Time to give us more information about which cards will/wont cycle?

If they “functionally reprint” things they are still selling us the same cards multiple times. Either way it fits in with FFG’s lazy design philosophy of “find ways to minimize the number of playable cards per pack”. While simultaneously pooping on the legacy community (legacy RP with 4-6 jacksons anyone?)

I would expect to hear FFG claiming that “Consumer Grade” was a huge success and they will be releasing more of them.

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We are only half way through the cycle you know. I also think you’re generally being a little harsh.

Yes, consumer grade cards are clearly a cynical cash grab. They’ve already avoided making 3 whole cards! Just 17 more of them, and FFG will have gotten away with not designing a whole datapack- practically stealing 18.95$ (Canadian) from me the loyal netrunner player! The indignity!

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Joining the illustrious company of net police toshiyuki leviathan and other non-cards.

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Technically six, since remember Fear the Masses has been fully spoiled and it only went up to card number 114.

there are a lot of non-cards, aren’t there?

Here’s my count of all viable runner cards from one of my january posts:

tl;dr FFG prints a lot of wallpaper.

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I’ll be surprised to see CT not stay in the game somehow; FFG clearly have a fondness for her, and there was that discussion (I forget where) about how she was almost the core set Shaper ID.

this is actually a very useful way to view the pool in light of rotation.

I would imagine there are a lot more playable corp cards, given that corp strategies can be narrow whilst runner decks must be constructed as broadly as possible to cover all corp archetypes

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Spy Camera: Limited in use. Only certain decks.
Net Chip: Why would I include six?
Ramajun: Too frightening of art to ever consider using. Plus damage is usually dealt one at a time, like with Janus.

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I don’t recall the numbers for corps other than they were similarly low, I’m not gauging anything on any metric, but the main point is less than 25% of the cards they print matter so when they start pulling tricks to print fewer cards, people are in the right to be upset about it.

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I think the argument has be for quality over quantity. I don’t have an issue with them printing 1 less unique card per pack, as I think the main problem is (as backed up by your work) we get 2-3 playable cards per pack and a load of dross.

Having said that mumbad has been quite good so far.

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It sort of depends if you count the blue cards as playable. If you don’t, we’ve had a single playable runner card - Political Operative - and nothing else. Oh, Artist Colony.

Corp side, there have been a bunch, many of which are neutral. Temple, Museum, Sales Team, etc.

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Neat! I made a version of this but then discovered Apple’s Numbers app can no longer do pivot tables because software is hard and (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ and ain’t nobody got time to count stuff by hand or buy excel :wink:

Bottom line: yeah, lotta chaff in there

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Well, maybe if you use a very high standard for “playable”- something like “currently playable in a high level tournament deck”. But I think we need to adopt looser standards- some people like building janky decks around niche cards, and I think its fine that FFG releases cards that support that play style. Other cards fall a bit short of the power curve, but might be playable in the right environment, and even if not they are the kind of “near miss” that’s inevitable. Chill seems to have built this in to his selection of cards to some degree- he included cards like surfer and gravedigger on his list.

By this looser criterion, I’d say there are plenty of playable runner cards. Run amok, Diwan, EMP device, High stakes job, tech trader, Mongoose, pretty much all the shaper cards. I think they’ve gotten better about avoiding trash like hard at work or leviathan, at least so far this cycle.

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well put. Some cards are not universally playable, but make good meta choices and/or are particularly good in certain archetypes.
Examples such as Tech Trader in Geist or Archives Interface in Anarch currently come to mind.

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I think (though I could be wrong) that those cards are included on the list because they are cards in the pack. Viable cards have a faction symbol next to them. I don’t think Neutral cards are on the list. I was working with Chill’s criteria (which does appear to exclude Surfer and Gravedigger).

I do agree FFG have got much better about printing cards that are at least playable somewhere, as opposed to cards like Leviathan. Then again, they also printed Harvester…

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Have you played with Harvester? Or decided never to play it because it’s not simply a better version of a existing card that you can swap out. When I have used it, it was a very different ICE, but certainly paid back it’s cost many times over. In some criminal match-ups, it was the stand-out card of the game! I am still not sure how to use it to its best ability, but from trying it out a few times, I am sure there is potential for it to be a useful card.

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Well, sure. Criminals can’t break code gates any more!

But replace my example with Ramujan-reliant 550 BMI if you like.

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Fair enough- then I disagree with Chill too :smile:

I’m pretty sure harvester is horrible, but it does seem like the kind of card that maybe someday could have a spot in a deck. Ramujan whatever seems way worse- I can’t imagine putting any number of those, never mind 6, in my deck. There are still some whiffs, for sure, but I guess I’m happy with the trajectory FFG is on in terms of new cards. And I think the consumer grade cards are an interesting design space, not a scam (although so far the execution is certainly lacking).

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