I think Aesop is on the list so that you cannot play both it and Levy, allowing for a practically endless stream of things to sell.
This is an interesting idea, I would also prefer it from resulting gameplay point of view, but (especially as some cards are likely to make it into more than one such group) this would make the list too complicated.
That’s the crucial issue: the tradeoff between precision and simplicity.
Unfortunately, I can’t shake the feeling that the restricted list underperforms the old MWL by both standards…
But Aesop’s also has a real downside. I don’t think it is so game warping that it deserves to be on the list. You still need to install stuff, you still need to pay for those installs in clicks and credits. Sure, you can use for example technical writer or Scheherazade (soon gone) to gain more, but isn’t that more the fault of those cards?
But Aesops was just an example. I think it applies to more cards on the list.
Is that actually a problem? I can’t think of a time when that has been a problem.
Restricted pairs seem pretty highly targeted and like they might be a good idea if there are going to be lots of cards getting restricted–it is trickier to deck-build, but not any more so than the old MWL. I’d be interested to hear the argument for why this current restriction list is so long, since I don’t really understand why most of these cards are on it.
I politely disagree. The biggest problem that I saw with the MWL was that tier 1 decks could generally spare some influence to keep the most powerful MWL cards in the list, while more marginal decks couldn’t spare influence, and effectively lost access to the entire MWL.
To be fair, I haven’t built enough decks under the new rules to say with confidence that I personally feel less limited, and we don’t have enough input from the larger competitive scene to say with confidence that the meta is more diverse. So the jury is still out.
It’s been interesting to hear that some think the deck building process with MWL is too complicated. A friend of mine that plays competitive Pokemon thinks that ANR deck construction is just crazy. FFG refers to this sentiment in the release of MWL:
“While the levels and universal influence introduced in version 1.2 took this curtailing of the meta a step further, it had the unfortunate side effect of complicating the deck building process, one of the most exciting aspects of any LCG.”
I completely disagree that it was too complicated. My ten year old son easily builds perfectly reasonable decks accounting for influence and MWL stars. Maybe they want new players to be able to just throw a bunch of cards together and head to the game shop without much thought. I’d recommend that new folks just net deck until they have a handle on influence. I actually liked the influence-hitting MWL approach. If they weren’t stuck on levels, they could have used it to flexibly hit cards ranging from 1 to 15. That’s not complicated, it’s arithmetic. 1.1.1.1 might be called a “complicated” format since it goes beyond simple addition.
I don’t think it was too complicated, but there are plenty of people who don’t use online deckbuilders that take everything into account and update regularly.
I can see some thought it more complicated when that introduced mwl3. Especially without deck builders.
I think the issue is that it doesn’t matter if it’s been a problem. It obviously became a problem in this new meta during testing.
While not necessarily a problem at the time, pitchfork hayley could be argued to be the first of the previous uninteractive big money decks. With the ffg putting the breaks on the meta, the money a current legal list could put out would be much higher than the curve.
I was testing a Pawnshop based Hayley deck for post-rotation before the Spoiler Ken announcement of the now Official MWL came out, and it demonstrated pretty clearly why a number of the Shaper cards had to hit a restricted list.
I had a whole gambit of offenders: Pawnshop, Employee Strike, Clone Chip, Inversificator, Film Critic, Bloo Moose and Levy.
I honestly don’t recall losing a single game with the deck. It just had answers to everything and I was always rich enough to pull those answers. In the post-rotation environment with corporations having considerably less cash, I think this type of deck would have been the dominant force in the meta. This must have been identified during playtesting so the designers had to bust it up.
Definitely going to miss playing Pawnshop decks though. I can’t really imagine taking Pawnshop over the other cards on the restricted list so Aesop probably gets the binder for awhile.
And we know have it in writing:
Each quarter we evaluate the health of the competitive Android: Netrunner metagame and make changes to the Most Wanted List when necessary.
And, in response to the suggestion that FFG OP provide an announcement/tweet if there is no change:
This & what @rubyvr00m said. I don’t think comparisons to past metas are super informative given the massive shakeup the environment just received. It’s hard to dismiss the Aesop’s restriction, or any of them, without testing in a post-rotation, post-core 2 world where corps lose Jackson and Shapers lose…Alpha and Omega? I honestly can’t think of currently-played cards they lost.
Anyways I actually popped in because I thought the Team Covenant discussion on revised core had some insights: The Netrunner Reboot | The Covenant Cast - Episode 29 - YouTube
Ignoring that they’re obviously a bit out of touch with the game (“They’ll never print anything better than Corroder…”), they make an interesting point that the core set did the fundamentals of Netrunner so well that it left too little room for improvement. We put the Anarch programs and Siphon in half of decks because they were so advantageous in the core economy battle of the game. Later sets, unable to improve upon these fundamentals without raw power creep, thus went on to introduce new archetypes like prison, combo, and asset spam, largely to the displeasure of the community I’d argue.
An interesting point. I’m quite sad to lose a lot of my favorite cards but perspectives like this help highlight the healthiness of it. Also I think, as LCG players, we’re maybe a bit too entitled to “I’ll always get to play this card” when that’s not strictly true. We should expect shakeups and five years is much longer than you’ll get with a card in most other games.
The core is semi-stable and so long as you are keeping up with purchases it isn’t a problem.
What I was referring to was the power cards printed in core 1 and the relative power level of a core 2 environment.
I am fine with the changes. I am excited to see where we will be in a cycle and what Bogg’s designs will do to the game.
I hear RDI is pretty good.
(Lockpick, False Echo, maybe Quality Time?)
Kate is by far their biggest loss.
Kate may end up being a loss in the future, but the only deck I saw anyone use Kate for in the last few months was Dyper, and False Echo was obviously the most important loss in that deck. Since big rig Hayley decks were the most common Shaper decks, I would say RDI is the card they lost that affects them the most in the short term.
Overall though, the restricted list hit Shaper wayyy harder than Core 2 did.
Losing Kate means they lost their good link runner as well. Hurts the Congress style, with or without nexus
