Hello and welcome to this very special Slack Chat. Worlds is just around the corner, and we’re writing this on the eve of 1st October (aka Armageddon). To see out the old meta and usher in the new, myself and four other Netrunners are going to be playing a game of Buy/Sell/Hold as we try and figure out what the next few months of competitive Netrunner is going to look like. Here’s the story so far:

The year is 2*17, and four industrious traders have just received word of an impending Most Wanted List about to hit the Net, with some big names on the chopping block. The Fake Financial Trading Markets are already in turmoil with the recently announced so-called “rotato” and “core 2.0” M&As that have dominated recent casts, so it’s a perfect time for our traders to make a few extra TT Credits using this new insider information…

For our readers, this is what the terminology we’ll be using means:

Before we begin, a quick run down of the stats from Know The Meta, which we’ll use as our baseline. Prior to any implementation of rotation, Core 2 or Ban/Restricted list, the faction split of the Top 30% of corps decks at tournaments that took place during the last 3 data packs looked like this:

And for the runners:

Anarch – 43%

Shaper – 28%

Criminal – 27%

Minifaction – 1.3%

circadia (Sam Burdock): Any surprises there?

callmedutch (Rufus Eyre-Varnier): seems about right

ouroboros (Dan Strong): More than 1% minis!?

😉

circadia: Yeah Sunny was crushing it in like… two tournaments?

callmedutch: some people like to dream Dan

ouroboros: I think I might expect NBN to be a bit higher

sync was well placed

but it wasn’t that prevalent

guy.patching (Guy Patching): Sometimes you have to factor in the “cool” factor. NBN wasn’t a “cool” thing to take to a GNK / SC if you wanted to be different you’d do something different. Some of these tournaments were not super intense nationals.

nemamiah (Chris Dyer): That’s in line with what I saw for the past three months

Though I suspect if you just looked at the last data pack Criminal would be well above Shaper

ouroboros: Oh huh, shaper were above criminal?

callmedutch: yeah Lock Hayley and co took a real dive later on

circadia: Chris is correct, Crimson Dust was good for Criminal

nemamiah: Shaper were above criminal were until The Great and Powerful Turtle came out

ouroboros: HAIL

callmedutch:





the turtle that would be king

circadia: Well on that note, let’s crack on! Ding ding! (That’s the trading floor bell, obv.) First up – the corps.

guy.patching: (ALL HAIL THE BELL)





circadia: Let’s begin with the green-haired stepchild of competitive netrunner. Weyland – buy/sell/hold?

callmedutch: BUY

ouroboros: BUY BUY BUY BABY

nemamiah: Buy buy buy!

guy.patching: I’ll buy, but with neither capitals nor repetition.

circadia: Go on Guy, why the reticence?

guy.patching: I think we’re going to go through a very brief period where everyone will laugh and say that Weyland are now the faction to fear tags in, and burn some yellow, and they’ll regret doing that once someone turns their fiendish attention back to NBN. So Weyland will be left with the 7th point problem, and it will be not as great at finishing as other factions

That said I’m still a “buy”, just think it’ll be a readjustment rather than a zoomzoom climb

ouroboros: I certainly won’t be buying stock in weyland kill decks

callmedutch: I think Guy, you’re underestimating how good Skorp is right now

callmedutch: Don deck is basically untouched by changes no?

ouroboros: Don’s skorp rush is fearsome, and I personally think Titan FA is also a deck to be feared

nemamiah: My position is based on the fact that I really didn’t rate any Weyland decks before rotation. There was just too much hate around

But now there’s much less Strike, probably less Critic, and Weyland didn’t lose anything relevant

circadia: When I think about Weyland I think about three broad archetypes, Garg HHN prison, Titan FA and Skorp Rush. Those all seem fairly well placed after the changes? But they all have hate too.

callmedutch: oh yeah Gaga is still good too bluergh

with only Museum on the Restricted list they can have that and Whampoa + Preemptive to provide recursion

nemamiah: Titan fast advance and Skorp rush feel like the most ‘obvious’ decks from October for me. Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best, but lots of people will play them

I’m not buying Gagarin though

I think people are probably underestimating how significant Mumbad City Hall was to Gagarin decks

ouroboros: Yeah I don’t think Weyland will be the dominant faction by any stretch, but it has tier 1/1.5 decks now, whereas pre-rotation it just had nothing

guy.patching: I am working on the principle that it was still winning 14% of Top 30. I think it’ll cap out at around 20-25% . And I think it’ll do that in Skorp, and possibly mad Jemison.

circadia: Bold prediction on Jem there. I’d love to see that happen

guy.patching: If I make 20-30 bold predictions then in six months time I can point to the one that’s right, nod sagely, and go “I’m a genius”

ouroboros: It’s worth noting as well that the banlist helps Titan a lot

as runners now basically have to choose between critic, strike and clot lock

rather than packing all 3

nemamiah: The only argument against Titan is that your worst matchup is Shaper, and that’s probably not where you want to be right now





circadia: Moving onto the scourge of Worlds 2016… NBN – buy/sell/hold?

ouroboros: Sell

callmedutch: hold

guy.patching: Buy

nemamiah: Hold, with a slightly optimistic outlook

circadia: Variation!

