I think it’s a bit more than academic. When I think of rotation, I think of things being viable for a set amount of time and then disappearing for tournament play. The cards that come after are never the same as what came before. These cards are developed and received with the knowledge (now) that they will not be around forever.
A reboot (refresh… 2.0, if you will) would be something far more stable with the understanding that it was done because there were problematic cards in the original version of the Deluxes (SMC and CC have been mentioned already, though underpowered cards are also problematic in their own right). I mean, anything can happen, but it’s not like I’m expecting Core 3.0 to drop in 2021.
It’s probably won’t happen anytime soon but it’s a fantasy to think the deluxe boxes will never rotate in some way. You don’t want a large, persistent card pool in any game. It’s bad for business and bad for game play. If core didn’t make it, I don’t see why Creation & Control will. It’ll take time to release a set of replacements (maybe multi-faction ones like TD or Reign & Reverie) because the design of the deluxe boxes makes removing them particularly difficult, the factions losing a box suffer pretty heavily, but it has to happen eventually.
“It’s a fantasy not to think like me”
There is like 5-8 problematic card in 1st box, and a fewer after that. Replacing those, only to see the game dying seems to me a waste of time and money.
I think that the deluxe boxes will rotate out at some point, but if they do, I’m guessing they will happen all at once in a few years. I feel like balancing would be hard if you rotated out Creation and Control and took out a huge chunk of HB’s and Shaper’s cards and left everyone else with all of their deluxe goodies.
That being said, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they did deluxe 2.0s to save some of the rotated out cards, but I don’t know if that would be worth it financially for FFG (to change the boxes, maybe do new art, etc.) unless they were doing a pretty big change.
When they do it I’d be keen to see it happen all at once and maybe make it correspond with an all-factions box which has only cards from the current deluxes that need saving.
Well bear in mind that due to Terminal Directive, Shaper, Crim, HB and Weyland have more cards than anyone else. Likewise, when the game started and C&C came out, Shaper and HB got a big injection of cards that no one else did.
I think, if and when, C&C rotates that the key cards which go missing are:
Runner neutrals: Dirty Laundry, Daily Casts and Same old thing.
Shaper: LARLA, clone chip, SMC, Feedback Filter, Pro Con plus things like Scavenge, Atman, and so on which have often had their day in the sun.
A lot of the Shaper shapery stuff seems to have been re-invented in Kitara. The runner neutrals would be a big loss though.
HB seems to lose nothing of interest in C&C. Cerebral Overwriter is the one thing that might be missed because it’s a fun casual card. Efficiency Committee has a ready made upgrade in terminal directive anyway. The Corp neutrals are binder fodder with the occasional exception of Bastion.
Back when I wrote that blog post speculating that R&R will trigger C&C rotation (which admittedly is looking less likely now that they’ve announced they’re giving plastic CI promos at continental championships, a month before R&R arrives…), Damon replied to my BGG post to say that rotating deluxes was always something they wanted to have the option to do, they just didn’t have a firm plan about when or how: [BLOG] Cry of Frustration | Android: Netrunner
Technically the plan was always for expansions to be able to be replaced if desired/deemed necessary, but it would be on a case by case basis and not part of the planned rotation. The wording in the presentation at worlds announcing the demo was specifically chosen to allow for this.
I have no idea about whether any deluxe expansion is planned to be replaced, but they made sure to allow themselves the space to do so.
What’s interesting is that Reclaim and Compile have different use cases from Clone Chip and SMC. One for one comparison, Reclaim lets you get Hardware and Virtual Resources back, while Clone Chip lets you get Programs back mid-run. Compile allows you to not use MU until you absolutely need it compared to SMC, with the drawback being that it goes on the bottom of your Stack afterwards. It also gives you a Run in playing the card, which is Good and Bad, because you save a click, but also can’t use it with Legwork/DDM/Indexing/etc…
The biggest argument FOR C&C rotation is Compile/Reclaim existing.
