Pay-to-Win Challenge

regardless of the ridiculousness of your friends statements, it can be a fun challenge to play with a “handicapped” card pool, especially if your playgroup has widely varying skill levels (i.e. some new players and some vets).

"Core Set vs. " is a bit hardcore; especially since it gives your opponent easy knowledge of your entire card pool. maybe try “core set plus any 2 expansions” or something; keeps them guessing as to which set/s you might have gone with, but still constricts your options and offers a more interesting deckbuilding challenge.

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I think its kind of a ludicrous statement, because 90% of people playing Netrunner competitively have spent the exact same amount of money in the game.

Now, if their claim is that there is an unfair burden on players at the kitchen table to compete with varying degrees of financial stake in the game, that’s not invalid, but that’s certainly not “Pay to Win”, but I could see how you could feel that way without plascrete carapace or Jackson Howard (or if only one person had those cards). The guys in my playgroup tend to drag behind 1-3 datapacks, and don’t think it has ever been a big issue. Sometimes they get blindsided by a new card they didn’t know to expect, but by and large, nobody has ever been obliterated by this difference.

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My play group has run tournaments with 1 Core vs No Core (all expansions but no Core allowed), as well as a quirky league with banned cards vs Core (League of Extraordinary Cards & Tournament | Android: Netrunner). They both worked pretty well!

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The World Championship winning Corp/Runner combo used:

x3 Core Set [Could have been x2 if not for the third Desperado] - 90 Dollars
x2 Deluxe Expansions - 46 Dollars
x13 Datapacks [CE,FP,HS,WLA,DT,FL,FP,MT,OM,TSB,TC,UP,WLA] - 169 Dollars

For a total outlay of 300 Dollars.

This is actually pretty comparable to the World Championship Magic the Gathering Deck, which is about 280 dollars if you buy it all as singles.

Of course with Netrunner, 300 dollars gives you enough cards to deckbuild pretty much all of the top 16 finishers at Worlds, find your favourite, build variants to your hearts content with extra loaner decks just laying around - whereas with Magic 300 dollars lets you netdeck 1 good deck. Better hope you don’t get bored playing it.

You do pay for power when you play Netrunner. Pretty much to the same extent you might in MtG. It’s a fact. It’s just that you get SO MUCH VALUE and re-playability along with that power that there is simply no comparison between the two games.

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When I read Zeb’s post, here’s what I heard in my head (in Arthur C. Clarke’s voice)

…indistinguishable from magic.

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I’ve done Core + What Lies Ahead games as Noise and Weyland and stomped newer full cardpool players before.

If you added WLA to your core challenge, just because the expanded agenda suite and plascrete, it would have made your life a whole lot easier.

This is what’s important. I can’t think of a single game (card, video, tabletop, whatever) where more options doesn’t give more power at higher levels of competition. It’s the nature of games. LCGs don’t create an environment where all cards are created equal. They create an environment where you own ALL the options for significantly less money than most other games.

If I remember correctly, I watched in a interview with Lukas, he mentioned basically putting the “strongest cards” in the core set, that that was the power cap, and they never planned to blank those cards with obvious replacements. And a lot of the workhorse cards for decks are STILL core set cards: desperado, AstroScript, EtF, Scorched Earth, Parasite, Datasucker, the list goes on, but the point being is that buck for buck, the core set cards do WORK. The game has done a fantastic job growing in new directions without true power creep (I think any time a major weakness gets shored up, you could call that creep, but not by just rolling out stronger and stronger cards)

We don’t necessarily see stronger cards (usually) that outright replace existing options from the core but we do see cards that fill space that didn’t exist before. This is where the power from expansions come from.

Example: SMC and Test Run. There were not comparable cards in core for program tutoring in Shaper that they replaced, but they’ve become basic to the strategy in faction.

In the core box, some cards were powerfull/optimized for your goal in deckbuilding. Today, most of them are optimized.

Now I still think you have a chance. 1 cent on Gabe and 1c on Weyland :smiley:

This is pretty close to the Weyland core set build I had the most success with: Core Set Weyland · NetrunnerDB

Man, look at all the crappy ICE.

Why SanSan City Grid?

