And now imagine a situation where our local playgroup is only big enough to have 4-round tournaments, but when we travel to an event (even as large as they come), most of us make the cut and frequently the reason some of us don’t is the nature of the swiss system (i.e. our losses tend come from others in our playgroup, not the other tournament participants).
tl;dr: don’t make the mistake of equating field size with strength of players, especially in this age of global community and across-the-ocean internet play.
Yeah, I’ve found this particularly curious in the tournament winning decklists over the last few months. The Colorado meta is simply not seeing this at all. We’re three weeks into our summer league with 22 unique players participating thus far and the top two runners are a combined 9-1 with Gabe, Noise, and Reina, and 0-0 with Andy and Kate. This would be the point where some BGG users who will go unnamed would just giggle and say the Colorado meta sucks, but I’m inclined to disagree - if only because I’m a part of it and can vouch for several of our stronger players.
I think a significant amount of players are playing Andy and Kate more than any other identity and it’s skewing the results somewhat in their favor… Don’t get me wrong, Andy and Kate may very well be the best available identities right now - but even if so, I don’t think it’s quite as lopsided as the tournament winning decklists currently indicate.
For what it’s worth, I had a stellar record with my Morning Star Andy deck. Unfortunately, I retired it with the advent of Lotus Field and needing to pull influence away from Morning Star to provide flexibility for dealing with Lotus Field.
Not unusual - noone’s playing Andy and Kate in leagues, because they’re so overfed with them from tournaments
I will say that our distribution between factions has been super-weird as of late, too. Yesterday’s league night might as well have been called “Red Thursday” - pretty much everyone was playing either Jinteki or Anarch, with a significant majority playing both Jinteki and Anarchs. PE/Whiz, PE/Reina, Tennin/Noise, RP/Whiz… you name it. The only red identity not seeing any play was poor ol’ Nisei Division.
It did make for totally different games, I’ll say that
Not the issue here, heh. In the 14 tournaments we’ve had in-state since mid-February (including 1 Regional and 9 Store Championships), Kate and Andy have won a combined… 1 tournament. Meanwhile, Noise has won 3, Gabe has won 3, Chaos Theory has won 2, Kit has won 2, Whizzard has won 2, and Reina has won 1. Call us crap if you will (not y’all… other individuals around the internet), but we’re certainly not boring or stagnant.
For example, Db0 has long done well with weird decks. We all love him
for it. He won a store champ with Street Chess/Untrashable. But it was a
4-round tournament. If you judge a player on results like that, you’re
just going to be wrong.
Ahem, I also went almost undefeated with the same combo in the last BGG league and came second in overall points
i have a hypothesis that may or may not be true but it does have to do with skill.
traditional andy/kate decks are high skill/ low variance. if you waste andy’s start and cannot extract every bit of value from it you are playing with a blank ID. Kate is similar. You want to be extracting every bonus credit possible from Kate’s ability or its a blank ID. The advantages Andy and Kate both provide play out over a series of turns and series of small but important decisions that adds up over the course of a game into a win. that takes skill.
traditional reina/gabe/noise decks are lower skill/higher variance. The raw power level of all three is higher than Andy or Kate and all three decks types can either win in the first few turns thanks to incredibly bursty starts that even the most skilled corp player can do nothing about especially if their start is subpar. These decks can also flame out in the same time span because of poor draws and be locked out of games completely if the corp stabilizes.
i used to run Andy but as the corps have gotten stronger i moved back to Gabe/Reina/Noise.Does this mean im not a skilled netrunner player? possibly lol. i mean i could have taken medioxhcore’s approach and practicd/refined/practiced/refined my andy deck to raise my skill level but instead of chose to say "eff it, the corps are strong so im going to embrace a little more variance in my runner game and take burst wins and random wins to offset my laziness in actually becoming good with andy
Remorhaz, that’s a position a lot of people don’t share with you. To some degree, I agree; I think the general sentiment that tier one decks require lower skill is generally a kneejerk reaction. Some people who want to downplay the skill necessary to win AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE with Andy or Kate, (you can still win with those identities without playing optimally or even close to it, but you’re correct that playing them well usually boils down to managing micro-decisions, extracting value, poking your opponent to be annoying, and choosing just the right times to strike).
I don’t know that I can say that it’s actually easier to play the other IDs optimally is much easier, but you’re right in one sense: you get a lot more blowout games with Reina/Gabe than with Andy. Usually, that’s due to your opponent unable to set up Siphon defenses while also protecting the agendas they draw. Either they just lose to relatively early random accesses, you Siphon spam them into the ground, or they whether the storm or block you from Siphoning and you lose. Noise, though, is a really weird fucking animal. I haven’t played a lot with him, but it seems pretty difficult to me. You can definitely just win sort of by accident in a similar way to Gabe or Reina, but actually going about it the right way usually seems to require that you take very measured risks and spend your money only where it’s absolutely important.
