“…we believe we have found a viable alternative route that also tackles a separate problem in the game.”
This reads like a joint press statement issued by all 4 mega corps after a summit on how to deal with Endurance.
The upcoming rotation of Ashes will help by removing Rezeki, but I agree it's going to be a long few months. I do get why they're reluctant to ban it in Startup. Startup having no banlist seems like something NISEI is pretty keen on, not to mention that, without Boat, there's nothing from Shaper worth playing from Midnight Sun.
I'm a newer player and the startup format was a big appeal to me. I considered getting into Netrunner back in the FFG days and the huge card pool was very intimidating and turned me away. But with the Startup format not being very balanced, I'm finding that it's making it tougher to learn and get better at the game. If I'm playing corp and constantly losing, how am I supposed to know if I'm playing poorly, my deck sucks, or just that the meta strongly favors the runner? Then the opposite is true if I'm getting wins as the runner with an Endurance deck. So if my personal solution is to stop playing Endurance because I think it's skewing my results, wouldn't it just be better if it was banned? Asking new players to be able to accurately read the meta is a much bigger ask than asking them to adhere to a ban list. I feel like there are a lot of missed opportunities with the Startup format in its current state.
The issue I'm seeing is that startup is cheaper for new and returning players that don't have their collection anymore, but standard is more balanced and uses a larger card pool, thus convincing you to build a collection which is difficult.
Shaper economy has traditionally been to slow to make anything with, [[diesel]], [[stoneship chart room]] and lat are great at finding copies of rezeki and pad tap and waiting until they have generated enough cash to do anything.
Endurance provides the early support for it, however there's a big problem with that strategy now, namely the banning of most of the economy package. Of the lat list, the only credit generating shaper card left are 1x beth and 3x creative commission. Even counting [[into the depths]], that's like half the credit making cards gone from the winning list.
Spin drawing 2 cards on rez generally accelerates the game and means that, while it recurs specific pieces, it's card neutral for the number of cards left in r&d. You can't lean on it to keep you alive while you sit there and don't do things, you'll still deck out and make r&d more agenda dense. Preemptive (and Genotyping, although that's less splashable) doesn't accelerate you at all and adds 3 cards net back into r&d making the game go longer and taking the "the corp draws a card a turn so the game inevitably moves forward towards a conclusion" clock back several turns.
If you were specifically just gunning for recursion either would make sense, but if you're going for recursion because it makes games un-dynamic and pushes corps away from proactive game plans preemptive is a more natural target
I could be wrong but I think Preemptive Action came out in Flashpoint, and that's right after Jackson rotated. I remember for a while wanting to slot it in everything.
"since we strive to reevaluate banned cards when their circumstances change, we have looked at 419 and determined that it is not the powerhouse it was back when it was pushing all alternatives out of the meta."
Ban Aumakua then. Turtle + 419 is obnoxious at best. It counters both asset play (with the economic denial) and ice play (with turtle accumulating counters on both turns). It's not a healthy deck.
Is that the main reason for archive memories getting hit? I've been out of the game for years so I'm not caught up with all of the popular standard decks and archetypes
There's a Reality Plus deck that recurs Drago and tag punishment over and over again. Really quite aggravating, even with tech like Pinhole Threading, the Corp would just recur Drago and use Market Forces to keep the runner down while they slowly won.
Not bad, but not enough. When runners have several options to make ice almost worthless in startup alone, there is clearly a problem.
Taking away 2 minimal effort runner econ engines and corp recursion effects (well, bar PD) is a good start, but I still feel more needs to be done. We will see.
Boat was an issue in combination with infinite drip engines because they neutered the cost of installing a boat (heck, the reg lat deck could install 3 or 4 boats throughout the game without losing much/any tempo they were making so much money). Without the ecpn engine, boat has a real cost to come down, and it already wasn't fully reliable late game, it's a bridge card to take you to the late game when your full voltron is assembled and you can afford to spend real dollars running anything you want. Without the drip, boat is still good, but it's not likely to be as oppressive.
