System Gateway Final Thoughts

After a whole month of spoilers, we finally know everything and, personally, I can actually start to work again in the afternoon, although I’m sure cricket, chess, cycling, puzzles, and erm, snooker will distract me again. NISEI and the community have done a great job of announcing the new cards along with pieces describing combos and synergies, even if they were only partially revealed at first. Therefore, in this article, I aim to take a step back and take in the bigger picture and I mean more than just matching up artwork. Get out your crystal balls, it’s time to see what the introduction of System Gateway and Update has done to the game of Netrunner.

Product quality

Firstly, the amount of hard-work and love that has gone into this starter set is amazing. It looks absolutely gorgeous and almost every card is trying to do something interesting. It doesn’t always do that in a strong way (I am writing this the day that Echelon was announced) but I think System Gateway does a lot of the right things to attract new players. Whether they stick with the game to transition on to Standard is another issue. Hopefully, the Startup format will make that move into the wider game more manageable. OK, I wanted to give NISEI the praise it deserved for this labour of love and, now that’s done, let’s get the meta wrong.

Spin Doctor

We may as well start with the card that is probably going to see the most play, Spin Doctor.

Manchester’s top Jackson Howard tribute band.

NISEI have not been scared this release to put their own spin on Netrunner classics. Even just in NBN, Funhouse and Public Trail are new versions of Data Raven and SEA Source respectively, and we now have power creep with Mutual Favour and Leech being strictly better versions of Special Order and Datasucker on the Runner side. While Spin Doctor may appear like Jackson Howard without the surrounding toys, it does enough different to feel new. Drawing two cards on rez, rather than having to click to use, allows for some neater tricks and cutting down the amount of recursion.

Despite the toning down, this is still the best recursion card in the game and at one influence this is going to be seen in a lot of Corp deck. Stocks in Preemptive Action has gone down but having had some time away from Jackson, it will be interesting to see just how many decks rush back to Spin Doctor or decide to save the influence for other cards. 

Anoetic Void

While strong, Spin Doctor doesn’t make a win condition in itself, but it does support Anoetic Void, a new way for Corps to try score out of a remote. I expect to see a lot of decks from all factions trying to use this card as their main win condition. An easy slot in Jinteki glacier, replace La Costa Grid and Bio Vault in Palana or AgInfusion even frees up some other slots, probably best used on Spin Doctor to retrieve some of those tossed cards.

Here, the red lights mean “stop”.

I’m particularly interested in how this gets used out of faction which, despite being 4 influence, I fully expect initially. Both Earth Station and GameNET have a lot to gain from this card and HB may be able to recreate a Footcoats-esque deck, with or without Jinja City Grid.

As a result, Criminals should probably include a Political Operative to offer another line of counterplay and this may extend into other factions too. I have already started to add one into my Adam list, which is always the first deck to get modified when new cards are released. That said, it is possible to play around Anoetic Void without any silver bullets. It is a surprisingly awkward card to defend when the remote is otherwise empty and a persistent Runner could force the Corp to lose a lot of valuable resources from HQ.

Interactions with ICE

The Runner side of System Gateway has not quite as bombastic as the Corp side. Tao has a new twist on Leela’s ability but wasn’t really expanded upon aside from his console Pantograph. Instead, Shaper got a whole bunch of economy and draw which offer a change from Aesop’s Pawnshop and Rezeki, but it is never going to be meta-changing. Criminal got some small improvements potentially in Mutual Favor and Pennyshaver, while Anarch will probably feel the most disappointed as Carnivore isn’t as meta-defining as promised. In a core set product, fundamentals are possibly slightly more important for the Runner who have to adapt to different Corp strategies.

The two most exciting Runner cards are viruses which allow new ways to interact with ICE, Botulus and Tranquilizer.

If you were expecting Parasite, then you were going to be disappointed in 75 different ways. Tranquilizer feels a very Criminal way to play viruses and can imagine this being incredibly annoying to play against. The correct way to counter this as Corp will probably just be to suck it up and leave the Tranquilizer on the derezzed ICE to fill up memory and force the Runner constantly factor into their calculations the fact it could still be rezzed in an emergency. Does it make the cut over old reliable Rezeki in Criminal? Probably not, as this isn’t going to be a huge tax against the very best deck.

On the other hand, Botulus is a Anarch attempt at Boomerang or perhaps a NISEI attempt at D4v1d. The very best ICE has high strength and a lot of subroutines, but this card at least counters one of those. The obvious targets are one subroutine pieces of ICE but even Slot Machine isn’t a terrible target. I’m less of a fan of using this on unrezzed ICE like an Anarch Boomerang as their events are less impactful. Again, I think it’s in the Corp’s best interest to keep the ICE to force the memory usage. Botulus only gains one counter a turn so if you can force the Runner through every turn then it is still a tax.

I’m also very exciting to try both these viruses, maybe together, in Shaper where Self-Modifying Code and Simulchip allow some neat tricks as a 1x.

Rush and 3/2s

The final topic relates to one of the very first things I mentioned in my System Gateway blog. With a more compact 40 card deck and a new limit one per deck 3/2 agenda, every Corp faction has a reasonable rush option available to them. Together with their “Project” agendas each faction has four 3/2s, add three Cyberdex Sandbox (or Offworld Office) and two Global Food Initiative is a perfectly solid suite, and there are other in-faction options instead of these neutral cards.

Good to see NISEI maintaining the Weyland “looking out of big windows” and NBN “looking at big screens” colour pie.

