I agree with this, and I find that many of the recent builds which take up Museum of History out of other shells (Gagarin, NEH, I’ve even seen a Nisei division) can be similarly unpleasant to play against. It’s not that they’re unbeatable (or even particularly strong, as far as I can tell), but rather that many of them seem to durdle on nearly indefinitely without a clear path to victory. (NEH is probably less egregious on this front, but I’m thinking here mainly of the variants with 8 agendas in a 54 card deck and no mechanism to establish a durable remote to score those without relying on the runner bankrupting themselves trashing nonsense assets.)
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I haven’t seen IT dpt played in quite a while though. Which decks are running it?
None I hope. Takes too long for competitive play.
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I thought it was going to be cool when it came out, but museum of history just makes me want to shoot myself whenever it gets rezzed now. I hate it so much. It’s the only card that’s gotten me to quit a game before it was finished online simply because I would rather do something fun with the rest of my day, rather than take money and check the same fucking remote every two turns until I die of old age.
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Ok, people are probly going to bombard me with agressive comments for saying this, but whatever.
Museum of History is a card that is good for the game. There, I said it. Why, you might ask. Museum of History allows corps to never lose on thier secondary loss condition, without having to score a 5/3 agenda. The here are comparable cards on the runner side such as Plascrete, Feedback Filter, Public Sympathy, and the upcoming Guru Davinder. Not only does Museum of History do that, it also lets the Corp dilute the agenda density of R&D by shuffling non agenda cards back. It also protects have ice destruction, shuffling ice back after it gets trashed.
Museum also lets certain stratagies shine. Before Kala Ghoda, Gagarin was barely teir 2, now it’s approaching teir one because it can rely on Mumba Temple, and Museum of History to get it back. Diversity in the Corp meta game is necessary for a healthy meta. It has a clear downside of having to run a 54 card deck (Let’s be honest, nobody is paying influance for Museum), and it can be trashed if you are really worried about it. DBS helps the game not take forever.
Museum of History is a balanced card that is good for the game and can be played around as well as beaten, and if you are in a tournament, nervier player is going to want to take forever, so time will not be an issue. If you are really worried about Museum of History and it creates a NPE for you, you can include 3x Scrubber and 3x Archives interface in your Whizzard deck, and destroy anyon playing Museum.
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Never more relevant! Also, the thought of playing a Museum deck against x3 Archives Interface is shudder-inducing.
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Letting weird shit be viable is not incompatible with it just being a crushingly boring, unfun card.
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I am sick to death of the astro train. NBN fast advance simply sucks the fun out of the game for me more than anything else. Talk about non-interactive. The worst part is if you play competitively, it feels like it’s what you’re up against seven out of 10 games.
It wasn’t as bad before Data & Destiny because I felt like the runner had more options to derail it, but now things like news team and archangel make it so much more difficult to do what you need to do to stay in the game. I think the MWL made clot quite a bit less viable, which further exacerbated the numerous problems Data and Destiny caused and basically forced this Dumblefork meta.
Siphon spam, keyhole, DLR … I feel like those strategies fall under the general rule of, if you don’t like it, don’t let them do it to you. Stuff like crisium grid and corporate town affects such a wide array of runner decks that it’s worth slotting.
From a design standpoint, I think NBN has gotten so out of hand, I really don’t know how they can fix it short of doing more to restrict the use of astroscript pilot program.
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I don’t think it feels like that, it frequently is. Six out of the eight games where I ran were against Yelllow at the last SC I attended. It’s hard to play anything else right now. Cards like Astroscript and Archangel and PopUp and Jackson and SanSan and Wraparound are amazingly good.
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Just play Shaper, Kate still has an easy time with NBN FA/NBN in general now thanks to Artist Colony. It also falls under the case of “if you don’t like it, don’t let them do it to you.” I’ll agreed that huge code gates will give Crim unreasonable trouble, but that’s not a negative for Archangel/Crick/Turing, that’s an indictment of Crim’s breaker situation. CyCy/Escher/Spooned/D4 all deal with these cards effectively.
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It’s funny, I think that any deck that it designed to take less than 30 minutes to win isn’t much fun! I feel a bit cheated if there haven’t really been enough decisions on each side to make it feel like a tactical challenge (or maybe it feels like a deckbuilding game instead rather than a game in the actual playing). Each to their own!
