I shook off last week’s salt. Moving on.
Netrunner has a lot of cards with “internal tension”. What do I mean by that?
Well consider a card like Audacity: it’s a powerful fast advance tool to finish a game, but you can also consider using it to score early points. But you nuke your hand (or at least nuke 2 more cards). So you have to weigh that possible play very carefully. Or consider any illicit ice: you’re taking a bad pub (or some other similar penalty) for rezzing it. Several runner cards require you to pay a meat damage (random discard) or core damage (random discard + permanent hand size reduction + increased vulnerability to kill) to use them. The cards can be good, sometimes the tension is used to balance a powerful effect (e.g. a lot of cards in an Esa deck, or the effect of Mutually Assured Destruction). But when a lot of the cards in your deck have that tension, finding the correct spots to extract maximum value can be tricky.
The current Shaper card pool offers a ton of cards that are tension-free and are all upside. Trick Shot, Coalescence, and Burner basically only have good text on them. I personally like it when cards that draw you into a faction just do good things, and the main metagaming decision is what other stuff you want to surround them with. Or that the upside is so strong, than the tension is generally easy to calculate (e.g. old favorites like Stimhack and Account Siphon).
On top of that Deep Dive is just excellent. I’ve been a Deep Dive believer since last year and a lot of excellent players have joined the bandwagon. And hey, if you’re good enough at the game, you can whiff TWICE on back-to-back Deep Dives and still take the crown in Berlin.
Think about “internal tension” again. Compare Deep Dive to Apocalypse. The text on Apocalypse is arguably more impactful, but it comes at a huge price. The text on Deep Dive does not come at price. You can play it without extra clicks. You can choose not to access a lethal Fujii. Deep Dive is the The Truth. You can play other wincons in your busted Shaper card pool if you like the reassuring glow of hard inevitability, but I’m now at the point where I personally think it’s a mistake.
So, as far as the decision for what runner to play at Worlds, I’m basically committed to green at this point, not close, barring a ban list change from NSG.
Obviously, the natural follow-up question becomes:
What Corporation ID/strategy gives me the most equity in a field full of Trick Shot and Coalescence?
Because, you see, if there are many viable paths to that, then it can rapidly create counterpressure to actually NOT play Shaper at Worlds.
In my testing, I don’t think sufficient counterpressure exists, and that it’s hard to pick a Corp that gives you 55% vs. most Shapers but only 25% vs. Criminal. If I came to the conclusion that Worlds is going to be 75%+ Shaper, then I might play that list anyway and hope to dodge Sable and Steve in the Swiss rounds as much as possible, but generally I would rather play a list that’s 35% vs. Shaper and 95% vs. random (hint: Just Say “Event” and don’t change it).
Decklist Highlight: Mucha Muchacha
Akiko Nisei is what I would consider a Tier 3 Shaper1 ID- in a vacuum. Meaning, the ID ability isn’t very helpful compared to something like a free install during a run, or a free card per turn, or turning random ice into a code gate. 12 Influence is also a real cost.
Nonetheless, card games are not vacuums. If you jam enough R&D pressure into a strong shell, that ID ability starts to do some real work:
https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/0161f125-4cc4-4124-af82-27b71333d8f1/girls-wins-best-runner-at-bristol-top-cut-x4-nottingham-
I did some testing with Girls on Jnet back when the deck first hit the scene, and I was already convinced it had some real legs (see what I did there hahaha the male gaze is so funny hahahah).
This evolution is great, my only regret is that we couldn’t do more science but we can definitely still avail ourselves to pure papaya power.
So, what’s changed?
Slightly more streamlined at 47 instead of 48 cards (Psych Mike really is a marginal card, and slots are hard) but the main thing is the LilyPAD engine to keep the cards flowing. My only regret is that with 16 Events we couldn’t find a place for Mystic Maemi? She’s a girl too if we assume Standard Japanese naming conventions, まえみ. Come on, if Kit can often find room in her 10-influence heart for the Anarch Amphibian, surely a LilyPAD packing psychic can too?
That’s all for today. By my next post, I hope to have better insight than “Shaper good” and maybe some type of Corp strategy for a very green meta. In the past, going extremely fast and having ample anti-Clot tech has been one way to fight the SMC gang, not sure if that’s really what I want to be doing right now, but clearly some people have had similar inspiration.
With the now-revealed full strength of the Shaper card pool, which is finally arguably on par or better (!) than the Anarch one, even a Tier 3 ID can be looked at closely.