Above the Law and Tomorrow’s Headline are the most meaningful of the new 3/2 agendas, as they offer a serious threat to the Runner in factions that are likely to play Digital Rights Management to find them. Both offer ways to trash The Turning Wheel at the very least, often an important Runner tool that can swing rush pairings with a deep dig. There aren’t many other targets that can have such a big swing, although losing a full Daily Casts will be upsetting if the Corp can sneak these through without telegraphing the agenda, unlikely as a one-off agenda, but possible.

Without any fast advance options, a rush strategy will probably struggle to completely score out with Engolo and Boomerang, but Audacity, Ping and the ever-present Hard-Hitting News with kill options all fit nicely to punish a Runner forced to interact before they are ready. At least, it is encouraging very quick games rather than the six 5/3 agenda suites that are always a concern with 40 card Corp IDs.

That concludes my look at all things System Gateway and System Update. Sorry for the focus on the Corp side, but aside from Botulus and Tranquilizer, nothing on the Runner side excited me aside from the new IDs. That’s not to say that the Corp will be ahead in the new meta. Criminal were already very strong, and the new cards and rotation did little to change that. For the upcoming Store Championships, I expect Criminal to remain on top with a mix between Weyland rush and Palana with Anoetic Void doing well on the Corp side.

The Colour Blind Anarch (by Baa Ram Wu)

(There are just so many new cards in System Gateway, but thankfully Baa Ram Wu from my local meta has offered to help. Without further ado, I pass you over to him with his sideways look at deck building in Anarch.)

Looking for ruthless efficiency? Keep on walking! Looking for ridiculous multi card combos that may just ‘do a thing’… well then, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s some inventive/insane/dumb ideas you ‘could’ do with the new anarch cards.

Cookbook

Ok, so lets quickly skip past the ‘Grimoire as a resource’ comment and jump straight into some synergies!

My mind is immediately taken to Tranquilizer as installing one on the Corps turn with SMC/Simulchip/Gachapon/Pantograph/Paule’s with a Cookbook out will give you an instant derez when your turn starts (1 counter on instal, +1 w/ cookbook, +1 start of turn) All the green here makes this look like a fun thing to try out of Tao with Conduit pressure.

Closer to home a Hivemind on a Progenitor will allow instant Tranquilizers on install out of Anarch.

Any virus support card will always make me keen to see what it does alongside Pelangi as Pelangi-Paperclip is a great way to stick 2 Anarch fingers up to any big Code Gate or Sentry (now excuse me while I morn the loss of Surfer) just remember to pre-install your Paperclips kids due to that Pelangi/Bin Breaker Anti Synergy!

Also, worth considering Virus Breeding Grounds in a new light as Programmes such as Aumakua, Gravedigger, Conduit etc can come down with a counter, ready to be boosted by VBG. Is this slow? Yes! Did I promise you Efficiency? No!

Carnivore

A card that seems to have received a somewhat sour reception from the UK scene due to it’s costs (both credits and cards) but one I am excited to build around myself. The credits I can’t help with, in fact that’s only going to get worse. The cards, however, is ‘easy’.

Steps 1-5: Somehow get all these Cards onto your board: Rene ‘Loup’ Arsmont, Carnivore, Buffer Drive, DreamNet, DJ Fenris (Steve Cambridge)

Step 6: Run Hq, feed 2 cards to Carnivore to trash a card, recur a card back to the Stack with Buffer Drive and 1 to Hand with DJ, draw 1 with Loup and 1 with DreamNet

Step 7: Garnish for taste with Docklands Pass, Friday Chip, Consume, Bhagat etc.

Step 8: Eagerly await Cook_Ed’s Loup/Steve fan fic

Botulus

Probably the most fun card here and potentially important in the rushy nature of 40/15 Corp decks. Could give Criminals yet another way to ‘guarantee’ a turn 1 diversion ☹ and probably a great single splash in shaper to contest early remotes without having to pay for Engolo.

Feels like a really good midrun install with a Gachapon and will definitely be tested by yours truly in a Virtual heavy deck with Gachapon, Virus Breeding Grounds & Cookbook

Fermenter 

Tutor able ‘drip’ econ? Its only a matter of time until someone tests this in Wu over Rezeki. Getting 2 of these out turn 1 and simulchiping them back when you take the money could end up in fun games of Chicken between the runner and the Purge button. 
For the more hilarious combos – consider also slotting Acacias to guarantee credits either way!

Our old friend Hivemind is fun here too as Fermenter does not eat the virus counters like consume would so if you manage to charge your hivemind to, let’s say 5 counters, using Knob/Friday chip/VBG you can install a Fermenter and immediately click it for 12 Credits, then reinstall with a Simulchip and do it again.
Why not add 3 Tech Traders to your combo to gain an additional 9 credits! 

Leech

It’s a Datasucker. It still doesn’t make Chisel good.

System Update Review

System Update, and the associated rotation, always felt like a hard sell to get excited about. With the hype of spoiler season, it’s easy to imagine every day like NISEI Christmas, but here they are removing a large number of our toys and we are trying to get excited about the few that we are allowed to keep. Instead, it is better to treat System Update as a decluttering, and as we Marie Kondo our collections, we should find joy in the cards that remain and look back fondly over the time we spent with our now departed friends. System Update and Gateway reduces the Standard card pool by a significant amount, and it is easy to think we are losing out, rather than gaining by having the game streamlined.

With that in mind, I want to go through System Update by faction and look at one card I am happy got to stay and bid a fond farewell to one card that is leaving for now, with some special mentions along the way. I don’t want to be negative about cards that are going (“get in the sea” seems to be the almost thoughtless default phrase) as, while there are things I will not miss, every card is bound to be someone’s favourite. For a similar reason, I don’t want to question why a particular card got to stay but not another. With those caveats laid out, let’s talk about cards that, for me, sparked joy.

