I have never owned a color printer, and during most of my time as a Netrunner player, I also haven’t owned a black-and-white one (not that it would matter). If I needed a proxy, I printed one somewhere. If I had no time, I did not use the card. I think it is more important to provide my opponents with good gaming experience by using easy to read cards, than to play with a last-minute deck change I cannot properly make.
I have TOd a lot of Netrunner events spanning about 5 years. During all this time, I had a player need an emergency proxy exactly once. Do we really need to solve such rare cases in the rules? Those can easily be solved by a TO ruling when such case happens.
We’re currently looking for any and all solutions to the question of card availability. If you have one, please let us know.
With regards to providing replacement cards or cards that are copies of FFG’s official ones, we simply can’t for legal reasons. A few fan alts and our own templates/work are probably fine (still technically illegal) but we just can’t start selling their sets/product wholesale because they will likely litigate if we do.
Blank templates that TOs can hand-write on are just one solution to availability. If you run an event and any of these don’t work for you, you can decide not to use them. With any solution we have, it will likely be up to the TO.
Yes, Nisei cannot sell FFG’s sets. But players can print those cards for their own use and I don’t think FFG would try chasing them individually. Also, in many jurisdictions, I think they would not succeed doing this anyway, especially when it is impossible to buy the cards printed by FFG.
So, for me, the solution should be exactly how it was during FFG-Netrunner time. Each player is responsible for having their decks ready to play. Big majority of Netrunner organized play happens in places where it is easy and not very expensive to print things in colour. There are multiple such places in my city (Eastern Europe, about 800,000 inhabitants) including one which is open from 7 am every day, so someone travelling for a tournament from a small village can simply turn up there in the morning and print their decks. Printing 100 nice colour proxies at that place costs about the same money as 100 medium quality card sleeves, so definitely not a prohibitive cost. You just need a bit of research and preparation, to provide your opponents with good gaming experience.
And this should IMO be the default NISEI policy. Each player needs a deck, cards should be FFG originals or look close enough to be easily recognizable from the other side of the table (i.e. colour prints, because art is what most people use to recognize cards). If a player expects they are going to have trouble sticking to this, they should contact the TO and look for a solution. If a TO expects multiple players in their area to have trouble sticking to this, they can introduce local policy (and communicate it clearly each time they organize a tournament).
BTW this is a good rule to follow generally. Global policies should lean to the stricter side, and people should be allowed to introduce local, more relaxed policies. This way someone who had no time to read local policies can simply stick to the global one and be sure they still comply with whatever was agreed in the place they go to.
I forgot about this, but we do have an official proxy policy already. This will go on our website eventually, but here it is for now: Click Here. You’ll find it within the article, heading is just Proxy Policy.
A: You may order GNKs and run those however you wish; there are no requirements. Store Champ, Regional, and National kits will require that you agree to our policies.
@icecoldjazz has said they’ll be on later to explain in more detail their thought process and enforcement policies.
If that is the case, why would you feel the need to alter your rules? It sounds like anyone in your area will have pretty proxies, if they need them.
Beyond that, it seems you are projecting your anecdotal circumstances to apply to everyone. I think NISEI’s goal has been inclusivity, which will be increasingly challenging as time goes on and we get further and further from official FFG print runs. By setting the standards a bit relaxed now, they will hopefully not need revising soon. Not everywhere has cheap, easy access to color printing like you do.
Because, with the current rules, they will not need them.
Grayscale proxies are an issue because if I have them, my opponents have less fun playing me (they have to put extra effort into recognizing my board) and I get some competitive advantage (it is easier for my opponent to misrecognize my board and make a mistake because of this). So, with those rules, if I go to a tournament trying to win it, the logical thing to do is having a deck where every single card is a grayscale proxy, and copies of the same card are slightly different for further confusion. Of course they will all be clear and readable, so that I am within the rules and no TO can do anything about this. This way, my chances to do well in a tournament go up at the expense of some NPE for my opponents.
Of course, it is important that people can play, and I know there are places where black-and-white proxies are the only possibility. But those places are a minority. They should not be accomodated in the global policy, they should be given right to introduce local, more permissible policies, and encouraged to use this right as needed. Local TOs know what is possible at their place and will be able to make a good decision.
TL;DR Whatever rules are introduced, there will be people who try to use them to their advantage. That’s why you need rules which minimize possibilities for such (ab)use.