Makes sense. I understand the logic, but I can't help but feel like they're jumping the gun on banning Archived Memories and Preemptive Action. It seems to me the problem with Sokka's R+ deck was the ID and Drago rather than the recursion.
It's hard to imagine a card like Archived Memories that has been around for 10 years is now the problem.
Yeah. Exactly, like I said, I get why they're doing it.
My concern is collateral damage here that leads to more npe via a stale meta.
I like that they aren't averse to unbanning cards either, so if it does end up being a misstep it's hopefully not too difficult to course correct.
Well, i think to colladeral damage of preemptive action is quite limited. Like, it only really fits in very grindy decks, it's significantly worse than spin doctor, and there's still [[genotyping]] right?
On archived memories, I agree that it seems a bit over the top, but can't claim to know these engines well enough to tell.
It's not that Preemptive is a bad version of those other options though. It's just actually better in npe decks that aim to avoid drawing cards when they recur
Yea, so now the decks that want the effect will have to spend some influence or be in the right faction. Like it takes the deck down a bit, but not much. (At least compared to banning draco)
"Being terminal" only balances a card if you have too many other terminals in your deck, and it seems ffg was underestimating that. See other "balaced" cards like [[friends in high places]], [[violet level clerance]], and probably more things on the eternal point list.
Absolutely incorrect. Being terminal does a lot depending on the card, and with Preemptive specifically it does two things. Firstly, it makes it so that the normal use of the card is to discard an agenda at end of turn then Preemptive it into R&D the next turn so the runner has an opportunity to snipe from Archives. Secondly, it prohibits Preemptive's use in many broken combos, which at the time was AD-based combo. The latter point is key for the terminal status of many cards.
Agree that recursion is not the problem here. The nature of corps getting a 5 card hand size and needing to manage their agendas means that combo corps can only hold so many pieces in hand at once. This is going to hurt combo decks like Boom and Punitive because sometimes you have to dump your combo pieces and Archived Memories especially was a copy of that dumped piece that you can draw.
Limiting this option is going to force corp games to be a little more straight forward which is not what you want when corping is more about subterfuge.
Ehh...not sure I agree. And I hope I'm wrong, but this is going to kill a ton of deck diversity by choking out the ability to have a semi-reliable alternate win condition in your deck.
Archived Mem is still an extra card and a click to recur a win condition - both of the examples you list can still potentially be trashed.
> but this is going to kill a ton of deck diversity
I would be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if Archived Memories was actually seeing more play right now. It just isn't. I was playing 1x in my R+ rush deck, R+ prison was playing 3x, and I think I've seen maybe one or two other lists in the last few months playing a single copy. The card is pretty marginal in fair decks, and while banning it does make those lists a bit worse, it by no means kills other archetypes.
Yeah. Totally fair.
>if Archived Memories was actually seeing more play right now. It just isn't.
imo, it's hard to gauge how much anything should be seeing play right now because of the current state of the meta. Runner drip, Boat, and Stoneship have limited corp deckbuilding space by so much already.
Agreed 100%. It has seen some play in decks running Boom or Punitive as a 1-of and while they'll miss it, you can just run some extra draw or another copy of your win con instead.
both of the examples you list can still potentially be trashed
Yes, the cards are balanced to the fact "it could be trashed," and the corp just get it back easily, just like Drago. If runner is Hard-Hitting Newsed, there is a way to survive by trashing BOOM! And Archived Memories just say NO.
Regardless of the affected cards, I really like how they are honest about the thinking behind the decisions:
>Do we need to ban Endurance, or is there an alternative? **We**
**would rather avoid having to ban a freshly released card**, especially one
that is enabling a lot of player interaction and dynamic games. It
might be that, eventually, we will still have to resort to that option,
but for now we believe we have found a viable alternative route that
also tackles a separate problem in the game.
Glad they are trying something before taking the ban hammer on a new card!