Anarch

Imp (staying): A very Anarch way to deal with assets by simply dealing with everything exactly the same way; bin. There are not many utility programs in Netrunner that are relevant in every game they appear. Rezeki is one of them, but Imp is just on the opposite end of the fun spectrum. I play Imp in Freedom decks; I love trashing things that much.

Street Peddler (rotating): For a game about hidden information, Netrunner is surprisingly one-sided regarding this aspect of the game. The Corp is the one guarding all the secrets, outside of a spicy tech choice by the Runner beforehand. Street Peddler lets the Runner play the Corp at their own card by having their own secret information only they know and can use to their advantage clicklessly.

Criminal

Sneakdoor Beta (staying): This is often the 46^th card in my Criminal deck but it is one of the best tricks they have up their sleeves. For me, it sums up how most 2MU programs should be. Something that you temporarily put in your rig to ruin the Corp’s plans and overwrite when it has done its job. It still catches experienced players out today.

Grappling Hook (rotating): I’ve been a big fan of pirate breaker decks for the longest time and this card encapsulates the whole archetype. I’ve played it in Geist, Hayley and even Adam. Being able to interact with ICE in ways other than Fracters, Decoders and Killers is fun to build around, and while feelings towards this card may have waned with the presence of a strong Geist deck, I will be sad to see this go.

Shaper

Aesop’s Pawnshop (staying): On paper, a weird economy engine card that ended up being good and even restricted. While it can struggle to compete with steady drip of Rezeki, it shines a new light on so many Runner cards, creating new directions for deck building. A well-designed card should change the way you think about the card pool and it’s hard to imagine a card that does it better than Aesop’s Pawnshop.

Notoriety (rotating): Watching the Corp’s face panic as you run all three central servers, the relief when, on 4^th click, you play a card that isn’t Apocalypse, before that respite draining away as you point out you now have seven points. Beautiful. That’s assuming you don’t accidentally steal an agenda along the way.

Haas-Bioroid

Marilyn Campaign (staying): This was the hardest faction for me to pick as I don’t find any of the choices overly exciting, but I am a sucker for economy cards that do things just a little bit differently. A cheap 1-inf option for asset decks with an interesting dilemma of which side benefits from shuffling R&D. In a way, the perfect selection for the adrenaline-fueled world of accumulating small efficiencies.

Lab Dog (rotating): I feel like I’m allowed one sillier pick in this list, but this card led to one of my favourite moments in Netrunner. I made a couple of duelling decks for my friends to play based around hand size; HB Cybernetics Division trying to do brain damage against Itinerant Protester Valencia trying to restrict the HQ. In that game, Lab Dog ran off with the Runner’s Brain Cage. Twice. I laughed like a train.

Who’s a good boy? You are.

Jinteki

Ronin (staying): Jinteki are losing a few traps and enablers this rotation. This completely different way to play the game got me super exciting when I first started playing with the original core set, and I worry this epiphany will be lost to players starting with System Gateway. However, I am glad that Ronin and yomi mind games are staying in the card pool just to put a flicker of doubt in the Runner’s mind. Like a six-pack of Muller fruit corners where the yoghurt in one of them has been replaced with mayonnaise.

Mushin No Shin (rotating): As much as I can enjoy a little yomi, as a treat, it is time to put Mushin No Shin out to pasture. Strangely, it’s a card I enjoyed playing more at the highest levels, leading to a top 8 finish at UK Nationals 2018 so I am choosing to fondly remember the good times rather than the million times it has blown up in my face. Hopefully, this will create new cards to fill this gap and Round 2 of the mind games can begin.

NBN

License Acquisition (staying): This is picked more out of hope than expectation as I didn’t play this card when it was legal. 3/1 agendas don’t tend to get played much and there’s enough competition in NBN vying for this spot such as AR-Enhanced Security, Quantum Predictive Modelling and, erm, 15 Minutes. Its role has probably changed in modern Netrunner, where it is more important to recur an important asset with a high trash cost, rather than get a free install and rez. The returning SanSan City Grid falls into both categories.

Data Raven (rotating): They always did.

Extrac’s meme was just too beautiful for this world.

Weyland

Oaktown Renovation (staying): This may be the perfect economy agenda. It’s unique for gaining the Corp credits as it is advanced, all for the low cost of not caring that the Runner knows what you are up to, which is incredibly Weyland. It’s an interesting agenda for all levels of the game, rewarding players who recognise a scoring window without punishing them too much if they don’t. To be fair, with Weyland this could just mean they have Too Big to Fail and Hard-Hitting News in hand.

Blue Sun (rotating): Initially, I had planned not to include IDs in this list as they are so game defining, but this ID holds a special place in my heart. The EigenHarpoon range of decks remains one of my proudest deck building achievement, the Blue Sun version being expertly piloted by Drago to win the European Championship 2019 and dragging me up to 7^th in Swiss. I had mentally prepared myself for its departure as saving all the necessary tools (like Oversight AI) was always going to be a big ask for System Update. It’s just nice to end this list on a card with such great personal memories.

System Gateway IDs

With 7 new IDs entering the game in one product, one for each faction, System Gateway will hugely change the meta landscape in the coming months. They offer new ways to play and build decks so it will be interesting to see how they compete against each other for our collective attention. Reign & Reverie was the last box to put a new ID for each faction into the card pool simultaneously and it took a little time for people to realise Liza’s terrifying potential, so we may be playing with new ideas within these cards for some time.

