Hoshiko: Making Running More Fun Since 2019
(Unironically. This article is NOT pro-banning.)
OK, let’s examine the data below.
“WOW! Rapa-Nui, you are an exceedingly mediocre Corp player and absolutely abysmal at Running. Why do I even read such a scrub blog?”
To this I would reply:
That’s my stats going all the way back to 2016 when I was still using MTG heuristics to try and play ANR.
I often take a lot of time off from ANR and have to shake the rust off.
I often play jank or jank-adjacent stuff on Jnet and I never smurf.
I play very differently on Jnet than I do in meatspace. Jnet has no stakes. Stakes change things.
Sometimes I misclick on Jnet for very suboptimal plays that I just roll with because who the hell has time to type in the chat bar?
Nonetheless: Netrunner hard yo. 35% is a very bad rate for Runner-side. It actually does reflect a large skill gap between my Corp play and my Runner play, but it also reflects a big bias I have against playing “the best [anything]” in a CCG. That is not to say very skilled players do not win with “subpar” IDs. They do. It’s just that for a long time during the FFG days, if you were going to a tournament or messing around on Jnet and you were not playing Whizzard, you were at minimum leaving huge percentage behind, and (depending on which metagame we’re talking about ) you were probably very dead money.
Right now, Hoshiko is the easy front runner for best Runner ID. I’ve won ~70% of the games I’ve played as Hoshiko the past few weeks because, as it turns out, when I get pseudo-5 clicks instead of 4 every turn, even Scrubby McScrubbster can win some games on Jnet.
Let’s examine reasons Hoshiko is an easy choice if you want to Try Hard.
1. The condition for getting the free draw is extremely easy to fulfill.
Access a card, ideally getting either some Agenda-equity along the way, or maybe using dirty laundry or snooping on a facedown asset. There, you’re done. The game is set up to make you want to keep doing that anyway. If you unflip, you still netted a free card and a free credit over two turns. That’s not nothing.
2. The ability does not massively constrain deckbuilding.
Look, I love Arissana. She’s got a great sense of T-shirt aesthetic. But, if you’re gonna build an Arissana deck, you start by asking “from the space of all possible Trojan combinations, what package is better than 5-15 free cards?” The click compression you get from triggering Arissana’s ability can certainly roughly equate to 1 card worth of value, but you need the trojans. (There’s also hidden value in the threat that Arissana’s ability presents.) But Hoshiko? You’re gonna get your free card value even if you play Netrunner with 45 copies of “Ham Sandwich”. That gives you a lot of slots to play with to attack the metagame in whichever way you think is necessary.
3. The Anarch Cardpool Is Still Versatile and Generically Good
Criminal is the faction that’s supposed to be good at making money, but the current Anarch cardpool is right there. The Super Happy Tree Friends virtual resource suite is very good at reducing installs/event cost, powering multi-access through Twinning. Your basic card draw also provides incidental death protection, a feature no other faction gets which provides partial free insurance against flatline plans. You get Hannah in faction which is a versatile tag hoser and remote/asset spam hoser AND just banks a click for when you catch the Corp with its pants down. Shaper? They lost Beth and got… uh… Beatriz? Science is cool kids. The main weakness Anarch once again has is their inability to reliably find breakers and keep them in play against rig-shooter. Also, shout-out to Liberated Account which allows you to reliably fungify (fungibilize? fungilate?) your click equity into credit equity. Maybe every faction should get a Liberated Account equivalent, and don’t talk to me about Telework Contract. I run that card with vague vitriol.
But no, don’t ban Hoshiko. Instead, I think every Runner faction should have a competitive ID that provides deck-building unconstrained +1 card draw value for something that the game intrinsically rewards. That will instantly guarantee that unless a faction has really serious problems with their card pool there will always be one ID in each Runner faction that can be competitive.
“Crim would be too good. Shaper wouldn’t be good enough.”
Yes, maybe their condition for drawing a card would be easier for the Competitive Shaper ID and a bit harder for the Competitive Criminal ID. Shapers already have good card draw in faction, but we still pay a premium for Aniccam or LilyPAD.
“What about Lat?”
What about Lat? Lat is good. (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/6342c3f9-110a-44c1-9cfe-d4ea16ec6f86/undefeated-shaper-best-deck-co-winner-) Thanks Whiteblade for proving my point (albeit in a different meta) or try this (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/fdc87862-241d-4fe1-9fd2-50ba0cf5941f/congress-lat-3rd-at-continentals-) . Just because I can’t win a game with Lat to save my life doesn’t mean the ID isn’t extremely strong.
I’d bet at even odds that at least 1 Lat dack makes the cut of Words alongside a sea of Hoshikos. If anything, Lat’s ability should give a card and a credit, just to get it on the Hoshiko power curve. We’d definitely see at least a few Lats at the top cut of Worlds then.
And the criminal ID I think is most likely to make the cut of Worlds this year is Sable, not 419 since the ‘free’ run is closer to the “pseudo-5 clicks instead of 4” power level thing I’m talking about here. (However, note that the only reason 419/Aumakua doesn’t see more play is that it is SO strong that basically every corp is packing multiple Mavirus copies to not auto-lose to turtle man).
“These IDs are so bland though.”
Yeah, the other option is to have no IDs with easy blanket econ benefit and see which of the weird esoteric wonky abilities ends up synergizing best with the in-faction card pool against the Corp meta. The risk is that you end up with a super stale meta once one weird esoteric thing is shown to be the strongest.
I’m not saying we can’t have “Jonny” (combo player psychographic) and “Timmy” (feel-things player psychographic) IDs; or IDs absolutely set up to snipe specific metagames (Whizz, Khumalo). We absolutely should because they are fun and add a strategic element respectively. But my key thesis is that every faction should have something on par with the Hoshiko curve.
“What about Corps?”
ASA, A Teia, Azmari EdTech, NEH and Ob all effectively provide free value equal or roughly equal to that of a click and they are competitive. Outfit, Sportsmetal, and R+ also do something very, very close to providing many clicks of free value over the course of the game. On Corp-side, abilities that are not easy to equate to clicks have been very competitive (PE, AgInfusion, CtM etc.) so the Corp-side is clearly not as constrained in this department. It’s an asymmetrical game after all. At any rate, ID diversity is much better on the Corp-side currently than the Runner side, which I think supports my thesis. Gotta get that click value.
“You played too much MaxX, it infected your brain.”
I did, and I am learning to love Weeb MaxX as much as original flavor.