Anyway, I’m sort of rambling/agreeing, but what I wanted to say is that I don’t think the low variance decks are really high skill decks compared to the high variance decks, in fact, I think playing tier 2 decks optimally is often harder because you often have to adapt your game plan on the fly precisely because your deck is inconsistent. It just makes less of a difference; you can’t usually lose what should be a blowout win by playing slightly suboptimally.
This is a common trait of Anarchs, not just a specific one of Noise. To me it seems to be a result of how their card pool is counter-indicative to “safe” play - if you wait for all the answers, you’ll lose. As a result, it’s very easy to spend your money unwisely, for something you won’t really be positioned to get the most use out of.
i probably should have clarified the exact archetypes i was thinking of.
on one side you have the models of efficiency in andysucker/katman and on the other side you have siphon spam/sneakdoor blitz/disruption strategies of anatomy of anarchy/ gabe decks.
Sure. I think the point I was hinting at was that it is just as easy to play Siphon spam badly as Kate or Andy. Sure there are blow out games where your deck plays itself - but most games aren’t that simple - you have to balance keeping the corp on the ropes with using that time to actually score and build.
Variance is a point I agree with you on though. The reason I would look to Andy first for any large event is the security that she’s highly unlikely to lock you out of a game with a poor start.
I think everyone missed my only point which was, all other things equal, a win with a ‘suboptimal’ or jank deck is worth more than a win with an ‘optimal’ / top tier deck / slight variation thereof, in my mind.
A win with a jank deck can surprise opponents. It’s original on one side, but can be cheesy on the other. I don’t think either way to play the game is worth less or more than the next strategy, it’s just about winning.
Netrunner isn’t all about deckbuilding like Magic, gameplay itself is complex enough. The bits of deckbuilding that net competitive wins are a lot more often small differences such as a couple of unexpected cards being thrown in rather than something completely unanticipated like a whole new deck. This is mostly because Netrunner is quite gated by design, with a specific win condition, achieved through similar sequences of actions. This is especially true for Runner gameplay and deckbuilding.
Ah, this is what I disagree with. Then again, this is the thread about competitive play so I guess I should shut up. I have just found that this mentality leads to super boring meta in any game, but I guess that’s inevitable.
Side note: it is an ignorant mistake to place importance in mtg on deckbuilding. Standard meta is generally so stagnant as to render deckbuilding moot. Mtg at high level is purely about skill and luck, maybe not in that order.
You could argue the same thing about Andy requiring less skill because her games can be so predictable and linear. She gets an extra 4 cards, so she almost always has the tools she needs to come out of the gate consistent in her control of the board, where as other identities require more careful and clever calculation of the board state to manufacturer wins out of less consistent starts. Ultimately competitive decks require different skills to be successful. You expect some easy wins due to the aggressive power of Gabe just like you expect some easy wins due to the consistency of Andy to setup a strong economy and control of the board. Both of these archetypes use these features of their design to exploit poor starts by the corp, and that’s a big reason why they are Tier 1.
For example, I’ve played 45 minute games where I felt like I got steamrolled by Andy because I never had a chance to advance my position on the board, and I’ve played 4-5 minute games where I’ve been steamrolled by Gabe because he never let the game get to the point where board position even mattered. Both are what you expect some times when you play these IDs.
Now when you look at Gabe you have to account for some wins due to Corp variance, and then determine how often you think those will happen in the given environment. Decks that run lower/cheaper ice and require drawing into specific card combos are going to give up more variance wins where as decks with lots of ice and econ are going to give up less. Take RP Glacier for example. This is a top tier deck with no real “tricks” to setup that you can disrupt. You are not going to get midseasons or scorched, your rig won’t get blown up, if a card is advanced it’s an agenda so you know when to run, and basically everything else is ice and econ. This kind of deck does very well against Gabe because it’s so focused on making running difficult and has more cards geared toward achieving this than Gabe has towards defeating it. HB Glacier in many ways is similar. So if you expect a lot of RP and HB Glacier then you should adjust your expectation on variance wins with Gabe.
Now I think where the skill comes into play is in knowing how to squeeze the extra few percentage points of wins out of the bad matchups. This starts with the mulligan, and hopefully ends with getting a win where many other players would have lost.
And to tie my rambling back into your post. This is the key thing no matter what ID you play. When you lose, objectively evaluate why. Always think about what cards are not helping you out, or are steering you off course. Make tiny adjustments and test them out. Then you’ll get those extra wins and you’ll know why.
Unfortunately, I retired it with the advent of Lotus Field and needing to pull influence away from Morning Star to provide flexibility for dealing with Lotus Field.
