But tell us how you really feel 
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Shots fired.
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Iâve had some very slow runner plays against PE. If you donât see the archetype (or ever), and have no way of telling a cerebral overwriter from The Future perfect, then runners can become very hesitant and indecisive.
I love that these decks exist, and I love that they offer a very different way of playing netrunner that subverts many of its normal plays and forces different responses. I disagree that we should blame people who play different or inventive decks for their opponents not knowing how to play against them.
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Itâs pretty simple to work out whose âfaultâ it is, if you want to view things in such a confrontational manner. Who is taking more thinking time when making their plays? If the Corp, it is the Corpâs fault; if the Runner, it is the Runnerâs fault.
Strictly speaking in tournament play you should be playing at a speed to finish the game, regardless of how complicated the game state is. Now, in reality no-oneâs going to insist on this too strictly and people always take a little longer at crucial points. But if you take it too far, thatâs a bit rude. Certainly, if you repeatedly take longer playing against a particular deck type (whether because itâs unfamiliar, or sets complicated game states, or you just donât like it, or whatever) then youâre cheating your opponent somewhat. If the opponent sets you a problem that you canât solve promptly, they should get a reward for that (in the chance of you picking the wrong play). If you stall out your thinking time too much, itâs kind of similar to stalling out the game to get a draw at the end of a round: youâre abusing the fact that the prompt play guidelines are not hard enforced by sand timers but simply by people being sensible and not taking the mickey.
Itâs very easy thing to end up with brain freeze, but I think to be fair to your opponent it is worth keeping in the back of your mind that if you recognise yourself taking overly long to decide then just pick one (dice it if needed!). If it turns out to be the wrong play, that is the deserved reward for the opponent setting you a problem that confused the bejeezus out of you!
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Interestingly enough this topic (and a similar one on reddit) had me almost unsleeve my IG deck without a plan for a replacement last night, even though Iâm a huge fan of slow, deliberate play in almost any game (I prefer TBS to RTS, for example). I had resigned myself to playing IG only online (especially because shuffles are instantaneous!). Then I thought about all of the Faust I would be seeing in an upcoming SC and I think Iâve swung back on the IG train. Do I want the deck to play faster? Absolutely, and Iâll be making some changes to that effect. But attrition decks are actually doing quite well against Faust and if thatâs all Iâll be seeing at an SC, I canât be completely to blame for choosing to play those decks. I only went to time once in the GNK where I took Sunny/IG (75 minute rounds, to be fair), so it CAN be done.
I think this is where weâll have to agree to disagree. If it happens âoftenâ and is a âregular occurrence,â and you know that, you are indeed (as least as) responsible for bringing the deck in the first place. You are doing something you know is likely to cause particular outcomes: I donât know any way to parse a meaning of the term âresponsibilityâ that doesnât include that.
Well, youâre right that you donât âhaveâ to, but in an OP setting you are going to force more games to go to time and you are going to cause more NPE for other players. No oneâs stopping you, some of us just think itâs a dick move. (Particularly as a timed win/loss not only hits the other playerâs prestige, but if itâs happening often it also very likely eats into their SoS at the time of the cut.)
Sure, and if thatâs the exception rather than the rule, I think it would be reasonable to be frustrated with the runner if youâre in a timed situation (or otherwise expecting speedy play). If it happens consistently, though, that suggests this is not a problem with individual runners but that the common element is actually the deck youâre bringing (and/or your style of play).
If your principle strategy relies around burying agendas for as long as absolutely possible, you are increasing the total length of the game regardless of how quickly you take those actions. (And yes, I realize that a good IG/Museum player will be taking other actions to force the game state to advance â but I have also played enough bad IG/Museum players to recognize that many of them do not, in fact, have a plan beyond hiding agendas and hoping the runner implodes). This doesnât meet the tournament criteria for âintentional slow play,â but it is a reality nonetheless.
