Where is the MWL? - As of August 20th, 2018 - MWL 2.2 is here (effective 2018.09.06)

Overall i must restate that i think the game would be better balanced with them on the tier 1 MWL, not bans or anything more serious. 1 influence per card is not much in todays cardpool. Hell i manage 2 caprice anyway in Grail Palana. So it’s more from a finetuning perspective i’m talking here, no sky-is-falling for sure.

  1. My main beef with her is that she is way more powerful than the alternatives, and that batty also exists in the same faction. To ensure she is not objectively better than Batty, and also since her power is unmatched among other cards, she would be a good fit for another pip. Everything you say is true (except for using the current, lol), that’s why i consider her necessary for the game and not gamebreaking at all, but since she doen’t cost 4 to rez, or the like, this is a good solution.

  2. I have played all types of criminal with or without Despy. Horizontal decks will be fixed by this MWL, or pushed down a notch. Otherwsie i would agree more on that point. As i stated earlier, to have 3 out of 4 pieces o synergy and a different console does not a bad deck make. But if all 4 are available easily you would be a fool not to use them. Still only a single influence-pip we’re talking about.

Other crim consoles in my own ranking order:

Gauntlet
Reflection
Forger
Logos
Doppleganger
Blackguard
Box-E

Dopple is better than most people consider it. Works well with Temujin, clearing remotes of assets, medium, turning wheel, dirty laundry, etc. I have been using dopple exclusively in Andy and the extra temujin uses really are great

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Temuijin + run + Desp + run = 7 credits

Temuijin + run + Doppel + run + run = 10 credits

Above assumes first turn. Difference is that Desperado can still collect 15 credits while doppelgänger can liberate another 8, which means Desperado gains 4 more than Doppelgänger in the end.

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Yes obviously. Desp gives credits per run. Total number of credits is higher, yes.

But the ability to throw down a temujin on archives and almost clear it in one turn rather than having to spend most of 2 turns doing so is great. And also medium/turning wheel. I am not saying its better than Desp, but its better than people give it credit for.

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Interdiction and Councilman (and Drive By) are so ineffective against Caprice, that they’re not worth mentioning. I’d imagine most players don’t want to rely on their opponent making a mistake to deal with Caprice. Outside of Rumor Mill, there’s only Political Operative (and S&W) to directly deal with Caprice. Government Investigations is a soft counter, that may actually get explorer if Rumor Mill is banned (or MWL3).

With FiHP, Caprice is very likely to get abused. The tactic to clear out the Caprice with multiple runs won’t be effective anymore (outside the turn there’s an agenda).

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You can also bridge that gap by clicking for credits with the clicks you save with Doppel. :stuck_out_tongue:
(or, more realistically, get more than one per click somehow)

I think your discounting the fact that when your Caprice gets PolOp-ed, your probably on the losing end of a 4 point swing. Even one time will frequently be enough for them to win elsewhere even if you recur the caprice endlessly.

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I’m not sure where you read that I’m discounting anything about PolOp. I highlighted PolOp as one of the few direct counters to Caprice.

IIRC, PolOp was only 1-of in most decks (maybe a few had 2), I’m not sure if that’s enough in a FiHP world. I do think a lot of Glacier players can recover from Caprice being trashed. Caprice by herself is not 100%, but the resources it took to clear Caprice was often enough for the Corp to recover from the 4 point swing. FiHP would even make it easier to set up the double-Caprice tactic that defeats one PolOp.

I think FiHP is a problem card, for a lot more reasons that just Caprice.

I don’t want to say ‘ignore FiHP when you consider Caprice,’ but I do want to say that FiHP is the more broken card of those two. The two of them together unrestricted will be troublesome to deal with, and only makes Slums more powerful.

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Double Caprice doesn’t work. She has to be rezzed in step 2.3 of run timing, the runner can trash her in 3.1 which is a paid ability but no rez window, next time corp can rez is 4.3 which is too late for Caprice’s trigger.

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Double Caprice does work if you can arrange an unrezzed inner ice (no ice encounter means no paid ability window that is not a rez window).

