I’m glad you liked it! I’ve actually not tested those two together, no! Though, I’ve not tested them for a reason - I’ll go over why.
As you mentioned though the install cost of Yog can sometimes be prohibitive when they’ve just got Quandary or similar. Yog can work out to be really efficient over the course of the game, but Gabe wants a cheap, good breaker now. Five credits is a lot if they later invalidate it, too.
Yog is influence spent on a card that could be dead. Dead draws are bad, and that influence could be on a Quality Time, Hades Shard, Feedback Filter, Stimhack, or some other goodie.
Peacock’s a little awkward. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I’d rather be breaking ICE with Passport over Peacock, especially for small stuff like Quandary (2 to install and break as opposed to 5 like Yog/Peacock). If they’ve got a Lotus Field or two on HQ or something, you probably just have to install Peacock and break it that way, even if it’s a game where you’re winning pretty heavily. Having to spend another 3 on top of the now half-invalidated 5 you’ve spent is a big deal - then you have to pay 4 to break Lotus every time as opposed to 3 from Passport. It can really put a stint in your early pressure if that 5 you paid to help your HQ runs is now useless!
I’m actually not completely opposed to Yog + Passport; I personally wouldn’t run it but I can understand why you’d want to - though I still feel it’s suboptimal. Still, 5 credits spent on something that they can abuse to force another breaker out is something I’ve never liked. I think that this is the best combination if you really want to use Yog.
A combination of three would be even more awkward and means you get dead draws more often.
I don’t hate Yog in Gabe and I can see why some still run it but I don’t think it’s optimal right now (I may be wrong, remember, it’s not an objective assessment!). I think it’s more defensible in Andy where you’re not as reliant on the early game, but even in her I’m wary.
I don’t think so, as then every deck would play the same. It’d maybe be healthy for balance but cancerous to the game - it simply wouldn’t be fun, there’d have to be no variety in playstyles and that’s what I love about Netrunner.
Eh I shouldn’t have posted this in this thread as it’s off-topic. Last remark on the subject for me: just because an Andywhatever and a Noise Cache both have a 50% match-up versus Whatever Corp deck, doesn’t mean they are the same deck. Win percentages/match-up stats don’t say anything for similarities between decks and the variety of the meta as a whole. What I mean is, it doesn’t make sense to say that there would be no variety in playstyles if every legitimate deck had a 50% match-up against every other legitimate competitive deck.
No, because then it doesn’t matter what deck you bring to a tournament. Anticipating what’s going to be prevalent and tuning your deck to beat it consistently (hopefully without giving up too much against the field) is part of the game.
I disagree: different decks have different playstyles, and different are better against different decks and styles of play. Noise is played differently to Gabe is played differently to Andy is played differently to X etc. This is good, and healthy.
The same is true for Corp, and since decks are different there too, I feel like it’s pretty obvious that it must be the case that decks can’t ever have a 50% matchup against each other deck. For any one playstyle, there’s an opposing playstyle that will do best against it (when compared to the other viable ones).
To give an example - GRNDL Supermodernism’s worst matchup is by far Shaper, because of Self Modifying Code and similar. If Criminal and Anarch were given similar tools to make their matchup similar to Shaper’s, the factions would become more similar and there’s far less of a difference between decks or the way they play.
There would, too, have to be either a card pool that’s far too large for people to get into (which won’t ever happen because rotation) or ID abilities would have to be VERY similar to keep them with the same win percentages. There’d be more numbers (like Kate) and less active abilities like Noise because they fluctuate far easier with the card pool (imagine Noise right now but without Cache/Aesop’s). I do not think this would be healthy for the game at all.
Good balance would I think be something like every decent deck has a slightly-better-than-50% average (the >50% accounts for bad decks it plays against) over all decks, though I’m convinced this will never be the case in Netrunner or any card game, really.
If every good deck had a 50% winrate against every good deck I probably wouldn’t want to play Netrunner very much. There’d be very little variety in deckbuilding and that’s what I love about Netrunner.
It’s part of the metagame, but I don’t think it’s a necessary component of a healthy meta.
On topic: This article really helps distinguish the strategic difference between Andy and Gabe which has often been murky. Deckbuilding is pretty different too when you can’t count on a 9-card hand. Mulliganing is still the same for me though: Desperado or bust
Though games with Desperado go significantly better than those without it, I feel like this is a misguided motive (though I know it’s often said in jest, I feel like it should be clarified anyway). After mulligan, if you truly do mulligan for Desperado you’d still only have a 50% chance (compared to Andy’s 75%). I’d be extremely happy with a starting hand containing Shutdown + Inside Job against Blue Sun, and I feel like a mulligan there would be a mistake. The same may be said about Bank Job + Siphon + something else against NEH or whatever.
Conducting a bit of necromancy here because, going into Regionals season, this is one of the archetypes I’m looking at playing. I wanted to put some thoughts down about that, see if anyone has anything else to add.
