Still the Best Game Ever

ANR Worlds 2023 Observations and Impressions

[Note: This article contains spoilers for Netrunner World 2023 in Barcelona.]

What a Tournament!

Preamble: NSG Organized Play did a great job despite some technical snags that could have disrupted the schedule. In the future, it would be optimal to have untimed games for the cut if possible, but if the choice is between a nice/comfortable/spacious venue that has a time limit, and a shithole that has unlimited time, then it is correct to go with the former. And if the choice is between paying airfare for more people from across the globe who may not otherwise have the financial means to attend and an untimed venue, then the former is also correct.

Also, congratulations to everyone who made it out and played their best. Obviously competition focuses on the eventual winners, but it’s pretty fair to say that almost everyone in that room was a real threat. The streamed games would not have been good without the people who variance and momentary lapses did not favor. Competitors: give yourself a high-five for being willing to swim with the sharks in a game that is tremendously skill-testing and often psychologically exhausting.

I was fortunate enough to catch a substantial portion of the streamed games on Saturday and almost all of the top cut on Sunday. The games were almost all interesting, competitive, hard-fought and intense. This pretty much confirmed the community zeitgeist that we’re currently in a Netrunner renaissance and the metagame is very healthy.

And what a finale.

Sokka is an incredible player. Out of 254 contestants, he was my pick for eventual winner. Obviously, it was a lucky pick to some degree, since anyone in the cut (and many who did not make it) could have won. It’s a card game. But Netrunner is a game that rewards reps more than any other variance-intrinsic CCG and Sokka had not only been putting in the reps he had been getting results too. I have played many Corp-side games with his EMEA-winning ASA list, and I don’t think I’ve lost a single game out of ten I’ve played with that list. The fact that he did not go with that extremely powerful plan (probably because it was very well-known and playing something off the radar means your opponent’s reps matter less) is indicative of the tremendous level of effort that went into testing. (Side-note: ASA was the most played Corp ID in the tournament.) Despite my recent loss to Weyland: Built to Last at a CO, it wasn’t really on my radar as a Tier 1 ID, so props to Sokka and his testing team for figuring that one out.

The final game was extremely close. There was some unfortunate time-pressure that may have changed the result somewhat, but in some sense the clock had actually initially favored the runner-side as cableCarnage was on 5 points and Sokka was on 0. I will definitely be going back to watch the replay slowly so that I can analyze every decision made in the match that led to such a spectacular conclusion.

The Weyland Corporation not only dislikes your music, it has found you personally liable for the underwritten contract. Standard termination fees apply.

Faction and ID Diversity

If faction and ID diversity is something that matters to you as a player (and it should) then you should be fairly pleased with the distribution at Worlds. Let’s look at the numbers:

[Side-note: You may notice the numbers on the graphs don’t add up to 254, I think there may have been 2 players on the neutral IDs Nova Initiumia & Ampère and these don’t show up correctly on Cobr.ai.]

That’s fairly astonishing: an almost even Corp faction split and only a moderate bias towards the Anarch faction among runner decks. We also haven’t had a Weyland corp win since the very first Worlds, suggesting the Faction power balance is basically as perfect as it can reasonably get without making the game boring (the underlying thesis/assumption: having some factions/IDs be slight underdogs but well-suited to specific metagame states is actually really helpful for a dynamic and healthy meta).

What about ID representation within the factions? That also looks very good to me. Among Anarch, Hoshiko (82 players) was by far the most played, but I’ve discussed why I think that’s probably good in a previous article. Also supporting that article’s core thesis that having every faction have an ID that essentially gives +1 pseudo click of value is good for the game was that Sable was the most represented Criminal ID (42 players). Shaper was decidedly the underdog faction for the tournament (as anyone that has tried getting above 50% win rate on Jnet with green over the past few weeks should know). I happen to think that this reflect two separate truths: first, a deep-seated difficult to fix econ weakness in the Shaper card pool and a hostile meta. Corps are really playing a fast game right now, with a ton of click taxing demands early on. I suspect that as people start to tech their Corps vs. Criminal, the meta could start to shift more in the Shaper direction. The bias towards blue or green really is dictated by what Corp strategies happen to be showing up in any given meta. Anarch, being able to both pressure early and late is often a safe choice.

OK, let’s see what happened to those numbers after the cut.

• HB, despite being well-represented in the Swiss only put two players into the cut, both on PD, not ASA. Clearly playing the expected deck was a mistake.

• Weyland was about as represented in the cut as it was in the Swiss.

• NBN had a very strong positive conversion rate, putting 5 players into the swiss, with R+ and NEH. Clearly, playing yellow was a good choice, specifically yellow lateral decks were positioned to punish a Hoshiko-heavy meta despite possibly having issues against criminal aggression.

• Jinteki only put two players into the cut, and both were on innovative Restoring Humanity lists.

• Anarch and Crim dominated the runner-side of the cut, with substantial conversion rate for Crim. Shaper, on the other hand, was represented only by a single Arissana shaper, solidifying the notion that Shaper was generally poorly suited to the Corp strategies in this tournament.

