Faust at 4MU would have been great since part of the problem is all the anarch tools to easily deal with the stuff Faust can’t hit.
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Don’t apologize! It is too effective in the general case, because of context (as others have pointed out: d4v1d, ice destruction, wyldcakes).
People 'round here stopped playing Parasite after MWL, which is some relief (and why the NEXT plan has been working so well), but I doubt that’ll be sustainable.
I still feel like a restricted list is by far the easiest and most targeted solution to all of these sorts of problems
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The main issue is that there is almost no reason not to run faust.
Crim and the mini factions need to pay influence on a rig, why not just make it faust? drug dealer is the cheapest support and works best with faust anyway, and 2 inf is way better than what a full rig goes for these days.
Anarch rig gets blown out by cvs, why not slot faust, you’re already running redundant card draw, it also is your easiest answer to lotus field.
Shaper has the easiest time not playing faust, due to a high strength in faction rig that keeps it competitive, but they have issues with sentries, and it does work well with their burst draw and recursion. Starting to see faust shaper outside of combo decks and it isn’t wrong.
That’s the crux of it really though, with a bunch 5-6 str codegates and sentries running around for dirt cheap, there really isn’t a reason to play other rigs. It’s not a matter of is this breaker better than faust, it’s why aren’t you playing faust and if the other breaker’s good enough it can support it.
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I really wanted to like Checkpoint, but an Illicit Tracer is just stupid. Also, D4v1d.
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Shaper also has the easiest time playing Faust as they can run 3 Levy and not care about their deck ever running out even against glacier.
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I’m not a fan of these fan-driven efforts to moderate the meta. They tend to be shortsighted and driven by some ill-defined sense of “fairness” between factions, instead of focusing on the game as it is. But with that said, I’m actually surprised people are focusing on Faust – or any runner card at all. NBN seems to be on a runaway train at the moment, and the rushiness of Faust Anarchs is the only thing keeping it reasonably in check. I’d rather have a meta in which 60% of the runner field is running one ID than one in which corps win 80% of their games.
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There are reasons not to run Faust:
- You are worried about drawing cards quickly enough.
- You are worried about getting enough cards in hand at once to Faust into a server.
- You are worried about running out of cards and not being able to access.
- You are worried about getting killed after using your health to break in.
Any problem with over-occurrence of Faust lies with Runners simply not expecting to run up against these problems very often. “Glacier” decks tend to rely on tricksy server upgrades over tall stacks of ICE, such that Runners don’t expect to need an oppressive numbers of cards in hand to make a single run. Corp decks that aim to start scoring only once the Runner has exhausted their stack and run out of tempo are not bad, but are stymied by the tournament system with its time limitation. The permanent card draw that Faust likes tends to come through resources. Resource-targetting doesn’t tend to be a priority for Corps: no one plays SEA Source to get rid of annoying resources, but they could.
Faust is popular because Corp decks that are susceptible to Faust are popular, driven in part by the requirement imposed by tournament time restraints to start scoring points quickly with as few resources as possible. If everyone was playing oppressive, spiky, endlessly-recursive Industrial Genomics decks full of high-strength, taxing central server ICE and full suites of Chronos Project, Faust wouldn’t look so clever. Against gear-checking NBN rush decks, of course it’s awesome!
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I’m on parasite, cutlery and clone chip along with all of faust; That’s temporary because most of the faust tech requires switching back onto the classic hate packages for the stuff that hates on faust, and its largely in faction.
1 Like
Many good points on this discussion thread so I might not be adding much, but I’ll throw in my 2 cents. I voted for a BAN (although just barely MWL would get most the way and I’d really just like a slew of hate cards). Additionally, I am one of the people who have slide into hypocripsy having argued against it and now playing it (while still arguing against it). My MaxxCakes variant has won most of its games by installing 1 breaker for 3 credits and burning down all the ice I didn’t like with cheap parasites or cutlery powered by Faust.
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the comparison with previous AIs is ludicrous. It’s cheaper than Overmind and Crypsis to both install and use. It’s also cheaper that atman and darwin without their significantly limiting restrictions. Why in the world when designing and play-testing this card would they want to take such a quantum leap on AI breakers?
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runner draw engines have grown better over-time which is already an advantage for runner over corp. You could defend an argument that this was a primary factor in the swing to runner advantage in 2015. Basing a universal breaker on this card-draw advantage seems ill-advised.
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the current hate cards really aren’t that effective given the other generally-good cards in the pool. Turing is easy to solve with D4v1d, wrap-around is either d4v1d or just installing a 2-cost program, swordsman is just parasite bait or running through it for the 1 net dmg (since you’re drawing more cards than you’re using anyway). Komainu is really the only card that hurts when I play a Faust-centered deck and then I do a 2-credit for 5-credit trade with parasite and good-to-go again.
