So instead of asking “how many cards do you see?”, we ask “which circle of hell do you belong in?”
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My favourite trash talking of net runner is " Jugar account siphon es de mala persona", (Play AS is a bad person thing in spanish).
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They’re gonna have to start making up new circles.
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The little-known 13th circle of hell, for people who complain about Medium while allowing incubator to grow to THIRTEEN COUNTERS without purging?
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To be fair, I died from net damage while accessing.
Snare! is a cruel mistress.
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Snare, aka “Justice from R&D”.
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To get serious for a moment, though:
Medium is undeniably powerful. It snowballs quickly and is surrounded by cards that make this snowball easier to escalate.
However, is this a problem, or is it just a powerful strategy?
A “problem”, in my book, is something that makes the game unfun, either for the person playing it or the person getting it played against them. This would be why the IG-54 Prison decks from earlier this year were a problem; they made the game boring for both the Runner and the Corp, but it was simply the most powerful thing around.
Compare this to, let’s say, Foodcoats. This was an undeniably powerful strategy, but the games were still fun and interactive. Ergo, not a problem.
So how does all of this relate to Medium, and by extension, the Anarchs that use it so efficiently?
Is playing Medium unfun? No. It’s an amazing feeling to snowball away and see a dozen cards.
Is playing against Medium unfun? I’d say, no. You have to plan around it, which can be done, and when it hits, the game becomes a fast-paced cat-and-mouse where you try to purge and shore up your bleeding R&D while the runner tries to stop you. And beating a Medium feels quite rewarding.
Simply put, it’s just a strong card. It can be played around. Start running Cyberdex Virus Suite again, use Architect, run Snare (as @TheBytemaster can attest), play Friends in High Places to counter ICE destruction. it can be beat, and you don’t even need hate cards. Just play your game with the card in mind.
If you leave R&D single-iced against an Anarch who have decent econ and think you’ll be fine, then maybe Medium isn’t the problem, eh? Almost every game when I face an Anarch and don’t suspect Siphon, I double-ICE R&D as fast as I can.
And please, before I see replies like “But I don’t want to play counters to powerful cards, I’d rather try to bully Damon into nerfing a card I don’t like”, how many of you run Networking or New Angeles City Hall to counter CtM? How many run Plascrete Carapace or Sports Hopper to counter Scorched Earth? How many use Whizzard instead of other powerful Anarchs to counter Assets? How many of you ran Turntable back in the day to counter the Astrotrain? And don’t even get me started on #SlotTheClot…
Throughout every game, something will be powerful. And the players will find ways to beat it. Only when something becomes unfun and makes people not want to play, is it a problem. And that, Medium is not.
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I play 3 years against medium (and with, included a mad noise with incubator and personal workshop) and i’ll never se as a problem until last months. But in this time defend against medium is not only about ices in rd (melted like butter with ice destrucion) or blackmailed, with no possible upgrade to defend (cyberdex is one turn trick and 3 to rez before access) because are rummor milled, and you still have to defend HQ to stop shiphons and vamps, and archives because omar.
Well anarchs are powerful ok, but for the balance of the game should be nerfed (like in every game is made). And for me the more logic and clean solution is limit is power of rd multiacces, allowing all the other tools (forcing to import another things, like all the factions to solve that problem) Maybe with medium out of the game is not necessary to add more anarchs cards to the mwl.
Another thing Eli is fine in MWL, but architect should leave the list.
Medium was around for years and wasn’t a problem. Runner economy was limited enough that they couldn’t just run R&D 3 times in one turn, so R&D Interface was often better than Medium. Now that runners often have all the money in the world, Medium has become ridiculous.
MWL/restrict runner econ cards, not Medium.
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Ice destruction are economy cards, shiphons are economy cards, too much cards to be restricted. My point i see anarch destruction ice or black mail anarch could be battled with the actual card pool for glacier decks ( via ark lockdown and friends) and can we have interesting games and still be a powerful style of play, but always if that anarchs can’t have acces to ridiculous RD lock.
My biggest beef with Medium was that it’s the best R&D multi-access card in the Archives faction. Shaper should have Medium (or the best R&D cards), not Anarch. This breaks the color pie, contributing to the problem that anarch is the best at everything.
Personally, I would have liked Medium to gain counters on archives runs or something. You’d install, run archives 2x, then run R&D to access extra cards. Of course, it would not be very good then, so that’s not particularly fun, is it? :-p
All that said, I don’t think medium is a problem card. I’d like see other powerful multi access tools released in the other factions to match.
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I recently read what WotC does in such cases: "Smuggler’s Copter, a rare card that sold for about $10, was banned because it shows up in too many decks, diminishing the format’s diversity, according to WotC."
So simple.
While it is a solid precedent, it’s worth bearing in mind that this is the first time WotC have banned any cards in the standard format in over a decade. They do have the capacity to do it but only when they think it’s got really bad and have showed restraint in cases of cards more omnipresent in mtg than medium ever has been in ANR over the last few years.
iirc, WotC banned two cards in Standard in 2011. So, technically, 6 years. But still, Standard bannings are super rare for Magic. Point still stands. Just nitpicking.