Considering sleeves:
Extract from the rules from 1.1.16:
If a player’s deck contains alternate art cards, the sleeves must be art sleeves or opaque.
Extract from current rules (4.2. and beyond):
Players are required to sleeve their decks in identical opaque card sleeves for Formal and Premier events.
Are art sleeves allowed from 4.2. forward or not?
If they are a subcategory of opaque sleeves why did they differentiate between the two before?
They are a subcategory of opaque sleeves.
For example, clear sleeves with art on them (I’ve never seen them, but it’s good that the new rules cover this issue) would be allowed with the old rules, but not the new ones.
Nevertheless I wrote a mail to clarify this issue.
I just want to know why they even differentiated between opaque and art sleeves in the first place if the latter is a part of the former.
Just making sure.
I actually don’t like the new rule as much anyway.
Just stating that cards must not be identifiable when looking at the backside, aka not marked, would have been fine enough I guess…
Metallic sleeves that have a high reflection rate and can be used to cheat are not banned, right?
I mean in case of rules regarding sleeves and possible cheating options it might not have been to bad to look at the competition, aka MTG, or?
That would require the judge to be able to extremely easily and extremely quickly identify if cards are marked. This rule makes it harder to cheat, and yeah, sure, it’s still not impossible to cheat at Netrunner but I’m happy with any rule change that makes it harder.
I’m not sure about how metallic sleeves might give you an advantage, but certainly, I think a lot of Netrunner’s (tournament) rules are now in line with Magic’s, which is a good thing for the most part, yes.
Some metallic sleeves are so reflective that you can see the card image reflection on the sleeves when lifting cards. (look under the card by lifting)
So you just try and sneakily lift your cards from your deck without overtly showing your opponent that you’re doing so? Do ninjas cheat often? I feel like this would be hard to get away with
For instance you lift the top 3 cards off your deck to present them for a successful keyhole run, then look down at the metal sleeve that is now the top card of the deck and see what the bottom card is.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I thought this was interesting. My friend plays and watches X-wing, and apparently at an X-Wing Regional Championship yesterday the entire Top 8 decided to ID in the 6th round, keeping the next 10 ranked players out of the cut. He said he heard that it was to make a statement on how easily the new rules can be abused.
I don’t see how that would be even remotely likely to happen in Netrunner, though. It would need 1) the top 8 playing only against themselves in the final round and 2) player at spot #8 to have more than two more prestige than #9 (or exactly two more prestige + much better SoS to not risk it). The first requirement I can see happening often enough, but the 2nd requirement probably almost never happens. And if/when it does happen, I don’t see how the top8 didn’t earn their spots in the cut regardless of the IDs.
Ah, the old “well, they earned it” defense; why bother playing the final round at all then, at which point, why bother playing recursively, etc etc – if they earned it, why were there ten players within striking distance that only collusion guarantees the lockout on? You’ve only earned it at the end of all the games or at the point at which it doesn’t matter if you lose every remaining game.
I cannot understand any justification for a tournament structure that removes the incentive to compete in every game.
I’d have thought it was pretty obvious: each of those players got prestige points for N wins, but only actually earned N-1 wins. That’s one win worth of prestige that wasn’t earned, regardless of what they might have earned if they’d actually played the last two games like big boys and girls.
Please don’t compare IDs in X-Wing to Netrunner. It is a VERY different situation. In Netrunner, draws in Swiss are common, and unavoidable. A split in Swiss is almost the norm at the end of the day. In X-Wing, draws are incredibly hard to create naturally. You’d basically have to deliberately never engage to reliably draw, and that is very counter to standard play. This is important because if IDs are illegal, they are easily enforced in X-Wing, but not in Netrunner.
On top of this, prestige is a different beast. You get 5 for a win in X-Wing, 3 for a low margin of victory win, and 1 for the very rare draw. This means that you’re basically generating two wins - giving prestige to two players - out of a match in a game where someone should walk away from a game with 0 prestige >99% of the time.
Eliminating draws is what X-Wing should look to, given that they’re such a rare occurrence.
Different games, different situations.
I wasn’t comparing the two or trying to make a statement. I don’t know X-Wing tournament structure. I just thought it was interesting how the new rules are affecting different games in the tournament scene. Thanks for explaining the differences. 
I don’t think it justifies the principle, but the points system you detail there at least makes artificial draws “less bad”, since by agreeing to draw the players reduce their combined expected points tally. In the case of what would play out to a minor win they give up a point between them, and three points in what would play out to a major win.
In Netrunner, artificially drawing a match actually increases the expected points tally of the pair! Four is the most that you’re ever going to get between you and the real expected haul must account for the likelihood of going to time (-1 point usually compared to an artificial draw), or even the very small chance of going to time in the first game (-3 points)!
From actual real world experience at the Cambridge regional, only the top table could safely take ID’s… and maybe the second, but since tiebreakers aren’t easily calculated it wasn’t at all clear. It was five rounds and after 4 there was one undefeated 8-0, two 7-1’s (including me), a handful of 6-2’s and a TON of 5-3’s (It ended up being a clean cut to top 8 at 7-3). I think that’s a fairly typical tournament breakdown where there are a bunch of people who need to sweep to have a chance to make the cut or to be sure they are in. Unless we start having tournaments where SoS is routinely posted you are not going to see many ID’s in my opinion… and if it’s only the top one or two tables doing it who really cares? I never understood why people would want to do it when I started, but clearly endurance is a part of the game… it’s why first round byes are great, and it’s why anyone would gladly chill out for 65 minutes in the last round before elims if they can. I certainly don’t regret taking the ID as the 7-1 paired with the 8-0. Do not feel dirty. Would ID again. Five Stars. A++.
If only we had the flashy thingies from MIB and could erase people’s memories of having just lost or won their previous rounds, so everyone played to win every round because they had no idea whether they were trying to climb from 10 seed to 8 seed or were about to fall in the same direction.
As long as there’s a cut, people will have motivation to intentionally draw. The question is wether it happens in secret (illegal, but hard to enforce) or in the open.
I’m for dumping the cut.
This makes it seem like something very strange was going on to make the top 8 drawing viable. If the difference in points was really 1 point for a draw vs potential 5 points for a win. How was it that not one person not in the top 8 already was unable to use a sudden relative 4 point gain to move ahead?
The 9th place player was already a full large victory behind the 8th place player?
8th place was 5 points ahead of 9. The majority of rounds usually award a full 5 points. It was a bit of a corner case, but way more probable than in ANR.
Here’s the score sheet, for those interested.
How does MoW work?