Dan, you’re the odd one out

What’s wrong with our favourite news network?

ouroboros: Pre-rotation there was precisely one good NBN deck: Fiery Sync

Sync is dead

callmedutch: as we know it

ouroboros: That said banning Aaron makes a big difference, and Sol and CTM may be making a comeback

but I remain skeptical

to be honest with you I’m verging on a hold

circadia: I was gonna say re: CTM, table scoring AR Enhanced Security in CTM could be crushing

nemamiah: I kind of agree with Dan, but the difference is that before there were no great NBN decks, one very good one and no good ones

Now there are no great or very good ones, but maybe three or four good ones?

So the faction is weaker at the top end, but deeper in options than it was before

ouroboros: That’s a good point Chris, although the maximum power of an NBN deck has probably decreased, the average may have risen

callmedutch: are we all forgetting that NBN has the best card for 0 inf, Special Report!

ouroboros: You and that card

it’s not good Rufus

guy.patching: I think you’ve got to look at the amount of cards that used to sit on the table and the NBN player would go “well, this is terrible and I hate my opponent” that are now gone away.

circadia: Absolutely, Astro and News disappearing makes NBN far less threatening as a faction

ouroboros:

guy.patching: NACH – Marron – Temujin – Moose . All huge new for a faction that wants to say “You’re at risk of a tag problem here, you’ll need money”

callmedutch: I agree but runner econ has been destroyed as well, plus Mopus is on the restricted list

nemamiah: It’s hard to overstate just how bad Aaron was for NBN, no matter how fond of hyperbole you are. Even though the card it was designed to shut down, Breaking News, is gone, the fact that Aaron is banned makes me feel a lot better about the faction

circadia: A huge thing to consider is that every corp deck is getting a 3 inf bump because of Jackson going

Except for NBN

callmedutch: well its 3 inf bump from Breaking News sam

circadia: D’oh

ouroboros: That’s true to an extent, Sam

but corps will probably still need to splash for some flooding mitigation in most cases

callmedutch: but my Special Report

ouroboros: Miraju stock is going through the roof right now.

guy.patching: Its a bubble.

callmedutch: all hail Dans Miraju tactics

nemamiah: As an aside, can I buy all the stock in Preemptive Action and hold a fire sale on all other Jackson ‘replacements’?

circadia: No, because you can’t buy stock in neutral cards

That’s like… buying stock in the government or something

nemamiah: Bonds, you mean

ouroboros: So it’s government bonds?

circadia: Whatever, I didn’t think the analogy through

nemamiah: Anyway, I think the point that NBN need a ‘victory condition’ is absolutely correct

guy.patching: See I think there’s a point at which a game where they runner is tagged to high heaven and NBN can exchange at will makes the runner victory condition a lot trickier as well, and puts NBN far more in control of the game than we might suspect

nemamiah: The problem is that most runners can let NBN get to five points

At which point they’re so setup that you’ll never be able to reach that ‘tag hell’

ouroboros: I mean who knows, with runner econ tanked, they might even be able to score out… behind ice!

dum dum DUUUUUM

callmedutch:

circadia: Sol Glacier is an archetype that will be revisited, I’m sure

(Iced Lemonade decks, I call them)

ouroboros: Scarcity of Resources is pretty brutal right now.

nemamiah: Yeah, Scarcity has never looked better

guy.patching: I don’t think a runner that is “set up” looks as dominant as it once did

With the loss of huge econ cards and the Medium delivery system now offline

And corps being willing to spend on big ice

I think the idea of a crushing end of game board state is really difficult

circadia: Yeah, you choose between Opus or clot lock, can’t have both

ouroboros: I don’t know, Congress Kate style durdle-shapers look pretty scary

there’s still a lot of runner drip econ

I suppose the hope is that Weyland will outpace them

nemamiah: All the explosive, reliable and early economy is gone, but that just means that it takes longer to set that oppressive board state up

If you give them time to establish it it’s still just as oppressive as it ever was

ouroboros: I agree with Chris here

nemamiah: And you have worse tools to counter it

callmedutch: I feel like we’re getting off topic

guy.patching: Aye. I think I’ll just agree to disagree with the world champ





circadia: Let’s move on before Rufus brings up Special Report again. Next up: Jinteki – buy/sell/hold?

