After tonight, I’ve remembered another reason I dislike the Museum decks - I have to keep changing the zoom on my screen as the chat window gets bumped off the screen and eventually need a magnifying glass to see what the funk is going on. #OldTimer #GetOffMyLawn #MyEyesAren’tWhatTheyUsedToBe
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You might not like it, I might not like it, we all might not like it! The point is that with the tournament setup we have it is both players responsibility to play fast enough to finish the game. Not fast enough to get X turns done, fast enough to finish the game.
It’s absolutely not the Runner’s place to go faster than they might like to work out all the optimum strategies, the onus is on both sides. If the Corp has quick decision-making, the Runner has slow decision-making and there aren’t enough turns to finish, then the Runner hasn’t been keeping to the prompt play guidelines. If the Runner is quick and the Corp is slow them the Corp hasn’t been following them.
If you as as either Corp or Runner know that when you come up against certain decks and play at your normal turn speed, there aren’t enough turns for one or other side’s expected win or lose conditions to come into play, then that is a sign that your normal turn speed isn’t fast enough according to the tournament guidelines! If you don’t like the speed that would mean you have to take your turns, complain about the tournament format!
It’s always a bit of an unknown how fast is fast enough, but if you’ve played a particular deck a few times and know that it takes more turns, then you know how fast you need to go to fulfill the prompt play guidelines, given the existence of that deck. But what certainly is unforgivable is if you don’t play fast enough to allow your own deck’s major win/lose conditions to come into play. If you’re playing a double-LARLA, Faust, Wyldside deck are you playing fast enough turns that a major lose condition of your strategy (you deck out and can’t access) can come into play in the time limit? It is surely more abusive to bring a deck to a tournament where general play speed turns off a major lose condition than a deck where general play speed turns off a major win condition?
Weirdly, back in the day, I tried Tennin a few times at tournaments and never had a remote server (unless you count temporary Jackson ones). You’d think with only three servers to go at the runner but would be quite quick, but my games always went on for ages due to runner prevaricating. My turns were really quick and there weren’t many options, but for whatever reason, runners got analysis paralysis, so I had to stop using the deck.
I suspect a lot of the museum stuff will lead to players wondering what on earth they can do about the situation and hence taking longer, but we’ll have to see how it shakes out.
It’s up to both players to keep the game moving - agreed. However, if you take something out of the ordinary, it slows your opponent down - in my experience anyway. I’m not saying that’s a reason to avoid new decks, but it is a Thing.
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“If you don’t like the speed that would mean you have to take your turns, complain about the tournament format!”
There is no reason to change the tournament format that is ideal for over 90% of IDs because there are a couple that sometimes time out. Hurting most games to help a small number just doesn’t make any sense.
But that makes you in favour of a change!
It doesn’t currently say “Play fast enough so that 90% of IDs work” it says “Play fast enough so that games work regardless of ID”.
If you ignore the rules and instead try to play fast enough so that only 90% of IDs work then you’re not following the rules and presumably want to change them to follow what you actually do (unless you actively enjoy cheating the rules I suppose).
I’m ok with the current rules because timeouts hurt both the person who brought the super-long deck, and the person who didn’t. So people are less likely to bring IG to a tournament with current rules. I suppose I would also support IG being banned from tournaments, but that seems a bit heavy handed.
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MTG deals with annoying indefinite stall decks by punishing them with the dreaded Draw Bracket. If you brought a Turbo Fog* deck to a larger tournament and you drop the ball and go to time in the first or second round, you were punished by being paired up against all the other Turbo Fog decks that inevitably led to more games going to time and thus more draws. This was not a good strategy for making top 8.
Giving those playing stall decks essentially their own bracket is probably my favorite way of discouraging stall decks in tournament play. I marvel at it’s elegance. But the way prestige points are awarded in Netrunner doesn’t guarantee that you’ll continue to get paired up against other opponents who went to time like the MTG W/L/D 3/0/1 point system does. Drawing 2 games in Netrunner looks exactly like winning 1 when it comes to pairings. The only problem with the draw bracket system is that it leads to the stall deck’s blameless first round opponents being brought into the draw bracket as well to face all the stall decks.
