Dr. Feelbads

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love REL

Hello all, I am now back to regularly scheduled ANR blogging.

Yours truly ran a CO in Northern Virginia this weekend. We got a nice turnout of 7 players and 1 spectator (who played a few games too, with the person who got a bye for the round). While the tournament as a whole was great fun and I would very much have liked to lead with a tournament report, today’s we’re gonna start with more of a rumination on a very essential component of tournament play and yet one that I have to say is more often than not the source of a lot of negative sentiment: rules enforcement and penalties.

Dedicated readers may remember that back last December I went to PAX Unplugged and was doing reasonably well until I got a game loss for failing to discard at end step- I tried my best to take it with grace, as the TO and opponents had already amply accommodated my tardiness, but there was a small part of me that was a bit miffed. This was a Casual REL event. I’m not playing for artificially scarce booster boxes, cold hard cash, an MtG ProTour invite or the honor of having my symmetrical visage preserved in cardboard for eternity. Why am I getting a game loss for a rules infraction I pointed out to my opponent myself at a Casual REL event? [NOTE: This has been changed in the latest (1.63) Organized Play document, updated back in April 2024; see the section in 5.4.5. I obviously welcome this change.]

Netrunner is different than Magic in that information asymmetry is OFTEN tremendously material and game-defining, so penalties for improperly obtained information have to be steeper. I am not denying that… and yet, I think there’s an argument to be made that we need three levels of rules enforcement, just like that other game.

Before diving into this, I do want to highlight one part of the NSG OP document, which I was unaware of until yesterday:

This has all the right vibes, but it has the awkward side-effect of leaving it to the TO/Judge’s perceptions as to whether an infraction should be downgraded at Casual REL.

A quick review of how it works in Magic:

-          Casual: FNM-level which often includes material prizes like boosters, promos or store credit. You’d only get a game loss for a pretty serious game violation. Game losses in Magic are less of a penalty than in Netrunner because matches are best 2 of 3; additionally a game loss represents forfeiting only about 5-10 minutes of game time. A match loss could be given if you repeated an infraction multiple times. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a match loss penalty at an FNM- even illegal decks are often remedied by game loss + fix.

-          Competitive: you go to the PTQ because you want a plane ticket to Honolulu or whatever. You fail to properly randomize UnicornTribal.dec . The opponent yells JUDGE, and you get warning or a game loss. This is fine. You draw an extra card. Warning and game loss. This is fine. You miss a mandatory trigger. Warning. Do you it again. Game loss. This is fine. You’re playing for money and you know this comes with hard rules.

-          Professional: in theory, missing triggers that lead to differential outcomes at the ProTour level should be disqualifying errors, but Brian Kibler infamously got a ProTour win after “forgetting” an Angel of Despair trigger back in 2009. So, you know, mileage may vary.

Pretty privilege is real kids.

How it works in Netrunner:

-          Casual: 8 cool people show up to spend their free time for basically no monetary reward, and a chance for an invite to an online event. You accidentally shuffle an upgrade at the root of R&D, something that can very innocently happen due to the way the game pieces are positioned. The judge (hi!) tries very hard to find a fix (“is that the only upgrade?”) but alas there are multiple different cards that could have been at root. You cannot fix the broken gamestate and it is conceivable an advantage could be gained. You’ve been playing for 35 minutes and it’s tight but I opt to give you a game loss, and given that it’s Single Sided Swiss it feels more equivalent to a match loss. You feel miserable, I feel miserable, and presumably your opponent doesn’t feel awesome about it either.

-          Competitive: You accidentally pull two cards on a random HQ access. Instant game loss. Not nice, not pretty, but this is how we do in Information Asymmetry: The Game when we’re playing for keeps.

-          Professional: No such thing.

So, the main thing I want to highlight here is how little difference it feels like there is to me in between the two first categories. Here’s an example of how it could be made nicer:

Casual (GNKs and AMTs): Game losses are to be used extremely sparingly. Any infraction that would result in a game loss is instead a warning. Game states should be repaired as close as possible to the original to both player’s satisfaction if possible. Multiple warnings for the same infraction can result in a game loss, unless a player is very new.

Competitive (Nationals, Continentals, COs and other “qualifier” events): Notice how COs are upgraded to Competitive. REL as currently written in NSG policy document otherwise.