guy.patching: Buy

callmedutch: hold

ouroboros: This is a tough one… sell I think

nemamiah: Yeah, I’ll sell

But with the caveat that I tend to chronically underrate Personal Evolution decks

ouroboros: Where’s our :crying-caprice: emoji

I’m in denial about PE

nemamiah: We can get flatlined together, Dan

callmedutch: I almost got you Dan, even with Caldera out

circadia: Who are you buying stock in, Guy?

guy.patching: I think the reason that I’m keenest to buy is that I’m not specifying just one ID. PE basically got to write a lot of the current changes. Meanwhile all of a sudden Aginfusion is saying “Are you really going to take Employee Strike as your chosen card” and a variety of decks are still sitting on Marcus Batty in a world where Shapers are having to think hard about Clone Chips.

It has too many weird vectors of attack, and too many potentially huge IDs, to not want to buy it right now

circadia: Yeah that’s huge – Aginfusion got a big bump, no?

callmedutch: yeah Excalibur cheese worries me

ouroboros: I strongly disagree that Aginfusion got a bump

Caprice is so core to jinteki glacier, and the turtle makes Excalibur very sad.

nemamiah: So my sell is based on the fact that before, AgInfusion was pretty good, IG was playable and there was some net damage stuff that might catch people out.

Now Aginfusion is still pretty good, IG is unplayable and there is some net damage stuff that might catch people out

circadia: IG is a super interesting one

Because people were saying that it was going to be the deck to beat

ouroboros: They were?

nemamiah: I was all in on IG until the MWL update gutted its agenda suite

circadia: That’s it, right

Loss of Obo and GFI just killed it

nemamiah: And you’ve lost Fetal to rotation, so you can’t even compensate for that

circadia: I don’t even know what an IG agenda suite would look like, it’s that bad

3 TFPs and…

ouroboros: uuuh braintrust?

callmedutch: 3 Obo 3 TFP 1 Philotic?

ouroboros: And no Bioethics?

sure



guy.patching: If you’ll excuse me I have a tiny violin to play for IG

circadia:

nemamiah: All Shapers will have multiple Sac Cons, by the way. Batty cheese is much worse than it used to be, and you really don’t want to be firing that dude for a simple end the run

I do still think AgInfusion is good though

callmedutch: Palana is still ok imo

circadia: I think the main idea is to fire Batty with an Excal, then Bump or Nisei

Yeah weirdly I’ve seen lots of Palana since MWL update

What’s that about?

ouroboros: Good rush ID

nemamiah: Econ IDs are good

callmedutch: Panic Pal, Sam

guy.patching: I think you may well see lots of Sac Cons, I’d agree, but its just another thing Shaper have to have on the board before challenging a Nisei. and all of the time they’re doing that they’re not getting credits

But again I feel I digress

circadia: We’ll get to Shaper…

(said every competitive player ever)

nemamiah: You can’t play Netrunner in a vacuum

ouroboros: One day Chris

one day my dreams of space netrunner will be realised

I’ll be the first person to play netrunner in a vacuum

guy.patching: (also, as an aside, Jinteki ice suite unhit)

nemamiah: It’s better, right?

callmedutch: I wouldn’t run chiyashi right now

nemamiah: Kakugo and Komainu are unholy terrors

ouroboros: Kakugo, what a god-awful oppressive mistake ice

guy.patching: That’s what I meant by “unhit” I meant “unhit by Parasite”

Obviously…

ouroboros: I like that Komainu is good again though

circadia: Faerie and Sunny breakers still exist for Komainu

But Kakugo… yeah

ouroboros: Your kakugo answer is basically caldera/feedback filter

Shame net filter rotated huh

guy.patching: … net Shield

nemamiah: I think every single Jinteki deck takes OboPro as its restricted card

ouroboros: 100%

callmedutch: yes

circadia: Probably

ouroboros: that agenda is bonkers

guy.patching: I think some PE will take Bioethics

But you won’t know it until its too late

ouroboros: nah seems bad tbh

like

bioethics is cute, but obokata is so solid in PE

circadia: I think you’d be more likely to see Bioethics in PU

Because of the double dipping

guy.patching: Well feel free to run my facedown remotes to check..

circadia: No thanks…

ouroboros: installs Caldera





circadia: And the giant of 2017… until now?! Haas-Bioroid – buy/sell/hold?

callmedutch: buy

ouroboros: Sell

guy.patching: Sell, but keep the bulk of the stock.

nemamiah: Yeah, agree with Guy

ouroboros: Are you really saying you think HB is better now Rufus?

