@Matuszczak has won Wrocław Regionals this weekend with Grail AgInfusion deck.
Mateusz uses Grail everywhere. He is going to win with a Grail Runner deck someday now 
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You will always be playing in a metagame that you have to take into consideration. There isn’t a single card game in the past or present that doesn’t have one. Even if you have a small play group at the store, someone will tune their decks to beat those decks specifically. It doesn’t matter whether your playing Standard Netrunner, 1.1.1.1 or Cache Refresh, a good deck builder will tweak their deck to have the best win percentage against the dominant decks. This even happens around the kitchen table. If you know your buddy relies on ETR ice, you will pick certain breakers over others instead of wasting space on dead cards. Any deck can be turned into a 90-10 deck with the right choices. But those choices should also affect how they do against other decks.
A deck that has a 90-10 matchup against a particular deck may have a 10-90 matchup against another deck, and vice versa. Just because a deck has a brutal matchup against a particular deck doesn’t mean it’s not viable. If a player takes the 90-10 deck to a tourney they could end up doing great if the deck it’s tuned to beat ends up being a large proportion of the field. It could also end up doing horribly if they read the field wrong. If the 90-10 deck starts to become popular, smart players will move away from the deck it is designed to beat and build something that can beat it. If the meta isn’t playing the deck the 90-10 is targeting, then there is no reason to keep playing it as it is a poor choice against the new meta. Sometimes a 90-10 only lasts 1 major tournament cycle (or less if word gets out on NRDB and people figure out how to beat it).
You fail to understand. Of course there will always be a meta. But a deck with a 90-10 matchup is a horrible failure which should be addressed. Because the metagame is something to tolerate, not embrace.
It’s always there, and you have to account for it, but it’s not why we play this. More often, it’s the reason why we stop playing Netrunner.
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Violet Moon has proven to be strong right now winning 2 out of 3 regionals in Germany so far.
I’m also always fond of Andromeda. The latest addition in Rosetta 2.0 fits my playstyle perfectly.
For me at least, Red Planet Couriers has been showing to be a defining archetype in the Weyland meta. Government Takeover is as viable as ever!
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It’s not a failure to understand. I understand your point of view. I flat out disagree with it.
I have played lots of CCGs before this, and will likely play lots after this game has run its course. In every instance, there has been a metagame. It is an inherent part of competition. In soccer or football, you study game tapes and build your field layout accordingly to best combat your opponent’s style of play. In poker, if you are able to better predict your opponents’ play styles, you will be better equipped to beat them. Poker has the advantage of shared resources, but the players can metagame against the common play styles at a type of tournament. The way people play at a backroom table versus a WSoP televised event are quite different. Competitive cheerleaders study their opponents’ past performances and previous competitions to see what judges liked and didn’t like when building their routines. In every instance failing to anticipate your opponent’s play style and strenghts/weaknesses is poor gamesmanship.
If a player doesn’t like metagaming, they might as well stop playing games because there is no way to avoid it. Card games, miniature games, video games and most board games (Euro co-operative games can have it, but it’s to no advantage because you are on the same side. If anything, you would metagame against the game itself, but really that’s just playing the game) all have it built in. Picking a fighter in Street Fighter based on your opponent’s fighter choice or playstyle is metagaming. Choosing what weapons and items that you will carry in Arkham Horror LCG is metagaming. Deciding what weapons to equip your Space Marines with based on your opponent’s army choice is metagaming. In Street Fighter, in the hands of a competent and practiced player, there are characters that are almost auto wins against other characters, but they also have trouble with other fighters. If you know your opponent is building an Ork army with lots of troops, a Space Marine player would be foolish to pack lascannons instead of heavy bolters, whereas it would be the opposite if they were playing an opponent with low troops and a high vehicle count. If you know that your DM uses a particular monster type a lot because they like it, or they like to set your adventures in a particular location, you would be unwise to not equip yourself accordingly.
If a player just plays for fun at home with their friends, and they like playing virus Noise, a friend could build a deck that gives them a 90-10 advantage over Noise by packing as much virus hate as they can. In doing so, that deck will likely perform poorly against their other friends’ decks, unless they also like playing virus Noise. Nobody is clamoring to MWL3 anything with the word “Cyberdex” in its name because we know that a deck teched in this way is going to have a difficult time against other decks due to dead cards in other matches. There is only a problem if the overall average of a deck gives it a >50/50 advantage over all deck types. The larger the field, the harder it is to metagame as you should theoretically have a greater variance of decks, unless there is a flavor of the month and you tech against it wisely.
Metagaming also helps the game from getting stagnant. If Moon decks are placing better and becoming popular, a smart player builds a deck that can beat it. The creator will have to decide if they want to go all in, because, in doing so, they will likely have a harder time against other decks. But if they judge their local meta to be Moon heavy, it could be a wise decision to make. If that deck starts to become popular, then Moon pilots have to decide whether their deck is viable any more, or to move on and find a new deck that can take out the deck that is teched against theirs, or a third type of deck that avoids both a weakened Moon deck and the new Moon killer deck. If no one is able to build a deck that can take out these Moon decks, there is a problem.
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