If the decks to consider foremost right now are RP, Blue Sun, HBFA and the odd Fastro, I feel like this should still be a solid choice. RP and NEH are still good matchups here. HBFA I don’t have enough experience to say, but I don’t see why it should be bad. Blue Sun glacier - ESPECIALLY the OTG combo - can be rough if you don’t get some early luck, but knowing that ID very well, I’ve usually been able to play my outs to a win even against strong players. So it still seems like a reasonable choice there.
That being said, the consensus is that the meta is moving more towards glacier, and I do worry about running out of steam. I like some of the changes @Jander made when he took this to the SSCI. Here is the list. It’s a nice compromise between the original and the slower variant. Baby Face seems like a solid inclusion, basically adding Desperado to your draw. I’m not sure if I like the SecTesting as it encourages them to protect archives and econ assets, but some long-term econ would be nice. Tri-Maf Contact being unfortunately suicidal, Armitage is limited, and Kati is the other obvious option but she is even more precarious around tags. Basically you need something to tide you over through the midgame so you can steal the last few points. Currently all you can do is click for credits. I’m leaning towards 2x Kati only for those specific scenarios, but maybe it’s my obsession with bblum-style Blue Sun that’s skewing my perspective. Maybe the original style is stronger.
Is anyone playing it right now? How do people feel about it in the current meta?
Sec Testing was good, because it’s a 0 cost resource - cost of installing is lower than cost of trashing it, it made NEH matchup even better.
Symmetrical Visage is nice if you get it before you start to Siphon, as you won’t be losing your tags. The tags are the greatest problem, your economy needs to be tag-protected. You don’t want to install Kati when you have 6 tags. My friend included Magnum Opus for late-game econ.
I was even thinking of including something to remove tags, like Lawyer Up or Paper Tripping (get all the tags, remove them for 4 and start to Kati), but I didn’t test it.
Anyway, Gabe is great against RP, but not very good against Blue Sun or EtF Glacier. I felt the limits of deckbuilding with him, so I stopped playing him after SSCI. Good players will install 4 ices on HQ, 2 on Archives. It’s harsh without multiaccess.
The main concern is Crisium Grid. A Crisium Grid on HQ is extremely painful to deal with to the point where you can’t really deal with it: Gabe, nor the deck, are built for dealing with it. Even if that card wasn’t in the meta, Gabe has got worse because of the way the meta’s shifted.
Gabe’s very good versus Blue Sun though. Shutdown and Inside Job being good includes helps the matchup and it’s hard to lose when you can deny them 14 credits. Less good against RP, and RP imo is probably the worst matchup and one of the reason to steer clear of him. It can sometimes swing your way even vs good players, but the matchup is definitely below 50%, especially for Grail RP. Gabe’s NEH matchup is still as good as it was, but if you wanted to hate on NEH you’d play Shaper with Clot.
Though, if you ask me, Criminal’s in a horrible spot right now, and Gabe’s the one that’s turned off most by Crisium Grid and the weakest of the three good ones. Leela’s probably a better pick if you want an aggressive Criminal as she’s not as hurt by Crisium Grid and is an overall solid ID. If you really really wanted to make Gabe work post-Clot, the main change is probably to take out the Bank Jobs, add in Sec Test and/or Kati,
That being said, if you find a list that serves you well (and better than Prepaid Kate would) I’m all ears. I’d love to be playing a deck like this but I find it very hard to justify in the current meta.
@jerklin used to play Parasite gabe back in the day. The RP matchup is pretty miserable; definitely way way worse than Parasite Andy, (Gabe was like, 20%, Andy 65%).
I have a year of experience playing RP, it certainly helps and I felt good with this matchup. I stopped playing Gabe not because RP, he’s suited for it: Bank Jobs, Siphons, Sneakdoor, Shutdown, Inside Job, Faeries, Parasite…
It’s funny how whenever two people disagree on strengths of matchups, the proposed explanation almost always is “maybe your opponents aren’t that good” and practically never “maybe you’re better than I am at playing this specific deck”.
To be fair I don’t think it’s the exact same thing here ^^ @mediohxcore was talking from his experience as a RP player. So when he said “maybe your opponents aren’t that good” what he means is “maybe your opponents aren’t as good as me playing RP” and let’s face it : it’s probably the case
As a long time RP player myself (pretty much all tournaments since Caprice), I think that Gabe isn’t the most threatening ID but will take a stronger advantage if I have a bad start. If I survive the first turns and don’t do silly mistakes It’s pretty much game over, especially with a grail build.
I usually try not to delve into this but I was playing this matchup almost exclusively with @jerklin, who was a very strong gabe player, and I’m obviously quite reasonable at RP. We played it lots and lots and lots of times, including once at regionals. Unless modern RP got worse somehow, or Parasite Gabe got a lot better, I don’t think there is any way this is over 25% for Gabe based on a lot of experience.