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Vamp is a really good caprice counter, and siphon can be too. And having to play around Councilman/Interdiction does make Caprice somewhat less powerful - you can no longer bluff that a breaker bay is a Caprice, for instance. Nor can you put different Caprices on multiple servers and only rez one when the runner makes a run.

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While Caprice is a very powerful defensive upgrade, she does cost HB a lot of influence, so I’m also excited to explore Sandburg more. It came out right around Rumor Mill so I don’t think decks using it have had the chance to shine yet.

But basically I’m just waiting to hear if these spoiled changes are official, because I want glacier to be a more competitive option again.

Sandburg was released the pack before Rumour Mill, and there were a few weeks when people said “omg, this card is ridiculous, let’s the corp totally snowball away with the game, it’s bad… oh wait nvm lol.”

Sanburg Glacier will be very strong in this brave new world, I’m sure.

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I mean exactly what @Dragar said. Basically, without a unrezzed inner ice, you have the option to rez the second Caprice when the runner decides to use PolOp on the first one.

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Indeed. Bane knows this, and would just Vamp his way into the remote.

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I mostly agree. FiHP is a problem amplifier and should be considered for re-balancing. Any card that can be abused by re-installing will exacerbate by FiHP. Currently most of those cards are assets and upgrades (Data Mine is probably the only ice trending that way in some PU decks, but it’s not much of a problem). Powerful cards like Caprice that were balanced with low trash costs, become a (bigger) problem with FiHP. I can’t say if the problem card or the problem amplifier is more broken.

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And you can still rez the ICE being approached as well if you wanted to

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Right, but only if they decided to use PolOp on approach, otherwise you’ve forgone your opportunity to rez and trigger the second Caprice.

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These are the sort of justifications for mwl that I think are really bad. Yes, both Caprice and desperado are good cards, but no that is not sufficient reason for them to get banned or mwl.

We saw what impact the mwl had on desperado, and it was basically a 3 influence tax on Criminal. Which can be fine if you want to make Criminal worse for balance reasons, but does not make the other consoles better. The reason other criminal consoles don’t see play is because they aren’t as good as desperado. Often times with stuff like this it restricts your design space, because decks can include both the old good card and the new card statted to compete with it, but in this case you cannot include multiple consoles. The correct response to desperado is not to restrict it, but instead to say criminal is a faction of strong consoles and design them accordingly. The fact they haven’t done so isn’t the fault of desperado, but the fault of all the other cards. Finally, and this is the actual most important point, desperado leads to the most interesting gameplay of all the criminal consoles. It encourages a run heavy strategy which should be read as interaction heavy. It encourages lots of interesting ice placement decisions, and it leads to criminal having a very different power curve than the other factions as they’re very strong in the early game and weaker when runs aren’t cheap. It’s a good thing desperado is more powerful than logos or boxe because it is way more interesting. Finally, the other justification for mwl is to balance relative power levels of decks, and I think criminal isn’t going to be completely out of whack, and even if it was Aaron or temujin will be far better targets for additional mwling.

Caprice is very similar, yes it will be a good card, and it will probably be part of the best strategy. But Caprice is good because it is the power level needed for decks to score out of remotes given the late game power level of runner econ. It isn’t going to displace any runner decks, because glacier decks tend to be way more lenient towards jank because they allow more setup time and rely on ice. Caprice had always had plenty of counterplay because there are so many ways to attack Caprice (econ, ice on remote, other servers). Finally, we don’t see glacier decks based around other cards because they simply aren’t good enough. Making Caprice​ worse or banning that isn’t going to solve it.

The important takeaway here is that something being good is an incredibly bad justification for mwling, because some stuff is always going to be good and better.
Here are the acceptable reasons for restriction imo:

  1. Heavily restricting options on the other side
  2. Being so far above the curve it is the only deck people play
  3. People really, really hate to play against it
  4. Excessive swinginess

Notably 2. Is a deck level justification so it’s about deciding what card in a deck fits most into 1. Which I think in both cases is neither desperado or Caprice. Imo 1 is the main concern for balancing, as the goal should be to make plenty of decks viable.

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