Full disclosure though, Moment’s Peace is one of my all time Favorite MtG Cards.
*Turbo Fog decks are decks that play a lot of “Fog” effects or cards that prevent combat damage, the primary way of killing you opponent in MTG. This would let the player stall indefinitely until eventually milling/ drawing through their opponent’s entire deck causing them to lose. They are slow and don’t lend themselves to playing 3 games in 50 minutes, often leading to winning the first game against an unprepared opponent, losing the second game to the opponent’s side-boarded deck, and then going to time in the final game leading to a draw.
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Having spent all day in the bowels of jinteki.net playing an endless stream of durdling Museum of History decks with the only win condition of “bore the runner to death”… I’m going to change my answer from “there’s no such thing as an NPE deck” to those.
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I’ve started using “No museum games thanks” in the title matches I create now. It’s worked well so far.
Came third in another SC today - still no museum decks on display in actual tournaments, in my experience.
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This is gonna seem off-meta, but that’s where you find most of the fun stuff: Spark Agency.
Spark is the anti-Anarch, no question about it. Play the whole game around cutting off the runner’s resources exactly when they need it most (if they click for a 3rd cred, rez an ad! That’s another click not spent eating your ice/assets). Whiz is tougher than most, but you can get around that by just playing so many assets, and comboing them with money-making ice to ensure you get something out of the deal (pop-up, special offer, product placement)
A bit off topic I know, but solutions to decks do exist. You just have to find them. And then exploit the ever-loving crap out of them by faking a breaking news, then using all-seeing I when all the wyldsides have gone to appease faust. Good times.
I’ve decided Museum decks can suck it. Grinding the runner to death is no fun for anyone, even if I’m probably going to win. Now I’m one of those jerks that leaves games on Jnet and it’s all thanks to spending 40 damn minutes of people shuffling Snares back in.
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You realize that this means:
is entirely accurate, right? I.e. you are still presuming a fixed time per turn, it is just one which now conforms to the pace required by slowest possible decks (sidenote: ugh, god, hell no.).
Where are you seeing this? The floor rules, as far as I can tell, ask judges to warn (and subsequently declare game loss for repeated infractions) people for play which is slower than “reasonable:”
Nowhere is there a suggestion, as far as I can tell, that “reasonable” means “playing at a breakneck pace in case someone brought a deck designed to stall for several dozen turns.”
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To those frustrated with IG, I recommend my Sunny deck. Big economic engine, feedback filter, vamp…dismantles slower decks, manhandles glacier,
chews up asset spam
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5 out of 11 players in a Seattle SC played that deck… glad I wasn’t there!
3 were playing this deck, 2 were other Gagarin flavors. Never the less, Myself and @CJFM ended up in the finals, and we were both playing it, so it works in a tournament setting!
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To me, it’s the right play.
You’re facing a risk of:
- syphons/utopia(s)
- keyhole/mediums
- retruns.
I have a much easier time recovering from Keyhole than siphon. In the time the corp is recovering from turn 1 siphon, apocalypse can very easily happen.
Medium/Keyhole is x2 in almost all Anarch decks, though.
If you got one ice, I’d still draw, ice HQ if >2 pts in HQ, R&D by default, then clic money/hedge or drop an asset/agenda/draw if HQ is iced.
It really depends on intuition though. Dome Anarch tricks are really nasty if HQ is open, some if R&D is open.
ITT: decks that make me mad when I lose.
Pre-errata DLR and anything involving psi games is my 2c
I’m adding Cerebral Imaging combo decks to the list. Either the combo works, and you can’t do anything about it, or it doesn’t, and you don’t have to do anything to win. It’s all luck, and no skill.