Ranking the Runners

Continuing the discussion from Exile:

What runners do you think are Tier 1 and need to be prepared for? I’m personally preparing only against Noise Mill, standard Andromeda, and Kate toolbox with Atmen.

However, I actually feel that there are many other runner archetypes almost at the level of those three decks. Here’s my ranking list:

Noise
Andromeda
Kate
CT (Oracle May)
Nasir (parasite/atman)
Whizzard
Gabe
Ken (Oracle May)
Quetzal
Silhouette
Kit
Reina
Exile
Iain Stirling
Professor

There was recently a survey posted on reddit where people were asked to rank all the runners on a scale of 1 to 5. The results are here.

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Fascinating data. I wish it was presented in other formats.

Here is a crude transposition of ID’s ranked in descending order their ratings, giving each Runner their mode rating.

Andromeda - 5 (70%)
Kate - 5 (69%)
Noise 5 - (55%)

Gabe - 4 (53%)
Chaos Theory - 4 (42%)

Reina - 3 (53%)
Iain - 3 (49%)
Nasir - 3 (47%)
Ken - 3 (46%)
Silhouette - 3 (46%)
Quetzal - 3 (45%)
Whizzard - 3 (45%)
Kit - 3 (40%)

Exile - 2 (43%)
Professor - 2 (39%)

One note: Kit, Chaos Theory, and Professor were the only 2 with second-highest ratings within 5% of the highest. CT was within 5% of 3-star, while Kit was 2% shy of 4-star. Prof was 5% shy of 1-star.

Looking at it, I think this is a very accurate rating of ID power. The top 5 are definitely what I would consider the top 5 any serious player should prepare against (the most).

Please correct me if any of my transposed data is inaccurate. Ctrl+tabbing is not the most efficient method…

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I find it interesting that Ken comes below Gabe and Iain. Whilst Gabe’s ability is nuts, it is also pretty easy to defend against these days. And I find Iain’s ability very situational for five influence. Whereas Ken generates money just for playing good criminal cards and gets two extra influence (relative to Gabe) into the bargain.

Otherwise I think it is pretty spot on.

strength of gabe resides in his pressure against HQ. Against Crim, corp usually chooses to not rez during simple runs, to avoid siphons. Gabe forces you to rez, and will therefore have an easier time landing a siphon.

My concern is whether we can and want to rate the ID’s ignoring their respective faction or do we really need to take them into account? Because let’s face it, the not-Noise Anarch ID’s are not bad at all, the whole faction is just missing cards to really support them.

This leads to a rating between factions before all else, while some strong Runner ID’s are still capable of breaking through those borders. And they can do so, because the synergy with their in-faction cards is better and/or the ID ability is just very strong on it’s own, sometimes even providing a second gameplan (Noise).
Some ID’s can be nice Meta calls, like Whizzard right now or Nasir if Glacier is getting prevalent, others are just straight inferior because they are missing serious support to raise them even above other in-faction Runners, like Exile.
But Runners like Andy, Kate or Noise will always stay strong.

I would say that we currently rate Criminals first, Shaper close second and Anarchs last place overall. And that is something the abovementioned list is not reflecting.

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