Ok that’s fair and I’m less confused about why something was done. I still think it’s a bit hasty but I get it. Thanks.
Not sure what you mean by hasty. The last MWL was in April, so they were a few weeks past hitting their target of 3 months. CI has been on their radar for a while, and Boggs said he’ll take a less drastic approach to CI first to see if it solves the problem, but will likely put it on the list next time around if it’s still a problem. So he’s making good on his word.
The problem with CI is that getting to hold on to 10+ cards always breeds degenerate combos that are hard to contain even with regular MWL adjustments. I can almost guarantee that even with the Moon ban, someone would come up with another stupid combo deck where games are more or less up to RNG on the runners single accesses before the Corp just sort of ends the game.
As for Mars for Martians, while you’re right that HPT is a hard counter, decks that don’t have that specific answer can practically auto lose just as hard. Very few Corp decks can survive the 15+ accesses Counter Surveillance can land, and it can feel very oppressive if you don’t have tag punishment. I think this move was probably made to combat the “Rock Paper Scissors” meta game where deck choice was starting to matter more than in game choices, and for that I’m all for it.
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Plus, they didn’t hit the actual crux card: Counter Surveillance. But, just slows them down without M4M. They still have other ways to get credits (even things that fit in the archetype: Rogue Trading).
What you don’t want is over-representation of either HPT or CS-M4M decks that just tries to dodge the bad match-ups.
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Just out of curiosity, what were the Hyperdriver and Tapwrm decks that were chewing through the meta? Did I miss something?
(The other additions to the removed list all make complete sense to me from having watched Euros, US and NA championships.)
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You must have missed all of 2017.
There were a few Wu DDoS combo decks that won some early Regionals or late SC’s (and I want to say the NZ National). Not sure about Tapwrm, maybe as countermeasure against CC becoming unrestricted.
To me, it seems like their MWL testing is showing those types of non-interactive decks are rising to the top.
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Hyperdriver because it’s part of a degenerate Kabonesa Wu deck that would be good vs pretty much everything now that it can run Employee Strike since Clone Chip is off.
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Yep, here is the link to the NZ list:
Yep. That list +1x Employee Strike to deal with Mti.
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Yeah, sorry about that. I should have been more clear that I was specifically asking about the 2018 meta.
Since it was restricted, I can probably count on two fingers the number of decks I have seen that chose Tapwrm as their unicorn.
Seriously, are there dominant Tapwrm decks out in the wild?
Removed the hyperderiver part after readign cross posts.
See the list I just linked for Hyperdriver.
In the end, it’s a matter if you trust their development process for coming up with the MWL. From what I’ve see from Boggs and his design/development team. I fully trust that those were the best choices to make given what they’ve seen in their testing (and given the time they had to do that testing).
It’s not so much that Tapwrm was being played heavily or dominating the previous meta, but more that with CC off of the restricted list you could potentially run 3x each of Tapwrm, CC, and Sac Con which would be pretty busted.
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I wish I knew about strike so I could have used it on my previous post. 
Is the NZ list really good? From the write up and comments by the author it sounds like it is extremely fragile and mostly good as a surprise deck.
Anyway, thanks all for the discussion. I am not trying to argue about any of this, I am just asking about the two changes that surprised me.
Fragile or not, nobody likes playing against Dyper.
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That Wu deck worked as a nice surprise but fell out of favor pretty quickly as I remember it. It doesn’t have the money to win matchups without careful planning and poor counterplay and loses to most fast advance.
hummm… I understand most of it, but bummed that weyland took it on the chin a bit with surveyor/skorp/seeker/Stinson. As always, everything that’s good in weyland is scarier everywhere else. I would have preferred rather than restricting the skorp ID it was batty on the list with hunterseeker.
Too bad they can’t simply errata Surveyor and Fairchild 3 to 5 influence each.
And though I guess I recognize that Scarcity of Resources has it’s place, I wish it had made the list as well, but I suppose it’s still there to slow down the pirate hayley/geist decks/resource nonsense, but dang it’s a blunt instrument.
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Similar question as above (looking for info)…
Can anyone provide any information on the spicy 24/7 News Cycle deck?
The corp restricted list seems long to me. Now that they Banned CI I think MoGo, Brain Rewiring, and even Violet level Clearance could have come off. Especially since Bryan is restricted as well.
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similar to my gripe above, on the surface with the current meta is looks like it’s mainly a weyland nerf, with the Jemison Armed Intimidation decks. But since it’s always enabled combo instant death decks in NBN it’s probably future proofing “fly on the wall” butchershop decks.