Professional (Intercontinentals, World Championships, and Circuit Breaker Invitational, any tournament with, Marx forbid, cash prizes¹): Extremely strict game-state policing. Both players get warnings for failure to maintain gamestate. Yes, that means ‘on-steal’ Maemi/Poemu triggers too. Failure to correctly maintain credit totals, information asymmetry, and hand size is a game loss.

Again, this is just a proposed solution. If I were to re-run the tournament from this Saturday, I would not have issued a game loss for the R&D shuffle infraction. Being a TO is tricky! Clear guidelines so I don’t have to worry I deprived someone of a good time unfairly would be nice.

The Tournament

I opted to play Neurospike Azmari and Ashnikko. I considered both “safe” choices for myself, as I have reps with both decks, and Jnet win% numbers that support them as generally strong choices. And I am not the only one, consider:

https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/938a96e1-03ec-4d66-ab4b-4a193cd5e4ea

You can taste the salt through the screen.

Despite the recent downtrend of Hoshiko at tournaments, I didn’t expect a ton of Sportsmetal to show up for our local event. The Corp deck ended up being a somewhat poor metagame call, as two players showed up with Spark of Inspiration Kit decks- I do not think that matchup is favored, as the fast breaker pressure and presence of Stoneship Chartroom makes setting up a fast kill quite challenging.

At the larger tournaments this weekend (West Canadian Nats and APAC) HB and Jinteki were the clearly dominant Corp factions. Notably CaesarAugustus ended APAC’s Swiss rounds at the forefront piloting NEH. I mentioned last time that the Death of Yellow Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, and at our local event two players show up with Reality Plus shells, one of which flatlined me after ending the turn on 6 agenda points and 7 credits, no tags, and 4 cards. (Hint: 3 clicks, three different operations)

There were several interesting judge calls other than the one mentioned above, one was about whether Spin Doctor can be activated after being hosted on a Cupellation (no, the card explicitly says that the Hosted card is not installed, abilities cannot be used from uninstalled cards). Do we have an official “judge training program”? We should. Comment below if you know.

The eventual winner, netjogging (a skilled player who you may recall helped carry me at the Sovereign of Subways event in NYC last year), showed up with Spark Kit and an interesting PE deck that I unfortunately did not play against (yes, you read that right).

I brought cookies and they were a hit- lesson: you should attend our NoVA CO’s if you’re in the area!

What’s really going to cook your noodle is: would you have played Hoshiko if I hadn’t blogged about it? (Yes.)

What’s next? I will be attending NANPC Philly next month, and Worlds tickets are about to go on sale as I finish typing this. I’ll see you in San Francisco in October.

Big Deck Energy

Recently, we’ve seen a slew of competitive results where top-placing lists have notably eschewed the old heuristics of “you want the smallest deck size possible so you can see your best cards more frequently”.

1.        World Tree Arissana (they want more tutoring targets, and they have redundant ways to snag the namesake card). I have to completely defer to expert opinion on this, since I have yet to sleeve up WT and get reps.

2.       The thing I’ve been calling “Jan Tuno Esa”, which requires more cards because like an old school MaxX deck you are shredding through your Stack with self-damage, Moshing, and The Price. It includes a lot of draw to really crank through and find the pieces you need to sabotage efficiently. (At least one Hoshiko list is also doing this: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/7d68c5dd-4d5f-4bd9-86a1-a320e83c73db) That being said, it does dilute your total Chastushka density, and in theory you want to be shoving a Chastushka in their face as often as possible. These are the types of delicate deckbuilding compromises I am bad at figuring out, so I trust good lists that perform well over the old heuristic.

3.       Venti Latte Ob – SebastianK’s extremely evil pile which continues to put up great results. (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/3f25a899-1055-4afe-8450-a52b0d3d766f/caution-beverage-is-dangerously-hot-1st-otg-2024-) It runs a lot of cards to have fodder for MAD, but also just to drain the runner’s trashing credits. Leave your Maw at home at your own risk.

That’s it for this week, feel free to start a Struggle Session in the comments.

1. As far as I can see, there are no guidelines in the Organized Play document for how a TO should go about running a sanctioned event where they want to award cash or cash-like rewards. It would be nice to have very explicit clarification on whether this treads on gambling concerns for NSG. There is actual LITERATURE on this subject, as it seems some people felt that efforts to add cash prizes to the game would “ruin” it. Friends, cash prizes didn’t ruin Netrunner. (Further reading here: https://se4n.org/papers/ruined-to-nisei.pdf)