Now that I’ve got my excuses in for why I’m wrong six months down the line, the first thing worth noting is that these are all 40/15 identities, due to the size of System Gateway. That shouldn’t really affect any of the discussion about the card abilities here; it’s a nice-to-have rather than a must-have and, for example, something that I put down the list below having a link in Runners. It’s more relevant for Corps mainly because of the 6 three-point agenda option, although after Azmari’s ban, these haven’t taken off in the same way since, although I’ll try to bring these possibilities up went important.

These discussions were written before the full list of saved cards in System Update was known, so these points can change drastically depending on what stays and what goes. Now the second excuse is done, let’s get to the new cards!

Weyland – Built to Last

The first ID to be announced and a straightforward ability that perhaps sets the tone for the new set. The “advance a card” text will catch some new players out compared to most card abilities that “place an advancement counter”, but aside from that, it’s a simple ability that helps what you should be doing in most games anyway, even without building around it.

The drive-thru space Wendy’s was as popular as ever.

My initial thoughts were to use this ability in a rush archetype using the extra money to smooth out the early game, however there is a lot of competition there amongst other Weyland IDs; the three main competitors being Titan, The Outfit and Argus. Titan is straight-up fast advance. The Outfit tries to win quickly by scoring out or forcing the Runner to interact before they are ready, also with no long game plan. Finally, Argus is a bit more considered using tags and meat damage as an extra cost for the Runner. We have to decide where there is space in the triangle for Built to Last.

I place this ID between Argus and The Outfit, if you want to fast advance, play Titan. The extra money makes the Hard-Hitting News threat more dangerous, without completely ruining the mid game by Bad Publicity. Successful NGO traps hurt the Runner even more and Reverse Accounts could also be a nice include if that stays around. The 40-card deck size is probably as meaningful as it’s going to be with 2 Hostile Takeover, 3 Project Atlas, 2 Oaktown Renovation and 2 Global Food Intuitive being my initial baseline agenda suite.

Note that I haven’t mentioned the possibility of advancing ICE, which feels like a deck-building trap. Some people (called Rob) will try to fast advance Government Takeover using Red Planet Couriers, but advancing ICE is time consuming and the ID isn’t making full use of the advancements unlike Cayambe Grid. I don’t expect it be popular competitively.

Shaper – Tao Salonga

A simple ability that opens up a whole bunch of new directions for Shaper deck building. This is exactly what I was hoping for with the new IDs and Tao seems to deliver. I really love how the fiction introducing him was written and I can see Tao becoming a fan favourite, if not one of the main IDs we see out of Shaper.

Rubik Cubes are much easier when at least 50% of the sides are cyan.

It’s very easy to categorise Tao as “Green Leela” as she is leaving the game with her version of the scored or stolen ability, but it’s important to say how they differ. Tao doesn’t have the same ability to snowball like Leela, scoring from R&D, bouncing the remote ICE to steal another agenda and so on. Leela removes ICE temporarily, but the Corp usually has the option to put in back in place soon after. Tao can make this change closer to irreversible, so good knowledge of the ICE is important to hurt the Corp’s well-laid plans the most. A very skill-intensive ability where a bad decision can end up hurting you.

So, how to utilise this ability? You are not opening up servers and most competitive Corps run what is known as Good ICE. However, there is big difference between rezzed and unrezzed ICE so Tao may be more like a “Green Reina” making the Corp spend lots of money to defend the same server after multiple agenda scores moves the rezzed ICE away. In fact, DJ Fenris seems a good include with Reina herself and Los being good targets. The ability will also affect how Corps will position their ICE. Is it a good idea to defend HQ when that can be swapped with a more meaningful ICE later on? I expect to land some easy Jailbreaks with this ID in the future.

As well as affecting Corp decisions within a game, Tao may also shape what ICE is played in decks. Pure “End the run” ICE hasn’t been too popular of late, but Spiderweb, designed to prevent Boomerangs, becomes a liability as it can become a bounce pad for Turning Wheel tokens. Even the currently banned Gold Farmer isn’t too happy about this possibility.

Jinteki – Restoring Humanity

It was a bit disappointing seeing this ID at the start of the day. Personal Evolution was the ability that got a lot of new players excited about Netrunner when they opened their first core set and this Jinteki feels a bit of a damp squib in comparison. I’ve warmed to it slightly over the day so let’s see what we can say about the new ability without knowing what support cards are in the pipeline.

Water feature.

This is a way to make money that we haven’t seen anything like before, turning Archives into a temporary PAD Campaign. I worry about how often we will want to switch this trigger back on with a 40-card deck if the Runner is determined to run Archives for a credit that could be earned via Palana instead.

If I had to play this tomorrow, I would adapt the Harmony Medtech six 5/3s builds with Punitive Counterstrike. Swapping Global Food Intuitive for Bacterial Programming gives, in total, six spare influence for Cerebral Overwriters and play the Mushin game. That’s probably already an improvement and we haven’t mentioned the ID ability at all. Three Subliminal Programming is a nice synergy from the current card pool, but we have to assume there are more toys coming in Gateway, hopefully better than the tools Hyoubu Institute got in Ashes.

Anarch – Rene “Loup” Arcemont

Once you bring yourself to continue past the artwork, Loup is certainly a no-nonsense ID ability. Interact with the Corp, smash up their stuff and get rewarded for doing so. Unless NISEI added “plan out your entire turn” as flavour text, they couldn’t design a better ID for encouraging good Netrunner fundamentals.

People are probably losing shirts in the Moon’s low gravity all the time.