Click savings, I think. I think it was probably 2x SanSan, 1x Data Raven, 1x Ichi, 1x Junebug now that I think more about it.

It also gets you a much bigger community. More places and tournaments to play, bigger recognition and potentially bigger prizes.

Just saying.

Quality over quantity; from my experience, the Netrunner community is much better than the Magic community. There are many people in the Netrunner community I would be friends with even without Netrunner, I can’t say the same about Magic.

couldn’t agree more. MTG community toxicity is rivaled only by wh40k in the (non-video) gaming community. Not to say that I haven’t played with a ton off great people over the years, but I’ve also played so, so many more intolerable a**hats.

another thing to point out is that $300 get you the entire Netrunner community: there is now no format in the game you can’t full participate or compete in. $300 in MtG gets you a sliver of this “much Bigger community.” You might be competetive in one particular format or meta, or have playable decks in one or two less expensive formats; nevermind how quickly you’ll get bored with your one or two decks.

I really don’t mean to hate on MtG, it’s given me so many great times, but dollar for dollar there is no comparison to be made here; Netrunner gets you more game for your dollar in the same way that the sun is brighter than a campfire.

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To be quite blunt about it… part of magic’s marketing strategy is that it attracts really immature people. Skill and experience are a much smaller factor to a player’s win rate, as compared to “are you playing a tier-1 deck” and “did you draw the right cards at the right time”. It’s easy to win frequently enough with your deck on autopilot that you can blame all your losses on bad luck, and never have to introspect about your play. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I associate this with other abrasive personality traits.

Netrunner avoids this, at the cost of a much higher barrier to entry in terms of rules understanding. If you’re not good at questioning yourself, you will lose every game as you facecheck architect or walk right into an inside job.

That said, I’m fortunate to have a really excellent magic community where I live full of people I’m happy to call friends outside of magic, and that keeps me playing the game instead of only netrunner. Just in case any of y’all are reading this. :slight_smile:

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I think of it this way.

A deck building game such as Legendary or Star Realms or Dominion packs all the relevant cards for all players in one box and calls it a game. This is a pretty traditional board game or card game strategy. I allows any player to step right into the game with no further commitment save to learn the rules.

A collectible card game such as Magic, Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh and the like requires that you first secure a card pool through trading, booster opening and sometimes fixed assortment products. In order to build any deck you must first acquire a collection sufficient to fill your desired card list. This means that the barrier to entry for serious play is very high outside of varients such as booster draft. Casual formats allow play with whatever jank you happen to be lucky enough to own. Serious deck building costs serious money. $500 a deck is not uncommon and running multiple decks over the course of the year chasing a meta is easily a $2000 a year prospect. Without the right cards skill has a negligible affect on game outcome.

Living Card Games are in effect an attempt to make the CCG model more approachable while maintaining the same sort of high quality continuous delivery. Cards in the competitive pool are always available at msrp rather than extortionist prices post original publishing. Cards are provided in small fixed distribution packs and somewhat larger deluxe boxes which has 2 effects. One, you always know where to find the cards you want, no gambling or trading necessary. Two consumption necessary to maintain a complete playset of the cardpool is a small monthly fee similar to a magazine subscription.

Technically all are Pay to Play. The first requires a 1 time moderate investment to obtain the materials. The second requires a continuous time and money input that is very large, akin to hobbies such as semi-pro bass fishing or competitive downhill skiing to actually compete on a skill only level. The last requires a moderate continuous investment similar to an MMO or magazine sub.

Pay to win would literally be you could give the just $5 for an extra 10 life during a game of magic or for an extra click in netrunner.

I would also add that Netrunner seems to have a much lower variance dependence than MTG and the use of clicks as a resource seriously makes it a much more skill dependent game. A Core only deck may well beat another deck with the right pilot a fair percentage of the time.

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This is technically correct, but Magic is effectively pay to win for most people because they have to pay for objectively better (and more expensive) cards. You’re not paying for an extra 10 life, but you are paying to be able to play with a rare that has a strictly beneficial ability on top of stats that match or exceed its common counterpart.

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Promo Eli actually makes you loose more if not x3, and loose a lot more in x3 because you’re actually stupid ^^ (j/king)