MNGA - Rolling Ban-List Discussion

I think one goal of bans, restricted list, and MWL should be to make the maximum possible number of cards and deck types playable. That’s why I’m 100% behind banning Caprice and Sifr - we lose 2 cards, but gain a bunch of defensive upgrades and big ice that are hard to play with those cards in existence.

On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of banning a key component of DLR decks, CI decks, etc. because they are unique deck types that some people enjoy playing. Instead, I’d rather nerf them (if they are overpowered) or just make other deck types viable so that you don’t see them over and over again. Making WNP unique was a great example of fixing DLR. Blackmail decks would probably be fixed by banning Rumor Mill (Caprice is a nice counter to them).

1 Like

DLR can stay if the decks that operate it are transitioning to tag-me mode (such as in Gramble Scrub). The tags make it so the Corp has inherent interaction possibilities with the Runner’s board. Nowadays, however, you have the Sunny and Andy versions with Citadel which never go tag-me, so the game devolves again in a race before the Runner is set up. I could do without those, tbh.

1 Like

Nexus Kate is also going to win the game if she gets fully set up - are you going to ban that deck too? It’s the player’s job to recognize that their opponent is going to win when they set up and adjust their plan accordingly. Citadel Andy decks were huuuuuuuuuge a couple months ago and have almost completely disappeared now, so I think the meta took care of itself in that case.

All of them. Hold on, put down pitchforks. :wink:
There have been ‘dominant’ strategies or even ‘degenerate’ combos at every stage. I don’t believe that trying to pick some set of cycles will lead to a better game, which is why I don’t believe a banlist will really help, though it may appear to. But, this topic starts from the assumption that the answer to this question is ‘Yes’, because that’s what a banlist does: It states that a certain subset of cards makes a ‘best’ game.

Ok, so, that derailment out of the way… This topic is about assuming that there is a banlist in place, what should we do with it?

I would argue that by putting this custom banlist/MWL in place, you’ve already got a big ask from players in adhering to it, so we could just go all the way if that makes things better.

This is powerful. I’m not convinced it’s too powerful. Clone Chip, Parasite, Sifr, now that’s too powerful. (Street Peddler is fine.)

The problem I have with a lot of people requesting a banlist/MWL changes is that they think that this card or that card is powerful, so it should be stopped. The problem is that Netrunner is always about doing Powerful things. We just want to make sure we aren’t doing completely broken things. Sifr making one ICE/turn easy to break or Parasite? Powerful. Rumor Mill singlehandedly being responsible for no one playing any defensive upgrades that stop the Runner? Too Powerful.

The difference is that one of these is a strong reaction to several decks without invalidating those decks.

1 Like

Alright, DLR got some love and no-one for, so it seems to be off then for version 1.

It is primarily for the players in my meta, for an experimental tournament. Anyone else can use it if they want to, or make their own. I am however interested in getting some robustness and criticism from the hivemind to shape it, since i know i (like everyone) have my own biases.

That said, when version 1 is finalized maybe you should give it a shot with some meta buddies and see what types of discussions and comments pop up when you do. Might be helpful getting a critical eye with experience.

1 Like

Methinks Friends in High Places deserves MWL treatment at minimum, it’s simply too cheap and splashable. It’s a big buff to asset spam, creates repetitive gameplay, and punishes runners that try to disrupt the corp by interacting with them.

14 Likes

I really wish it was printed at 2-3 influence. It feels strong but not game-breaking when run out of HB, but feels oppressive in horizontal NEH and RP decks.

1 Like

I’m guessing you haven’t played against Spooky HB:mask:

1 Like

One of the “So close, but so far” aspects of Flashpoint is the introduction of trashable operations.
The concept of trashable operations: good!
Enforcing Loyalty and Hatchet Job are trashable, but HHN and FiHP aren’t: facepalm.

Boom! is the only one they really got right.

11 Likes

Quick comment on this. I happen to think this card suffers from hate the same way Hard-Hitting suffers. It is the actor in bad decks, but i don’t think it is the enabler. From a card-economic perspective it makes a lot of sense and seems balanced to me (cost-curve wise).
Since we disable the worst perpetrators with the rest of the banlist, and that this card has a lot of legitimate uses (defending against ICE-destruction for one) i will not put it on the version 1 of the list.

Also, i now consider the list locked in for version 1, and ready for testing!

It is dangerous to fiddle too much with too little information, and i’m very glad that all comments in this thread has helped me shape my initial ideas to a more robust state. Enabling this type of list will necessarily create a new meta/game-environment so i think it is difficult to use intuitive judgement that comes from the current NR-meta for further bans.

I welcome everyone who is interested in the testing, i will definitely be up for Jinteki-games regarding this, as well as test in my local meta. My plan is to arrange a tournament in ~3-4 weeks to try it out in serious-mode and let the time until then be used for people to adapt to this environment as much as they want.

After the tournament i’ll open up for some more changes if any serious issues pop up, otherwise i’ll try to be conservative with changes here. If anyone does their own testing, please come back here for discussion, i’m very interested in learning from all of you who do.

