I think the reason for 3/2 agendas was to balance out the corp with the runner before Jackson Howard was printed. But there is a critical mass of them and if/when they crossed the line it caused problems.
I think that 5/3s are stronger than 4/2s since if you can’t score from a face down position then it doesn’t matter if you have to IAA rather than IA. That’s why only 4/2s with powerful abilities get played. So they had the choice of trying to make a good enough but balanced 4/2 for each faction, or else just making it colourless and only have to make one. That’s how we got NAPD.
I actually really like that I, as the runner, have to decide whether I want to pay 3 to deny Jackson to the corp when I hit him in centrals. It’s a fun decision about whether you have an enough of advantage right now to justify the tempo hit.
to me its not much of choice. i trash him almost every time unless the corp is on match point.
the problem is jackson will not be around forever. he was printed before they planned for set rotation and at the time they seemed quite happy with themselves for “fixing” the corp side of netrunner with him. without jackson the glacier decks with long game strategies will suffer, noise will be an unstoppable terror and we will back to the good old days of the “oops bad mulligan, i lose corp games”,
I suspect that now we have had big boxes for each faction, deluxe expansions will be less faction-focused and more theme-focused. We’ll probably see some of the most important cards reprinted in big boxes just to make them permanently part of the game. Two or three cycles could fit into a single big box if you cut all the bad cards.
Honestly, there’s some good stuff in that box for them. HB Big Ice is severely underrated, especially with shutdown out of the meta, the problem is that when the box dropped it definitely wasn’t. NEXT and CB definitely needed a little more love though.
Now every faction has a big box, i would be VERY surprised if they did any more big boxes going off there other games.
Especially with Rotation in the game more big boxes, the more cards that don’t get rotated out and more potential problems for future cards to take into account!
I think the best thing they can do, is add some duel function cards, like Ice that can be played as an OP for extra click ect.
The problem with 3/1s as I see it is that there are very few agendas in the game, fewer playable combinations and practically none that include a one pointer in them.
The decks that can play 11 agendas are few. With that number you have to push them fast because if you don’t, your hand gets clogged and you die.
Being able to play 10 agendas (3/1+X/2+5/3) is extremely rare because decks that can score a 5/3 don’t tend to need but a handful of smaller agendas.
Any other combination is awkard or unplayable.
I’ve been playing since the second datapack was released and in all this time I’ve only seen two, pèrhaps three, decks run 3/1 agendas: HB FA (Gila Hand Arcology), Jinteki PE (House of Knives, Gila Hand and Profiteering) and sometimes, just sometimes, Posted Bounty in Weyland.
I think the abilities are good, I simply cannot find an agenda spread that works with them. I would play them if they were 4/2s or 3/2s or were buffed up to be a 5/3 but as printed I simply have no idea how to fit them into a deck.
But you didn’t actually respond to the criticism he has about corp deckbuilding. He may be salty, but it doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Would love more discussion about whether he’s right and why.
Before a deck can be considered the best and then copied/played by everyone, there’s always a couple of dudes who tried everything possible around their ideas and make that strong deck.
I played Lady / Double Cycy Voicepad Kate for months before people started to catch-up with the deck. I think it’s probably the same for your Shell Game PE deck last year.