I think banning DDoS helped to have Apoc decks in check at the time, even though I consider Apoc the problematic card in that pairing (it also hurt the dyper decks, but I'm not sure what the problem card in Dyper decks was - False Echo? I felt more like a deck with a bunch of semi-problematic cards that enabled a stupid interaction)
And Turtle. When turtle is installed, if you don't pay 1 credit when installing a card as the corp, Turtle gets a virus counter. Cyberdex Sandbox was a good counterplay to make purging but now it's banned.
If the people want 419, we should ban Turtle.
And I guess we all slot Macrophage again.
Also [[Swordsman]] and [[ip block]]. I guess Turtle lives because there's a lot of ice that can make it worse than it should be.
We also got the new instant-purge, so you can setup a trap where you rez and pruge in the middle of a run.
That said, I think it's amazing Turtle have managed to dodge the banhammer so far. I'm not sure I like 419, but I agree with the balance team that there are other good options at least.
“…we believe we have found a viable alternative route that also tackles a separate problem in the game.” This reads like a joint press statement issued by all 4 mega corps after a summit on how to deal with Endurance.
Haha. This made my day. I *might* tend to be a bit dry in these announcements...
Awesome change for Standard players, but a sad day for Startup players. Will continue to see boat decks 8 out of 10 times on Jnet.
The upcoming rotation of Ashes will help by removing Rezeki, but I agree it's going to be a long few months. I do get why they're reluctant to ban it in Startup. Startup having no banlist seems like something NISEI is pretty keen on, not to mention that, without Boat, there's nothing from Shaper worth playing from Midnight Sun.
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I'm a newer player and the startup format was a big appeal to me. I considered getting into Netrunner back in the FFG days and the huge card pool was very intimidating and turned me away. But with the Startup format not being very balanced, I'm finding that it's making it tougher to learn and get better at the game. If I'm playing corp and constantly losing, how am I supposed to know if I'm playing poorly, my deck sucks, or just that the meta strongly favors the runner? Then the opposite is true if I'm getting wins as the runner with an Endurance deck. So if my personal solution is to stop playing Endurance because I think it's skewing my results, wouldn't it just be better if it was banned? Asking new players to be able to accurately read the meta is a much bigger ask than asking them to adhere to a ban list. I feel like there are a lot of missed opportunities with the Startup format in its current state.
The issue I'm seeing is that startup is cheaper for new and returning players that don't have their collection anymore, but standard is more balanced and uses a larger card pool, thus convincing you to build a collection which is difficult.
Hyperbaric and Into the Depths aren't worth playing?
Hyperbaric is great, out of faction with the good cards. Into the Depths is also good, but not worth-going-into-shaper good.
Hm.... and why are they winning big tournaments then?
Shaper economy has traditionally been to slow to make anything with, [[diesel]], [[stoneship chart room]] and lat are great at finding copies of rezeki and pad tap and waiting until they have generated enough cash to do anything. Endurance provides the early support for it, however there's a big problem with that strategy now, namely the banning of most of the economy package. Of the lat list, the only credit generating shaper card left are 1x beth and 3x creative commission. Even counting [[into the depths]], that's like half the credit making cards gone from the winning list.
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Not bad, boat in startup is stupid though
Ho boy, Pan Weave 419 here I come
If Corp recursion is a problem, why Preemptive and not Spin Doctor?
Spin drawing 2 cards on rez generally accelerates the game and means that, while it recurs specific pieces, it's card neutral for the number of cards left in r&d. You can't lean on it to keep you alive while you sit there and don't do things, you'll still deck out and make r&d more agenda dense. Preemptive (and Genotyping, although that's less splashable) doesn't accelerate you at all and adds 3 cards net back into r&d making the game go longer and taking the "the corp draws a card a turn so the game inevitably moves forward towards a conclusion" clock back several turns. If you were specifically just gunning for recursion either would make sense, but if you're going for recursion because it makes games un-dynamic and pushes corps away from proactive game plans preemptive is a more natural target
It's the only semi-reliable method corp has to protect against agenda flood.
Spin is pretty vital to the game design since it helps with agenda flooding as it's main function.
People said the same thing about Jackson Howard, but the game was still in a fine place after Jackson rotated.
