I voted MWL, but I don’t think Faust should be on it. Chronotype is the biggest issue I think. After a long time of thinking about it. Two free cards per turn early in the game gives you 90% vs every deck no matter what breakers you’re playing.
I would argue for talking about D4v1d before Faust. D4v1d is what lets Faust get away with not having to deal with big ICE for free, which is one way that players can tech against Faust. It’s the Big Game Hunter of Netrunner.
But in general I am extremely hesistant to put anything on a banned or restricted list. I voted to leave things as they are for now. Faust hasn’t really changed my feelings on Netrunner as a whole, and if it becomes a big problem I think I can build a deck to deal with it well enough. It’s not a problem in my meta yet, at least.
D4 and chronotype are all powerful cards. And its true that anarch just has the most “good stuff” right now. And the fact that they’ve got coverage on every problem they could conceivably face is probably a large part of that.
Yeah, if chronotype and d4 weren’t in the game we’d have to play a different flavor of Faust. But, we see Faust in green & blue decks without d4 and without chronotype. And we see it in brown doing its own thing. So some part of Faust is good enough on its own to be a power card and it may be that any support is too much?
Faust is a huge problem. It’s in every runner deck right now (maybe 95% of them, to avoid exaggerating). I’m even playtesting adding it to my kate list, and I hate myself for it.
I voted MWL; I wish it was never printed, but voting for it to be banned is just a childish fantasy. MWL is realistic. In fact, both Faust + Chronotype on MWL is probably the best solution.
Faust is strong and it has crazy numbers, but it can be played around. 3+ str ice, multiple subs, any kind of damage that can happen during runs, etc. The reason it’s so prevalent now is because it’s easy to build around. Pick any ID, shove in a bunch of draw and a Levy, sprinkle in 1-3 Fausts and you’ve got a deck that can win you some games. Doesn’t mean it’s optimal, but it is easy.
What I’d like to see printed is more direct AI hate. Until this point there was little need for the likes of Swordsman. Now we need some neutral/easily splashable AI dedicated hate cards that aren’t solved by including stuff like Mimic/Corroder that are being played in-faction anyway. Putting Faust on the MWL doesn’t help with the fact that Anarch has all the optimal support for it. Anarchs still play Parasite regardless, same will happen for Faust. Actual answers would help more.
From an ice design perspective the ice that deals the best with the combo of d4 and faust is multi sub and taxes a lot of other breaker suites just as unfairly. Anti-faust ice has an option of pure AI hate, like swordsman and turing, or fairly strong ice like ichi or hive.
Rather than printing a bunch of generically strong ice it will have the least impact for other runners to just reduce faust’s resources and limit Chronotype.
I think the meta was heading towards large amounts of card draw, and hence Levy, regardless of Faust; but it’s an environment that Faust benefits from either way.
A lot of Shaper decks (Prepaid Kate namely; wyldside noise secondly; l4j variants even) were able to leverage card advantage and I don’t think that’s going to change. While we used to say “card advantage doesn’t matter”, I don’t think it holds true anymore. Having more cards won’t win you a game, but having the right ones will and seeing more leads to that happening more often. Being able to do it twice without increasing deck size? Now we’re cooking with fire.