For the record I also agree with Guy

circadia: Explain yourself Rufus!

guy.patching: grabs pitchforks

callmedutch: HB is still really strong rn

the Fairchildren have come out to play

ouroboros: Sure it’s ok but it’s not Moons Rufus!

You’re a madman

you’ll be ruined

nemamiah: Moons and CI were streets ahead of every other Corp pre rotation

They were so obviously the best decks that it wasn’t even funny

guy.patching: I will say that we’re all about to see a lot of MCA Austerity policy

callmedutch: CI spam decks are making waves on jnet

circadia: So if you think NBN’s stock has dropped off with no scoring plan, Weyland you may still have reason to doubt, and Jinteki is about the same… HB is still king?

ouroboros: I think even if HB is still king it’s a clear sell

guy.patching: Yeah. what you’re saying is that it’ll be around 40%+ of top decks

And that’s a big ask for any faction

nemamiah: I think HB are still good, there’s about four different viable CI builds

That’s why it’s not a hard sell

But I don’t think you can overstate how good they were before

ouroboros: Yeah no one’s saying HB are bad, but there’s absolutely no way they’re better than they were pre-rotation

callmedutch: I will make it my mission to make AoT good

guy.patching: I don’t think it’ll be a hard mission by any stretch

circadia: AoT can get bonkers pretty quickly, I’ve found

guy.patching: Absolutely

I think it’ll win games, rather than just (in the hands of the right player) absolutely crush games, like it did in the moons hayday

circadia: Like I’d venture to say it’s the second best HB ID

nemamiah: I can get on board with that, Sam

ouroboros: Yeah I agree with that assessment also.

nemamiah: Especially because 12 influence hurts much less than it used to

callmedutch: I think getting 20 creds off CFC Excavation is pretty nuts

ouroboros: Best Case Evaluation Rufus strikes again

guy.patching: Like, can I tell a quick anecdote, it’s about Chris?

nemamiah: Book clock!

ouroboros: Book clock!

circadia: Does it involve whispers Brainstorm?

guy.patching: No. Brainstorm is a secret tech that shall remain secret..

nemamiah: (I broke a Brainstorm at Nats. Brings my total record to 4 Brainstorms rezzed against me, 15 brain damage suffered)

guy.patching: I’m watching the final of BABW at Reading

And its Chris versus Jonny. Chris is attacking Jonny’s Moons

And not long into it he siphons HQ with a rezzed Caprice

To me, the reason you sell HB right now is that you’re not seeing decks that are going to tell the very best players in the game “do utterly mad things, because the only way you win this is by doing really bold high risk plays”

That’s my book clock. And I am hoping it is illustrative of the point

circadia: What’s a book clock?

ouroboros: story time

guy.patching: Story time!

ouroboros:

circadia: Goddamit

ouroboros: it’s a meme!

circadia: But let’s talk about Moons in CI

Because… you have VLC to create absurd power plays with SFT

nemamiah: It’s still pretty good, right?

But not mind bendingly ridiculous like it used to be

circadia: And Restore is an ok card

callmedutch: is archived mem still in core?

circadia: Yes

callmedutch: yeah CI seems good

nemamiah: That’s why CI is still good, because in a game low on explosive economy cards the Clearances are way above the baseline

And it’s why is flexible, because playing those six cards enables you to do almost anything you want

ouroboros: So, I’m not the greatest deckbuilder, but I find that moons CI decks struggle to get a good number of assets in after slotting all the clearances

I think going ahead we might just see CI going all-in on op econ more than using assets

circadia: I think you can build it with just VLC and standard moons asset spam. But I’m not good at moons, so I wouldn’t know…

callmedutch: tbf i only played 1 CI recently and it was Ashigaru + Slee combo

circadia: Did you die Rufus?

callmedutch: yes….

circadia: Uh oh…

callmedutch: I forgot Slee was a thing

ouroboros: I’ve been seeing a lot of Stinson CI

which is

bizarre

but also probably ok?

circadia: That’s important though

Is it Sandburg CI? Ashigaru? Moons? Some weird 7 point combo?

They’re all viable-ish

nemamiah: Yeah, I’d expect CI to be just as dominant in faction as ETF ever was, at least for the near future





circadia: Ok! To wrap our corp discussion, let’s have a quick round of over/under for predicting the World’s meta. Over meaning more likely or more prevalent, and under meaning less likely/less prevalent.

