Store Champions Invitational Meta Analysis by ussgordoncaptain

StimHack.com
83

@Calimsha, @SamRS, and I tested out this approach a bunch leading up to the tournament. It seemed fine against shaper and anarch, but then I pulled out bog standard andysucker and it wasn’t able to win a single game. Only HB has a strong enough econ to support the glacier/FA “flex” gameplan.

Incidentally, andysucker is totally ridiculous with 3x earthrise hotel. I think people have forgotten about that deck since All That Remains… earthrise is a HUGE boost for that deck. Even more so than for stealth andy.

84

I think the bottom line is that it’s super irritating to play a runner deck that is not geared to handle astrobiotics and then get rocked by a “full strength” astrobiotics deck that has no hope against clot.

2 Likes
85

This is maybe true right now, but I wouldn’t write off NBN in general. I won a lot with this one when I started playing, and @jerklin took a later iteration of it to Philly regionals last year and took 2nd in a field full of criminals not unlike what everyone is playing today:

NBN Tax Man

NBN: Making News

Agenda (11)
3 AstroScript Pilot Program
2 Breaking News
3 Character Assassination
3 Project Beale

Asset (8)
3 Jackson Howard
2 Marked Accounts
3 PAD Campaign

Upgrade (6)
2 Ash 2X3ZB9CY **
1 Bernice Mai
3 SanSan City Grid

Operation (6)
3 Hedge Fund
3 Sweeps Week

Barrier (5)
3 Eli 1.0 ***
2 Wraparound

Code Gate (7)
3 Pop-up Window
2 Tollbooth
2 Viper **

Sentry (6)
3 Caduceus **
3 Draco

I don’t see why something like this can’t work tuned for the current meta. It might not be great but if you throw in 2 Sfss and maybe DBSes I think it could be fine. You’re right that econ is the weak link. Maybe we’ll get something to help out. FWIW I think that if you were trying this sort of deck out of NEH rather than MN that probably explains why it was bad vs Criminal.

1 Like
86

Clot has nothing to do with this though, so we can’t really complain about that.

87

playing a runner deck that is not geared to handle astrobiotics : getting rocked by astrobiotics :: playing straight astrobiotics : getting rocked by clot

88

I played a really similar (main difference was -1 bernice + 1 closed account) list last year during the regional season and even if it’s really good, it still lose a lot to andysucker. Security Testing didn’t exist last year for instance, and it makes all your pad / marked worse. Neither does Switchblade, Earthrise Hotel, or the shard. Also every runners deck at time needed to devote 2 slots to Plas just for not dying to a random scorch. Since then, runner got more deckslots, better econ option like the LF / Voicepad packaging, Legwork and better neutral draw.
You still need to protect your R&D against lock, protect your HQ enough to not get siphoned AND protect your remote. Biotic was what make the NBN vs Crim matchup good. Honestly, we tried a lot of different NBN decks the weeks before the tournament. I played a tons of variation out of NEH (with caprice, with ash, without biotic, with a single biotic, with CVS, SfSS), @SamRS and I built a couple of Making News with Ash as well and all the testing came down to the same conclusion: by giving up on the biotic gameplan, you just concede way too much against crim. Periods.

2 Likes
89

There’s a huge difference between “changing your deck to adjust to the meta” and flipping a coin to decided whether to play Fastrobiotics and/or Clot. It’s not an interesting choice… it is a binary one. Either you play Fastro and hope to dodge clot, or you play to the “Fastro is dead” meta. The closest thing to a middle ground is something like HB FA which can kind of glacier up and then Biotic out the third and forth agendas. This deck is much better against clot than full-fledged Fastro, but it’s worse in a Clot meta than just straight Glacier, and it’s worse in a no-Clot meta than just straight Fastro. So you’re still in this meta where “Clot or Not” defines deck selection in a boring way.

Lots of good suggestions on this thread as to what to play, but the point I am making is not that there are no viable decks right now, the point is that Clot is affecting the deck selection process in a really negative way, given a competitive “pick the deck that will win” spirit.

6 Likes
90

Negative in that the go to selection is RP.

91

even out of making news, one of the main issues is security testing. you can’t really give them 3 credit clicks in a taxing deck, protecting them with anything but pop up window sucks and the econ wasn’t near enough without assets. I agree that some kind of super taxing nbn is probably the way to go now, but you do need to address security testing while building it.

