Don’t forget Kala Ghoda Real TV. I think it could be a “sleeper” hit card. I’ve only tried playing it in conjunction with Power Shutdown to primarily snipe breakers, but it could work with any target. Knowing what is in the Runner’s hand, and when, is powerful enough anyway but would synergise perfectly with Salem’s Hospitality. Best of all, it’s NBN and one influence, so three copies of Kala Ghoda Real TV and three of Jackson Howard is six influence and means you get influence-free Salem’s Hospitality in Weyland.
I clearly said that I tried those options and they didn’t work for me. I outlined the reasons they didn’t work for me. What more do you want from me, should I suddenly start winning Store Champs left and right with Weyland?
And it sounds like you want to fit these
aforementioned cards into existing archetypes with no consequence.
Doesn’t work that way.
The decks I played were Mushin/OTG and Bootcamp Glacier. Mushin/OTG stacks ICE on centrals like no other and still dies to Faust pretty hard. I have played against Gagarin, but haven’t tried Gagarin with Tour Guides. I’m trying to find answers to Faust same as anybody else, and I have found that the Weyland answers do not work for me. HB still does work because its cardpool is stronger, as does NBN.
Maybe you are sick of this discussion, that’s fine. But I clearly outlined that I used Interns for Lizzie (since Bootcamp Glacier runs 2, Mushin/OTG sometimes even 3), and I find it patronising that you do not present a decklist or anything else to make a point. If you have found a good Weyland list that does work against Faust, that’s fantastic. I bet I’m not the only one who would like to hear about that. But disregarding my points completely is just not a great way to discuss this.
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0_0
@JaredRules is referring, I believe, to my deck, which is over in the Gagarin Thread, but I’ll post here:
Legends of the Hidden Temple 5th, then 1st · NetrunnerDB
I believe of the tourneys I’ve taken this to, it’s lost a total of 4 times, thrice to Shaper (Apoc Kate once, twice to Kit) and once to Anarch (Siphon/Keyhole MaxX). Every Anarch I’ve played (except the MaxX game, which was very unlucky for me) was on the Faust plan, and got overwhelmed by the ice that I listed above. Not saying that this is the only solution to the Faust problem: I’m saying that when you set out to disrupt the metagame, to disrupt Faust, players can do so. Don’t give up. I’m going to keep playing this thing until I hate all the Faust out of our local meta. 
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Yes and no. If we were to look at the winrate of Faust and runners as a whole right now, I think the stats show that there is a problem. Whether that is something that can simply be mitigated by good play probably remains to be seen, but if MWL was intended to make the meta healthier, it has not achieved that goal based on the number of people just auto-including faust. Faust Gabe won our 24 person SC. Dumblefork is oppressive and something that is extremely difficult for the metagame because the decks that perform well against it don’t really exist. Even decks that can stave off the barrage for a while usually don’t hold up as well in the long term against any other runner decks since their tech is too esoteric. The number of runner decks winning SC’s with Faust is too high. If Prepaid Kate was unhealthy, this is no better at all and if cards aren’t going to be released to help us deal with Faust, then I think something needs to be done before Regionals about these decks. Whether it’s Faust, Chronotype, or Wyldside being on the MWL, or something else entirely, I just don’t think it’s right to dismiss player opinion simply because we like to win/hate losing. Even people who love to win are trying to find competitive runner decks without Faust in them because they have an objection to playing with an engine/breaker that is extremely difficult to stop given current options. And it’s not helped by the fact that cards like Ash and Nisei, which help the corp in a meta where Ice is very weak, are getting hate cards coming likely before regionals.
I guess when you said “regardless of whether or not I’ve tried…”, I interpreted that to mean you hadn’t tried them. I guess I interpreted that wrong?
Thanks man, I’ll try this. It looks a lot more asset-heavy than the Tour guide Gagarin decks I have played against.
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Ah sorry, I meant that neither Lizzie nor Corporate Town were the Anti-Faust bombs I hoped for. They both do kind of the same thing, so I lumped them into one bullet point.
Of the two (when you’re trying the Gaga deck above), Lizzie is the one I’d cut first, but she’s kinda necessary against Val, so I’ve kept her. But getting Corp Town rezzed in that deck is such a blowout that the runner (read: Anarch and possibly ProCo Kate) HAS to spend turns clicking to trash it. Oh, and remember to -1 Root, +1 Interns from that list. 
