NAPD Most Wanted List - *Update July 2016*

Being a common or uncommon choice doesn’t make a card okay or not in terms of restricting the design space. Yog.0 would only ever be restrictive in a card pool where there were no code gates above strength three (since printing another code gate of that strength would be functionally identical to the existing code gates, because everyone played Yog.0). That situation is never going to exist: we already have stronger code gates in the card pool!

The existence of Yog.0 means that you have to bear it in mind with deckbuilding, not individual card design. If you choose to include only strength three or lower code gates (and rely on them), you risk running up against Yog.0. But if you include no meat damage you risk getting scorched. It’s a choice.

Saying that Yog.0 makes code gates of strength three or less a worthless addition to the card pool is like saying that Parasite makes ICE in general worthless! What Parasite does do is mean that your game plan can’t rely on a piece of ICE never getting destroyed; Yog.0 means that you can’t rely entirely on code gates of strength three or less.

If my Pop-Up Window draws a Parasite, I usually feel it’s a good trade. Likewise if someone throws down Yog.0 to get through Yagura, I’m not too sad. On the other hand if I know the rest of my ICE is comprised heavily of more Yagura, Enigma, Quandary, Datapike and Marker I’ll happily accept that I took a deckbuilding gamble which I just lost. If there were no playable higher strength code gates, you’d have a point. But there are, so if you choose not to use them (thus forcing Yog.0 to become a more awkward way to break the low-strength ones) then that’s a deckbuilding risk, like choosing to include no damage prevention.

Come to think of it will anyone actually stop running Lady? It’s not like people ran a ton of Snowball or Battering Ram pre-Lady, it was still pretty much Corroder and even at two copies of Lady it’s still the same price as Corroder.

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Can confirm Battering Ram is trash.

@Thebigboy Sorry if that seemed like a personal attack, I respect your opinion. I actually replied to you because you were continuing the conversation about Blackmail, that block of text was more directed toward this post by @higgs_bozo and others who thought it should be on the MWL because it is not fun to play against.

Blackmail is the worst.

It basically stole Inside Job from the criminal color pie, and put it in the faction with the most oppressive late game in the form of Wyldcakes with bad pub.

I understand that everyone has different ideas on what cards should or should not be on this list (or whether it should exist at all!) My post was attempting to point out the importance of balancing a game on high level play versus what seems overwhelming for new players.

Actually, that’s not quite the same level of interaction. Even without damage prevention, there are ways of playing around the various scorch combos.

Yog is problematic in that it causes penetrating central servers to be way more trivial. Even against 4 strength code gates, Yog still preforms well. Contrast with Mimic, where there are still ice in its range that are difficult/taxing to break. Yog is binary, even more so than other fixed strength breakers.

Does it break the game? A bit. Not entirely, but a bit. That’s why it’s on the list.

Yog, Parasite and Clone chip all interact with datasucker to make defending centrals very difficult. While Mimic and Datasucker are part of this plan, they aren’t nearly as problematic outside interactions with these 3 cards. I’ve been playing a Shaper deck recently that uses Datasucker+Mimic+sharpshooter as its core sentry breaking plan, but doesn’t run parasite. In that context, datasucker is simply a card that plays a key role, rather than part of the nigh broken engine.

This is why Yog got targeted - the only answer to it was either a) play something super high strength and hope D1V4D is stuck at the bottom of the runners deck, or b) screw playing code gates that cost more than 1. Yog isn’t that good against gear check stuff like Quandary, but excels at midsized stuff like Merlin, Enigma, Rainbow, or Viktor.

Viktor 1.0 is a great example - against anything but Yog, he’s pretty good.

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No worries dawg.

And yet never sees play. Why? Because Yog entirely invalidates him, even more than being a Bioroid might already.

Yog puts code gates in an impossible situation. 3 strength and below all become gear check of a kind if the runner has Yog, and are useless afterward. 4 strength? Outside of Lotus Field, that’s just one datasucker token. 5 strength? D4V1D, or two tokens, but it finally starts to matter.

The problem being that there just aren’t that many high-strength code gates that are worth playing anyway. Even if there were, they tend to be pretty expensive – which means you can’t run them easily in a gear check or rush deck. But the low strength ones get turned off entirely, meaning that you can’t at least tax the runner with them once they get their breaker out.

