I think it’s fine to ask to watch games so long as you ask and that refusal is accepted without judgement. Netrunner is a pretty good spectator sport. The reason I go to events is to have a good time.
Part of me thinks decklists should be shared after Swiss. But even then, you get an advantage from watching someone playing. I’m of the opinion that we should get over it and allow people to watch games. I guess the problem is that if you share information freely, you can’t get away with not playing Overwriter in your Jinteki PE like @mtgred did at Worlds.
For the sake of enjoyment and fairness, I think spectating should be allowed. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the alternative.
Going overboard with the spirit of ‘no scouting’ like this is particularly frustrating. Along with it making for dull post-game conversations with your friends, it’s not strictly in the rules, utterly unenforceable, and cedes an advantage to every other player who does have their friends tell them what happened.
I mean, I get it guys. I’d also love to talk in depth about my games right after they happened. Just realize that in doing so you’re screwing the other guy. Some people don’t mind, some people do. Respect that.
Fwiw, I personally don’t care one bit if people watch or comment about my lists.
I respect that. I really do. Which is why I think that the no scouting, spectating rule needs to go. Otherwise people like you are at a disadvantage and everyone has less fun.
Here’s an argument for why it might actually make things more fair in the end: I’ve played in plenty of cuts this years where all my opponents were rematches from swiss, while other people played fresh opponents in the cut. I’ll leave it to you to decide who was getting screwed in that scenario.
…and since the cut games are one side only, this matters more in some pairings than it does in others. What’s worse, the value of that information is completely decklist- and matchup-dependent (“Is he running Clot?”, “Is he running Overwriters?”).
I’m a info sec nerd in the real world, and i’ve always liked applying Kerckhoffss principle (Kerckhoffs's principle - Wikipedia) to deck building. That is - if i make a deck that relies on my opponent not knowing what is in my deck, then its going to be a bad deck. Build a deck around the idea that everyone you will play will know your deck card for card.
I agree that’s the better principle to follow while deck building, but that doesn’t mean other ways are less valid, they just get (probably) less competitive decks at the end of the day.
It’s not inconceivable that someone would bring some maximum jank that relies on not knowing anything about the deck to function to a tournament, They probably wouldn’t be playing to win, but just to have fun, and it ends up getting spoiled if people spread it around rapidly.
…In the end, all of that is moot to me. Whether it’s a good idea to limit “scouting” like FFG does or not, the fact it is against tournament rules. It’s not an especially restrictive rule, but it’s probably not a good rule either. I can’t speak for others, but I much rather follow the rules of tournaments I enter, even if I think they’re dumb; I get why some would disregard that rule, but I personally feel it’s a matter of integrity, so I wouldn’t.
1000% agree with this. decks that rely on utter list secrecy are inherently weak ones, especially in the cut where the liklihood of maintaining the perfect secrecy around your card choices becomes incredibly low.
As others have said, it’s one thing to have a complete decklist in front of you; it would be unsporting to know that one’s opponent is running exactly 2 snares and 2 overwriters and 3 neural emps, for example. it’s not at all unsporting for your opponent to know or guess that you are running snares, overwriters, and EMPs at all.
(I think it’s also worth pointing out that the best trap decks thrive on opponents who know what they’re packing; a false threat can be even more powerful than an unknown one)
It does change the nature of the game to remove scouting restrictions: jankety “surprise” decks lose a bit of oomph while play with real decks becomes even more competitive. Events become more fun, and the entire pastime is improved imho.
TLDR; no reason at all to make every player with eyes and ears into de facto cheaters just to try to preserve an unattainable and actually not entirely desirable ideal of total deck secrecy.
I spend way more time talking, writing and thinking about ANR than I do playing it (in its physical form, at least). Not discussing decks, etc., takes a lot of that away from me. I like optimizing, I like discussing card choices and the validity of archetypes one can try out, and I most love testing them. I see no reason to hide away card choices like this, but then again, I most share decks with people from other geographical locations, but I never try to hide from my friends/people I play with, what I’m playing, what it does, how it wins and what fun card choices it has.
I think it’s very reasonable to expect players in the cut not to spectate any matches in the cut. I’ve never had a problem doing that; the desire to spectate for entertainment value is pretty low for me at least, as 10+ hours of playing makes resting with your face on the table a lot more fun than watching games of netrunner.
I play custom decks that are very different from “the meta”, so I like to keep them secret between tournaments. However, watching tournament games is fun! And watching decks that you’ve never seen before is really fun! I’m not going to be a turd about having people spectate my games.
Hiding decklists has another benefit besides simply secret tech. You could spread out your entire deck in front of your opponent before a game, but if they’ve never played against that style of deck before then they are still at a disadvantage.
I think people should build their deck in whatever way they enjoy the most, whether it is good or not.
This is a pretty big deal I think. It’s one thing if your opponent doesn’t know if you BS deck has Punitive or Scorch or neither, but the real advantage of playing less popular decks is that people generally don’t have games in against them and the vast majority, including the best players, will make critical errors against you as a result.
@Zeromus I think I figure out something pretty close to your IG list based on investigation, and now that I’m Qd for our circuit I have a while to go before I have to play in anything competitively. Thinking about trying it out, (I played almost nothing but your PE on the corp side between regionals and worlds last year). I’ll refrain from playing it on stream or anything so you can keep your edge for worlds.
Yeah sure, i wasn’t meaning to sound like there is only one way to do it - my way or the wrong way, although perhaps my wording was a bit strong. That’s just how i approach the problem, and for me its been important in keeping my deck building level headed and away from novelty.
this is a great point, and I think a point in favor of lax “scouting” rules. It’s potentially a decent strategy to keep your deck under wraps so that the meta is unprepared for it (as you say, even if they’ve learned some of what you’re packing, people won’t be as prepared to play against it). Without a netdecked list available, your deck may never get popular enough for people to get a lot of practice in against it.
It’s quite another to expect that your specific cards choices will remain sacrosanct throughout the day- it’s not realistic, and if perfect secrecy is a requirement for you to win games, well, you’re not going to.
this is fair enough; though by this point the liklihood that you have at least an inkling of what other top players are playing has got to be pretty high, I’d imagine?
I do like how ‘scouting’ is illegal, but my final round in Swiss at Worlds against @mtgred had at least 40+ people watching at by the end of game one. I was told by various people afterwards it was one of the greatest ANR games they’ve ever see (this was prior to the nutso T8), and I’m glad they could watch. It was the end of the tourney, so scouting wasn’t a huge deal. But, if you made the cut, and got to see all of Mihn’s deck…
Funny thing is, Lukas watching the game from about the 15 minute mark in, and didn’t say one word about scouting, or tried to shoo people away. The scouting rule is dumb, and the Man himself really doesn’t care about it.