[small edit: I also recommend not playing this on Jinteki.net, as it makes your browser almost unworkable when shrinking to fit everything on it]
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I said it before upthread, but I think it’s worth it to say again:
Faust does have decks that can perform very well against it and don’t necessarily do poorly against other runners. The problem is that those decks (attrition decks, in general) play a long game and an argument can be made that they aren’t suited to a tournament format.
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A good point. Both tournaments, in full disclosure, offered 65 minute rounds in Swiss. I rarely needed anything close to that, except in one round, where my opponent was taking about two minutes a turn. I ended up winning that one, and never went to time. The deck above averages 25-30 minute games, so pick your runner accordingly.
Yup. I took IG and Sunny to a GNK, but we had 75 minute rounds because many people were first timers. I went to time once, but probably would have gone to time about 3 times with 65 minute rounds. Would never bring both of them to a tournament together again.
I think a lot of people voted in the poll before Dumblefork took off. Results would probably be more skewed now.
No comments about the state of the meta or competitive balance–I just don’t like the card. All my anti-Faust decks feel like troll decks (net damage, 3x Batty, Museum of History, etc.), aren’t much fun to play, and probably aren’t that fun to play against.
It would be like if the competitive game revolved around 7-point CI. Yeah, you can tech against it, and I’m sure there’s a good, balanced game in there, but it’s not something I’m interested in playing. If you like Faust, more power to you, but I’ve definitely been cooler about the game since Dumblefork took off.
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Yes. Before the Great Faust Debate of 2016, before there even was the NAPD Most Wanted List, there were calls to ban Account Siphon, Caprice, and Scorched Earth. Siphon’s case is particularly amusing, because by the time the hard counter/silver bullet was released (Sealed Vault), nobody played it because the player base had adapted and everybody was playing strong Siphon defense.
You’re right that cards that change the meta will often receive calls for bans, because they disrupt winning tactics, invalidate certain strategies that players might like, and force players to adapt to new situations. That being said, that doesn’t mean that every time there’s a call for a ban, it’s an overreaction that has no basis (and I know you know this, Sean, I’m speaking to the general audience here). Rather than polls and win rates, I prefer to look at the data we have from knowthemeta.com (thanks to Necro for the great site).
Looking at the data the site has on Faust, it’s in 97% of Noise decks, 65% of Whizzard decks, 44% of MaxX decks, and 67% of Val decks. I freely admit that I’m not sure where the data cutoff is here, so it’s likely that these numbers are ballpark figures and could be skewed (e.g., by pre-Faust deck lists stored in the db), but I think these numbers alone are pretty troubling, because Noise, Whizzard, MaxX, and Val are all IDs with different archetypes, yet Faust is commonly found in lists using each of these IDs. DLR decks, Keyhole decks, MaxX Apocalypse decks, Dumblefork, Val Desperado decks – I would say that these are all diverse and varied archetypes, comparatively speaking. Yet Faust is found in all of them. More Anarch decks are using Faust than are using Wyldside/Chronotype, and that’s a potent draw engine that’s found in several Anarch deck archetypes. Faust is popular among the Anarch faction the way Self-Modifying Code and Diesel are popular among Shapers – only SMC isn’t an omnibreaker and Diesel doesn’t break ice. On top of all that, Faust is also popular out-of-faction, in Faust Gabe (guilty as charged), HyperFaust Kate, and so forth. Those aren’t widespread archetypes yet, but they are winning Store Championships, so I don’t think we should dismiss them as data points. Faust is in more decks total than Levy AR, and Levy is widely imported into other factions (and it isn’t even ubiquitous among Shapers!). That seems really telling to me. There are more archetypes that can make use of this incredibly powerful and flexible AI breaker than there are archetypes that can make use of Levy recursion or Self-Modifying Code fetch power – and, again, it seems to me that “flexible AI breaker” is inherently a more powerful card than “deck recursion” or “fetch any program,” because those other two effects don’t allow such strong pressure on all servers.
Full disclosure: I voted “Faust is a challenge, but new cards could fix this problem.” If there was a solid AI-hate card coming out in the next pack or two (preferably a Weyland one, because seriously, wtf, why don’t they have any AI-hate in faction?), I would be content to sit tight. But I don’t think we’re getting one. The Business First spoilers haven’t made me hopeful that there’s any answer to Faust in there. And the problem seems like it gets worse week-to-week.