I would strongly disagree with this personally. I think minorities of various kinds should be at the forefront of NISEI’s thinking and am glad to see this has been the case so far.
Ultimately, this is the policy. I’m sorry you don’t like it @hsiale but it’s unlikely to change.
Proxies are at the discretion of the TO, so another reason to possible need blank cards is if someone turns up with a problematic fan made proxy that the TO decides is not acceptable.
Yeah, not talking about last-minute deck changes, but about making a functional deck at all. You can’t carry a full Netrunner collection if you move back and forth across the Atlantic every few months, but there used to be sufficiently frequent rules changes and card releases that would make decks no longer playable in that timeframe.
As I said, good for you, but I’d rather make sure people can play than exclude them because they have a hand-written proxy in their deck (which I don’t see as necessarily being worse than a printed one, provided you take care to write legibly).
Sorry, but not wanting to allow grayscale proxies is so over the top that I don’t know what to say. What’s wrong with grayscale; they aren’t any less legible than colour-printed ones. At this point you’re taking only aesthetics; this has nothing to do with useability.
Colour printing is like 10 times more expensive than grayscale in most places, just for your information.
NISEI luckily stands for inclusivity and accessibility. Requiring colour of all things would have nothing to do with that.
I’m totally happy if my opponent uses grey proxies, as it means I’m playing him instead of not playing him and it lowers the accessibility of the game which is important in it’s current state. It’s important that they are of decent quality. And currently everyone playing has most of the cards, so the proxy guy is very likely a newbie.
What you are saying is very similar as opponents:
not using click tracker
not having a clear board state
And at the end Nisei need to make rules and they don’t make everyone happy as it was with FFG, so please consider this. I don’t like the Core 2019, but I accept it, as we need people making the rules and they don’t make the rules as I would!
When will the new MWL enter effect? I’m worried about the power of the new Champion cards and I know that, were I to play them, I would drive players out of the door.
Color copies, even in the US, are pretty expensive, so I think this is probably incorrect globally. It may well be that for your specific case, color copies are broadly affordable, but NISEI definitely should not assume that to be the case generically.
We’ve allowed greyscale proxies at GNK events I’ve been in and part of since the very beginning of the game (and hey–that’s how the playtesting worked!) and I’d like to try to reassure you that there’s never been a particular problem with them. They are legible and clear; not necessarily pretty, but pretty is a step up from functional.
I look at a color proxy from the other side of the table. I immediately know the card and 99% of the cases I know exactly what it is doing. Game continues smoothly.
I look at a black-and-white proxy. I don’t recognize the card by art, I have to bother my opponent to give me the card so I can read the title. This happens multiple times in the game because the whole deck of my opponent is like this (as faceup cards of my opponent are open knowledge, I am not supposed to memorize them, so I check often to be sure). A match which would be 55-60 minutes goes to time instead.
Very nice of you to cut my post exactly the way that makes it say something I didn’t say. Did you read the next sentence?
Yes, we should support minorities. But we should do this in wise ways. I knew a person, who had arachnophobia strong enough, that they were not only afraid of real spiders, but also of depictions of them. If somene sits next to them wearing a t-shirt with a spider drawing, they would simply stand up and leave to avoid freaking out. Suppose this person started playing Netrunner. Would you support a global ban on spider t-shirts at Netrunner events, or would you trust the local TO that they will introduce a local policy that supports this player without inconveniencing another player at the other end of the world who happens to believe that they access more agendas when wearing their lucky spider t-shirt?
If my opponent is not using a click tracker, I can do this. I did this a lot in complicated situations and there have been several times when a CI7 combo has failed only because my click tracking has shown to my comboing opponent that they have less clicks than they thought they have. If my opponent has a board state messy enough to make it impossible to follow their plays, I can call an official to make a ruling. A full grayscale deck is legal within Nisei rules, I see reasons why this is wrong so I try to show them.
I’m not in the US, so cannot say about prices there. In the place where I live, it costs about $4 to print 100ish color proxies (11 A4 pages, enough for two Netrunner decks). This $4 is about 1 hour of work at minimal wage here, I wouldn’t say this is a prohibitive cost for cards one will use for a full day tournament, and they will likely reuse most of them next time. Possibly Poland is a cheap printing heaven. Out of curiosity, how much does it cost to print 1 page in colour at your place?
