame the players for playing the best cards, especially at a high level where competitive edge is the main thing that counts. You just have to make the format so that the best cards aren’t horrible experiences.
With regards to the new MWL, I think it was 90% a good step in the right direction. I think Elusive has already touched on which cards should be on there, and a few of them probably should’ve been on the first one. Hopefully the 20 card limit isn’t arbitrarily kept in place and we can work on the cards that are actually the problems.
I agree about the new MWL not being perfect, and meant to state as much in my post but forgot. It’s a great first step, but things like Aaron and probably Estelle Moon (just based on her pure efficiency stats) need to be there. Given the recency of those cards I can overlook that for the moment, and it may even be prudent to wait for rotation. That said, if the MWL doesn’t get updated fairly soon after rotation I will have concerns.
Edit: Oh, and if Damon is defending O2 Shortage then he’s a lost cause. There are just about zero scenarios where the runner doesn’t just take what is essentially an unpreventable net damage to prevent the Corp from gaining two clicks outside of having no cards in hand. Are you kidding me? It’s like a really expensive Neural EMP. Those effects have such an uneven impact it’s bonkers. The idea that O2 Shortage is in any way a viable card is demonstrably unpalatable.
I don’t frequent BGG so I hadn’t read Damon’s comments. The bit about a “solved game” feels wrong. I also think the entire competitive/causal divide is artificial. I play in a tournaments, I’ll netdeck at major events when I want to do well, I’ll grind practice games. I’ll also play ridiculous, utter jank because this is a game after all and it’s fun. I think that’s true of a lot of people here. Stimhack is a community for Netrunner first and foremost, competitive Netrunner second.
Also blaming a competitive community and an online client for figuring out what cards are the most efficient is ludicrous. This is the sort of thing I can’t imagine Wizards doing, they’d just ban the damn cards if need be and admit their mistake.
But anyways, I started writing this post because I actually wanted to defend Damon. There are hints in that post that he wanted to help the competitive meta—that he had ideas for a more complex MWL and a ban list. These are things we’ve wanted. He did introduce the MWL almost immediately after becoming lead designer. And while it’s certainly debatable, I think it’s fairly well-accepted as a necessary balancing tool that the game truly needs.
[Flashpoint] was also the first set designed with the knowledge of impending rotation so there stayed to show cards that would scale up our down certain mechanics of cards that would be leaving the environment the year after release.
This is an interesting statement and it helps explain why Flashpoint was so unbelievable in terms of power level. I’d argue it was, far and away, the most powerful cycle, and at the time that freaked a lot of people out (myself included). But when you start to see the cycle as a basis for what comes post rotation, some cards make more sense. Crims make money; they get Temüjin. NBN tags you; they get Hard-Hitting News. Etc. Now, are all the cards from that cycle perfectly designed? No. But I’m much more willing to accept their heightened power level when I think of a post rotation environment where we’ll need new staples.
Man, that Damon post has 54 up votes on BGG! Guess we competitive no-fun-niks are the vocal minority around these parts
There’s a reason I stopped going to the BGG forums for Netrunner and started following Stimhack exclusively.
Argh, I almost fell into the trap of posting a reply to that topic, because someone claimed Faerie, John Masanori, and Snowflake were underplayed.
shudder
Haha, it’s funny because I feel like those are prime examples of “trap” cards that seem great but have impractical downsides for a tournament level deck.
Snowflake is actually the best barrier in the game (or was it top 3? I looked at it once can’t remember) from a cost-to-rez vs. cost-to-break for common Fracters. That’s good on the face of it, but the sub being a psi game means that the Corp will either have to let the runner through or pay a credits every time they actually want to stop the runner. In theory you play is neat middle stakes psi game, in practice the runner just bounces off of it 4 times a turn to drain your credits… (The exception being Nisei Division where this ice is very, very good since you can turn it into a Pop-up Window).
Faerie is actually really great, in general, and saw a ton of use in days gone by. The problem is you have to run so much so quickly nowadays, and there are better cheap sentries around, that you can’t afford to have a disappearing sentry breaker. Faerie also shines well as a companion to Mimic to hit the larger sentries, but so does Mongoose with more flexibility. Better options have just come out to replace it.
Masanori is another card that’s actually pretty good, in general (click compression!), but for a tournament-focused deck you have to have the ability to check servers and hit unsuccessful runs. He’s arguably still good, even with that restriction, but Aaron Marrón exists in a similar draw-provider space without that downside and with stupid good upside due to the tag removal. Masanori is replaced by Aaron in a similar way Mongoose replaces Faerie.
If anyone is arguing those cards are underplayed then I have to question their ability to evaluate cards as a whole.
Basically only Snowflake never saw much tournament play, and the meta evolved past Masanori/Faerie.
