Week 0
Navigating the biggest shift in ANR since NSG took over.
[Preamble: No AI in this one.]
The entire Elevation set has now been spoiled. The new cards are available to play with on Jinteki.net right now! I’ve gotten about 7 games in already1. Despite the big changes, the game feels like good ol’ Netrunner. Whether the meta shakes out to something pleasant or unpleasant remains to be seen, but it’s early days: we got that New Relationship Energy, we’re in the honeymoon. Maybe after the 127th time you get flatlined by a Measured Response fork you’ll feel a bit differently, but for now HELL YEAH NEW CARDS.
Some cards are effective reprints of rotated staples, some are 'near-prints’ with similar effects. I’m not going to do a Tier List, I’ll leave that to Metropole Grid and company, but I am going to highlight some important considerations you might want to keep in mind if you have a competitive streak.
Here are the 5 non-ID cards I’m most excited to play with on the Corp side:
Plutus - Wanna make obscene amounts of money without spending clicks? This might not be Bryan Stinson-level “the SEC is my bitch” type shenanigans, but it’s very close. If the runner doesn’t trash it, you will have enough money to rez everything and advance everything and tax them out in the long game. If the runner is contesting this every time, they expose themselves to the aforementioned Measured Response fork.
Otto Campaign - If this fully triggers (a big if, I’ll grant), you get 2 Biotic Labors for free. More on this below, but if this doesn’t end up being meta defining at some point in the next 3 months I’d be extremely surprised.
Have you ever wanted to score Offworld Office from hand with minimal effort? Live the dream! Bigger Picture - If I’m playing an NBN deck, you can bet heavily on me running at least 1 copy of this. The first mode can be used for a double End of the Line2 kill, but that’s gravy. Most of the time, you’ll use this to nuke their tempo after they go Tag Me which will hopefully position you to score evil agendas.
Measured Response - Nothing to see here.
Touchups - I think this will mainly shine in Nebula to simultaneously bait the remote and make the run extra risky. It does require you to have a clear read on the runner’s likely grip, which makes it a high skill ceiling card with a pretty awful floor. Not sure how much of this we’ll actually see, but I suspect a few enterprising players will get their value.
Here are the 5 non-ID cards I’m most excited to play with on the Runner side:
Detente - This thing is a monster and creates all sorts of weird subgames. The opportunity cost of not being able to play a more econ-oriented console is quite high, but the effect is strong enough to merit consideration anyways.
Transfer of Wealth - You still get your access! If you like living dangerously, you could play this with with Solidarity Badge in an Anarch shell and reap massive econ value every time you hit them. They lose 3, you gain 6, access a card and the tag comes off for free next turn. Ideally their credit pool is left low enough that even if they have tag punishment they can’t fire it.
Illumination - That’s a LOT of click compression. Again, this might be better out-of-faction: if R&D is open because you’re playing a Crim and they do the incentivized thing of fortifying HQ, you can get absolutely absurd value. This card has an absurd ceiling but it will be difficult to land. If you’re playing the surprise factor, that gets taken away in the top cut of the tournament which might make this type of thing great for placing high in the swiss but less great at clinching the tournament win.
Cacophony - It’s no DLR, but might nonetheless be a fun card to try and make work. Alternative win conditions are always worth keeping an eye on.
Chromatophores - Someone build a strong Arissana list with this so I can jam Frogs and Cephalopods in the same deck again. Ika is gone but not forgotten.
OK, but what has changed fundamentally that should alter how we approach deckbuilding?
Asset control has been significantly reduced. We don’t have Miss Bones anymore and Paricia got a pretty serious downgrade. Imp also looks a little he’s let himself go a little bit- he needs to go on a diet. That means Wage Workers stocks are up because paying that CUATRO is a serious pain. Ubiquitous Vig, Svyatogor Excavator, Prāna Condenser, Cybersand Harvester, Hostile Architecture all have that big ol’ 4 at the bottom and are cheap to rez. Threes look pretty good too, specially if they cost 0 to rez. I am concerned that the lack of asset control tools will impinge my enjoyment of the game- I don’t love playing against huge lateral boards on a good day, but in the past I could always play a ton of hate if I just didn’t want to worry about it. I might be taking a second look at PrisonMorph and considering if any new tools allow it to be more reliably competitive (notice how few cards rotate or are banned from that shell). That deck was hard to keep up with unless you landed an early Paricia or Miss Bones.
There is no Clot. Now, I have to assume that NSG playtested fast advance a lot in a world without a Clot equivalent. But, my Corp starting point in this meta has been this:
HB: Precision Design (49 Cards; 9 Agendas)
2 Manegarm Skunkworks
3 Your Digital Life
2 Corporate Hospitality
2 Send a Message
2 Seamless Launch
3 Project Ingatan
3 Red Level Clearance
2 M.I.C.
3 Brân 1.0
2 Bumi 1.0
3 Scatter Field
2 Big Deal
1 Mavirus
2 Midnight-3 Arcology
3 Drafter
3 Spin Doctor
1 The Holo Man
2 Offworld Office
2 Lamplighter
3 Otto Campaign
3 Hedge Fund
Yeah, it’s Yodel Riot at home. The idea is pretty simple: score 4 points early, either by just jamming behind a Scatter Field or by spamming Ottos behind Lamplighters or whatever. Then, draw a gajillion cards, YDL, and slam a Big Deal for the last 3 points. This is super soft to hand pressure, so ice HQ adequately. Also, an early Bankhar is bad news. Go fast, make them “have it” and just set up adequately for the last 3 points. You can bait bad runs if you are forced to play fair, but this deck doesn’t really shine at that. The ice suite needs work, so there’s only room for this deck to be improved by someone that actually knows what they are doing.
On the runner side… well, I have no clue. Sort your econ out first, I guess? Anarch and Crim have it relatively easy, but it looks a bit rough to me on the Shaper end. If people are spamming assets in ice-thin decks, the one proven solution that I strongly advocate is just to play 3 copies of Deep Dive to make them cry. Border Control being gone is a big boon for the card, although if people start playing a lot of LEO3, Deep Dive is probably not where you want to be.
That’s all I got for this week. More soon!
That counts as a lot of for me at this junction in the academic semester.
Or, if they goofed, you can get funny with a double Mindscaping!
LEO might be another place to try and find a good fast advance build.
Of note, while we got more tools to deal with tags, NBN has more way to give out tags or do economic denial.
Idiosyncresis is the new NGO for NBN, while Jinteki keep Charlotte. Having an NGO + Reversed Account in one card it huge. And Plaza get to its threat 2 very easily.
A card to look out for is Madani. This card is bonkers and allows shapers to male Propeller their main breaker, using Pelangi and Chromatophore.
I expect Lie Low to be splashed everywhere. One influence, for draw 4 or take out 2 tag is a big help to any runner.
Finally, I expect Pinhole to be much more popular, with card like Plutus and ID like Bangun.
I fully agree with your analysis, even if I'm not sure about Bigger Picture and Touch-up.
Keep up the great work! Cheers!