I’ve written some errata and house rules in an attempt to create a version of ANR more to my liking. It might be more to your liking too, so i’m posting a link to a download here for anyone who’s interested.
It’s largely untested ( thus ‘Beta’ ), though of course it’s comes off the back of all the commentary on the game. By 'untested i mean that i’ve had very little chance to playtest this, and that i can’t give much by way of meaningful playtest results.
At the moment it contains errata for Core and Genesis cards only, and it’s intended to be used with cards from those sets only. I’ve got an ‘Alpha’ that contains errata for cards ( some of which i’m still working on ) up to and including the Mumbad cycle, but for now i’m happy with this.
There is a Commentary at the back giving an overview of the general intent of my changes.
LOL; no. NAPD MWL is a thing, and you want to reduce influence even more? Datasucker trashes itself on too many succesful runs? Ruin the trifecta of Ice subtypes, which will push people more and more into Faust / Eater, which aren’t addressed at all? Every single FA agenda gets nerfed into the ground? Breaking news needed a fix, but not every single agenda in the game.
All this does is nerf every single popular (non-jinteki) card, without actually providing any consistent form of balance.
The tag removal thing is interesting, but doesn’t make sense flavorwise. Maybe someone who absolutely hates NBN, and worships janky Psi-Ice (Kelf you there?) will love this but this just ruins the game for every other faction.
Oh, and let’s all delude our decks, have 90 minute rounds, play asset spam with museums and wait for Whizzard to rotate out. No problem, because you’ll never be milled and the runner needs 11(!) points to win.
I agree to the general feedback, not in all details but in general.
The idea of trap ICE to return to hand is interesting. Not sure if it is balanced. I think it’s even increasing to favor AIs, as no one else can break them.
I’m not a fan of this, but then, I don’t need to. If the game makes more fun for you this way, play it like this.
But one thing you should fix is the agenda points: With 11 points needed to win, and possibly only 18 points in the game (40 to 44 cards Corp deck), the game can enter a state where both sides sit on 9 points and no one can win any more (at least not on points). If the Corp included GFI or the Runner took some negative agenda points, this might happen even more often. I don’t think that’s a good thing for the game.
For what it’s worth, these errata are for cards in the Core and Genesis sets only, and it’s intended to be used with cards from those sets only. ( I’ve edited the first post to emphasize this. )
The trap ice change is one i took from Willingdone.
It’s true i think, and intentional, that the Runner will need AIs ( and/or ‘not-breakers’ ) more if using these errata. Trap ice have always required AIs to break them, and now the Runner will need them if intending to break all psi ice and most tracer ice too. However, bear in mind that 1) tracer ice and psi ice subroutines don’t need to be broken in order for the Runner to get through them, that 2) tracer ice have a ‘tracer breaker’ of sorts in the form of link, and that 3) the intent of this Hack’s changes is also to make it generally more costly for the Runner to break through ice and so whilst the Runner will need AIs more they will also need a range of other icebreakers in order to make breaking cost-efficient enough over the course of an entire game.
I second (third?) the above comments on agenda points, both for 11/18 to win and 20 agenda points in 54 card decks. It gets into the Monopoly-with-all-the-house-rules problem where the game gets to a point where no player can come close to victory and the game basically ends when all but one player is sick of it. In this case there’s the eventually corp timeout, but that’s never fun to wait for; even mill decks tend to grab agendas from Archives rather than decking the corp. Fun is not directly proportional to game length.
Also, with Gingerbread and lots of link out there, I suppose I can see trace-only ice becoming another major subtype (since counterplay exists, although Marker and Sensei will have something to say about that), but I think it’s a big mistake to do that with psi ice. There isn’t much the runner can do to improve their odds short of bankrupting the corp (or greatly increasing focus on AI breakers), and once you get to handling later cards (not covered yet, I know) you find psi ice with non-psi game subroutines (notably Aiki). Also, psi ice are already (usually) favorably priced for their rez/break cost ratios.
The situation you describe whereby a Corp and Runner with smaller deck sizes could reach a stalemate situation, with both not being able to get enough agenda points to win, is intentional. It’s intended to put the Corp in a position where if they opt for a smaller deck size they risk running out of cards and losing. It’s intended to encourage and even necessitate larger deck sizes.
I’m happy for the game to take longer. Part of the reason i made this hack is because i don’t like the way this game has increasingly become shortened in various ways.
I’m still slightly in two minds about the psi ice changes because of psi ice that have non-psi subroutines as you describe. With tracer ice i’ve a general rule that i leave the code gate, sentry, and/or barrier subtypes in place if the ice has non-trace subroutines that directly effect the Runner. So for example, i left them on Ichi 1.0 because it has two non-trace subroutines that directly effect the Runner by trashing a program, but i removed them from Shadow because the non-trace subroutine does not directly effect the Runner ( and because it’s there precisely to add an optional boost to the trace ). I might apply the same general rule to psi ice. However, i am happy for the Runner to be forced between either a more expensive break using AIs or the psi game. I want Runners to have to take more risky runs more often. Oh, and not to forget, i would like to see the Runner needing to resort to more of the cards ( abilities and mechanisms ) that dealt with ice without breaking them, such as ice-trashing, ice derezzing, ice bypassing, and ice subtype giving cards.
I really like some of the ideas in this. Specifically removing a tag when you play a card that requires the runner to be tagged. It stops the binaryness of the runner being tagged and then deciding to float tags because one tag and 20 tags are very rarely any different.