Asset spam will make up 50% of decks on day 2 at this year’s worlds – over/under?

ouroboros: under

callmedutch: under

nemamiah: Way under

guy.patching: Under

ouroboros: yeah quite substantially under

circadia: Whizzard, you did your job

And now you may rest

ouroboros: I mean really the restricted list did most of the work

the wildcard here is that if someone makes CTM good it might be over

guy.patching: That said. I think there will be decks with 4-5 remotes

Just… not 20

circadia: Redefining spam… I like it.

nemamiah: Right, I have quite a high bar to clear before you get to spam

So CtM never qualified as asset spam in my mind





circadia: Next one:

There’s a 20% chance we’ll all be getting full art Project Atlas next year when Weyland wins worlds – over/under?

callmedutch: over

guy.patching: Under

nemamiah: Push?

callmedutch: less than 20% guy!!!

really?!?!

I think its 25-30%

guy.patching: Yep. more like 10

ouroboros: hmm I need to think about this one

I’m going to go over I think

circadia: I have no idea what Push means, but I’m guessing it means you’re fence sitting and I don’t like it

nemamiah: By ‘push’ I mean that I think the line is almost exactly right

ouroboros: I suspect weyland will be the second best faction

guy.patching: I think Skorp right now is what NBN was before the 2015 Worlds.

It’s what they’ll play on the plane

nemamiah: As of a week ago I would have definitely said over

But I’m cooling on Weyland quite rapidly





circadia: Last one, for funsies: there’s a 33% chance that a psi game of some variety will decide at least one game in the cut at worlds – over/under?

guy.patching: WAY over

nemamiah: Yeah, over

callmedutch: over

ouroboros: uh under?

what are you guys talking about?

circadia: Ok, but WHAT psi game?

nemamiah: Batty

callmedutch: Batty

circadia: On a what?

guy.patching: Batty AND Voter Intimidation

circadia: Ooh, VI

ouroboros: I’m not sold on this

at all

circadia: That’s fine Dan, I didn’t ask you to buy

guy.patching: My heart says Batty on Inazuma, but my brain say Excalibur

nemamiah: For bonus points; it’ll be Batty to trigger a Fairchild 2 sub to inflict a brain damage that makes the game winning OboPro unstealable

That’s how you make a bold prediction, folks



circadia: Halfway through the trading day, and it’s time to talk runners.

Let’s begin with Big Blue Criminals – buy/sell/hold?

ouroboros: hold

callmedutch: hold

nemamiah: Hold

guy.patching: Sell

nemamiah: Huh, I thought I was going to the odd one out here

circadia: Holders, what’re you waiting for?!

ouroboros: are criminals good? who even knows?

so Siphon is gone which is

but

they’re still ok?

callmedutch: yeah its tough right

nemamiah: Criminal used to have one good deck that was okay against the field and literally nothing else

nemamiah: That’s exactly the position they’re in now

Only it’s a different deck

circadia: Geist?

nemamiah: Yeah, the big shirtless doofus

guy.patching: Geist is a minifaction with blue cards

I’d agree that those decks have a real boost

But I don’t think it makes up for the loss of Andy decks

Which, let’s face it, were everywhere

circadia: You could say the same about Garg being a minifaction though

callmedutch: Geist has the Miraju problem

which he has no real answer for

circadia: And the scarcity problem

ouroboros: You know I just completely forgot Geist

with him in the mix I might be a buy!

guy.patching: Andy was the “I don’t know what to play but want to be competitive” runner for many a tournament

nemamiah: North American players seemed to rate Andy much higher than we did in the UK, so might disagree with this assessment

But although she was popular I don’t think it was a great deck

guy.patching: It made an effective Medium delivery system

And that was always a great play, especially around middle tables

ouroboros: I think Andy was a good all-rounder deck, so she was good in a varied meta

guy.patching: It was a great “screw your jank” end game

circadia: KTM says Crims were slightly overrepresented in the general field than the top 30%

But not by a huge amount

ouroboros: the trouble is the UK meta was moons as far as the eye can see, and Andy didn’t love that matchup

nemamiah: While we’re on Criminal, I’ll buy stocks in Turtle all day

That card is going to be in about 70% of decks

circadia: Turtle is great but… it’s not really a Crim card at one inf

callmedutch: all hail our new turtle overlord

ouroboros: I have mixed feelings about turtle to be honest

it’s certainly strong

but also perhaps easy to tech for?

