2023 is not 2016: Let’s Talk About Sideboards in Netrunner Again

Introduction

The biggest competitive card game in the world, Magic: the Gathering, uses a best of 3 match structure where players play a game with their decks, and then play 1 or 2 more games using their deck possibly altered through the use of a side-deck called a Sideboard. The idea behind the sideboard is to allow players to adapt to their opponent’s strategy if they have planned and practiced a contingency. Sideboarding is skill-testing because the players have to consider how their gameplan changes when the opponent brings in potentially very impactful cards; it alters how the main deck is built; and there’s a yomi element in some matchups where how you sideboard depends on how you think your opponent will sideboard.

Android: Netrunner as implemented by both FFG and NSG does not feature and has never featured sideboarding in competitive play. There are multiple very valid reasons.

1.       We do not play best of three games.

2.       The most common tournament structure (double-sided Swiss) does not accommodate it.

3.       The fungibility of clicks to cards makes cards very easy to find in comparison to something like Magic that generally only has one draw per turn.

4.       FFG’s card designs were such that cards could be impactful enough in certain matchups to be almost immediately game-winning (see the 2017 World’s final of Tongue vs. Horig and the impact of the card “Scarcity of Resources”)

5.       Influence is often more of a restriction on availability of tech cards than deck size considerations, especially for the runner.

1-3 are structural issues that can be solved by implementation, 4 is a more serious card design issue that has been mostly solved by a shift in NSG’s attitude towards designing “hoser” cards. We don’t live in a world of Plascrete Carapace, Aaron Marron and Film Critics anymore.

As such, I present a viable Sideboard implementation that could be considered for competitive ANR play. I then defend the design and implementation, and then I consider counterarguments and construct counter-counterarguments.

The Proposed ANR Sideboarding Protocol (Tentative Example Implementation)

We will still play single games.
This protocol works the same for double-sided Swiss and single-sided Swiss.

After sitting and revealing their Identities simultaneously, both players have 60 seconds to sideboard, shuffle and present as per the NSG tournament floor rules. Cards in the Sideboard count against influence use. Runner sideboards will consist of 5 cards, Corp of 10. Cards must be replaced 1-to-1 in the Corp’s case due to agenda density requirements, but the runner may adjust deck size as they see fit. The difference is because:

1.       ANR is asymmetrical and sideboarding is no exception.

2.       Runner ‘hoser’ cards can be more impactful than Corp ‘hoser’ cards.

3.       The Runner side gains somewhat more information as to what sideboards are likely to be helpful from knowing the Corp’s ID than the opposite. (E.g. if I’m Running against an NBN ID, I’m very likely to want tech that helps against tags, but if I’m Corping against Hoshiko I have no idea if I want AI hate or not).

4.       Most tournaments use open decklists after the cut. This benefits the Runner-side. Giving the Corp more options may lessen this somewhat.

A Defense of the Proposed ANR Sideboarding Protocol

The burden of proof is on the author to answer a pressing question: “y tho?”

Indeed. ANR is currently very fun. Do we need to add this complication to our game and potentially disrupt the delicate balance that NSG has crafted for various formats? I’m actually not super clear on this, but I want to posit that the experiment is worth trying out and here are the reasons.

1.       It May Limit Negative Play Experiences

A lot of complaints about Negative Player Experience/NPE in card games is from two connected problems:

-          “Nothing I did mattered”

-          The game took a long time and featured repetitive “grindy” patterns.

Sideboarding can ameliorate the first statement because they make it more likely that players on both sides can at least try to find a relevant solution to the problem being posed by the opposing party. If you’re facing a PE deck that tries to punish you for running and multi-access, you can try to dig (note: digging can be bad against PE!) for a net damage prevention answer or something that circumvents access (Sideboard Stargate anyone?). [The author will humbly confess that he started thinking about Sideboards again after taking back-to-back losses against PE.] If the Runner is leaning heavily on Aumakua or Audrey V2, you can dig for a Swordsman or a timely Mavirus.

Solutions and counter-solutions can be dynamic too. If the Corp locks out your Aumakua, maybe the Sideboard alternative breaker solves the problem!

As for the second statement, in general the presence of Sideboard solution should act as a buffer against the tendency of decks to repeatedly try to push a very precise board state or play pattern over and over again. One thing we have seen crop up as a problem against fun in Netrunner over the years are Asset decks that manage to recur the same problematic card over and over again.

2.       It Opens Up Design Space

Here are some possibilities: a run event that allows the runner to install a card out of the Sideboard after a successful run on Archives; a neutral Agenda with a very specific on-score effect that is valuable against Runners that rely on Resource economy; a Corp ID that has a click ability that installs ICE out of the sideboard; etc. Not all of these are necessarily good ideas (and implementation details matter), but having another play area for the design and development teams to experiment with is nice.

3.       “Slots are Hard”: More cards will see play.

