Agreed on that front too.
From a pure design standpoint I like Red Herrings and even Strongbox but they just canāt compare to Caprice whose usefulness will generally extend beyond a single encounter and can be placed on central servers OR a scoring remote (I mean you could put Red Herrings on R&D per say but the runner just trashes it without much cost).
I would like to see more non-unique, non region defensive upgrades but Iām sure itās tricky to design without making them ubiquitous and oppressive.
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I know Iām gonna get some boo-ing from this, but I would leave things the way they are or make a few mods, if I worked/ran FFG. One card I wouldnāt touch would be Rumor Mill, tho. This card, single handedly exterminated 3 (pieces of) ICE servers you had to run twice, not to mention allowing some Indexing to come back on R&D.
The only reason I say this, is because guys COMPLAINED SO HARD, about Ash, Jackson, and yes Caprice, so HARD. Then FFG was like OK = Rumor Mill, now you want to go backwards and ban Rumor Mill. I feel people want to ban this because they, are SO USED to install Jackson Draw2 Draw2, I mean itās just a way of LIFE for some guys out there and how they run their Corps. TWO BAD, youāre gonna have to get used to not having Jackson when rotation happens so, start learning now.
And Caprice, do we really want Caprice to be chilling without an āAsh Clauseā? By Ash Clause I mean she should at least have an Errata about if you lose the PSI game you at least get to Trash her for all of your efforts. I mean where are all the PSI Cry Babies? Theyāre GONE! Gone for good. PSI is now playable without guys losing their minds and wanting to quit.
IDK whatever, Ban Happy Cretins everywhere is all I see, now that we finally got an MWL, they just want even MORE. Sad. The game changes month to month.
For years the NBA had Michael Jordan, in which people might have got sick of him, then there was Kobe Bryant, and they got sick of him, now for a minute there has been LeBron James. No matter what you do there will always be that BEST CARD at the top. You just donāt ban it, you create a different league or something, with wholesale changes, and they are doing this with ROTATION.
Thereās always going to be a #1 and if itās #1 itās probably pretty good to stay #1, thatās lifeā¦
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They printed reasonable fixes, polop and councilman. RM is just not needed.
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In essence what Ulrik writes below, but i do think Rumor Mill adresses a problem still. It just does it without leaving any alternative left. Glacier corps that aim to score 4/2ās and 5/3ās need a āserver enhancerā because installing more ICE simply has declining rates of return.
However Caprice is too good for this, and initially i proposed to ban her on the list iām organizing because of this, and as a comprimise. What Ulrik says is true, there are good enough counters, but iām not keen on having the need to include counters to have a chance against something. Sheās not OP, sheās just definite power-tier, like Breaking News essentially. In the end she ended up on my optional āMWLā because players argued for good reasons that she is still needed.
Even as a main Jinteki-glacier player (and lover of good, balanced games) since about a year back i am however looking forward to the day when she is not needed anymore.
Looking at Rumor Mill from a āthey printed this because yāall were whining about Capriceā is actually a great way of thinking better of the decision to print the card in the first place.
āYou really hate Caprice + Ash servers that much? Well, here.ā
But the two big concerns about Rumor Mill:
- Without Rumor Mill, corps are now resorting to strategies that the people who disliked Caprice + Ash servers now like even less.
- Top tier players seem to think the meta is less rewarding to play in.
Anyway, if you want to talk basketball, look up the history of goaltending. It was banned because people thought it made the game stupid. Probably a better analogy than comparing banning Rumor Mill to banning Michael Jordan.
I think you are right on the money that we need to be very cautious about being too ban happy and move the format around too capriciously. Honestly, I think a lot of us are hoping for a new MWL update soon just because we would like the format to get new checks on it but would rather those checks come from an official source.
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Even with Rumor Mill, you are starting to see Caprice, Ash, and Batty around. In a world with FiHP, Iām not sure PolOp and Councilman are very good counters.
A short time ago, I was arguing that Faust cripples gear-check rush decks, and someone said it was just the nature of the game to have bad match ups. Rumor Mill cripples traditional glacier. Is that just the nature of an evolving game or a profound problem requiring a ban list?
