Assuming you play 6 rounds of swiss in a tournament, you have 6 games when playing warhammer and 12 games when playing Netrunner. The difference is pretty darn big. The different outcomes are quite drastic, too.
That is true, but if you just cut off the 2nd game, the person in the first example would have still 50% of the points and the 2nd person something between 0-100% of the points. Which is as big a deviation as you can get.
So your problem is that there are fewer games, not that they are best of 1.
Because there is no such thing as best of 2. Thatās just best of 1 twice. Best of three implies some sort of variance mitigation, the possibility of sideboards and so on.
I donāt want to argue, but I think it disingenuous to say that best of 1 was the deal breaker for you when you play a game that is basically best of 1.
Edit: I also want to point out that I think the time limit on rounds in Conquest is way too high and could easily be much shorter to allow for more rounds.
Iām always down to chat about LoTR 
It is a great game and very difficult too boot. I also love how the quest design determines the meta keeping the game fresh. It can feel a bit fidly at times though thatās my only gripe.
Sigh. LOTR is an amaznig game and I should give it a bit more love. I have decks built, but I really need to get more play in - very hard to do that with Netrunner and AGOT also jockeying for my attention.
Is this really a fair comparison? Firstly, Conquest has a huge cohort of miniature gaming fans who access the content because theyāre familiar with the fluff and love Space Marines, whereas Netrunner started from pretty much a blank slate save for a handful of old school ONR veterans.
Popularity is also largely unrelated to the quality or balance of a game - at least until a game becomes lucrative enough that sales strategy bleeds into the game design. What I mean here is like in actual Warhammer 40,000 where the best units are coincidentally the most expensive models and you need several of them to be competitiveā¦
FWIW, I donāt find the decision-making process anywhere near as interesting in Conquest - both in the deck-building and the card play. Netrunner is in a very interesting place right now, with most IDs represented at reasonable sized tournaments and viable archetypes out of each faction.
I think it maybe true as the rising tides lifts all boats. The success of Netrunner has also been a success for the LCG model in general and has legitimized the format making it less risky for people to invest in a new game.
There are a few comeback mechanisms - most notably planet Tarrus, the warlord command snipe, and a few cards like Tense Negotiations. I definitely agree that there isnāt that much way to disrupt the natural clock, and Iām hoping the upcoming Planetfall cycle (which focuses more on icons/positioning of planets) will have some means of rearranging planets or otherwise altering them to potentially change the game.
Eldorath and Kith are definitely top tier, though Eldorath has been playing less choke-heavy more recently. Superiority is becoming less popular, and thereās an interesting combo with Mighty Wraithknight that has taken its place in many decks.
Cato tends to play a flexible anything-goes sort of game, being either aggressive or playing the long game depending on planet layout, and Ragnar does the same thing but with a bit more focus on killing the warlord (though focusing too hard on warlord hunting ends up making you too combo-oriented IMO).
Zarathur, the other warlord Iād put clearly in the top tier, tends to play a more aggressive game, with lots of direct damage effects and cheap but punchy units. He also cares less about command than other warlords because he has a fair bit of alternative economy with sacrificial Cultists (Splintered Path Acolyte/Promise of Glory) providing extra resources and Ammo Depot providing extra cards. Warpstorm and Gleeful Plague Beast can be used to counter large enemy buildups.
IMO it definitely has. In particular, there are a lot more good cheap units for basically all factions/allies, which means almost every deck can be more competitive in command and greatly reduces the chance of getting lucked out early and the game snowballing away from you. In the core set only environment, most decks were forced to run relatively inconsistent cost curves (or play bad cards) simply thanks to what was available in the pool, and thatās no longer the case.
Yes, definitely. Iāve run several tournaments for this game and itās pretty normal for every single game to finish early, often 15-20 minutes early.
Oh, I wasnāt trying to use that as a selling point for Conquest, more as a reference for concerns about how many players are playing. The popularity of a game doesnāt have all that much to do with the quality of its rules and gameplay.
Hate to say it but the top player in conquest right now appears to be Jermey Zwirn
Isnāt it always him for the first year?
Should I open one about Doomtown as well? 
Itās mostly because he playtests everything, and gets to know the cards very well before theyāre actually released.
Heās also an incredibly skilled player at no less than 4 different games (Netrunner, Invasion, Conquest, Call of Cthulhu) and plays many others at a high level. Saying itās āmostly because he playtestsā really belittles his accomplishments.
Agreed, heās clearly a skilled strategist. For example, watch the Conquest finals for Worlds 2014.
Edit: I would place bets now on Zwirn winning the first aGoT 2.0 worlds!
thrones has enough of a carry-over that I think a thrones 1 player will win thrones 2 worlds
Case in point: Warhammer 40K itself ;). I kinda liked the Commander-pack based deckbuilding, and with an LCG thereās only so much youāre going to be able to do with a core set and like eight factions (so I expect it to open up quite a bit!).
Conquest was pretty fun but didnāt feel fresh enough for me to make the time commitment to. I only have so much space for card games I donāt get to play much, and right now those slots are filled with CoC, 7thSea, L5R, VTES, and DTR.
7th Sea represent!
From a technical point of view, in ANR there are generally many more actions per game, leading to more need for consistently correct decisions to win. In other words, the power of each separate decision is reduced. For a game that takes 30 turns for instance, the runner has 120 actions whereas the corp has 90. Thatās a lot of decisions! Then, to win, you have to be consistently good.
In the long run, the better players of course tend to win- though they can lose a given game due to extreme draws. It reminds me of the NHL - the bigger the numbers involved, the more stable the law of large numbers becomes. A goaltenderās true skill canāt be accurately assessed over 5 shooting attempts- we see the āactualā save percentages stabilizing after hundreds of attempts. In this case netrunner may be more stable simply because of the larger numbers involved per game.
As to which game involves more skill- none of us is smart enough to provide a proof. Just enjoy the games you enjoy and be happy 
And, as to the balance of the cards released for the various games, I am also not qualified to comment 
Yo ho, yo hoā¦ a pirateās life for me!
I should note my background here too; I got into LCGs only in late 2014, starting with AGoT. That game was on its last legs and came with a huge card pool and complex rules, but I nevertheless played it the most. At the same time I dabbled very lightly in Netrunner, Conquest and Doomtown.
Thematically, my natural inclination should be towards Conquest as I used to play Games Workshop tabletop games- in fact those were the only games I had played for the majority of my life. Netrunner would be bottom of the list because I am generally not very interested in sci-fi themes.
As it was, I didnāt get into Netrunner at the start, due to the jargon and such (and my limited motivation given the theme). Conquest was enjoyable but I felt that the game was somewhat simplified compared to the others. Doomtown was my favorite of the āotherā pack with both tactical movement and shootout math (I loved Morgan landslide as I recall).
More recently, as AGoT slowed down, I spent more and more time on these āotherā games. I was very surprised to find just how deep, enjoyable and interesting Netrunner was, particularly from a numbers perspective, once I got over the initial hurdles. I like it so much that I am now playing only Netrunner!
So in sum, I guess I am trying to say that I found Netrunner to be the best game for me, even though I had a bias against the theme. Itās a game of long-term averaging, which really appeals to me.
Is there a centralized hub for Conquest the way Netrunner has Stimhack, with articles and tourney winning decklists? Iāve tried to stay semi-up-to-date with the game, and Iām actually considering picking it up as a secondary as I really dislike the direction AEG is taking with Doomtown, but I want to make sure the gameās meta is in a healthy state before I take the plunge.