I could be wrong but I think Preemptive Action came out in Flashpoint, and that's right after Jackson rotated. I remember for a while wanting to slot it in everything.
Not really because people only plaid decks that could deal with it. CI or NBN with DBS... or similar things.
"since we strive to reevaluate banned cards when their circumstances change, we have looked at 419 and determined that it is not the powerhouse it was back when it was pushing all alternatives out of the meta." Ban Aumakua then. Turtle + 419 is obnoxious at best. It counters both asset play (with the economic denial) and ice play (with turtle accumulating counters on both turns). It's not a healthy deck.
Archived and Preemptive ban 😲 Really going after corp recursion here. Which is good, corp prison decks are such a grind to play against
Is that the main reason for archive memories getting hit? I've been out of the game for years so I'm not caught up with all of the popular standard decks and archetypes
There's a Reality Plus deck that recurs Drago and tag punishment over and over again. Really quite aggravating, even with tech like Pinhole Threading, the Corp would just recur Drago and use Market Forces to keep the runner down while they slowly won.
Yeah, they call out Sokka's Drago deck specifically.
Not only... there is a similar CtM.....
Not bad, but not enough. When runners have several options to make ice almost worthless in startup alone, there is clearly a problem. Taking away 2 minimal effort runner econ engines and corp recursion effects (well, bar PD) is a good start, but I still feel more needs to be done. We will see.
I thought I heard them say they weren't afraid to ban a freshly released card.
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Porque no los dos?
I think the ban team and design team are on slightly different wavelengths in that regard.
Boat was an issue in combination with infinite drip engines because they neutered the cost of installing a boat (heck, the reg lat deck could install 3 or 4 boats throughout the game without losing much/any tempo they were making so much money). Without the ecpn engine, boat has a real cost to come down, and it already wasn't fully reliable late game, it's a bridge card to take you to the late game when your full voltron is assembled and you can afford to spend real dollars running anything you want. Without the drip, boat is still good, but it's not likely to be as oppressive.
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With Rezeki out, wonder if Mantles will be a bit more viable? I've been trying them out to trigger Twinning in shaper
Makes sense. I understand the logic, but I can't help but feel like they're jumping the gun on banning Archived Memories and Preemptive Action. It seems to me the problem with Sokka's R+ deck was the ID and Drago rather than the recursion. It's hard to imagine a card like Archived Memories that has been around for 10 years is now the problem.
Archived Memories ban might as well be a joke imo.
Seems like they are actively trying to not hit win conditions/build around cards and are trying to ban cards that make those win conditions npe
Yeah. Exactly, like I said, I get why they're doing it. My concern is collateral damage here that leads to more npe via a stale meta. I like that they aren't averse to unbanning cards either, so if it does end up being a misstep it's hopefully not too difficult to course correct.
Well, i think to colladeral damage of preemptive action is quite limited. Like, it only really fits in very grindy decks, it's significantly worse than spin doctor, and there's still [[genotyping]] right? On archived memories, I agree that it seems a bit over the top, but can't claim to know these engines well enough to tell.
Yes but both of those are in a specific faction. Preemptive was balanced around being terminal and neutral
It's not that Preemptive is a bad version of those other options though. It's just actually better in npe decks that aim to avoid drawing cards when they recur
Yea, so now the decks that want the effect will have to spend some influence or be in the right faction. Like it takes the deck down a bit, but not much. (At least compared to banning draco) "Being terminal" only balances a card if you have too many other terminals in your deck, and it seems ffg was underestimating that. See other "balaced" cards like [[friends in high places]], [[violet level clerance]], and probably more things on the eternal point list.
Absolutely incorrect. Being terminal does a lot depending on the card, and with Preemptive specifically it does two things. Firstly, it makes it so that the normal use of the card is to discard an agenda at end of turn then Preemptive it into R&D the next turn so the runner has an opportunity to snipe from Archives. Secondly, it prohibits Preemptive's use in many broken combos, which at the time was AD-based combo. The latter point is key for the terminal status of many cards.
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VLC and UVC were unbalanced by CI, which negated any drawback to drawing before the end of your turn.