Big shout-out to DeeR, rongydoge, and cableCarnage for correctly sniping the expected meta with essentially perfect deck choice. If I were to go back in time and play at Worlds, I would definitely play NBN (probably R+ because I have more reps) and Crim (probably Deep Dive Sable, although 419 Mining Accident is awesome).

So, what should you be playing on Jnet over the next few weeks? On the Corp side, you have your pick as to what you want to be doing. I suggest you gear up for an uptick in Crim players in the Jnet lobby over the next few weeks. And on the runner-side? Basically you want to be playing Anarch, Crim or Arissana specifically unless the meta slows down substantially. If you can tweak some of the higher-performing Tao lists to be even faster, you can probably push your win rate to close to 50%, but it probably won’t be easy.

Lastly, watch out for Punitive Counterstrike. It was something of a surprise to see this at the top tables, since this has historically been more of a “scrub crusher” card that can be played around somewhat easily once you know they are on it. This implies that economic forks with inevitability are actually quite a powerful option vs. most runner decks right now if you can apply the right type of economic pressure.

2024 is Going to Be Crazy

So, Null Signal Games is going to be stepping up and essentially completing their takeover of Netrunner in the last quarter of 2024. All FFG products are going to be rotated out, which will be a big leap in accessibility for players who just like to buy and play with the stuff that NSG makes. We will be saying goodbye to the Mars, Kitara and Reign & Reverie products all in one go. To this, I have only one thing to say.

It’s about damn time.

I think this will have the following positive effects on the game:

• No need for players to proxy or try to obtain difficult to acquire out-of-print FFG product.

• Psychologically free NSG from subconscious design constraints imposed by having to somehow retain some type of connection to the FFG product. I expect to see some really new design ideas and concepts.

• Finalize legitimizing the enterprise as distinct entity.

An hey, new stuff, including a new Core Set and the second half of Liberation. I think we can all agree we want more Liberation.

How did I Do with My Predictions

Lastly, let’s see how I did with my silly Worlds predictions last week.

New Cards that Will Make the Cut for Every Faction

Anarch – Hannah “Wheels” Pilintra
Not sure, since not all decklists are posted. Longi writes about his Hoshiko deck: I think the deck needs to incorporate at least one copy of Miss Bones or Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra.

Shaper – Pichação
Yup.

Criminal – Hermes
Yup.

Weyland – Tucana
Yup.

NBN – Oppo Research
Yup.

Jinteki – Tatu-Bola
Yup.

Nailed it. All that being said, these were easy calls. I would never in a million years have suspected that the Worlds 2023 winner was going to be decided by a lethal Clearinghouse. Dr. Keeling eat your heart out.

Corp ID Most Likely to Win for Every Faction, In Order of Likelihood - ASA, R+, Ob, AgInfusion

Generally speaking- a swing and a miss. While plenty of people showed up with ASA, no one broke the top cut with it, so it was clearly a poor deck choice for the Sable Gonna Steal Your Money meta. Almost no one showed up with AgInfusion and the winningest Jinteki deck was not even on my radar. While R+ was good, most of the top players preferred NEH.

Runner ID Most Likely to Win for Every Faction, In Order of Likelihood - Hoshiko, Sable, Lat.

I did much better here. Hoshiko and Sable were indeed the top runners in the cut, and I knew that Shaper was going to be a suboptimal choice. What wasn’t clear was which Shaper ID was best positioned. As it turns out, Arissana having a better early game than Lat was probably very relevant.

Underdog ID I Most Want to See in the Top Cut – Mercury

Alas, no Mercury. We’ll have to wait for a few more tools in the second part of Liberation, but I think this ID is only 1 or 2 cards short of being Tier 1. Having to spend huge chunks of influence on Logic Bombs really hurts.

Decks with at Least One Copy of Aumakua in the Top Cut - <= 3

Not sure yet because not all lists have been posted, but I think I missed on this one.

Copies of PE In Top Cut - 0

Correct, and the ID did somewhat poorly overall (although 3 players did manage to get close to the cut). I still think PE is not the strongest thing you can be doing as Corp, but because it is an obnoxiously high-variance strategy, it absolutely does let you steal games against very skilled players on occasion, so I don’t fault people for bringing it to the shark-infested waters of Worlds. I am hoping PE rotates permanently out of the game with the 2024 product releases, but failing that, I am OK with this level of PE shenanigans at the most competitive tournaments.

Number of Times Rashida or Spin Doctor will Be Snap-Trashed Only for Runner to Realize They’ve Disrespected Oppo > 103

Yeah, I mean, I saw it happen at least once on stream, so I suspect a lot of people had that “whoops I guess I die” moment during the Swiss. I got this one right.

Missed Hoshiko and/or Paladin Poemu Triggers During the Tournament (Absurdly large number.)

I’m going to call this one a miss. I was extremely impressed by how the top players despite being tired from a ton of grueling rounds were still able to remember not only their beginning and end of turn triggers, but also the Agenda steal triggers on the companions.

All in all, I’d rate my pre-Worlds understanding of the game at about a B-, with many of the top players in the cut demonstrating an A+/S-tier understanding of what ANR is all about.

And yes, despite the fact that we’re likely going to enter a bit of a lull in the ANR competitive world, you can continue to expect Tuesday blog posts, although they’ll probably be less focused on meta-details and more on other stuff.

And our parting Moment of Zen: