You’ve probably seen the screenshot by now – a post on 4chan by spoilerken, known for revealing the 3 tier MWL and plenty of other leaks up to Order and Chaos. Since he (or she) hasn’t been wrong before, we’re going to go ahead with the assumption that it’s real. If you haven’t seen it, the list is:

BANNED

Aaron Marrón

Bloo Moose

Faust

Rumor Mill

Şifr

Temüjin Contract

Salvaged Vanadis Armory

Clone Suffrage Movement

Friends in High Places

Mumbad City Hall

Sensie Actors Union

RESTRICTED (one playset of one card on this list for each side – so you could have Opus in your Runner and GFI in your Corp)

Aesop’s Pawnshop

Clone Chip

Employee Strike

Film Critic

Gang Sign

Inversificator

Levy AR Lab Access

Magnum Opus

Bio-Ethics Association

Estelle Moon

Fairchild 3.0

Global Food Initiative

Hunter Seeker

Mumba Temple

Museum of History

Obokata Protocol

Firstly, I think this is a fantastic move for the game. It’s something that Netrunner has needed for a long time. The MWL was an innovative and interesting solution, but over time it’s become clear that it doesn’t quite work. Deck builders will pay influence for the most powerful cards and deck diversity decreases instead of increasing. Programs such as the ever present Faust simply become Shaper cards, because they can happily run a single copy. I completely agree with the list as it stands.

I’d like to take a look at some of the most common arguments against the list that have come up in various discussion forums since the leak. Please don’t think I’m having a go at anyone in particular – these are all arguments I’ve seen multiple times.

Temujin isn’t a problem! It was a boost Crim needed, and would be fine if it was an exclusively Criminal card. The only problem is that it’s everywhere!

The thing about Temujin Contract is that it’s the single most broken econ card in the game – just compare its output to Liberated Accounts and the insane amount of synergies with it (practically every run event, Despy pre rotation, Datasucker, Sec Testing…). It’s also a card that’s disproportionately powerful on turn 1, as an unanswered Temujin on the board sets the Corp back massively. If you put the most broken card in the game in a weak faction, all that means is that you can’t print strong cards for that faction anymore! If it didn’t boost Crim to tier 1 on release (and I’d argue it did) then the release of Aaron Marron certainly did. Even at tier 3 MWL it would still be overpowered, because Criminals will happily pay the 9 influence to have access to the most broken economy card in the game.

Magnum Opus? Aesop’s Pawnshop? They’re in Core 2! FAKE NEWS!

I saw this one a few times! Mostly, this seems to be a misconception about the nature of the Restricted list. There’s nothing stopping you playing either of these cards, but there are checks on you combining them with the other strong lock options available to Shaper in particular. Do you want to play Mopus, take 8 every turn and remote lock? Fine – but if a Corp builds counter to this strategy with a FA deck, you can’t Clot lock with impunity anymore. Similarly, if you want to sell your whole deck to Aesop’s for efficient clickless econ that’s fine too, but you can only do it once – no Levy for you. If you’ve done much post rotation testing you might have noticed that without this list Lock Shaper (whether Hayley Pawnshop or Noob Kit) is absolutely godlike. The testers have clearly noticed this too and are planning ahead.

GFI? Obokata? Hunter Seeker? Fairchild 3? Bio-Ethics?

Again, this one seems more like breaking up combos to me. GFI is widely played because it forces the runner into 4 agenda steals while the Corp only needs to score 3 times, and consequently is a front runner for best agenda in the game. Hunter Seeker has a natural synergy with this. Combining GFI, Obokata, Bio-Ethics and MoH makes prison decks more powerful. It’s not about removing these power cards – it’s about making sure you can’t jam them all into the same deck.

Banlists make designers lazy, because they can just release broken cards and ban them later.

The best counter argument I can make to this one is this article about one of the more infamously busted Magic cards. Despite the best efforts of designers and testers, there’s only so many man-hours that can be put into testing by the number of testers a game has. I’d be surprised if Netrunner had more than…50? 70? playtesters at any one time. The simple fact is that an online community of thousands are going to find things testers never could (and faster) because there’s so many more minds looking at the problem. Of course designers aren’t going to decide to just not do their job because a banlist exists! We need a safety valve and the MWL just hasn’t quite cut it.

Runner econ has been gutted! I can’t run wherever I want all the time! The game is boring now! WHAT DO??

Well…yes (except the boring part). HOWEVER, runner econ has also gotten completely insane over the years. I’d argue that it’s gotten to the point where skill is less rewarded, because you can be carried all game by an early Temujin or Moose. There’s been plenty of games I’ve won instead of lost simply thanks to having ludicrous cash reserves to fall back on when I made dumb plays. One post (and I promise I’m not picking on you!) complained that “I commonly end games on 5 or less credits now”. How can this possibly be a bad thing? If you end your game on any more than 0 credits, you’ve arguably been inefficient with your resources! At its core Netrunner is a game of economic warfare. Part of the skill of the game is reading the game state and choosing your runs carefully – or knowing when its time to throw caution to the wind and go for that one glory run. The need to be smart with your runs adds tension to the game more than being able to do whatever you like all the time.

With rotation and the banlist, X is garbage now!

Well, yeah. Netrunner is a living card game after all, and the relative power level of factions will always shift. Here’s something I’m really excited about though: this is the first opportunity FFG has had to reprint cards. I can’t wait to see if they release more “fair” versions of iconic rotated faction cards in the upcoming cycles (we’ve already seen a bit of this – Equivocation strikes me as a more interesting RDI, for example) and I think it’ll be great for the game.

Personally, this has made me more excited for Netrunner than anything in years. Keep jamming those games – we could very well be on the edge of a golden age.