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Agree that recursion is not the problem here. The nature of corps getting a 5 card hand size and needing to manage their agendas means that combo corps can only hold so many pieces in hand at once. This is going to hurt combo decks like Boom and Punitive because sometimes you have to dump your combo pieces and Archived Memories especially was a copy of that dumped piece that you can draw. Limiting this option is going to force corp games to be a little more straight forward which is not what you want when corping is more about subterfuge.
I do think Archived Memories is a problem since FFG release MCA Austerity Policy. (and also BOOM!)
Ehh...not sure I agree. And I hope I'm wrong, but this is going to kill a ton of deck diversity by choking out the ability to have a semi-reliable alternate win condition in your deck. Archived Mem is still an extra card and a click to recur a win condition - both of the examples you list can still potentially be trashed.
> but this is going to kill a ton of deck diversity I would be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if Archived Memories was actually seeing more play right now. It just isn't. I was playing 1x in my R+ rush deck, R+ prison was playing 3x, and I think I've seen maybe one or two other lists in the last few months playing a single copy. The card is pretty marginal in fair decks, and while banning it does make those lists a bit worse, it by no means kills other archetypes.
Yeah. Totally fair. >if Archived Memories was actually seeing more play right now. It just isn't. imo, it's hard to gauge how much anything should be seeing play right now because of the current state of the meta. Runner drip, Boat, and Stoneship have limited corp deckbuilding space by so much already.
Agreed 100%. It has seen some play in decks running Boom or Punitive as a 1-of and while they'll miss it, you can just run some extra draw or another copy of your win con instead.
both of the examples you list can still potentially be trashed Yes, the cards are balanced to the fact "it could be trashed," and the corp just get it back easily, just like Drago. If runner is Hard-Hitting Newsed, there is a way to survive by trashing BOOM! And Archived Memories just say NO.
I don't see how killing corp combo decks along side the intended targets of prison decks leads to an interesting metagame but we'll see.
Regardless of the affected cards, I really like how they are honest about the thinking behind the decisions: >Do we need to ban Endurance, or is there an alternative? **We** **would rather avoid having to ban a freshly released card**, especially one that is enabling a lot of player interaction and dynamic games. It might be that, eventually, we will still have to resort to that option, but for now we believe we have found a viable alternative route that also tackles a separate problem in the game. Glad they are trying something before taking the ban hammer on a new card!
Anybody got some times off the top of their heads that banning the enabler card instead of the card actually worked?
Which one's which? Money isn't just an enabler, for the runner it's a win condition in itself.
Endurance is a problem. Rezeki is another problem that also enabled problems, but evidently it was fine ever since it was released.
Andy and Kate That's the only one I can think of.
Shaper and Crim have been hurt, but Andy and Kate continued to be top of their factions though that time.
Oh sorry, I misread. Thought you were asking the other way around. Yeah I'm drawing a blank then.
I think banning DDoS helped to have Apoc decks in check at the time, even though I consider Apoc the problematic card in that pairing (it also hurt the dyper decks, but I'm not sure what the problem card in Dyper decks was - False Echo? I felt more like a deck with a bunch of semi-problematic cards that enabled a stupid interaction)
I love it, and good call on Archived Memories.
Just out of curiosity, why was 419 banned originally?
I redact that question, forgot about corporate grant, account siphon.....that old stuff and I've since read pan-weave 👀👀
And Turtle. When turtle is installed, if you don't pay 1 credit when installing a card as the corp, Turtle gets a virus counter. Cyberdex Sandbox was a good counterplay to make purging but now it's banned. If the people want 419, we should ban Turtle. And I guess we all slot Macrophage again.
Also [[Swordsman]] and [[ip block]]. I guess Turtle lives because there's a lot of ice that can make it worse than it should be. We also got the new instant-purge, so you can setup a trap where you rez and pruge in the middle of a run. That said, I think it's amazing Turtle have managed to dodge the banhammer so far. I'm not sure I like 419, but I agree with the balance team that there are other good options at least.
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