Yet somehow they think it should be a 3-inf card unlike Scorch for NBN to play combos.

2 Likes

I signed up to Stimhack to say this, and I’ve been independently building my own banlist to put on the reddit. (Speaking of which, have you made a topic over there? I and some others don’t use Stimhack that often you know, and there’s been no discussion of a banlist there yet.) Unsurprisingly, we’ve come to a lot of the same conclusions, but I’m also hesitant to keep a banlist and the MWL as short as possible. Since no one’s specifically asked this, what’s your reason for keeping D4v1d off the banlist? In my version I have it instead of Faust. Part of what makes the Faust/D4v1d rig so strong is that in-faction ice destruction mitigates how temporary it is, but Spooning a Fairchild 3.0 becomes much less palatable when it takes 5 cards plus the Spoon card. To me, that makes more sense than banning Mimc: importing a solution for low strength sentries (in a faction that already has Parasite) is far easier than solving high strength ice, which was always supposed to be a weakness of Anarch since the core set. The argument might be then, of course, that it makes Weyland too good with their huge ice; but I think this just pushes the meta towards derez effects and Panchatantra, and all of that feels like playing “proper netrunner” anyway. I understand you don’t want to make any changes now, but I’ll just give my own banlist, with differences in italics:

  • Sifr
  • Rumor Mill
  • D4v1d
  • DDoS (I had Blackmail on here in an older version, but then I remembered that the thing that rocked the world immediately following Order and Chaos wasn’t Valencia but Keyhole MaXx, so I wonder whether it’s Blackmail or the whole Anarch package that is so damn good)
  • Temujin Contract (I think this card is so good that all putting it on the MWL does is that it nerfs Criminal generally without effecting their card choices for economy, since of course they’ll run 3 of these over any other type, and ultimately the banlist is supposed to effect card choices)
  • Aaron Marron
  • Beth Kilrain-Chang (In my version I imagined replacing the MWL with a banlist so this goes here)
  • Fairchild 3.0 (In a world without D4v1d, something has to go in Glacier decks. I went with Fairchild 3.0 over DNA Tracker because I had all the HB cards coming off the MWL, whereas Jinteki glacier was losing Caprice)
  • Caprice Nisei (Same as Beth)
  • Bio-Ethics Association (You’re absolutely right it should be Hostile Infrastructure, good thinking. Allowing BEA to exist promotes mind games play since it’s excellent in PE)
  • NBN: Controlling The Message (Without access to Temujin Contract or Aaron Marron, I feel like asset spam improves massively in how much it taxes. Jinteki loses Hostile Infrastructure, Gagarin, in my list, loses HHN and Consulting Visit, but NBN doesn’t really lose anything. CTM is the big taxing NBN card. Sensie could easily go on my list as well.)
  • Hard-Hitting News (IMO, this card actually limits runner card choice by completely smothering poor runners like Noise. Those decks can clear 1 tag or survive damage once but not 4 tags and not multiple Boom!).
  • Consulting Visit (Same reason as Mumbad City Hall, but additionally it also makes kill dangerously powerful in Blue Sun when they can tutor literally any card they need)
  • Global Food Initiative (What was the last 5/3 agenda you saw that wasn’t this card? Also, I think runner gets hit harder in my list than corps so this might help the balance. It also smacks all kinds of degenerate prison decks)

That is just wayyyyyyy too many cards banned. I would have zero interest in playing a game with that list.

3 Likes

Me or Elusive? They’ve got 10 banned cards and 7 cards added to the MWL, where I have 14 banned cards and I’m considering without the presence of the MWL. I figured that having both a banlist and a list of +1 influence cards is more complex and confusing than just opting for a banlist. Ultimately, if you want a shorter list, I think going back to a world without Sifr or Aaron Marron would be satisfactory for many players.

Your list is way too long. There’s an enormous difference between MWLing a card like Temujin (a good idea that was slightly overpowered) and banning it. And any list that bans Caprice is not fixing the problems in the game.

3 Likes

Fair enough. Ultimately, that’s because I think that all of these cards are strictly better than alternatives in the same role inside and outside of each faction. I reason that banning 14 cards probably makes 30 competitively playable: banning Rumor Mill creates space for Councilman, Interdiction and Political Operative, banning Temujin Contract creates space for “old-school” runner economies like Magnum Opus, Aesop’s Pawnshop, Data Folding/Underworld Contacts and so on. If you don’t think Temujin is a problem, look at how many Shaper, Criminal and Anarch decks on Netrunnerdb have the card right now. When people complain about the current state of Netrunner, it’s because cards like these have made tens of existing cards comparatively unplayable. That’s power-creep.

Granted, if my list solely existed to deal with cards like that, then it’d probably look like Sifr/Rumor Mill/Temujin/Aaron. Those cards smother many existing cards in faction and in neutral. The rest are more subtle, eliminating particular identities or playstyles by requiring that the runner uses particular high influence cards, particularly prison decks requiring a high-economy asset trashing solution.