There are a lot of âshouldsâ here, and I guess Iâm more of a pragmatist, so Iâll just reiterate: if something consistently evokes a particular reaction, the blame for that outcome falls at least as much on the actor as the reactor. I really canât fathom any other understanding of the situation that doesnât embrace a certain popular understanding of the term insanity (âdoing the same thing over and overâŚâ).
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It is not correct that playing hide-and-seek with agendas as a game plan increases the game time. What is correct is that playing hide-and-seek with agendas increases the number of turns in the game.
A game is, under tournament rules, thirty minutes. Game plans are irrelevant to that. If deck plans exist that take ten turns to win, games should be finished within thirty minutes. If deck plans exist that take sixty turns to win, games should be finished within thirty minutes. The difference is that you must play your player turns within ninety seconds in the first case, and fifteen seconds in the second case.
If playing fifteen second turns is an issue, that is an issue with impractical tournament rules or player play-speed assumptions (assuming that they can take as much time in a turn as if they expect games to be over in fifteen turns), not an issue with the decks. I actually think as an archetype hide-and-seek IG is not the worst culprit in terms of number of turns (and thus the need for super-speed turns). I think it is true to say that popular multi-LARLA Faust decks can have lose conditions that take far more turns than the number of turns for hide-and-seek IG win conditions.
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I honestly donât think I had a negative player experience with Netrunner until Faust-Whiz.
The biggest thing that turns me off of games is the snowball effect, where you know youâre going to win or lose and it just becomes a matter of playing the game until that foregone conclusion actually occurs. Itâs one of the reason why I donât play MTG.
Netrunner is great at avoiding this, because you can always topdeck an agenda, win a psi game, click for credits until youâre back in a position to act, etc. Weâve all won games we thought we were surely out of, because thatâs how Netrunnner works.
But with Dumblefork, Iâve been testing since it showed up and canât find a Corp other than PE that can stop the snowball. Unless Iâve scored 7 points before they get Wyldside, itâs a loss. You just keep slapping (and rezzing) ice on R&D until youâre out of either credits or ice, and then you lose. And youâve been so busy doing that that you havenât scored.
It feels like youâre playing just to lose, and thatâs certainly neither fun nor a positive experience.
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I countered this by bringing an RP deck with tons of Faust hate (Komainu, Snare!, Swordsman, Ashigaru, etc.) to a recent SC and it did really well. Try modifying your existing decks or building a new one specifically to counter Faust Whiz and you may find your hate turn to satisfaction in sitting across from a deck youâre specifically countering.
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I donât remember having any kind of NPE myself but I tend to give NPE to other people by playing unfun and boring decks.
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See, thereâs a sort of conundrum here. If you feel youâre forced to tech against dumbledork, youâre not going to feel better about playing it, youâre just going to be slightly less frustrated whole playing it, then some other deck comes along that trashes you because you chose to try not to have NPE with this match up. Which is a popular match up. It shows discontent in a major way.
Also, on the subject of length of time to pay decks, it is absolutely the runners fault the game takes longer by design. The Corp canât just play and hope to win whole the runner ignores what it does, the Corp acts first, then itâs constantly racing the runner in terms of resources. If the runner steals an agenda from me while Iâm playing my glacier deck, in not just going to try and rush out a win before they do, unless Iâm playing Noise or something, and good luck with that, right? So the play style the Corp takes gets shifted to defensive, and thereâs nothing that can be done about it other than make sub optimal plays for times sake. A lot of runners donât want to actually run these days too, so you end up with a situation that screams of camping, what are you supposed to do? This is when people decide to take fast advance over other options, and the game gets a little more predictable. Ew
Since this is a game of hidden information - in which the runner generally has no knowledge that youâve hidden agendas (outside of rare exceptions, like a visible TFP/NAPD that gets shuffled back in), much less the number of turns in your expected game plan - Iâm not sure how you can meaningfully separate the two. The runner canât be compelled to take quicker turns based on something they donât know.