The similarities to the other NISEI Anarch, Hoshiko Shiro, are pretty clear, mechanically at least. She gains a credit and draws a card just for an access but over a minimum of two turns. In the best case, Loup could give you that every turn, but you have to access and trash a card. Which will be the better choice will depend on which Corps are dominant, but the fact that we are even comparing Loup to the current top Anarch ID shows that his power-level is definitely up there. However, in any given meta, it feels that only one of Hoshiko and Loup will be correct, and the other will just be slightly worse. Take a good Loup deck, swap the ID, add five more Anarch cards and you very likely have a good Hoshiko deck too.

The comparisons to other Anarch IDs are also flattering. Imp is such a natural fit in Loup decks that he might step into Freedom’s domain in an attempt to trash everything. As a huge Freedom fan, I’m hoping that Loup’s support cards have a huge impact across the faction, which was more than hinted at in the spoiler article. Overall, a strong ID but he’ll have to shake off Hoshiko before becoming the competitive Anarch.

HB – Precision Design

From what we have seen so far, this ID could be the most meta changing so far. In my analysis I try to offer something a little bit different from the NISEI spoiler articles but the call of combo is too strong here to ignore. I’m not sure it can do what Sportsmetal was doing with Team Sponsorship in the card pool, but that is almost certainly disappearing after this reveal. I expect some purple fast advance decks in the next few weeks recurring Audacity and Dedication Ceremony, but time will tell if this ID can do it better than Titan. Seven-point combo enthusiasts will be keeping a watchful eye on this ID and its support for many cycles to come, just to see if their time to shine comes round again. If this ID is ever good, then it will be incredibly good.

HB admitting they have absolutely no idea about their atoms’ momentum.

If you’re not getting back combo pieces, what should we be getting back with this ID? Previously, HB wasn’t using Team Sponsorship to recover powerful assets; that was more of a Controlling the Message or Replication Perfection strategy, so only bringing stuff halfway to HQ isn’t going to cut it. Operations are awkward mainly because you typically score the agenda with your last click, although that is more reason to include Jeeves Model Bioroids if you needed it. Perhaps being able to play a good operation like Violet Level Clearance an extra three time in a game is enough to justify playing this ID over Sportsmetal or Asa.

One far-out idea is to completely ignore the agenda scoring ability, instead focussing on the smaller deck and extra hand size to find and hold a kill combo. Perhaps, something outlandish like Load Testing, Hard-Hitting News and Punitive Counterstrike. Please, don’t actually do this.

Criminal – Zahya Sadeghi

Maybe it’s an artefact of Gateway being an introduction product, but once again we have another ID that naturally leads to comparisons to one previously released in the faction. While they offer something new, Built to Last is competing for attention amongst The Outfit and Argus, while Loup has still to convince me to stray from Hoshiko. Zahya has the upper hand in that her main comparison Gabe has just left the game.

Although “Daddy” Gabe has gone, I don’t see the name “Mummy” Zahya catching on.

There are enough differences between the two IDs for their comparison to be interesting. Having two prongs of attack compared to Gabe’s one makes me favour this new ability slightly, but it misses out by not getting paid when using run events that replace access, which Criminal have in good supply. It’s simple enough that any good regular Criminal deck while work completely fine cut and pasted here. You shouldn’t use the extra credit to lure you into making early single accesses, but rather use it as a little bonus for Dirty Laundry or Bravado. The new Jailbreak card fits beautifully in this deck right out the box; getting two cheap accesses, a card and two credits is very nice in a safer Gateway meta. No new ideas for deck building but it’s hard to think of anything happening that will ever “break” Zahya.

I think this is a great ID for beginners and Gateway. My only concern is that the design space is not being explored in an exciting way for experienced players (note, this is different from competitive players) and Zahya doesn’t really offer anything new that hasn’t been seen elsewhere. Not everything in the box is designed for me!

NBN – Reality Plus

I really don’t want to keep comparing the Gateway IDs to existing IDs. Given our current knowledge of the card pool, I think most decks here would prefer to be in SYNC. Instead, let’s focus on the positives and say that Reality Plus will be a more positive play experience to play with and against. The Runner doesn’t need a large number of credits to risk interacting with the Corp and having their day ruined by Economic Warfare and Hard-Hitting News.

Why settle for Rielle 45/10?

This ability fills me with hope for tag-based NISEI cards in the future. For this ID to be meaningful, tag punishment has to move beyond the game-ending Scorched Earth or BOOM! What those cards will entail is a mystery, especially with the trace mechanic not appearing in Gateway, but I’m excited to find out. For now, we can only focus on the existing cards, and a credit neutral Prisec is very tempting. In terms of ICE, Data Raven was my first thought that many others had, but actually Turnpike probably gains even more, becoming an incredibly nasty face-check. It’s probably safe to say that Dorm Computer isn’t coming off the Standard Ban List any time soon.

The fiction accompanying this reveal was my favourite of the set, just pipping Tao’s story. I wouldn’t want every piece to take this form but seeing a huge event from the point of view of one small cog works really well here for a Corp story. 

Conclusions

It would be madness to rank these IDs based on just their abilities with no information about the rest of System Gateway and System Update. I could rank how excited I am about the potential of each of them, but basically that then becomes wild speculation about what will be included in the new NISEI products. Instead, I’ll pick a favourite from each side and that way I can’t be accused of being wrong in times to come.

I’m partially excited about Jinteki – Restoring Humanity largely because they are so few cards currently that work well with this ability. There must be so many more in the box! It’s an interesting take on economy that I’m looking forward to attempt to make work. Tao Salonga has me most exciting on the Runner side because it is not an economy ability. Let’s see how all this changes over the rest of Spoiler Season!