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Itās a good question and a good point. I was mainly just trying to respond to the post I was responding to which I thought was kind of overlooking the rationale for banning Rumor Mill rather than addressing it.
My personal stake in any kind of format modifications is that they increase the amount of fun people are having. And I certainly hope that banning a card always is going to cause some loss of fun (even if it doesnāt cause a net loss of fun, some people are going to be disappointed to find cards they canāt use, and especially disappointed to have cards they like taken away).
I donāt think fun is the main focus with the suggested banlist, but thatās where Iām coming from.
Personally, I play mainly Jinteki but Rumor Mill has barely touched by enjoyment of the game. Itās really not very prevalent in my meta. But if a bunch of players find that they enjoy the format more without it around, that gets my attention. Certainly, I think a lot of people at Worlds were disappointed at the lack of strategic diversity Corp side, and also about the relative strength of runner factions.
Faust is trickier because I can imagine more people enjoy playing Faust than Rumor Mill, but truthfully, itās all tricky.
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An evolving game might have lots of archetype changes,but it will never touch the essence of the game.Glacier as an archetype that seems to present Netrunner as its core being crippled by a single card is problematic.The whole āWe complain about Caprice so here is Rumor Millā thing is ridiculous,they designed card way before we play them,and when they designed Rumor Mill I think they were as sure as hell that there are PolOp and Councilman.
And already a lot of discussions on whether MWL or ban FiHP,looks like nobody really like that card too.
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Um. What? Indexing was and still is one of the best counters (at least the best one in green) to remote Caprice. Canāt win the remote? Go elsewhere. I donāt disparage people if they hated Caprice/TFP, but all things being equal, the Caprice + remote game was highly strategic and there were alternate paths forward for the runner. In these games it was the runner who struggled to figure out the puzzle of the corpās servers: āwhere are the agendas?ā āwhere are my outs?ā
In the Rumor Mill era, itās the opposite ā Corps with a scoring plan try to figure out how to best one card ā except thereās no solution to the puzzle. You just lose your remote, your ice, and then you lose the game. Even if you hated Caprice and the variance that came with psi games (though I still maintain psi games are mostly not random), at least there was a pathway forward for the opponent. Powerful cards that allow counterplay are great. Powerful cards that disallow counterplay are bullshit.
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As I check in on Stimhack forums, which I seem to regularly do despite not playing much these days, Iāve noticed that the only threads with consistent activity are those trying to fix / change / alter the current state of the game. Many of the regulars in this forum are putting a great deal of time into trying to deal with widely perceived problems. That doesnāt make them ban happy cretins. Your commentary is woefully misinformed and does a disservice to these efforts. I find the subsequent responses humorously benign and reflective of why I like these forums.
Then again, maybe your post is a parody and I missed the tag.
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All I know is Iāll be the last motherfucker playing this thing, simply because my wife doesnāt understand why I had to buy the same game box āNetrunnerā three times. āDonāt you have that one already?ā she asks. I try to tell her aboutā¦ Ice Carverā¦
Donāt fuck this up guys. I need this.
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These cards and Interdiction are all counters around Caprice/Batty/Ash that require some form of skill from either the Corp or Runner. Rumor Mill on the other hand just requires the runner to spend a click and it blanks so many cards. There is no need for skill with Rumor Mill and its broad use means even if you are not up against Ash/Caprice/Batty, you can just play it and you know you are going to at least take out the three Jacksons in the Corpās deck. It is just lazy and poor design.
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PolOp and Councilman are cool and fun cards. I started playing Netrunner around this time and including one or the other without really understanding why. (I saw them in decklists, seemed good enough for me, but didnāt really understand what they were for.)
One of the coolest moments in my learning came when I was able to perceive an opponent running HQ just to install PolOpā¦ I see what youāre doing, bud. A few games later I sniped my first defensive upgrade with PolOp, my eyes widened in comprehension. āAhhh, coolā¦ā
Rumor Mill has great art, but I would not want new players to learn such clunky play.
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