(Not counting Baba Yaga decks that play Faerie…)
Faerie’s actually interesting because the primary reason it saw a lot of play is because it was an Icebreaker that took no upfront investment, but prevented the worst facecheck penalties. It’s seeing less play today, though, and my guess is that deckspace is tighter and Runner’s are willing to accept facecheck penalties instead of playing Faerie. Mongoose being a very good Killer also replaces it.
Masanori is another victim of the times. It got heavy play up until Criminal had actual card draw options, and facechecking every server without a rig became more required. That said, he’s still a fine card as tech against asset spam. Aaron doesn’t really replace Masanori because the cards do different things… Aaron is more defensive in nature and encourages the Corp to play around him, Masanori is more offensive in nature and threatens the Corp so they have to play around him. Masanori helps more early game, Aaron helps more late. You are probably right in that Aaron has replaced Masanori in quite a few decks, but the nice thing is that it isn’t a ‘strict upgrade’ sort of change. (And honestly I think there’s space for a deck that runs both)
The specific post said that those cards were all underplayed since being printed. What’s funny is that he was wrong about all of those cards, but Faerie/Masanori wrong because they were played a lot because they were strong, and wrong about Snowflake because it wasn’t played and it was a terrible card. (And yeah, the fact that a Snowflake gives the Runner a free Lamprey unless you’re Nisei Division is part of that… Hell, even Nisei Division doesn’t quite make it into Pop-Up Window. Either it costs them a cred to ‘break’ and you nothing, or it costs them nothing and gives you a credit. Honestly it’s only playable in Nisei, and even then, at best, it’s just a 1-rez Wall of Static; Congrats, you saved 2 credits.)
Uh…that wasn’t the claim at all. The poster (cough) offered them as cards that were initially underplayed (and took pains to emphasize that your meta may have discovered them faster than his did, and that those might be more contentious than some of the other examples on the list).
I do stand by the view that Snowflake was playable but underappreciated (…a tourmaline in the rough?) in the What Lies Ahead meta, due to Jinteki’s atrocious econ and lack of ETR.
And while I’m setting the record straight, I was also curious to read Damon’s “defense” of O2 Shortage, and this was all I could find:
Lukas and I tried various forms of brain damage with no runner required conditions and the only way they did not become oppressive was by increased cost and the moment it became difficult for the Corp to abuse it they were panned by targets as not worth it. Maybe as often as every other cycle we’ve tried it.
This card would have to cost more credit and influence wise, even if it was RFG. [/quote]
I went back and actually read more of the posts in that topic. Damon made a comment that convinced me completely that he does not understand the game at the level which he purports to when he makes his statements that other players simply ignored the solutions because the “top level” preemptively dismissed them, and that he is simply wrong in his evaluations of potential lines of play and the viability of counter-play to existing tier 1 archetypes.
Emphasis mine:
Selverin wrote:
[q=“dormouse”]Pancakes…
You lose credibility when you cite a card which is only a problem when used in concert with two other cards and depended on one kind of deck not being played and ice that fit into a rather popular but arbitrary range.
If you had cited the three cards in concert, with the acknowledgement that it was problematic because the player base had, for the last year, not bothered to play high strength or multi sub ice it would have had merit, but facts and nuance seem to be out of vogue these days.
…
Two points to address. I’ll address the second bolded statement first:
…because the player base had, for the last year, not bothered to play high strength or multi sub ice…
The playerbase did try to play high strength and multi sub ice. Lord knows I tried many combinations of them all. The problem was those ice were not viable solutions.
High-strength ice fail as a solution to Faust because D4v1d and the cutlery already existed. High strength ice is a huge economic investment that would get destroyed after maybe getting hit once. D4v1d would just break them for nothin’ and then cutlery would sweep them away never to have impact again. This was a easy task for the runner because ice with more than 5 strength (requiring two Faust boosts) at the time generally had only one subroutine. This means one D4v1d could deal with three of these ice. The only ice with (effectively) more that one sub are Wotan, clickable bioroids, or in Weyland who couldn’t win through I’ve Had Worse/Plascrete. The only one outside of that is Little Engine, which did see play but falls short vs. any other runner in the field. Even beyond the problems D4v1d and the cutlery present, Datasucker could often take these down to viable Faust breaking range on its own. For the amount of cash a corp has to invest in these ice, that return is just atrocious. So they didn’t see play.
Multiple-subroutine ice fail as a solution because you can either just Datasucker + Parasite them down, Faust your way through them anyway, or simply use your Mimic or Yog to avoid spending cards. Now, there were some reasonably effective ice in this category (Eli 1.0, Ichi 1.0, Architect, Spiderweb, Data Raven, Swordsman, Enigma), but you may notice that that list is only 7 ice, spread across factions. That does not make for a robust ice suite against a Pancake powered Faust deck. Plus, even 4 of those 7 ice fail to be effective once Yog or Mimic hit the table.
tl;dr: The community tried to use high-strength or multi-sub ice but the options weren’t good enough to be effective!
Now, for the other point:
…only a problem when used in concert with two other cards and depended on one kind of deck not being played and ice that fit into a rather popular but arbitrary range…
Damon tries to say that a pancakes deck isn’t really an issue because it requires you to create a three card combo (implying like that’s some kind of burden to set up). Well, it would be a burden to set up if part of the combo wasn’t ludicrous amounts of draw. The draw engine its self supports the entire combo. Heck, it supports any kind of deck you would ever play. Even before Faust the Panacakes draw engine catapulted Anarch faction into speed-demon status and was a highly viable line of play for any conceivable construction in that faction (Noise mill, Blackmail Valencia, good-stuff Whizzard/Kim, even MaxX decks loved it). The combo sets up its self through draw power and then turns that draw power into econ as well, condensing deck slots to ludicrous displays of efficiency. This was an easy and quick combo to set up, not a burdensome and slow one!
I assume that he means damage decks as the ones it relies on not being played. That isn’t an unreasonable point, but it completely ignores a couple of things. One, I’ve Had Worse with Plascrete simply hose any meat damage kill plan that existed at the time. Just impractical. You could maybe get away with the Traffic Accident/Scorch, but that could only really be done out of NBN and then only reliably once 24/7 News Cycle (another stupid card) appeared out of Data and Destiny. Two, a net damage deck (such as a shell game out of Personal Evolution) still needs to be able to keep the runner from winning out of the central servers. The deck-space requirement for the traps and low econ levels necessitate certain ice selections that, again, just fold to Faust/Parasite. Oh, also I’ve Had Worse punishes these decks too. In addition, those decks are very inconsistent which will always drive someone away from playing them if they have to win 7 out of 9-10 games in order to win the tournament. Just not viable.
tl;dr: The card combo was already ridiculously good and implying that because you need more than one card to set up makes it OK or somehow a burden to the runner is just plain incorrect. Also, those “other” decks weren’t as good as he seems to think vs. the Faust-type deck due to existing defensive cards and inconsistency in play that doesn’t translate well to a tourney setting.
I think the biggest, most glaring issue highlighted by these counter-points is that every resource Anarch had access to to combat what Damon believes were lines of counter-play vs Faust are in faction to Anarch. They became too self-synergistic as a faction with so many power cards they could include with no deck building penalty, and the game suffered hard for it.
The initial o2 shortage claims were in that Facebook thread and there were a lot of them. At one point he claimed someone was “living in a different reality” because they said playing neural emp for non-kill (aka value neural) was a bad play. I think the entirety of his o2 shortage defense is based on the idea that a random neural emp that doesn’t kill the runner is a strong play even when it costs 2-3 credits. This is obviously ridiculous.
The above bgg thread made me rage and not just because of damon. There was a lot of “blame the players for playing the cards” even when said players are only begrudgingly doing it and pushing for balance changes.
That thread caused me tremendous grief. It took me a good while before I ultimately ended up making my own post there, just because I didn’t want to contribute any further to the toxicity that Damon had engendered, as so often is his wont. Being massively neurotic, I couldn’t help myself, and shortly after I did, more and more people came to the man’s defense, which made me further lose faith in humanity and question why I bothered. It’s a terrible cycle, I tells ya.
In particular, the thread (Damon’s posts in particular) infuriated me because of how much Damon exacerbates the problem he claims others are responsible for. He’s so loath to admit any degree of blame but he nonetheless recognizes that there is fomentation amongst the player base; consequently, he scapegoats competitive players, making them out to be some villainous collective and the cause of the game’s problems, intentionally driving the wedge between ‘competitive and casual players’ and exempting himself from any complicity in the matter. Worse still, when people point out the hypocrisy of his statements (not concealing their understandable frustration), he then claims we’re unfairly attacking him for his “long, thoughtful post” and turning him into the whipping boy.
Suffice to say, Damon’s BGG debacle further reminds me just how relieved I am that he is no longer actively working on Netrunner. I personally believe that he did a considerable amount of damage to the game, and not solely through his inability to adequately balance cards and disdain for his playtesters (as evidenced by the Build Script debacle, among other things), but also through his continual disparaging of the players and pitting of the community against each other.
I realize that I’m not mincing words here, and I am genuinely sorry if I upset anyone who still has affection for the Stone, but boy, was Boggs a breath a fresh air for me.
I couldn’t help myself and resurrected the dead thread, probably to the detriment of the community as a whole, but I just couldn’t stand by and let Damon disparage the most reverent players like he did.
I agree with you that Boggs is a breath of fresh air. I knew when I listened to his podcast tour after the MWL update that he spoke about the game so differently than Damon, with a much more balanced and respectful view towards the players, and he was going to be at the least better for the game going forward. The state of the game now is probably as good as it’s been in a year or more just on the power of the new MWL alone. I hope this continues going forward.