The new A Game of Thrones format that will allow playes to sideboard in cards to tweak their decks against certain opponents generated a littled dicussion in some places about sideboarding in Netrunner.
The first reaction to the idea seems to be that Netrunner has too many silver bullet cards to make sideboarding a wise idea.
Here is a modified sideboarding idea.
Each player could register two deck lists for each side, so they would have RunnerA and RunnerB, for instance. The ID would be the same for each list, but the cards in the lists could be different. You could cap how many cards could be different to make it more streamlined.
Each round, players would reveal their IDs and then have one minute to decide whether they wanted to play list A or B for each side. If players do not decide within a minute, they default to list A.
Why this might be fun and/or good?
Right now, the meta tends to be characterized as rock-paper-scissors where you can run into decks that you just donāt have a reasonable chance to beat. Allowing players to have two lists of each ID would let them play some lists that they might otherwise not. It would also add an element of bluffing and strategic choice when it comes to constructing lists and choosing IDs.
Iām not saying this is necessary for Netrunner, but the idea of sideboarding is not new to card games. I wonder if a variant of ANR that allowed this would be interesting or fun for people to play.