callmedutch: yeah IP block is kinda hurting it

circadia: CVS in archives too

ouroboros: IP block, CVS, icing all your centrals with anything str 3 or over really

and that’s not even getting into the other anti-AI ice

nemamiah: It’s so good that you play it despite all this tech though

ouroboros: Yeah I think you’re probably right Chris

guy.patching: I think Crims are going to struggle to control anything that can Fast advance, they’re going to struggle to win econ wars, they’re going to struggle to get the right influence split

circadia: Econ is the big thing for Crims, I agree

They got hurt the most economically

nemamiah: I’ve yet to see anything approaching a competitive Criminal deck that isn’t Geist

guy.patching: And I can’t see a lot of reason for corps to not take Scarcities

As it’ll hurt nearly every runner they’re going to play and hate

callmedutch: I think Tony Oxford is ok

circadia: (That’s Steve Cambridge for those readers who don’t know our Slack jokes)

ouroboros: he’s not terrible, but he’s tier 2 at most I think

probably less

nemamiah: Maxwell James is a crazy card, though. That’s something that the faction has

ouroboros: Maxwell is great

guy.patching: When we start seeing news cards I am looking forward to crims, and I think they’ll rise, but as a “snapshot” they’re just taken brutal damage

And I can’t see a lot of reason for corps to not take Scarcities

circadia: Scarcity is basically at war with Magnum Opus though

So long as one exists, the other is pointless

guy.patching: I completely disagree

Because you’re making Sac Cons cost 2 credits, at the very least

ouroboros: I think the other thing about scarcity is that outside of Sol it’s probably easier to clear, because it’s harder to manage flood

one legwork will do it a lot of the time





circadia: Moving on… Whizzard got boomed, but what about the rest of his brethren? Anarchs – buy/sell/hold?

ouroboros: SELL

callmedutch: hold

ouroboros: SELL THEM ALL

EVERYTHING

nemamiah: Sell, but not everything

guy.patching: Sell, but it’s not junk .

ouroboros: oh well ok maybe not everything

nemamiah: Wow Rufus

circadia: Let’s put it like this… Rufus – how many cards do they have to ban for you to sell Anarch?

ouroboros: Rufus is nuts and has no conception of relative strength ( )

callmedutch: never

Anarch till I die

ouroboros: A quiz for the readers: can you guess Rufus’s favourite factions?

nemamiah: I think my take is that Anarch had what, four top tier decks pre rotation?

callmedutch: Anarch still has a lot of power at its disposal

circadia: So let’s talk about the upshot – econ denial is now much better in Anarch than Crim, isn’t it?

guy.patching: I think econ denial will be Los, for what its worth

nemamiah: Anarch have better central pressure than any other faction

I initially thought they were totally unplayable, but that econ denial and disruption give you something

But I’m not sure it’s quite there and anyway all Anarch decks kind of look the same right now

ouroboros: I’m not sure I agree with that assessment Sam

Mining Accident is decent, but shutdown is more impactful a lot of the time

guy.patching: I think the reason I am keeping some of my Anarch stock is the HQ hand size pressure, Omar, and they still have cards that let you access crazy amounts of cards

callmedutch: Val, Omar and Maxx are all tier 1 imo

ouroboros: Rufus

you

are wrong

circadia: MAXX?

I cry everytime I look at MaxX

ouroboros: also mad

also wrong

callmedutch: Maxx has 1 problem

which is stupid skorp

circadia: And no Deja

ouroboros: MaxX has one problem, the best deck in the second best faction

which is completely unbeatable to her!

what could possibly go wrong

circadia: MaxX has to take Levy which means no Strike, no Opus

guy.patching: Nah just take Trope, It’ll be fine

nemamiah: Maw and Bhagat are really good cards, in my opinion

Wait, I just saw what Rufus said

ouroboros: Hahaha

nemamiah: That’s a hot take and a half

ouroboros: Chris is much more polite than I am

guy.patching: Many people are

ouroboros: True that.

circadia:

callmedutch: all posers the lot of you, Anarch is glad to be rid of you

circadia: Let’s talk Maw

ouroboros: Go away Maw

I’m trying to FA this Atlas

stop it

callmedutch:

nemamiah: It’s the best card in the faction now

circadia: Best console right now y/n?

ouroboros: Yeah it’s brutal

guy.patching: Yes. But not by a huge margin

callmedutch: I like Obelus as well

but Maw is super strong

nemamiah: It’s so good that I’ve seen it in all three factions

ouroboros: I mean I may be overrating it because I have almost exclusively been playing Titan FA and can I just say ugh maw ugh

so annoying

circadia: Can’t Audacity if you don’t have cards

ouroboros: The combo with Turtle is real

As Lukas intended

guy.patching: I think Anarchs will become the faction that just messes with your stuff. Which is great

But they’re not going to be capable of building an oppressive board state any more

Which is why you sell stock

callmedutch: yeah ICE destruction with Cutlery still hurts

circadia: Yeah, I like that now Anarchs won’t be the faction of “take a broken card from another faction and play it with Deja”