I don’t think Faust is actually the sole problem. As has been discussed at length already, Faust has several weak points: high-strength ice, multi-sub ice, damage, running out of cards. It’s just that the Anarch card pool is ridiculously strong, and includes great answers to Faust’s weaknesses that already saw play on their own, before Faust was released: D4v1d, Parasite, I’ve Had Worse, Wyldside/Chronotype/I’ve Had Worse/Inject. Looking back at knowthemeta.com, we see Faust played in 62% of top decks (in post-Kala Ghoda tournaments), but D4v1d is in 65%, Parasite’s in 62%, I’ve Had Worse is in 60%. In a meta where damage was stronger, or D4v1d didn’t exist, Faust wouldn’t be problematic…but we don’t live in that meta.
If we get some really solid pieces of ice, or some good anti-AI hate, or something else I haven’t thought of, I do think that Faust can be knocked down a peg from “God Tier” to “Top Tier.” But a Regionals season full of nothing but Faust Anarchs is one I’d rather not suffer through, and I doubt I’m alone in that.
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"I know we’ve said its the end of the world before, but this time it really is the end of the world!"
When hasn’t the sky been falling? When the game was released, Noise was Broken and Scorched Earth was broken, and something has been broken ever since, and yet here we all are. If Faust is still everywhere a year from now I’ll start getting a little worried.
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I’d have preferred the poll to say: “new cards will fix this problem”. Of course new cards could because new cards could say anything. But it’s perhaps this disagreement that is fuelling a lot of worry. If I thought Democracy and Dogma was hiding the secret tech, I’d be more relaxed about the whole thing too.
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I think my biggest issue with Faust is including a copy seems to make every runner deck better. Makes all your dead draws slightly better than clicking for a cred. Some decks can’t quite fit it. But typically you’re better with than without it. I think the most damning case is Kate decks, which are rich and have few dead draws because of the powerful tutoring in Shaper, include a copy.
Edit: my other gripe is that every time Corp falls behind, the correct answer seems to be take an NBN deck and go as fast as you can. I wish that wasn’t the case.
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It used to be “take HBFA, score 4 points, and win the match on tiebreaker”.
Not that I’m disagreeing with your sentiment or anything. Just a little bit of history.
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I remember when there wasn’t a MWL, but no, do not remember a time when people weren’t whining about allegedly overpowered cards.
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I’m not convinced that inclusion rates point to a degenerately unbalanced card, though. Jackson Howard is ubiquitous, but he fills a critical role in the game. I realize I’m in the minority here, but I like that Faust allows Anarchs to legitimately pressure every server quickly in the game – having played a lot of “Good Stuff Anarch” last year, the least fun interaction in the game was “Wall of Static? Okay. I’ll dig for Corroder/Parasite.” I’m of the opinion that Netrunner is at it’s best and most interesting when it is focused on making calculated bets rather than binary lockout situations. Dropping 2 cards to check something behind a Wall of Static seems like a fair trade to me in a world of hidden information.
I agree, and that’s why I can’t say I was particularly dismayed at any point to see a Faust hit the table across from me at any of the SCs I went to. Maybe it was partly that I had been teching against Faust since the start of SC season, but personally it was a lot more dismaying to see Assassins and Tollbooths melted away by D4v1d/cutlery than to watch a runner drop 3 cards on an Eli. I think the bigger, more degenerate problem at the moment is the way Dumblefork turns pretty much every piece of ice apart from Architect (which, given the MWL, is harder to include than it used to be) into a one-time tax instead of a recurring one. Generally speaking, ice is costed for the corp with the expectation that the runner will have to break it more than once. Whether that breaking is being done with cards or credits is mostly irrelevant, I think (not entirely – Faust eliminates install costs/need to search for additional breakers, which accelerates the ice destruction process), compared to the elimination of the steady drain economic drain most ice is meant to impose.
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I’m afraid I don’t recall in my post declaring faust to be on one end or the other.
What I am saying is that everyone is shouting out loud that this card is way too overpowered. So there are these other groups that listen and follow suit due to their belief that they cannot come up with better, or the lack of time to do so.
For the record I’m skeptical the faust movement will have the same fervor post regionals.
The cards form such a lattice. Would faust be so obscene if plascrete was changed to cost a pip? 2 pips? I doubt it.