I am not sure about the changes to make the game longer. The longer the game goes currently, the runner will have the advantage and making the game always go this long will surely favour the runner. Forcing the runner to need a 4th Icebreaker for traps and tracers is a nice idea. This will probably make the mid-game that little bit longer so the corp can get more agenda points there. Should the runner then start off with five MU (four for the four Icebreaker types and one for whatever they want) or should it push the runner to have to pack MU expansion cards which will slow them down even more? I have not played this so I cannot answer.
@TotsuzenheniYukimi How has your play testing with this format gone? Is there a stronger side or a strongest faction/ID?
how much have you actually played with these rules, and what conclusions have you drawn? in terms of runner/corp win percentage and how often some cards are used
for example, just adding 1 advancement to Breaking News completely ruins any reason to actually use it. imo, if you want to balance it in some way, remove the score (making it a 0 point agenda) or change the text on how the tags are added or removed. making it 3 advancements completely ignores the obvious original design intent of the card
i think that removing sentry, code gate, etc. makes AI not just powerful, but compulsory, and greatly shifts the balance, especially with the static keyword.
i also think that increasing the agenda points required to win will make the games much longer and prone to invalidate some archetypes
that said, i agree with everyone. if you like this and can find players to play with you who also enjoy it, more power to you
I’m calling this a ‘beta’ because it’s had very little ‘playtesting’, by which i mean i’ve played a few games with a few people using the errata, but not the rule changes on agenda points to win and deckbuilding. Things went as i’d expected, but that’s not saying much, and i can’t give you any meaningful playtest results. I’ve done the number crunching on agenda density, changes to breaking costs, etc, for what they’re worth. In order to really test it it needs to be put out there. ( I’ll edit the OP to clarify this. )
I’m not expecting the longer game to favour the Runner as much as before because of the difficulty the Runner will now have in fielding a full suite of top icebreakers and other cards that make the runs as cost effective as before, because of the increase in cost to get through tracer and psi ice, because with a larger deck the Corp can have more ice to build up glaciers with, and because of the generally greater need for the Runner to get rid of tags in order to prevent their resources getting wiped out in one click and/or prevent other card effects that the Corp has had more time to find. Bear in mind also that in a longer game the Corp gets more benefit from any agendas they’ve scored that give ongoing effects.
I’ve designed this Hack with the intention that there is more pressure on the Runner to have MU support, so i would keep it at a default of four starting MU. I want to push Runners into that dilemma of fast and dangerous, or slow and safe.
I think it’s worth mentioning that i’ve made the changes to tags and tracer ice in tandem, so that on the one hand the Corp now generally has to remove a tag for an effect, but that on the other they can also present a greater threat of tagging via their ice.
I did consider making Breaking News a 2 for 0 as you said, but on balance, given the other changes, i think it will still be worth playing.
I expect that the archetypes that would be invalidated, or at least harder to make work, are the very archetypes that i’d like to see go that way. I don’t want to get into a big discussion on archetypes, but suffice to say i’m happy to see fast advance become a tactic requiring support cards and card combinations and less of a game strategy built into the agendas.
These changes are just offensive. The vast majority of the changes you made to “problem” cards are so heavy handed that I’m having a hard time believe it’s not satire.
Why up the install cost of Desperado AND make it’s ability once per turn? Just one of the two could of been a good talking point.
Why even make the static subtype AND make Wrym a viable alternative to your new datasucker? That makes the whole Anarch breaker suite unusable in any combination of other cards.
Hostile Takeover is basically just a +5 credit operation that costs 2 credits and 3 clicks to play, oh and it gives you a bad pub. How in any world is that a sensible change?
This whole document reads as if written by someone salty their special PSI snowflake deck is 0-4 in the JNet open.
This seems really harsh. These changes are too extensive for my tastes too, but it’s no skin off my nose if other people want to play this variant. No one is suggesting that this should replace standard Netrunner.
it’s not about being worth playing or not. turning Breaking News into a 3/1 is completely ignoring the intent of the card:
you can either score it in one turn for a point or over two turns to get some tags to stick and do something about them.
if you want to balance it, adding one advancement while making no other changes completely invalidates that aspect of its use
as far as validating and invalidating archetypes, i think you’ve got it completely wrong. your changes make rush and fastro even more necessary, not less.
Honestly the runner needing like 40 random accesses if the corp has a max deck size seems pretty nuts. 4/2s with taxing ice and econ and I don’t see how you lose as corp when the cardpool has enough cards that you don’t have to play awful ice (aka probably not yet at genesis+c&c, but a couple more cycles and it’s probably doable). Especially out of HB.
i suppose it just seems like i’m piling on at this point, but whatever. i think with needing 11 points to win and additionally being able to get 20-21 points with a 54 card deck, basically all the corp has to do is find a way to win before decking themselves
I understood the usage of Breaking News. The ability to score it in one turn is precisely what i wanted to remove, and it’s more important to me to remove the ability to be able to score any agenda points in one turn ( without support cards or combos ) than it is to retain Breaking News as it is in ‘standard’ ANR. That said, i think Breaking News is too good in standard ANR and curtailing its power level and removing the ability to score it out in one turn in one standard change was perfectly convenient in my estimation. Even if i weren’t generally making 2 for 1 agendas 3 for 1 agendas i think i would still want to make Breaking News a 3 for 1 agenda.