But that doesn’t make me want to buy them

ouroboros: Knifed is now officially the best answer to Kakugo

nemamiah: Much like HB, they were so far and away the best faction before

They’re nowhere near that now

So it has to be a sell





circadia: Moving onto Shapers – buy/sell/hold?

ouroboros: Buy

nemamiah: Buy buy buy

callmedutch: I want to sell cos I hate Smoke, but I’ll hold

guy.patching: Buy

But not thrice

ouroboros: yeah I’m not massively enthusiastic about this

nemamiah: I am

circadia: I feel like Guy was the outlier in Corps, and Rufus is the boat-rocker for Runners

callmedutch: like what does shaper have beside smoke?

nemamiah: Hayley and Ayla are both possible

guy.patching: They’re currently the “I don’t know what to play” faction so they’ll get the numbers but I think people will play them reactively, and not always have a game plan. That’s a recipe for disaster

Exile got a lot of love in Core 2.0

ouroboros: The restricted list has shaken up shaper a huge amount

circadia: So ok – they got so many things on the restricted list, so I have to know – what are you all buying?

nemamiah: Film Critic

callmedutch: Film Critic

guy.patching: Mopus

ouroboros: Critic

nemamiah: Or maybe Strike

guy.patching: See this is what’s surprisng

People have been saying “Mopus economy” as an answer all through corp

And what are they saying they’ll slot?

Film Critic!

circadia: Critic is a bad card for bad players but whatever, I’m just running this show

Yeah I know Guy – I don’t get that either

Critic is way down on the priority list for me

ouroboros: Have you read obokata protocol?

circadia: Play a Diesel, git gud

nemamiah: I hope you enjoy purging Tapwrms

Because you’re going to be doing that a lot very soon

guy.patching: I agree Tapwrms will be a thing

But if runners rely on them they’re in trouble

I think Shapers have to take Imp

For sure

ouroboros: That’s an interesting thought

But Imp with no clone chips?

:S

circadia: Pretty sure you run it with clones

Instead of Critic

(There’s an idea for a deck name: Clones ain’t Critics)

callmedutch: I had a Mopus CT scavenge their Mopus to get an SMC, to challenge my server with a double advanced Obo in it….. while they only had 3 cards in hand

it was a delight as corp

ouroboros: I think the only legit shaper deck right now is Smoke, really

and Smoke wants critic over the other two

nemamiah: Let’s also talk about a sightly scary prospect; there’s always the possibility that there’s a really dumb game breaking combo deck out there, and if it exists it’s in Shaper

circadia: Well, Ayla got close to that with Cold Ones

ouroboros: Maybe it’ll be crim next

guy.patching: To be fair the last one was in Anarch

nemamiah: Yeah, but then they banned all the good Anarch cards

As a punitive reprisal

guy.patching: Well there’s that

I think Shaper is the best runner faction to be sure

ouroboros: You don’t sound bitter at all Chris

guy.patching: I couldn’t imagine why

nemamiah: Apocalypse decks are probably playable again

I’m not sure what faction it’s in though

guy.patching: There are many ways to apoc.

callmedutch: don’t spoil my tech Chris

ouroboros: I think Criminal may compete with Shaper for top pick

but there’s a huge amount of uncertainty here in my opinion

because corps are so diverse it’s pretty unclear what the best runner is

circadia: Doesn’t that benefit Shaper?

Diverse corps want flexible runners

ouroboros: Not with half the answers on restricted

guy.patching: Artist Colony / Fan Site is great

But as I say, Scarcity bothers me with that

ouroboros: I’m not sure shapers are inherently more flexible than crim?

circadia: I think they are, SMCs and lots of tech programs like D4, Imp, Misdirection

ouroboros: Oh yeah Misdirection is looking ok isn’t it

circadia: God yeah

It’s almost autoinclude in a Shaper deck tbh

nemamiah: Yeah, I like Shapers right now just because of that flexibility

guy.patching: Plus they’re the best faction to clot lock

Because its 2 influence and you’re going to have Sac Cons around

ouroboros: I like how of those 4 pieces of shaper tech you mentioned 2 are shaper

😉

circadia: That’s why shapers are good! One ofs and SMCs!

guy.patching: One offs in resources too –

callmedutch: I think D4 is pretty bad in Shaper right now, no?

like Clone chip and Aesop are on the list

guy.patching: I think you see a lot more scavenge around

Even Test Run in a pinch

nemamiah: Yeah, I think that might be right Guy

Scavenge, that is

ouroboros: I would really like to build a shaper toolbox deck

but econ is so hard with Aesop on restricted

circadia: I think as Weyland’s stock goes up, so does Shaper

Because SacCon for Skorp and Clot for Titan

ouroboros: your puny clot cannot stop me!