I guess this list just looks really heavy handed. Comparing Temujin to Magnum Opus for instance just doesn’t make sense to me; while they both are econ cards the decks that use them and the way you use them are super different. Saying a lot of decks are playing Temujin and none are playing Opus doesn’t necessarily signal to me that Temujin is overpowered. There are other factors at play.

I don’t contest that cards like Temujin are powerful but I would argue that it’s prevalence is somewhat a reaction to current Corp metagames.

To add a counterpoint to the banning discussions: what if we just tossed it all on the MWL? I’m thinking of something like: all the politicals, HHN, aaron, sifr, friends, temujin, beth, paperclip, rumor mill, blackmail, deja vu, diagnostics, ddos, false echo, net mercur, medium. The actual whole nine yards. Could this be enough to cultivate a healthier game?

My initial thoughts are that the Professor exception might need to go, since some anarch and CtM builds don’t really need to import anything to have a strong deck. (poor professor :sob:) Sifr also might still need the banhammer because I could see parasifr still being the most powerful runner strategy by a large margin.

1 Like

Hey,
I think i’m trying to be a bit careful with the bans, really only keeping to what i know for certain to be a problem. People talked me out of a couple, and likely rightly so. In retrospect i think MWL-ing is a very good compromise for neccessary but above-curve cards like Caprice. You are correct in that it costs comlexity however, but if not using it i would allow those cards with no change rather than ban them i think.

I also think D4vid/Faust may turn out to be less of a problem nowadays. Partly because of the new cost-efficient ICE, and partly because the other nerfs in the list brings down the power level of the deck a bit. It was already ‘okay’ post MWL-ing and i try to be aware not to overreact because i have previously bad experiences with a card or combo.

I see this argument around a lot, and i don’t agree with it. I main Criminal and have done for a long time, all through the shaper/anarch dominated last two years. People seem to think that criminal needs all the good cards to work, it really doesn’t.
You can put Desperado in a deck and not Temujin, you can put Temujin in there and use another console, or you can indeed sacrifice one of your good breakers or tech-cards to get the whole synergistic package if you want to.
It definitely nerfs Anarchs (and stealth shaper) more than Criminals in my mind. 9 Inf is a LOT more than 6 inf, and going down to two Temujin for 6 inf creates more inconsistency and not as good synergy in a deck. Crims already have bonus synergy with things like Sectesting and Bank Job.
This change puts Temujin where it belongs: in Crim. Not as good as 3 inf on the card would ahve been, but decent i’d say. It is really powerful after all. Banning, not a fan. Crim’s have needed an injection for quite some time, and this is it. It is also much easier to make mediocre than people seem to think if you do the math on it and play some cheap taxing ICE.

Do not agree here. I think HHN in combination with must trash assets is a problem. The card itself has counterplay in any deck (8-12 credits) and robs the corp more than you if they play it anyway. It punishes hard, though, so like Scorch before it all players have to learn the risks.

Have not seen problem decks using this card yet. Have tried many Weyland-kill strats and they still suffer from some problems, especially versus Crim. I think this consistency is good for weyland so far, seems balanced.

Could be considered for MWL for sure, but as it stands it also does a lot of good for the game in ‘normal’ glacier decks. I think it is only in combination with BN+EoI that it really should cost 2 inf. The problem in my mind is really that all other 5/3’s are bad.

1 Like

I had a huge post but I deleted it because I guess I want to talk about where the MWL succeeds and fails. It’s great at lowering the power level of decks. Above a certain threshold, around 6 or more influence, it can completely kill an archetype: consider Noise losing Clone Chips and Wyldside, or PPvP Kate, or even more specifically the changing face of Whizzard before MWL 1.0, before MWL 2.0, and after then, and now. Inside of Criminal, Temujin going on the list doesn’t change much: their only other card is Desperado, so they go down to 9 influence, and fill the rest with Gordian Blade, Medium, and any silver bullets they want. Incidentally, that’s why “MWLing” Sifr isn’t enough, because the factions that want to play it (all of them) can afford the additional influence hit of playing it - because it basically invalidates dealing with large ice, so you can take out whatever influence you spent on doing that. Same is true for Temujin: Smoke is paying nothing to the MWL at the moment, which means they have the spare influence to take less powerful cards - dropping Employee Strike or playing in faction consoles - and then they’re good to go. Same is true for the Worlds winning Whizzard List which has 3x Temujin: it has 5 influence on Parasite and Yog, so going up to 6 or 8 by running say Black Orchestra and Faust instead of Net-Ready and Yog keeps the deck mostly intact.

Make no mistake: the MWL works: it drops the power level of certain decks, and kills others competitively. Noise and PPvP Kate and Wyldcakes and Butchershop and more are all dead in their traditional forms, thanks to the printing of new cards but more frequently the restrictions on their influence. But right now, we’re looking to nerf individual cards. Astroscript Pilot Program on the MWL did little to effect its playability. I predict that the same is true for any of these “problem cards” - including Temujin - and that any community additions to the MWL should be to change the balance of power within certain archetypes and to kill others.