System Gateway/Update Blog Plans

Nothing gets the Netrunner community (and my blog) revitalised like new cards and, with NISEI’s System Gateway and System Update, there is plenty to get excited about. Previously, I wrote a blog diary for every single card in Uprising, but with even more cards on the horizon, this time I’m going to take a more laid-back approach. In the hope that committing to posts now means that I will actually follow through on that promise, here is my plan for articles over Spoiler Season:

• 9^th/10^th March: Review of all the new IDs in System Gateway. IDs are some of the most game-defining cards in the game, so I’ll spend some time going over new options they provide and how they complement the IDs saved in System Update. Speaking of which…
• 14^th/15^th March: Discussion of the cards saved by System Update and what that means for both new players starting with Gateway as well as competitively.
• 28^th/29^th March: Anything of particular interest from Gateway. With so many new cards, it’s impossible to predict full meta size changes so I’ll probably focus on some of the more interesting and novel cards to join the Standard pool.

As a special bonus, I will go over the new card spoiled today, Jailbreak.

I don’t know who The Catalyst is yet, but they’ve kicked the literal lightning out of this other person! What’s not to love?

Secretly an Adam card, I can’t wait to toss my Jackpots and Easy Marks into the garbage. It is very difficult to fill up slots 43-45 with good neutral cards and this does a great job for that. I would probably be tempted to use 3x Jailbreak to replace the influence spent on 1x The Turning Wheel. Adam has fairly good multiaccess built in and he just needs a little extra threat when they don’t work out. I’m not sure it has enough leg kick punch for the other factions, perhaps a different kind of Legwork to save influence in Shaper. Stargate remains the R&D threat of choice though for the time being.

Worlds’ Best Decks

NISEI’s second World championship took a step closer to cyber dystopia and happened entirely online two weeks ago. Iwas an amazing event, regardless of the situation, and while I was unable to compete, which helped makes it feel like most other World championships, the coverage was brilliantly executed, and I loved watching every minute. Usually I would do a post-mortem of such a large tournament to analyse the new meta. However, this year I am going to pass. Firstly, my statistics writing limit at the moment is being reached elsewhere, but mainly because I’m not sure players are too bothered. Despite the bans of SSL Endorsement, Gold Farmer and PAD Tap, it didn’t feel like the meta shake-up we tend to have before big events. Also, with the arrival of NISEI most ambitious products so far, System Gateway and System Update 2021, in December, players are looking to the future.

Instead, we will celebrate some of the top decks that came out of this tournament. Firstly, let’s look at the Runners. The meta had moved slightly away from the faster Titan builds allowing Runners to target the assets of Asa, which going into the event was probably the Corp to beat. Limes’ winning Hoshiko deck (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/62011/imp-pressive-hoshiko-1st-at-worlds-2020) was the great example of this with three Imps. An Apex card has now been in the last two World champion lists and amazingly it is not Apocalypse! I would have loved to see it in action in a less one-sided game.

The destroyer of Worlds

My favourite Runner deck was aDumbBrick’s Geist deck (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/61999/dageist-4th-at-worlds) watching its many dumb skateboard tricks before faceplanting into 4^th place. Appropriately, it seems to run very close to the ground initiating runs with very few credits and using Da Vinci, Prognostic Q-Loop and Boomerang to get in places it really shouldn’t. Normally I like to highlight a key card or two with a diagram but the whole list is an amazing collection of cogs that it feels like a disservice not to include everything. Even when it failed it was still great to watch so I strongly recommend checking it out on NISEI’s YouTube channel.

On the Corp side, Asa did not dominate as much as expected. Limes again took something at least left-field adjacent putting ICE in ICEless Sports combo (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/62012). However, I don’t feel I can call this the Corp deck of the tournament, especially since Limes himself says he hates this deck. I know the feeling and I wouldn’t like to be in a meta where this is the dominant deck. Watching the last few games of the cut, it felt like Runner error helped a lot but then I wasn’t playing at the very end of the cut for all the marbles. A long day of high stress Netrunner, it is no surprise small misplays start to creep in. Hopefully, this doesn’t come across as insulting to the players it beat. The deck seems to walk a knife edge and it doesn’t take much for it to go either way and we could have easily had another game like the loser’s final at Worlds 2019.

The Corp deck that has me the most excited as a new archetype is tf34’s CtM (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/62032/malia-ctm-2nd-at-worlds-2020). I feel it’s very easy to get over excited by the appearance of Malia Z0L0K4 high in the cut (shown below mainly to prove I’ve got the right combination of letters and numbers). While it did work blanking Liberated Accounts and Tech Traders, as tf34 says in their write out, its inclusion was quite the happy accident.

I assume Malia is the one doing the heavy lifting here

I find the idea of 8 agenda CtM inspired with Leela being a popular choice minimising the number of bounces, but it was the overall speed of the thing that was the most amazing. I can’t remember how many naked Beales were scored on stream and the blowout against Limes’ Hoshiko was breath-taking. Of all the Worlds lists, this is the one I saw swarming jinteki.net the following days. A new take on a top ID and, while it has a lot of work to become the canonical CtM, it is exciting to see new, strong ideas still being developed late into the meta and is my deck of the tournament.

Any decks that you feel I have missed that need some more love? I was only able to watch the main NISEI stream so I would be fascinated to hear about other lists that didn’t quite make it to the very top tables. Please, leave a comment below!

Continental Breakdown Part 2

Last time, we looked at the set of Continental Championships focusing on what IDs were represented during the three weekends. This time, just in time to hopefully throw a spanner into the plans of those competing in Intercontinentals tomorrow, we will try to answer what decks did well.

