Why is Food Initiative so commonly played?

Yes, lots of glaciers replaced their 5/3 with food, the 5/3 was the weak part of the deck. The difference being now there will be 2-3 people playing blue sun glacier in a 20 man tournament, instead of 0-1. In the same way, tfp didn’t reduce the diversity of rp agenda suites, it just allowed the deck to be played, even though you will see 3 tfp before any other 5/3 in rp

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The problem is that the Netrunner community is large and interconnected enough that there’s always going to be a set of best cards and deck archetypes that the community will hone in on. Today it’s GFI, last year it was PPVP and next year it will probably be something else.

I’m not sure TFPs are better than GFIs in all Jinteki. Philotic gets a little better if you play with GFIs and GFIs are imune to Film Critic.

They help to splah 3/1s, snowballing Philotic.

I think CP’s distribution could be something like 3 GFis, 3 HoK, Philotic and a 2 pointer, like Fetal or Med Breakthrough. 3 Shikyu to complete this, and that’s it.

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Food is probably better than all other 5/3s, but that may be because the design of all other 5/3s are flawed. The main benefit is the 3 points (winning in 3 scores rather than 4), so defensive abilities will always be better than post-scoring abilities.

Hopefully FFG takes TFP and Food as a new baseline for 5/3s - the alternative is banning both of them IMHO.

I didn’t say any 5/3s were seeing less use, although I’m seeing Weyland use it more. What I am seeing is 5/3s being used now were they weren’t before. Food reduces number of agendas in a deck and doesn’t bleed as much to the runner who steals it. Other 5/3s have powerful effects, but they hurt so bad when they get stolen.

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Interestingly, if you play only 5/3s, Food is useless*.

(*Harmony Medtech excepted.)

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Yeah, I’ve already noticed that.
Food is the best 5/3 if it isn’t the only one, simply because it’s only worth 2 points when stolen, shrinking your deck size.
5/3’s are inherently bad, so no one runs a deck with only 5/3’s. (Except me, but I’m insane. … Ok, fine, there’s one 3/2 in there because WHY NOT.)

Not inherently. They usually have the large disadvantage of being worth 3 points to the runner, but that can be mitigated and built around. In addition, they have unique advantages.

I suppose saying they’re ‘inherently bad’ is perhaps overkill. More accurately, their pros are not outweighed by their cons in the vast majority of cases.

Pros:
-They’re worth 3 points when you score them.
-They often have useful abilities.
-They reduce your deckspace used for Agendas.

Cons:
-They’re worth 3 points when the runner steals them.
-They cannot be Fast Advanced. (Score in same turn as installed. Barring ridiculous combos.)
-They cannot be Never Advanced. (Score after masquerading as an Asset with no Advancement counters.)
-At an absolute minimum, you give the Runner two turns to steal it out of a remote.
-If you IAA, AAA to score in two turns, you lose the ability to respond to whatever the Runner is doing for two turns. (Less Flexibility than other Agendas.)
-Cannot headfake as an Asset and still be scoreable.
-They’re Worth Three Points When The Runner Steals Them.

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This is all accurate, but it’s mostly true of 4/2’s as well, hence why the most commonly played 4/2 was NAPD contract. The best agendas are 3/2’s, 2/1’s, 3/1’s with especially good score power (the future is now) and any agenda that costs more than three that self-defends.

The fact that the future is now isn’t on the list I think is telling. the fact that a similar power level agenda is neutral but costs influence seems balanced to me.

I’m not saying it WON’T show up on MWL, but it just doesn’t seem like the most likely candidate.

Like I said on the other topic, while Global Food Initiative is great, one cannot overlook the fact that the vast majority of 5/3s are either unplayable in their own factions (Restructured Datapool, High-Risk Investment) or terrible on their own right (Laberinthine Servers).

Really, if we had stuff like Corporate Coup or AI Chief Financial Officier reprinted and some cards to support glacier in either NBN or Weyland, we would have tons of 5/3s and ambushes in the meta. But alas, we don’t.

Idle thought from looking at those OG Netrunner cards: how many modern 5/3’s would be played at 5/2? At 4/2?

None.

Ehhhhh 4/2 I might play a pri-req

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Even High-Risk Investment out of Titan? Maybe the shards?

It’s a thought experiment but I think it goes back to: not only are 5/3s hard to score and dangerous to lose most are kinda shitty when scored to begin with.

I hope Food doesn’t get added to the MWL. It’ll ruin the Medtech 6. :frowning:

I’d say
3/2 >>>> 2/1 | 3/1 > 4/2 > 5/3 >>>> 6/2 > 9/6
2/0 are out of the equation.

What about 6/4?

My hope is that they realize how weak most 5/3’s have been, and that Initiative is being left in because they plan on giving the corps some 5/3’s they might actually want to run besides Future Perfect/GFI, thus making it an actual choice between “do i want this really good effect/card that protects itself, or do I want to just play it safe any pay the influence for GFI”

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Lower than 6/2, to me.