I run THREE CVS! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!





circadia: Bonus round! Let’s talk mini-factions – buy/sell/hold?

ouroboros: uuuuh

what

callmedutch: BUY

Adam is going up in the world baby

guy.patching: BUY

ouroboros: I don’t have any stock in minfactions and I’m never going to acquire any

so I guess that’s a hold

nemamiah: Zero to zero is a hold, right?

guy.patching: Booo

ouroboros:

guy.patching: I agree with Ruf… hmm.. uh oh

callmedutch: Adam has a HQI people and Jackson is gone

circadia: Chris and Dan have one track minds

Sunny is ok, isn’t she?

ouroboros: no?

People always claim Sunny is ok

then she turns out to have a 50 card deck size

and no good cards

circadia: Just run Quality t… oh

guy.patching: For every person who says “Shaper lock is a problem” they need to tell me why Sunny doesn’t count

nemamiah: Does she do anything that Shaper doesn’t?

ouroboros: Guy, one word: SMC

callmedutch: just run build script

nemamiah: Shapers get to play a bunch of really good green cards. Sunny gets to play Another Day, Another Paycheck

guy.patching: Sunny has 25 influence to play with

And a way to avoid the worst ice in faction

I’m not saying she is AS good as Shaper

callmedutch: Apex will get their new 5 cost filppy card

guy.patching: But between her, and Adam gaining AND Apex gaining

Minifaction is a definite buy

circadia: I guess Adam is quite happy about less assets to force-trash

But no Temujin makes him a hold for me

ouroboros: the 25 inf in the minifactions isn’t actually an advantage

because their card pools are so ridiculously small

nemamiah: Yeah, I tried to work out the effective influence of mini factions once, when you take in to account all the stuff they’re missing out on. It came out at about -5

guy.patching: But the thing is you have to compare to the world we had before

Sunny was a completely joke against decks with insane tempo

And no decks have insane tempo anymore

Adam was a joke against decks that wanted to fight an econ war

And fewer do now, so he’s better

circadia: Corps are definitely slower, that’s true

If you add like three turns on to their average win, Sunny might come out ok

nemamiah: Plenty of Corps will try to go fast though

ouroboros: Sunny will just fold to any weyland

circadia: Yeah, Rush is also back

ouroboros: well maybe not gaga

guy.patching: Sure, but the fast decks used to draw like… 4-5 cards on their turn

callmedutch: Rush rush rush

it makes me so sad when Anarchs inject the right answer





circadia: Finally, as with the corps, let’s think over/unders for runners at Worlds 2017.

Magnum Opus will be the restricted card in 40% of decks on day 2 at this year’s worlds – over/under?

callmedutch: under

nemamiah: Under

guy.patching: Under, by a little

ouroboros: waaaaay under

callmedutch: like 10%

nemamiah: 10% is my gut feeling as well

ouroboros: that seems in the right ballpark to me (edited)

circadia: I feel like Anarchs might be leaning on it a lot

Frantic is still a thing

ouroboros: Anarchs, the faction that will be least represented on day 2? 😉

guy.patching: I don’t know how many of those will make Day 2

ouroboros:

circadia: Oh hush

There’s a 10% chance that a mini-faction runner will be in the top cut at worlds – over/under?

ouroboros: under

100% under, in fact

nemamiah: Is zero less than ten?

guy.patching: Under, but not zero

More like 5

And it’ll be Adam

ouroboros: I mean real talk obviously not actually zero

but less than 1 percent

guy.patching: Adam with a “5% of the time” average run with a really solid corp day

I can see that happening one time in every 20 or so times we run that simulation

circadia: Guess Rufus is still thinking about his Special Reports and the glory days of Anarch, so we’ll move on

ouroboros: under



circadia: There’s a 50% chance that we’ll be getting full art Aumakua next year as it appears in the winning world’s deck – over/under?

nemamiah: Over

ouroboros: yeah over

callmedutch: under

guy.patching: Oh the Turtle.. Under

ouroboros: Aumakua has so much representation across all factions

circadia: I had to end it acknowledging our new Turtle overlords

Like it might not even be that good but EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT

guy.patching: I had to look up the card

ouroboros: I struggle to believe that less than 50% of the decks in the cut will be on aumakua

nemamiah: All hail The Great and Powerful Turtle

guy.patching: Because it’s actually called “turtle”

ouroboros: the only way this could happen imo is if some ridiculously good runner which doesn’t want turtle emerges

and everyone switches to that

which seems reasonably unlikely

circadia: I bloody hope the final match is Aumakua vs. Moonspam CI

Just so we can have both players installing Turtles

and the commentators confusing everyone at home

nemamiah: Hot turtle on turtle action

circadia: Yeah… I think that’s definitely a wrap