Would you suggest that it is reasonable for a runner to start every game by taking 2.5 minute turns because they have a deck based on early aggression, where games are usually won inside of 6 turns? If not, why is the inverse reasonable, where a corp expects the runner to take rapid turns because they have a deck that operates optimally if the game runs 50+ turns (which, again, is actually hidden information to the other party at the onset of the game).
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Sure, if you feel like youâre forced to do anything it wonât be fun. But it feels good that you can get away with playing an odd deck that wouldnât normally be good except for the abundance of what youâre explicitly countering.
You are absolutely right, the Runner or the Corp cannot be expected to know the âexpected number of turnsâ that their opponentâs deck generally wins or loses in. So, in order to ensure that you get your games finished in time, you need (under tournament conditions) to play at a speed that would enable the decks with the highest âexpected turnsâ to get their games finished. That way, whatever deck the opponent is playing there wonât be timing issues. If youâre both playing âlow expected turnâ decks, no worries, you still got finished!
If you play at a speed such that âlow turn decksâ could finish a game in time, because you expect to see more of them, you are not playing at:
âa pace to allow the match to be finished within the announced time limitâ
you are instead playing at:
âa pace to allow the match to be finished within the announced time limit so long as they are playing a deck I approve of.â
I was building my own version of the Whizzard ice destruction deck as a counter to NBN fast advance even before the dominant version hit the scene because Iâm just so tired of the FA archetype.
NBN FAâs ice is super efficient and taxing for the rez cost, but in my view, since it typically only runs 11-13 ice, my thought was simply destroying the ice, R&D locking the corp and swapping scored astros with turntable was the way to go.
NBN FA is to blame for Dumblefork in my view.
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Thereâs a point where is expected that either player knows that the arenât THAT many options, and someone should just do something to avoid stalling. It comes down to experience and personality, but if youâre sitting with your maw agape, staring at cards youâve never seen before, youâre causing the game to stall, and you should be more mindful of this. It can be said about both players, in spite of my earlier accusation. Iâm not an unreasonable person, so itâs not totally insane to think that the experiences I have in this game are universal, so therefore if youâre sitting down at a table for a tournament or whatever, you should be more mindful of what youâre actually doing. Are you playing your deck the way it was meant to be played? Are you able to reasonably make expedient decisions regarding the board state? Are you at a severe disadvantage? These are all pretty simple things to understand in the course of a normal game, itâs when youâre forced to continue in the face of almost certain defeat with no recourse ,thatâs when NPE happens. Itâs not the amount of time invested, itâs the amount oftime wasted that gets people. If youâre playing a deck that takes a lot of turns, try to play it fast. Thereâs not a million things you can do, draw, cred, or install. Same goes for the other side. Eh, Iâm just ranting at this point, what a ridiculous subject this is haha
The thing about Museum of History is that is can create situations where both players honestly believe (sometimes correctly) that their optimal course of action is sit on their ass, take money, and wait for the other person to do something. The corp losing by decking out (or some runner inevitable loss condition based on time/turns) is a necessary function of the game.
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All of netrunner is good, with one notable exception⌠Waiting for 10mins while someone is faffing around with their CI 7pt combo (which half the time ends up with a darnit i goofed up autowin) is not fun at all. not saying that playing with and against that deck isnt fun, just saying the formalities of execution are tedious at best once you have seen it before
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I donât see how it is the runnerâs responsibility to play faster when the corp brings a deck that takes a long number of turns to win. Having to play faster is a disadvantage because you make more mistakes, so what youâre saying is that decks with a very long game plan should have an advantage over decks with a shorter game plan in timed settings. That doesnât make any sense to me. Iâd much rather that slow decks just time out some of the time.
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Unfortunately, I think this is correct. I really like the museum of history card, but I think it undoes one of the basic principles of Netrunner that the corp has to score agendas, while the runner has to stop them.
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