The two bar charts below show the win rates for the most popular Runners and Corps across the three tournaments. Note that these are more volatile than the frequency charts from the last blog post. We need to keep in mind the number of players representing that ID, for example, Adam and CtM both have win rates above 80% at Asia Pacifics but this is because that there were few people on these IDs. We will address this issue more carefully later but for now, if we are careful though, then there are still some interesting stories to find.

The most interesting stories appear in the Corp statistics although these are invariantly connected to the Runner side of the meta. Let’s start with Titan, the winner of the first Continental. At Asia Pacifics it had a win rate over 70% (and nearly 80% during the Swiss), which we wrote about immediately after that tournament, posturing what would happen in following weeks. Now, we can see that the attempt to counter the fast advance lists had an effect, with win rates dropping to around 60% the following weekends.

The other winningest Corp, Asa, showed good numbers throughout the weekends. After winning Europeans/Africans, I was a little shocked to see the number of players drop off slightly, but the win rate remained high. With only nine players in Americans, they all did rather well. After my last post, I heard that a number of players were scared of the Freedom threat, but this did not appear to materialise.

Comparing Win Rates

As mentioned, the biggest issue with these bar charts is that we haven’t taken into account the number of players. I blogged in the past about placing error bars on win probability estimates but that has been using the entirety of the meta to get good confidence intervals. With these smaller tournaments, we are much less certain so I’m going to pass the buck there to https://knowthemeta.com to address that issue. Instead, we can test whether there is strong evidence that the win rate has changed between tournaments without being too sure of the exact win rate.

We shall look at the changes between Europeans/Africans and Americans as these have the most data to play with. Without going into too much detail, for each ID we calculate the probability of the results in the two tournaments in two different ways. Firstly, we assume that there is one probability of winning shared by the two tournaments and compare this to a model where each tournament has its own probability. Depending on this ratio, we can say if we need two probabilities to explain the data or just one.

The following two plots compare the Runner and Corp win rates across the two tournaments. The dashed diagonal line shows the line of equal probabilities. Below this line, the ID performed better at Europeans/Africans, above the line, better at Americans. The colour represents our confidence in whether the probability changed. If the point is dark blue, then we have no reason to believe the win rate changed over time. These are usually close to the diagonal line or we don’t have enough data. Dark red, often away from the diagonal, have good reason to suspect a change. Colours in-between red and blue are less certain, for example, green shows middling evidence of a change, yellow slightly more evidence, orange more still until we get to red.

On the Runner side we have strong evidence that Leela was worse in the Americans Continentals. Note that while Sunny is further away from the diagonal we don’t have enough evidence to explain away what I’m dubbing the “Cpt Nice” effect. Of the more frequent IDs, Hayley had some noticeable improvement in Americans.

On the Corp side, we see Replication Perfection having a sizeable improvement between the two events. I found this interesting as it appears asset spam improved with Asa and CtM having some evidence of improvement. Perhaps with faster decks, like Titan, being targeted, smart meta players spotting the opening there and took advantage. MirrorMorph I cannot explain.

Anyway, I’ll be very interested to see how all of this is rendered irrelevant in the event starting tomorrow.

Continental Breakdown Part 1

The last few weeks we have been spoiled with top-level Netrunner. Despite, or perhaps due to, the inability to host large events, NISEI has organised back-to-back-to-back Continental levels on consecutive weekends. With four or five streams in various languages, we’ve had as much of the best Netrunner commentary available as we have ever had. My sleep pattern is kind of getting back to normal after accidentally waking up early and staying up late for the Asia Pacific and Americans Continentals respectively. I took part in Europeans/Africans and had fun coming in the top half playing new versions of my decks from previous Euros.

Previously, I would do a concentrated breakdown of the European Championships, but this time I will try to look at the larger picture and analyse how the meta shifted in this rapid Continental tectonic shift. The standard of Netrunner statistics websites, for example, https://knowthemeta.com has had a new update very recently, has made it much easier for anyone to have all the information about the meta that they want. I’m hoping that the analysis here can add a narrative to these numbers. A huge thank you to YsengrinSC on Slack for sharing his Python code to load in the raw data from cobr.ai into a format I can play with.

What people are playing

With a rapid-fire set of tournaments, there are two major questions you need to answer before going to a tournament. The first one seems obvious and that is what decks are good? The second, which obviously influences the first, is what decks are you likely to see? I posted before Euros about whether the performance of Titan at Asia Pacifics would change the ID breakdown. In this blog post, we will look how tournament deck choices change through the Continentals and come back to the first question another time.

Below are the Runner and Corp frequencies for the main IDs, by which I mean, IDs that were represent in each of the three tournaments.

Firstly, starting with the top Runners we already see an interesting story. At Asia Pacifics, 419 was the most represented Runner around 20% of the field but it was closely followed by Hoshiko and Leela. After Freedom won that event (yay, Freedom!), there was a big increase in this ID at the following events, more than doubling, but even more noticeable was the rise in Leela’s stock making up a quarter of the two events. These players must come from somewhere and a number of players moved away from 419 although it’s not as big as I had thought until the Americans Continental.

On the Corp side, things are slightly different. Sportsmetal was perhaps flavour of the week at Asia Pacifics, but a few other IDs were also well represented. Titan won that event but didn’t have the same boost that Freedom saw on the Runner side. It started approximately the same at Europeans/Africans but dropped off slightly at Amercians as it was deemed the deck to beat.

