State of the meta March 27, 2018

I’ve been away from playing the game for six weeks.

What is the state of the meta right now?

Is the game fun? Are people enjoying where it is?

I don’t think it’s changed too significantly from the Worlds meta. Obviously the MWL had it’s affects; Tapwrm use is down and with it Peace in Our Time is less common. Val has taken the throne from Hayley as the competitive runner ID of choice, though some new Hayley builds using Grappling Hooks and the new resource breakers have been popping up and doing well at tournaments. Criminal is still miserable outside of Geist, but it’s arguably never been a better time to be a minifaction, with Sunny and Adam actually showing up in some tournaments.

Corporation side, Cerebral Imaging has largely disappeared, though some variations continue to perform alright in tournaments. Azmari has made a big splash, taking down Canadian Nationals. Titan FA is well positioned because the meta is saturated with Val and the Clot threat is almost non existent. Similarly, Skorpios looks good with less Sac Cons overall. Jinteki rush/glacier decks have popped up using NGO’s and Obokatas to make repeated runs through Data Loop a risky endeavor. Usually these seem to be played out of Palana or PE.

Overall, I’d say I’m enjoying the game and I’m glad to see much less CI than immediately after rotation. I think it’s unfortunate that the runner meta is somewhat constrained by Valencia’s dominance, but at the same time I’m glad that the “best” deck in the meta is a money and breakers deck with lots of incentives to run and not something like DLR or Dyper.

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Here is a thing I wrote that answers your question pretty well: The Meta Snapshot: NGOMG – Sneakdoor Melbourne

One caveat: CI started popping up again like the day after I published this, otherwise it’s pretty solid I think.

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Great post. Thanks.