The age of Tour Guide is upon us!
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Youāve pretty much banned the whole of netrunner. Which I guess is the point. But Iām not 100% sure what it achieves.
I guess Tennin Institute FA probably works. Some sort of stimshop might work. You may or may not be able to play 6 agenda murder blue sun. I note that youāve removed many of the 3/2. I think thatās probably a mistake.
Stealth Criminal probably works ok too.
I thought for a moment that this was the CI combo format-then noticed that JH had gone. Thatās probably for the best.
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This list seems to mostly limit playstyles.
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i am interested to follow the results as an experiment. my intuition is it would be like removing the top X animals from the food chain - a new pyramid will evolve around powerful cards (e.g. tour guide) that are currently kept in check by parasite and have no natural predator if its on the ban list
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Personally, I think Parasite is necessary for the game and is totally fair without Datasucker present. Otherwise, NEXT and Grails will be allowed to grow unchecked. The only way to kill them will be Prey and Cutlery.
My hunch is that the currently list will have some unstoppable monster decks and not work at all, but we can eventually tweak it into one that provides an interesting environment that feels similar to draft but with more synergies and less filler.
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I wonder what Lukas will make of these new community led formats. Iām sure I saw an interview with him where he said this was something he wanted to avoid. This may prompt a more active approach to MWL revisions?
I guess only time will tell.
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Lukas probably wonāt really care as itās not him game any more. Whether Damon will react is a different (and more relevant) question.
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I was under the impression that Lukas would be with it for the Mumbad cycle but yeah its probably more Damon at this point.
Lukas is on Silver Bullets side and he really dislike the idea of Restrict/Ban list.
Lukas designed the Mumbad Cycle (as Design is generally 1-3 cycles ahead of Release). I believe the next cycle will be the first where Damon was in charge for the whole thing.
So does anyone know what Damonās stance is on this subject? Iām only curious because if this gained in popularity it could have implications in the core game.
Must say that Iām not against this sort of thing, itās just further exploration of the design space in deck building and play style. I guess in a similar(ish) way that Draft is.
The was a Winning Agenda podcast where he gave a long, informative interview about many subjects, particularly the MWL. I believe his sentiment was something along the lines of āI donāt like ban or restricted lists, and would rather not use them.ā Someone please correct me (and/or link the podcast) if Iām remembering wrong.
No game designer likes the idea. And I think we should view MWL in light of that: FFG felt there were some really serious issues that had to be addressed.
Some of the changes look to have had their intended effect (Clone Chip and Parasite are not played out of faction any more, NAPD is a real choice now) while others look to have been far too little or only highlight underlying design problems (Astro/SanSan, Desperado).
Vamp and Apocolypse seem like overkill for this kind of restriction. Also ProCo and Keyhole are oddly missing from this.
Now that Iām thinking about it, Iām not sure if I would enjoy this version of Netrunner at all. Itās a lot more variance based, and the concept seems to be a little flawed. The designers printed these cards for a reason, and I trust that FFG is better at designing cards than I am, even if they have some mishaps (looking at you, wireless net pavilion).
If you are really getting board with āregularā Netrunner, you can just play decks with different or āweirdā cards in them, and still do well. Even though your deck might not be the most efficient or have the most raw power, but you can rely on your player skill or experience with the deck to win. Sure, this wonāt work at worlds, but you can demolish a SC with this sort of style.
This also requires a certain skill that must be developed. I can think of a few people in my local meta that bring some sweet brews to our local meetups, and are able to contest teir 1 decks with them. Heck, I even get exited about the occasional brew myself! But creating decks/archatypes is a skill, one @TheBigBoy has obviously mastered. But sometimes all you gotta do to get something janky to work is to just try it a bunch.
tl:dr; There are a lot of cards out there. If you play some of the ones you forgot existed and put some time into it, you could have a competative deck, even if it isnāt the most efficient.
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I feel the real issue is that the rest of the game is designed around these cards. Like you pointed out with Security Testing, itās less good on its own than when stacked with Desperado/Dirty Laundry/Datasucker/etc. To use an extreme example it would be like banning Villages in Dominion- even if in some alternate universe Village was overpowered itās considered a vital engine and removing it would send all sorts of unexpected waves through the game.
Uhā¦ The recommended way to select cards in Dominion is full random, and something like 25% of the randomly generated boards donāt contain a Village or Village variant. That ruleset is used even at the highest levels of competitive play for Dominion and works fine without any objections from top players. When your analogy is compared to real data, your analogy supports the opposite conclusion to the one youāve drawn here.
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Yeah looking back on it it was a really bad analogy because the strength of Dominion is its flexibility in setup. However, I would still argue that the problem with a simple ban list (especially of cards that go all the way back to Core Set) is that the power level of the game is designed around those cards.
I had a really strong knee-jerk reaction to the phrase ābanned listā and thought I would hate it, but having read the full post Iām actually really intrigued.
I second voltorocksā suggestion that Jackson should be considered āneutral foundation for all decksā rather than part of a specific archetype weāre trying to avoid.
I get the desire to leave in the neutral money cards like Sure Gamble and Daily Casts, but not sure Sweeps Week qualifies as it gives NBN basically a second set of Sure Gambles which other corps donāt get. I might swap that in for Jackson, though we could probably find a better candidate for NBN top-5 cardsā¦
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I think the cardpool is big enough that that is no longer true. There are other answers to problem cards- theyāre just less efficient. For instance, if tour guide is everywhere you can slot switchblade or even mongoose. The whole idea is to let a different set of cards rise to the top of the power curve, and to see if alternative answers can surface to fight them.
edit- meant to be a reply to StashAugstine
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So after building decks for this and playing a couple games, I agree that jackson should come back, and potentially RDI comes in while keyhole moves out. I also think Proco is a bigger issue than mopus, but Iām less certain on that.
EDIT: I do want to say that building decks with this is more fun than I thought it would be, and I would encourage everyone who is hating on it really hard to at least brew a pair before coming at it and saying they hate it. If you know anyone else interested, games are fun too.
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