In terms of meaningful play choices, at least long-game decks give you more of an opportunity to fashion a counterplay if you recognise the plan. Sometimes with a quick deck if you realise what is happening a click too late, you missed any chance to try and counter it!
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I don’t disagree with you. I’d like to offer a defense for the need of NBN FA. From what I’ve seen, the overwhelming majority of players would rather play non-FA, non-NBN deck. Mind games with Jinteki, murder/glacier with Weyland, brain damage/glacier shenanigans with HB…these are a blast to play, and make one feel like they’re playing netrunner as it was meant to be played.
With the prevalence of faust/DLR/siphon spam/ICE-destruction, however, it often feels like FA is the only viable option. In the competitive scene, our local meta players have turned to FA out of necessity to stay afloat. I feel like knocking Anarch down a notch will lead to a natural migration back to other corp deck archetypes.
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Heh, I don’t think I’ve experienced a game of Netrunner that had meaningful tactical decisions being made after 30 minutes (once we’d all internalized the rules: learning games take an hour or so) :). 30 minutes is 30ish turns, plenty of time for a good bit of spirited thrust and counter, check and escape. Part of the joy is the “checkmate in 5” feeling / realization. To each their own I guess 
NBN FA is unquestionably good for the game, in the same way that HB Glacier is. Not necessarily any given iteration, but a healthy competitive meta needs decks that operate well at a spectrum of speeds (just get it under 30minutes, please) ;).
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Absolutely agree. Playing a long game, and having a way to prevent mill-losses should absolutely be a part of the corp’s options when building a deck.
The fact that it extends the game past the accepted tournament limits isn’t the card’s fault, that’s an inherent problem with organized play. There’s plenty of competitive decks, built for the long game, that aren’t playable in tournaments.
I think the biggest gripe about it is the amount of shuffling, which is a pain, but not what I would call a NPE.
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It’s decks like that Argus deck that make me love playing Noise. Oh, a corp wants to sit back and force me to run his centrals and activate his kill combo? He’s never going to try to score? That’s okay, I can play solitaire too.
I try to design all of my decks to have ‘two ways to win.’ What I mean by that is there is no single card or activity that I am so beholden to that my entire game strategy is dependent on it (e.g. a centrals-only deck I made that tried to score using Quest Completed and Notoriety; locking it our of any one central completely disabled the deck).
Among runners, Noise comes with a very strong secondary win condition that is difficult for the corp to play around. Heck, Noise’s ID activates 2 alternate win conditions (milling Agendas into archives, which the runner then steals, or milling all of the cards out of R&D). A Noise deck that can run a good primary game stealing agendas while keeping the secondary win condition(s) is very difficult for most corps to deal with.
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I disagree somewhat. I feel like the first 5-10 turns are virtually automatic for most decks. The midgame to me feels much more tactical as the corporation is able to get it’s engine running, followed by a late-game in which one side builds an unsurmountable momentum towards victory.
I play different decks, then :). The first turn or two, on the corp side, maybe. But even there there’s room for gambits and matchup-specific play. On the runner side it’s completely deckstyle and matchup dependent, from the get go. Some decks aren’t super interactive and tend to have program-ish turns, but I don’t tend to play those :)*
* I break my own rules all the time. It’s what they’re for. Sometimes you play 7-point combo CI just because.
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Oh wow, my first turn as corp is heavily dependent upon the matchup I’m facing, and my first turn as a runner depends 60% on what the corp did, and 40% on the cards in my hand.
ICE HQ, ICE R&D, Hedge Fund may feel like an auto-opener to you, but it’s the wrong play against MaxX!
Similarly, turn 1 medium dig on an open R&D may not be a great idea against Jinteki…
No, I think the first few turns are not at all automatic (which they certainly are in chess), but are the footwork where much of the game can be decided. Think of it as ‘I can’t win a game in the first 3 turns, but I can definitely lose in those 3 turns.’
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An hour per match is already exhausting by the end of even a medium-sized competition (4-5 rounds swiss, cut to top 4/8). The time limit is not a problem with organized play.
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I had my first time playing a round of 4 and then a top 8 last weekend. I was very happy to play decks that won (or lost) relatively quickly but even with that the tournament started at 2 and ended at 11 (partly due to some poor time management from the organizer, but only partly).
I’m now on board with the mentality that long games are not good in a tournament scene; that day was exhausting enough as it was. I am happy to play the odd long game on jnet every now and again though.
1 Like