The Latest Things (another new format idea)

Netrunner General
1

Here’s another idea for a format that would aim to have a smaller, more dynamic card pool, in a way that hopefully would be simple to understand and wouldn’t require much upkeep.

The deckbuilding rules would be as follows:

  • Decks may include any cards from the core set and the deluxe expansions.

  • Decks may include any cards from the two most recent data packs.

  • If a deck includes at least one card from any given data pack, then it may also include any number of cards from the previous data pack in the release order.

  • The MWL applies.

The overall idea is to push people towards the latest cards, similar to how a faster-rotating format would, but without setting a hard limit on how long cards can be used. As cards get older, they should slowly get harder to include until they’re not worth the trouble anymore.

On a deck level, each time a pack is released, players only have to change one card to keep a deck legal. Instead of becoming illegal all at once, decks should just slowly get worse.

For long-time players, this would hopefully provide a challenge that is different enough from standard to be interesting, and that changes frequently enough to stay interesting.

For newer players, this would hopefully reduce the need to know the cards from older data packs. They’d still come up, but not as often, and any deck that includes a powerful older card that might surprise new players will hopefully have to balance that out by also including some cruft. It might also make “buy all the deluxes, then buy data packs as they come out” a more useful way to build a collection.

The reason for allowing a deck to use the second-newest pack without the newest pack is mostly so that people won’t have to update their decks the moment a new pack is released.

Potential rule tweaks:

  • If it turns out that decks with mostly non-rotating cards are too dominant, then a rule along the lines of “decks must include at least n cards from data packs” could be added.

  • If the limitation turns out to be too hard to meet, it could be changed so using any card from a data pack lets you use any cards from the previous two data packs.

  • If the limitation turns out to be too easy to meet, it could be changed so you need to use two cards from a data pack to unlock the previous data pack.

Here are my first two attempts at adapting decklists to these limitations. They’re completely untested at this point.

The Latest Vidcast

(based on Code Marvelous’ The Queen in Green)

Ele “Smoke” Scovak: Cynosure of the Net (Intervention)

Event (14)

Hardware (5)

Resource (9)

Icebreaker (3)

Program (9)

11 influence spent (max 15, available 4)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Station One

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

The Latest Martian Advances

(based on Saan’s A Ramp to Mars)

Jemison Astronautics: Sacrifice. Audacity. Success. (Daedalus Complex)

Agenda (11)

Asset (3)

Upgrade (3)

Operation (18)

Barrier (4)

Code Gate (5)

Sentry (5)

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Station One

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

4 Likes
2

was trying to get, but I was not able to. Could you please explain this in more detail?

3

Right now Station One is the latest released pack. So you can include cards from Station One or Daedalus Complex by default. If you include at least one card from Daedalus Complex, you may also include any number of cards from the previous data pack, Quorum. If you include at least one card from Quorum, you may also include any number of cards from Martial Law. If you include at least one card from Martial Law…and so on.

If you want to include a card from What Lies Ahead, you must include at least one card from every other released pack as well, with the exception of Station One.

1 Like
4

If i understand corectly it works like this:

The latest two datapacks are Daedalus Complex and Station One, and so a deck can include cards from either of those two datapacks.
If a deck included no cards from Daedalus Complex then the deck could not include cards from any other datapacks.
If a deck included one or more cards from Daedalus Complex then the deck could include cards from the previous datapack, which is Quorum.
If a deck included one or more cards from Quorum then the deck could include cards from the previous datapack, which is Martial Law.
And so on…

So, let’s say that you wanted to include a card from the Blood Money datapack. To do so you would need to include at least one card from the Escalation datapack, which means you would need to include at least one card from the Intervention datapack, which means you would need to include at least one card from the Martial Law datapack, which means you would need to include at least one card from the Quorum datapack, which means you would need to include at least one card from the Daedalus Complex datapack, which you can do because it is one of the latest two datapacks.

Is that right @Absotively? This seems like a very neat idea to me.

5

RTsa and totsenheni have it right.

Another way to think of it is that you can use the X latest data packs, where X is any number you like, as long as you use all of the X latest data packs (except possibly the very latest one).

6

Hm… interesting idea and sorry for not getting it!

Wouldn’t this lead to a kind of chain that is very strong and might be applied by some decks? e.g. a chain down to Temu & Paperclip with some flex slots in it depending on your faction? And thus resulting in kind of similar decks? Not sure, do you have some experience with it?

7

Maybe? It depends how frequently very strong chains exist, and just how strong they are, and how often they go right up to the current data pack vs requiring some weaker or less synergistic links to keep them legal.

I haven’t done a lot of experimenting yet, just thinking through some of the details and making the two decks above to test how hard adapting decks would be.

1 Like
8

I checked a couple decks and some key cards are in the earlier cycles for sure. I think a reasonable chain back to Adjusted Chronotype is not going to happen, for example. It’s pretty easy to pick cards from a few packs to be able to go back a full cycle to get Temujins etc, but going back three cycles isn’t going to make your deck better.

I kind of like the idea, but it feels hard to let go of some of the staples of the earlier cycles. Is Noise a problem when you know nobody is running Jackson? There’s quite a few viruses available in core + deluxes already. Still, I feel like running some alternate format GNK tournament while we’re waiting for the new MWL. This just might be it. :slight_smile:

edit: I do wonder if it’s going to be all-temujins on runner side, though, seeing as you’d probably want to include some cards from data packs and that seems like an obvious choice. Though if that’s the case, maybe corps can deckbuild to respond to this…

9

format seem fun, altho validation what cards to put out from your deck is not an easy task.

10

So I was going to come back to this after my local regional in a couple weeks, but now I’m probably going to try to get people to play Cache Refresh with me instead. Please take this post as my official abandonment of this idea, at least for now.

1 Like
11

Cache refresh seems pretty interesting. I was completely unaware that they moved regionals finals to a second day. That is pretty great. Every year I usually am pretty bushed by the top 8.

12

They’ve only gone to two days for some regionals. You can see which ones are two days in the list of regionals locations.

1 Like