The biggest argument AGAINST C&C rotation is Dirty Laundry/Same Old Thing/Daily Casts having no replacements.
Bloo Moose is the closest, and in theory if they were to Restrict that card when they rotate the others, it might work. (BM replaces Casts, Shadow Net replaces SOT, but Dirty Laundry doesn’t get a neutral replacement… Deuces Wild is the closest, I think?) Additionally, if R&R adds anything that looks similar to Dirty Laundry, I’d start investing in C&C Rotation stock.
I think compile and reclaim are cool but I really hope they weren’t intended as full replacements for clone chip and SMC. Getting to make more decisions during a run makes running more interesting. If every run necessarily starts with all programs installed then the dynamic fom the corp side of the table (and thus the runner’s read on the situation as ice gets rezzed) becomes simpler. It’s that kind of in run flexibility at the expense of setup time and cost that’s a hallmark of being a shaper.
I agree to the extent that Runners would need even more econ than they already do to make up for the loss of C&C, but I’m not sure we should be looking for direct replacements. I was surprised and disappointed when they didn’t do anything about Kati rotating, but now I’m thinking that more faction specific econ would be better. Because frankly it’s boring to see Sure Gamble, Drip Sure Gamble, and Run Sure Gamble everywhere.
We’ve started to see a bit of this in Kitara, and I’d appreciate more. Crim can get its Pad Tap and Diversion and Kiting and Trading, Shaper can have more buildy, rig-based econ, and Anarchs can get paid for viruses, havoc, and self-harm.
I’m not sure what you mean by “set-up” time in this context as (at least with SMC) there is less set up time required. And, although Pre-Paid Kate was an example of having a lot of decisions, SMC itself makes the number of decisions fewer in my mind. Slap down SMC and run. Tutor for whatever you need. That’s not an interesting decision, IMO.
I’m not saying the cards are bad and should be removed, I’m just saying that I don’t quite agree with your line of reasoning.
Street Peddler is a fantastic example of what you’re describing. Savoir-faire was a mildly nifty idea that didn’t justify the slot. “Grab any program from your heap or anywhere in your stack for practically nothing” should not be in netrunner.
I agree with this. Which is why I very much enjoy Compile specifically, as it feels like a ‘fixed’ SMC. I like that you make a testing or querying run, having safety with being able to get whatever program you might need, but I don’t like being able to also have it be a high-impact run using an Event at the same time. SMC, Gamble, Indexing… Or SMC+Stimhack are some of the things that I think aren’t terribly good for the game… They narrowed the focus of the cards; Compile vs SMC is focused on it being a flexible option, ONCE. Reclaim vs Clone Chip is focused on the recursion aspect of the Clone Chip, and not the safety of being able to do it mid-run.
Good, bad, either way, it indicates they’re looking at SMC/Clone Chip. They’re viable options with those cards in existence, and they’re good replacements if they leave.
On the one hand, yes, but realistically, that means that Faction-specific options should be better than Sure Gamble, yet they aren’t. Ultimately what it means is that the mini-factions get hit hardest by this sort of faction-focusing of econ. I do like the idea of making each faction get their money a different way, though. There’s like, two problems with it, though. First, the options have to be better than Sure Gamble to be played, otherwise you’d just play Gamble instead. Second, the options have to be influence-heavy enough that not every faction just uses that (Temujin).
Temujin, by the way, is an example of a good Criminal econ card. That happened to be too easily imported into other factions. Single-card econ like that should be difficult to import, via high influence. It’s rare to import Aesop’s outside of Shaper, for example. (And partially because it’s restricted, but also because getting all the pieces necessary to make Aesop’s work correctly costs a lot of influence and card slots.)
“whatever you need” is a broad statement. If the corp has 2 pieces of ICE unrezzed, or you need to make runs across multiple servers, there’s the dynamic of the corp making you spend money to get what you need with the SMC and commit your fexibility. You can argue that the cost of SMC in credits is too low (I’d disagree) but I think 2 MU is plenty clunky and the effect is healthy and interesting.