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in most games I’ve played with distinct resources, the ability to efficiently trade one resource (in this case, 1 card for what often costs 2 credits for other breakers) for another is frequently over-powered and warps the game. The comparison isn’t perfect since cards can get you money already and clicks can get you both but ice-breaking is now another (very efficient) point of conversion.
Thoughts on what might have mitigated Faust’s effect (either alone or in conjunction):
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A higher install cost (at least 5)
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Pumpable at +1 card for +1 strength
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Putting the card in criminal. Criminal has the worst draw engine of the factions, already has a tough time finding influence for the levy (as opposed to Anarch where 2 levies seem to be shrug I wasn’t using that influence anyway), and frankly needs a boost against the other factions.
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a same-pack ice with a sub-routine reading – “destroy AI breaker and rip-up any copies of that AI breaker in the heap, stack, or runner’s hand”
1 Like
alllllll of faust, loves alllllll of the ice destruction… 
2 Likes
Just remember I forgot Eater (and Wyrm … but ). The comparison with Eater is not as one-sided but the Eater’s restriction is harsh.
The thing with Faust is even if you run all the hate cards (Turing, Swordsman, Komainu, and Snare!), it’s still about a 55-45 matchup in corps favor.
I think Faust is alright. But then I struggled since 2013 trying to make Noise work, so it was a welcome addition!
It’s powerful no doubt, but no more so than say Eater - MaxX E/KH decks and others are still strong.
Cards like Ichi 1.0 are super taxing for Faust and if you’ve got a couple stacked he gets really sad-face. (Especially if you have some kind of damage to back it up, but also works in terms of taxing someone down a remote to see Adonis, then put in your agenda next turn.)
Cards like Wraparound also tax him heavily.
I’m with Dodge and others from earlier on that D4v1d is in more need of getting a kicking. Tons of ICE is effectively turned off, or definitely under-played due to D4v1d and without that bad boy, then Faust become prohibitive to use against say OAI Curtain Wall or other chunky pieces of ICE (Susanoo, Wormhole, etc.).
Having said all that, I wouldn’t be crying myself to sleep at night over Faust’s inclusion on the MWL.
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I don’t think it needs mitigating as such but I think it would be more interesting, and certainly more Anarch-y and thematic, if the cards used by Faust were randomly chosen!
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I agree that Faust is over the line:
1) It’s a one-card threat that allows any deck, with practically no set-up to threaten every single server. You can easily threaten 2-3 ICE remotes without breaking a sweat.
2) It’s as efficient Eater except it has a much smaller drawback. It also costs 1 less credit and 1 less influence.
3) You can play and make successful runs from 0 credits.
4) It works in any deck. Every single faction and build can use it. There are dozens and dozens of completely awful decks that only work because you Faust is an all-around solution.
That said, I’m baffled the Netrunner community complains so much about it yet instead of moving towards decks that smash Faust like Genomics, people just play NBN in higher and higher numbers. That’s a death wish if I’ve ever seen one. Seriously, what the hell are you doing guys?
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Regarding the two influence and how easy it is to slot in Faust, it’s worth noting that the Faust-reliant Anarch decks are at least penalized one copy of Levy if they really want consistency in the late game. Noise is just about the only Anarch who can use Faust and get by without Levy.
That’s a great idea.
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Randomly chosen cards would have been a great idea.
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Because Genomics and Big RP can be huge time sink with timed rounds, and it’s often a time sink you can’t improve with your own play as the runner (legitimately) agonizes over their clicks. I love genomics but I had less fun at the events I’ve taken it too (even ones where I did well).
And NBN is an answer to the Faust decks - on-encounter ice and ignoring permanent ice altogether via fast advance is beating faust on a differing axis to Genomics.
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Agreed on NEH vs. Faust, they at least they have to find a solution to wrap-around and dig up some money to trash your DBS’ and San-Sans, so it’s a better match-up than most.
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Here’s the thing: Noise shouldn’t work. Honestly, it should be more of a corner case ID. Instead, it’s a Core ID, and anything given to Anarch continues to make him better. He should have the downside of having issues getting into remotes. Instead, Faust allows him easy access to remotes. I don’t believe Noise as a Tier 1 ID is good for the game.
- You don’t like winning.
Bingo. It really feels like dumb/easy mode. All of the other AIs are restrictive to some degree, are expensive, have some serious downsides, or all of the above. Faust doesn’t.
20 Likes