Since the announcement of the MWL I started thinking about restricted formats and how much I enjoy them. One thing that I miss from MtG is the countless different formats in which to play the game. There’s draft, with it’s myriad different styles and restrictions, but also in Constructed there are so many. From Pauper (where you can only use “common” rarity cards in your deck) to Singleton (every card has to be different).
One idea for an interesting format I had was 1 Core Set + 1 Deluxe Box and you had to play a runner and a corp ID from that Deluxe Box. Another idea I had was No-Influence where you could only use cards within the faction. Admittedly, HB and Shaper may dominate a format like that, but you never know. Another format could be a “Pauper” type in which you could only use 1 and 2 influence cards in your deck. Singleton would also be fun to play.
The Core Set + Deluxe has been used in multiple places. For me, locally, we’ve tried it to get players who don’t have full cards pools into organized play (though it really didn’t change anything). It’s a fun experiment once in a while.
Haven’t thought of a singleton format though, somewhat to my surprise. Would probably also be fun.
That said, of course, I doubt many of these formats would ever go past the casual level.
Yeah almost all of the ~100 formats in MtG are non-tournament formats. But some people start playing the alternate formats regularly, as well as Standard for a different experience once in a while. Maybe I’ll start a 1 Core + Deluxe League on Jinteki.
There’s a point to be made though that playing this type of format doesn’t imply a lesser skill level than normal tournament play. Just because you choose to do something in addition to or instead of grinding out practice rounds for a Store Champs doesn’t mean you’re a “casual.”
Ah. I think you may have misunderstood what I meant about “casual.” I meant that with regard to FFG’s Tournament Rules. We’ll never see any sort of tournament run (or so I expect) with much more support than regular GNKs. I can see alternative formats popping up (I’d be especially excited about some form of singleton format that would only get better when rotation starts - that is, it is unaffected by rotation), but I don’t see them reaching the same level (tournament-wise, not skill-wise) as, say, anything above a Store Championship.
One remark is that theoridically netrunner doesnt have rarity. Influence doesn’t mean the power level of a card but the costs of using it OOF. So it usually refer to those in faction staples, not powercreeps. And this means that we cannot have the so called common variant since it is not fair for those who reply on in faction toys.
There’s build your own Standard in MtG. For ANR that would probably just be Core, a cycle and a big box. There might be have to be some artifcial restrictions though.
Formats like this therefore need to let every deck play 3 Jackson Howard for free.
I am very behind this idea.
What do people think an unlimited influence variant would look like? Like, choose any id, and play with no restricted cards, or number of cards, or any number of out of faction cards.
But what about the source and clot haha, can’t you just counter your astro train with all your clone chips? I know it’s a crazy idea, to could always restrict certain cards from being in certain IDS If that would make things better. We need a really good brainstorming session to make an awesome format. I would totally be into throwing around ideas with whomever
I like the idea of limiting the number of cards you can run in your deck more. Like it isn’t as gross to astrotrain when you only have 1 or 2. Desperado isn’t good if you can’t draw it cause there is only one in your deck. That way it can limit how you use these cards but doesn’t ruin your influence (since criminal has none to spare)