Yog absolutely impacts individual card design, because every Code Gate has to be compared against it… and pretty nearly all of them are found wanting, or were until relatively recently.

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This literally made me lol. Well done sir.

Completely agree. We’ve seen two designers now, but in both cases it’s as FFG is afraid to legitimately nerf NEH fast advance. We got Clot, but got CVS in the same box. Even with 3 Astro and 3 SanSan, the basic fastro shell still has an effective 14 influence to play with (Jackson’s in faction, so 17 + 3 - 6 = 14). NBN’s got more ice than ever (Turnpike taxes Mimic the same as Architect), and now that fewer runners will be able to recur Clot effectively, FA is even stronger.

I’m not against the idea of the list, but I do wish they’d have the courage to actually take a bite out of FA for once.

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I’ve been reading this line of thought a lot, and I don’t know how much it will hold up. my gut says there’s a lot of truth there, but that may just be because I believe in my heart of hearts that NBN fastro will always be the deck to beat no matter what nerfs…

a couple things you missed though:

  • NAPD has been a core tool of fastro since its release; GFI is a solid option, but now both cost influence.
  • no ice is a match at all for architect when it comes to a) benefits to FA gained from fired subs or b) total invincibility. If you think these changes are going to make parasite or clone chip rare, I think you might be rudely surprised.
  • eli has been so ubiquitous in pretty much every competetive deck since its release that I think people are forgetting what it’s like to be without. Every other barrier (and perhaps ice?) is freaking garbage compared to him when it comes to rez/tax ratio, and it will hurt NEH’s game to go without him.

TLDR; NEH still has the influence to do it’s thing, but now they may have to choose between ICE, FA tools, or ideal agenda suites. I’m confident they’ll land on their feet, but ppvp Kate wasn’t the only deck that could beat them, and they took a sizeable hit, no two ways about it.

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Yet TWIY and NBN FA were consistent on the higher seeds of tournaments pre NEH, pre NAPD. The thing that put it over the top was sweeps, not NAPD. And now that recurring clot is pbb geting less ubiquitous, I fear we will relive those days

Maybe we just all go back to paper wall and give a big finger to all barriers, focussing on gearchecking with codegates and sentries. Or lose a biotic and still play arch and eli

I think this is Android: Netrunner’s main flaw. There are a lot of strategies or identities that could easily be playable if there were just a handful more options in some categories like 5/3 agendas, Jackson replacements, alternatives to Aurora or World Domination.

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It’s not Yog that invalidates Victor 1.0, it’s Enigma. Bootcamp Glacier is the only deck I can think of that ever picks a different low strength code gate, and even in faction Enigma gets picked over Victor every single time.

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Those new Wooley Whizzard decks are terrifying, partly because NRE/Ice Carver means Yog.0 becomes a powerhouse in a meta dominated by code gates. Why are we in that meta? Because Lady wrecks barriers so badly and everyone gave up on them.

Two years ago I managed to be in the top 8 of a regional tournament. At that time, corps were way stronger than runners. Corps had great low cost barriers and cheap punishing code gates like enigma and yagura. At that tournament everyone at the top tables won their corp matches, and some people complained at that time the fact you were able to play corp more times gave you a clear advantage.

And now we are here, and runners are now a bit more powerful than corps. But it was not because at that time the tools of the corps were hosed by a list, but that runners got new tools and answers. In fact, at that time, no one played anarch competitively (or at all). It was the release of cards what not only lessened the gap, but also managed to bring back a faction to the table.

Anyway Yog is probably the only card that can be problematic, as many people had said, it is way too binary.

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This comes pretty close to why I don’t think this list is even necessary to begin with.

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I don’t think it was necessary for “us”.
It may have been for “them”.

These are all possibilities, and (as I said in my post) they are great examples of ways in which NEH fastro is sure to stick around - and as you say, the solid core is still very much there. All i’m saying is that to dismiss the damage done to NEH seems a bit preemptive. having no significant barrier hurdle or perma-tax sentry, or having less reliable access to biotic, these things do make the deck more vulnerable in certain ways - and just because ppvp kate was the big fish doesn’t mean there aren’t other sharks in the water still.

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Erratas and rotation. The way I see it we are well set to becoming GenericCardGame 2.0

Kate and ETF needed to be addressed before PPVP.

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