I understand your point. From my perspective, many homebrews end up falling into existing archetypes, whether intended or not. When I’m in a game, I generally quickly try to determine my opponent’s strategy. I do this so I can play accordingly. When I see a Hayley install anything that fuels program installation, I assume it’s a Chameleon build. When I see Noise install Pawnshop, I assume it’s a traditional Noisecakes. This is done on my mind for my own reasons. After games it’s common in my meta to talk about your deck with your opponent; this is where it may become apparent that they were playing certain tech or a different build than I assumed. It is rare that I was completely wrong about the archetype, though.
tl;dr I try to classify my opponents deck as quickly as possible with the information I have, so I can play accordingly. Does this mean I sometimes get blown out by Komainu in Weyland? Absolutely. More often though, my assumptions are accurate and I would like to think give me an advantage against my opponent, or at least, remove any disadvantage I would have had by being completely in the dark about the opponent’s strategy.
I think it is important to distance all ego from yourself when playin ANR. This includes ego towards your decklist, towards your play, and towards your performance. I understand people being proud of their homebrews, but understand that when someone else assume you are playing an established list or archetype, it is unlikely that they are attacking your deck building skill.
Because it’s very helpful to us as players to be able to categorize strategies? It’s also very unhelpful to have to describe every deck by basically reciting the list aloud. “A Reina Roja deck that uses Kati Jones, Liberated Account, Day Job, and Daily Casts to build a huge credit pool, then drops a Vamp on the Corp – gaining access via Knight and Eater – to zero them out, and then follows up with Keyhole. Also you keep the ice weak by using Parasite and Crescentus with Clone Chip.” Might as well just say “Headlock Reina,” no? If my deck is like that, but I use Turntable instead of Vigil (or whatever), I can just say “it’s a kind of Headlock Reina, only I use Vigil and Street Peddler” instead of also having to go through the whole spiel.
Ultimately, we all know that which cards you include in your deck point it toward a certain strategy or strategies. I think it’s easier and more useful to classify decks in broad terms of strategy – which is of course linked to some degree by which cards you’re using – than it is to…not classify them? “Gaz’s deck #51” doesn’t provide me with a lot to go on, when I’m trying to evaluate it and study its game plan.
It can be your own recognized creations, you just have to vocalize it. Sometimes people just want an excuse to open conversation. Asking someone if they are playing Headlock Reina is far from a vague insult, it’s a open window to chat. To talk about your decks differences, vocalize your opinion on the netdeck, or show off your completely different creation.
I blew out some poor individuals with Ash in my NEH deck. Unfortunately I cant play that deck anymore because my local meta knows that I cut Architects, Fast Tracks and DBS from my deck. Which means they’ll assume I have Ash and will play slow against me while I rush Astros behind a Pop-Up Window.
Archetypes are bigger than any individual deck list. “Independent invention” definitely happens and should be expected. After all, Good Ideas are rarely so meta specific that they turn in to Bad Ideas at another game store or tournament. Those similar ideas get discussed in terms of archetypes simply because it makes a nice shorthand for how the deck plans on winning. You’ve included DLR in your deck, presumably because you think it gives you a better chance of winning. So have a lot of other people! You say yours isn’t “Val DLR” why is that? Are you using DLR as a way to pressure archives in support of another, primary strategy?
For better or worse, archetypes usually make their appearance in the global netrunner community by winning a tournament in some fashion, and that player gets to explain how the deck works and how it got to victory. It’s not a slight against all the other deckbuilders who came to the same conclusions but couldn’t playtest or execute the idea as well, its just that winning a tournament “puts your money where your mouth is” so to speak. I say this as the guy who brought Ian Stirling-Notoriety-Quest Completed and Harmony Med Tech-Trick of Light to Chicago regionals in 2014 and placed 64th. The winner of that tournament brought Silhouette “Notorious Daily Quester” and “Tennin Lightning”. These are pretty much the same archetype as my decks, but since I did terrible and he did well (presumably because he had been testing the decks for weeks while I put them together that week ) he got to name the archetype. Thems the breaks.
How’s that answering the post of mine you quoted? If I’ve made a Reina deck nothing to do with Headlock, gosh darn it, I may have never have heard of that deck.
I appreciate people might be looking for a shorthand, but frankly I can think of other Reina’s so its either headlock or not, so doesn’t seem a comprehensive set of pigeon holes. It’s just “that one I’ve heard of” or “everything” else.
It’s certainly not comprehensive or universal. It’s entirely possible that your deck doesn’t quite fall into any existing archetypes! It’s just that if it is pretty close to an existing one, it’s easier for players to discuss it by way of referencing the existing one. That’s not a reflection on you or your deck; it’s just convenience.
When I talk about my own decks I tend to use terms like Cambridge PE or Supermodernism as a way of shorthand referencing some credit. The Argus deck I’ve been playing recently is not that similar in terms of sheer volume of identical cards to Hoobajoo’s original Supermodernism but I’m clearly basing the general idea on his thoughts. It’s not so much always about th identical cards I think but about what the deck is trying to do. I feel I like to give a bit of credit, even if only in my own mind, when I’m talking about the deck. No one builds decks in a vacuum. Not good ones anyway.
There’s probably a spectrum of innovation here. Sometimes Pro Co vs No Co is a massive decision that completely changes the nature of the deck and can have a huge impact on its performance in a given meta. And that change is about a very small number of card slots. So just saying “oh, it’s Calimsha Kate but I put in Pro Co” wouldn’t quite sum up the credit that decision should bring you. Those decisions are really common in high level netrunner. But the ground up innovate deck archetypes like Supermodernism, Redcoats, Cambridge PE, or Anatomy Anarch are a bit rarer. I personally really admire the creative effort that goes into something like that. The capacity to do that is one of my favorite things about netrunner.
Those decks aren’t just innovative, they are progressive. They completely broke new ground for what you could competitively do in this game. So for me referring to decks by archetype is not so much denigrating the creativeness involved - even playing an established archetype involves some important decisions - it’s about referencing back a little to the big milestones.
I don’t really like the way “deck authorship” tends to get assigned in Netrunner. It’s like you guys keep calling the actors the scriptwriters for no apparent reason.
For instance, someone calling the archetype of Val with the signature cards [DLR, Scrubber, Faust, Fall Guy, WNP] “Dan DLR” is erroneous. If I show up at my store with that list with 3 cards changed, why should you call it “Dan DLR”? “Dan” is a WAY DLR Faust Val has been played (a really damn good, successful way), not a person who designed that deck. If I’m the one holding that pile of cards, nothing about the way I play the deck is going to be anything like the way he played it, the only author you should consider is whoever grouped a similar set of those cards together first. In Dan’s case it was a specific fellow in his meta that I’ve forgotten. But someone probably built a similar list even before that guy did. Maybe that unknown person piloted it even worse, but that doesn’t matter, the deck itself’s authorship is what you’re referring to.
I think it’s better just to refer to archetypes by the key cards. In OP’s case, someone would probably ask or assume that his deck was DLR val, and you could correct them by informing them you consider it [feature icebreaker] Val. The healthier focus on the cards in the deck rather than Dan’s personal ability to milk wins out of DLR, Blackmail, and Faust would probably more quickly resolve the question of whose footsteps you’re following if more people thought in that way.
You know, in Roseville, we use shorthand too. But one of the guys around here made it popular to say to the assumers “I can neither confirm nor deny” and then talk about the sweet new deck and/or tech after the game. His name is Chris, and he builds monster goddamn decks with some weird fuckin’ card choices.
) he got to name the archetype. Thems the breaks.