The solution to someone problems is not to give someone else enough problems to make that person feel better, it is to solve their problems.
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I remember when Blue Sun was first printed, and Lotus Field. Anarchs had no breaker that could functionally deal with that. Knight was invalidated by Blue Sun, and Force of Nature doesnāt exist. Those were bad times for Anarchs. Iām sure it will swing around for Crim again.
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Sure, and anarchs got Faust. Thatās the best way to deal with meta-game problems - new cards. Not play whack-a-mole with the things you dislike.
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Sure, but new cards are 12-18 months from design to play. Cards like Jeeves are already (I assume) in print or printed. I assume there are no new cards about to appear that will reign things like Fastro and Yog.0 back in. So at this point they either let the problem cards run and run, or they do something now.
Maybe FFG have something in mind for Crim (not necessarily in faction) that was as impactful as the Lotus Field solutions were for Anarch. Or maybe they werenāt prepared to wait 12 months for their next attempt at bringing Fastro back into line to be tried out.
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I would be far more inclined to believe this were fastro actually the dominant deck pre-MWL. This, however, is simply not the case.
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this leads to either power creep or restriction in future design. I donāt think adding 1 influence to cards above the curve is a major nerf. most decks will continue to run them and make cuts elsewhere. what it does do is even out the diversity in the deckbuilding space by making other builds that little bit more viable. the sky isnāt falling I think this is very welcome tbh
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A little power creep is not a bad thing.
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Theyāve clearly pulled back some important HB cards too.
But itās not power creep. Most of those cards are in the core set/genesis cycle. Which got designed at the same time.
there is slow, gradual power creep in the game in general. I do not think itās at all controversial to say this. Because of that, cards that are a problem at one point will slowly cease to stand out as time goes by. This is not a bad thing.
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I donāt know if āprinting Faustā is the best evidence for āwe donāt need the MWLā.
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There was a problem, and there was a solution printed for it that shook up the meta and enabled a vast range of interesting decks. I would prefer for this to continue rather than decks being shut down via nerf-bat.
Wait? You think Blue sun was terrible for anarch?
What about, i donāt know, every single game played before, D&D? Being anarch in 2013-2014 was rough
I donāt think he is. Weāve had a Astrobiotics and Kate all over the show for nearly 2 years. Pretty much. Even if his solutions arenāt ideal, some attempt needed to be made to create a little diversity.
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There are 2 anarchs:
- Core Anarch with cycle jank
- D4v1d/Pancakes/Faust/etc
Blue Sun affects 2 really hard. Youāre right that a division exists, but blue sun comes into affect as soon as anarch gets an upgrade. Prior to that anarch was bad at a lot of stuff, but if you take version 2 of anarch and play vs version 1 of the meta, anarch would blow it away.
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I think I was playing AoA Reina. And most of the decks I played at Nationals that year were still Astrobiotics.
kate only really hit top spot with clot, which was less than a year ago.
Astrobiotics is not the top deck, clearly. Foodcoats is just a much more solid choice all around (pre-MWL).
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Iām not talking about strength relative to meta, Iām talking about prevalence and diversity.
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I was and still am supportive of the MWL, and I really like how Damon is handling it. What we should remember, and this is true of Yog.0 even though some comments above have tried to state that itās not a problem, is that Damon and his crew have been testing cards many cycles ahead and designing ice that Yog.0 has invalidated. From a design perspective, the most important thing FFG can do is to keep space open for future cards and deckbuilding for unused cards that are being invalidated, not uphold some sanctity of perceived wholeness of Netrunner.
Having played about two dozen games with and against MWL decks, my opinion is that the meta is going to become more diverse. Weyland bootcamp glacier will be welcomed back into the game; Titan / Gagarin might even find homes; RP WILL find a foothold again. NBN will have representation in several forms, still, but it will be less oppressive. On the runner side, Noise will still be able to do his thing, but he will be a few credits poorer and a turn slower. MaxX is largely the same. Kate will adapt (Nexus is good, ProCo is fine, Pawnshop Cache Kate is fine - all of these can still play FA hate in the form of Clot + a few clones). The ciminal side is about to get a huge power-jump with Poly Op. Geist is going to be strong this season. Leela is largely the same. Etc. Etc.
Personally, I feel that building decks around these restrictions is been more enjoyable than building decks without them. Iām excited to try out L4J Kate.
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Name one fracter that is better than Corroder?
Name one barrier better than Ice Wall (okay, maybe Wraparound)?
Name one sentry better than Ichi 1.0?
Name one recursion tool better than Deja Vu?
Name a 4/2 agenda better than Nisei Mk2? (Ooh, Oaktown is close, right?)
I agree there has been power creep, in that plenty of good cards have been released that flesh out decks as a whole.
But I find it hard to think of alternatives to the above questions than those on the NAPD Most Wanted List. So if there has been power creep from core set, itās pretty clearly very small and tightly limited to a few select cards.
The remainder of the list was knocking core set cards down a peg - precisely because power creep has been so limited that many cards have struggled to shine against those initial offerings. If anything, Iād say there has been a power level drop off for many card types, and thatās why all those core set cards got pulled back, and those few amazing power cards released in data packs so brightly shone out.
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