Whistleblower is an example of a card with a clear use scenario (printed presumably to give an option for hosing the now-banned Obokata Protocol) that is too narrow to merit a maindeck slot [if the author is being honest, he doubts he would have played Whistleblower even if he had 20 sideboard slots and 3 extra influence]. However, it might merit a single sideboard slot in very specific metagame scenarios. Likewise, ICE Breakers that are narrow or only good against very specific ICE suites might finally see play as sideboard options. The sideboard will may also be a good place to put ‘card 46’ that is only good against certain IDs or strategies.

4.       It can be used as a way to balance Runner and Corp sides.

Netrunner is best when the Corp and Runners are roughly evenly matched. This is hard for the design and development team to set up because there are 7 factions and they have distinct limits and capacities that need to be carefully considered. The 5 and 10 card sideboard for runners and corp were numbers I basically pulled from thin air, and are unlikely to be the correct number to maintain good game balance. But it’s another lever that NSG has in order to adjust the game balance without needing to ban cards.

5.       It’s fun.

Making sideboard decision when deckbuilding and playing is fun. As mentioned in the Introduction, sideboarding can add a Yomi element in certain matchups. Did the Corp bring in a bunch of AI hate? Well, maybe you just replaced 3x Aumakua with a reg breaker suite and now the corp is drawing a bunch of blanks!

Counterarguments and Counter-Counterarguments

1.       This ruins my favorite deck, I hate it.

Ah, so your deck plays an extremely linear (but orthogonal) game plan that will trounce any deck built to play Netrunner, but fold hard to someone playing an extremely specific suite of hate cards? Who hurt you?

2.       This adds complications to an already complicated game.

Yes, it does. Additional explanatory burden and deckbuilding requirements will push some people away. It is up to the community to decide if the trade-off is worth it.

3.       This isn’t sideboarding, its guesswork based on IDs.

Yes, it’s not best-of-3 sideboarding. It is the closest parallel I could come up with without disrupting our already fragile tournament structure. That said, it will reward player who take the time to understand what cards are good to bring in against the expected game plans of IDs, and whether that benefit is worth it when the ID isn’t doing what you expected it to be doing. Similar choices happen with mulligan decisions.

4.       Someone’s going to have to add the code to Jnet.

If NSG ever strongly considers this proposal, I’m sure they will consult with Jnet to ensure that whatever implementation they do decide on is compatible with the existing codebase and is minimally painful to code.

5.       It uses up tournament time.

Although I think 60 seconds is a fair tradeoff, the impact on tournament duration is a non-trivial consideration.

6.       It hoses some IDs much more than others.

Valid concern. Over time this would be fixed with rotations and bans. As noted in the introduction, there are very few FFG cards left in the cardpool that are hyper-strong/hyper-narrow “hosers”. Nonetheless, I can definitely see cards like Miss Bones seeing much more play than even now, and thus punishing specific archetypes excessievely.

7.       People will forget to de-sideboard and get game losses.

I don’t think forgetting to de-sideboard should be a game loss. At most a warning. Most likely forgetting to de-sideboard will cost you

8.       It expands surface area that cheaters can exploit.

ANR has thankfully not had too many publicly visible issues with cheating. That said, it’s a human activity, so NSG Organized Play could give feedback on whether the addition of a sideboard is creating some kind of bad incentive that people are choosing to follow.

9.       I have to buy more sleeves.

Just keep the sideboard cards unsleeved, in a binder, or in different color sleeves? (I grant this doesn’t work fully for the proposed Runner-side implementation since I mentioned you don’t have to do 1-to-1 replacements runnerside)

10.   My bookbag will be slightly heavier.

Yes. Cards do indeed have mass. If this is of great concern, I would add that a player may choose not to bring a sideboard at all both to conserve strength and bragging rights should they go on to win the tournament anyways.

11.   Clicking for cards means you’ll always find the sideboard hoser and will make games very samey.

See the Yomi argument in the previous section.

12.   Your implementation isn’t very elegant or well justified.

Valid. NSG would likely test a different version entirely or come up with something different and better. Maybe they find that Runner-side sideboarding is just too good and I will continue to die to PE Snare!s for the rest of eternity.

13.   I don’t like anything that makes ANR more like MTG.

I mean… OK?

14.   I don’t like change.

Yeah, that’s actually valid. I think a slow rollout of something like this at a small real life tournament to test the waters is a very valid first step. If it sucks and people hate it, we can shelve it as a failed experiment.

15.   Can we call it something cool, like Backup Drive or SYNC Cloud Storage?

Obviously.

16.   How will this improve inclusivity?

In no way that I can discern at this time.

17.   Who hurt YOU?

So many things, but primarily PE players. The salt is real.

18.   What worthless proposals that will get ignored will you waste your time on next?

Not sure. Maybe a format bigger than Standard and smaller than Eternal?