Perhaps most noticeable was the rising popularity of The Outfit over the weekends, starting off at a very reasonable 12% of the field but finishing around 22% of the field. However, the biggest surprise to me was the drop in Asa at Americans, despite the deck winning Europeans/Africans the week before and many other excellent performances. This may be a misjudgement by the meta as a whole as these decks did excellently at the final Continentals taking three of the top four places.

I find it fascinating that a good performance, like Freedom at Asia Pacifics, can cause a jump in popularity, while another performance, like Asa at Europeans/Africans, can do the exact opposite. It makes me question why I even bother with data science at times! Obviously, there is only so much this data can tell us. Asa is deemed a fiddly deck to play well while The Outfit is perhaps more of a rooting-tooting-Runner-shooting list that’s easier to pick up. This needs to be taken into account when analysing the meta but we would need more information than what is available here. There is always more to be done in data science!

I’ll be very interested to hear your thoughts on the meta breakdown at these big events and how they might affect the Intercontinental event next weekend, especially if you are taking part! I don’t envy their task, especially after seeing the rise of GameNET in the latest event. Next time, I’ll look at the win rates of the IDs and how those changed across the three tournaments.

Titans May Fall

The 2020 European/African Championship is done and dusted, which means I will soon write another meta breakdown for the tournament. However, I want to wait until the trilogy of Continentals are over to get the full set of data to analyse. For now, we will take just a little glimpse back in time and see how our thoughts about Titan held up. From the ID breakdown, it seems that the top players had teched their list to beat Titan and Asa, which was the most represented Corp on the day. Thirty Leela had overtaken the previously dominant 419, so have we seen the end of Titan?

The short answer would be No. At the time, it felt underrepresented to me, but it was still 12% of the field (14 out of a massive 117 players for an online tournament) compared to 13% of the Asia Pacific Championship (6 out of 46). During the Swiss rounds it had a similar performance rate to what we normally would expect, winning 57% of its games (52 out of 91 games), similar to the other top Corps.

The issue this time around was the spread of the Titan players throughout the tournament. Previously I said that Titan had overperformed at APAC but this time the coin-flips seemed to balance out. In Swiss, the top Titan finish 3^rd while the bottom finished in 117^th. Even if we ignore these outliers, then the average performance is exactly middle of the pack in 58^th. This at least tells us that every now and again the law of averages does hold true. Only one Titan and Mark Yale player made the cut, with a small bunch of players finishing in twenties. Not bad, but definitely less in the cut than the Swiss would predict.

The big question is what this performance will do for the American Continentals this weekend. I’m really not sure if people will see the results from Europeans/Africans and decide that Titan is dead or that perhaps people won’t tech against it so much and it has another chance. If the tournament is as large as this weekend’s (and there’s no reason to suggest that it wouldn’t be) then the sensible bet may be that both these issues will cancel out. Our collective attempt to wrap the meta may have little effect.

Clash of the Titans

It’s the day before the European and African Continental Championship, deck choices are locked in, for better or worse, so I’m using my pent-up excitement constructively. In the build-up to the tournament peoples’ thoughts have been turning to Titan and what can be done to counter this meta defining deck. A common criticism thrown at Titan is that it’s a coin flip. Hand the deck to a relatively low skilled player and they could beat a better opponent just by luck. I wanted to test this the best I could by looking at data. As multi Scrabble World Champion, Nigel Richards, says, you bag your opponent 25% of the time (i.e. you draw perfect tiles) and they bag you 25% of the time. It’s the remaining 50% where tournament winners are decided.

If we believe that Titan match ups are a coin flip, then we should first try to estimate the bias of the coin. A quick look at the Standard Ban List 20.06 section of rnd-interface.com estimate the win rate of Titan at 64% with other competitive Corp decks like The Outfit and Asa Group at 65% and 59% respectively (the baseline win rate is around 58%). Based on this information alone, there is no reason to really dislike Titan over other IDs. It’s not uncommon for a player to say after the game they drew “the nuts” and the game was in their favour from the start so why the extra hate on Titan?

The main issue seems to be how Titan wins and who it beats. Let’s address the first point about the how. It fast. There are games as Runner where you feel that you had no chance of winning regardless of how you play. This is the Netrunner version of bagging. Your accesses whiff and the Atlas bullet train arrives at its destination. On the flip side, there are games as Titan (I’ve been practising it so others it my meta may succeed) where R&D gives it up and you lose, or that’s my excuse for a 100% beaten on jinteki.net. Over time these approximately balance to give the 64% win rate, but at the time it can feel like all-or-nothing.

If this was picture was true then we would expect a spread of Titans throughout a tournament, above average due to the higher win rate, with a few players winning all their coin flips, some losing and the majority clustered in the middle. This doesn’t quite appear to be the case though, for example the Asia Pacific Continental Championship had 6 Titan players out of 46 finishing 1^st, 5^th, 8^th, 26^th, 27^th and 31^st with a 79% win rate during the Swiss rounds. Being just one week before Euros Africans this is why a lot of players are teching out their lists. Even allowing for the decrease in the number of wins in the cut, this is statistically unlikely. The spread of Titan for the Black Lives Matter was more reasonable, although that data has to be taken with a pick of salt due to a high rate of dropouts due to weird time zone issues. In conclusion, it seems Titan is finishing higher than its already high win rate suggests.

One major factor is that Titan has a good match up against the supposedly best runner, 419. When the Titan rise, they often face a Runner that increases its chances. We don’t yet have enough data to analyse this one match in detail, but the fact that decks designed to counter Titan, like Freedom and Leela ended up doing well at Asia Pacifics means something. Of course, none of this is rigorous and we will see tomorrow and Sunday just how close I was. Will we have a drop in 419 to counter Titan and/or will we see Titan running scared as the deck to beat?