92

I agree, when I went to build a new version I came up with this:
http://netrunner.meteor.com/decks/3KYxPGQAP4CiMXd7m/

Completely untested, probably needs more money, and is probably ok against Sec Testing.

93

That either needs a lot more money or a lot less tollbooths

94

You could play Gift Restructure or something.

95

Sure, RP seems like a good meta call right now. But now let’s look at runner deck building considering RP will be the go-to. Do you play a 13 influence one blank card deck as Shaper? Do you get that slight leg up by cutting Clot? You lose your auto-win vs Fastro if you do. So you play Clot. You don’t see Fastro for months… do you keep playing Clot, just in case? Ok let’s cut it. Oops, you got paired against Fastro! And lost. That’s just bad game design, and meaningless deck building choices.

And that’s only Shaper decks! Let’s say you want to play Criminal… but the Crim deck you need to play to beat Glacier and RP is not optimised for beating NEH anymore, so you’re back in the coin flip situation. Anarchs can play Clot but what’s the point without Clone Chip, so you’re back in that restrictive deck choice space. It’s a Runner tool that makes Runner deck selection more restrictive… can we regift this fruitcake please?

1 Like
96

Can everyone just take a vow to ignore clot? I cut it from Maxx, haven’t even played it in kate yet. Hands in the middle, Captain Planet style.

2 Likes
97

98

I was thinking drip econ + manhunt to shut down testing

99

Thing is, NBN already have a lot of cards who can be used to deal against strong runner strats. The hardest part is to fit everything in the same deck without removing too much econs and too much ICEs.
I’ve tried to make Manhunt works since it got released and I always ended with either econ issues or not enough ICEs to defend my centrals and a remote.

4 Likes
100

maybe just neh bringing in ELP? similar card slot strain but cheaper and doesn’t need tag punishment to support it.

101

If FFG had managed to design a card like Jackson Howard, the meta would ACTUALLY change. Make a card many decks across all factions want, and will stick around instead of jumping in and out of decks depending on how much you want to screw one deck archetype. Instead, we’ve got this meta that is SOMETIMES new and SOMETIMES still Fastro-wins, and the terrible part is that you’re incentivized to meta against non-Fastro decks, which makes the Fastro matchup even worse. So instead of “killing” FA, they’ve just made it into this jack-in-the-box that pops up in your face and makes you want to play Shaper Clot, instead of innovating. That’s worse than just knowing you have to have a game plan against NEH in my mind.

2 Likes
102

Okay, but how?

They’ve tried to incentivize it from the corp’s side, and they’ve tried to give the runners lots of options for slowing down corp play. Neither has worked.

Now they’ve given two sort-of answers in one pack, with another (more widely useful) one following in the Underway.

The obvious hope is that once the corp side starts experimenting with new things they’ll hit upon something that works well and diversifies the meta. We can already see that each new Corp ID in SanSan cycle is meant to build a deck unlike any that currently exist in any successful form.

People can ping-pong between the two choices, but things are likely going to stabilize somewhere around the way Plascrete did. Test without it, then take out the least useful card or two to give yourself an edge against a deadly kind of deck.

It’s not the all-around hero that Action Jackson was, but that’s a lot harder to do for this than for mill/draw problems. They’ve shown that already with The Source, Chakana, Donut, etc. Even Traffic Accident. They have tried to do cards that are more useful all-around than Clot is, slowing down FA and Glacier alike. FA has plowed through them all the same because they were too restrained. Balance is tricky, and Clot will surely see more counters coming in the future, but it’s the first card of this type that’s seen any play, and predicting/slotting it in is just as important a meta call as not.

It’s not a coinflip any more than Scorch protection was. It’s certainly possible to go to a tournament with Pure FA and never see Clot, or to take Clot and never see FA. But if your deck is strong against glacier and needs an edge against FA, Clot is there to help. If you’ve got a deck that runs low on cash sometimes after scoring, Plascrete keeps you safe from retaliation. If you’re a corp that wants to do either of those, you need to plan around the problem in some way.

Shaper is the biggest threat because of SMC/Clone Chip, but they’ve been the best overall faction for a while now, able to handle more or less any corp, even if not as ably as Anarch/Criminal handle some. So I’m not going to be more upset about how “if I want to win I should run Kate with Clot” than I was back when Andysucker was the only “most competitive” choice by a league and a half.

2 Likes