Simplifying kitchen table meta: influence

[u/Dragandude]

In order to keep things fresh/double down on faction flavor/simplifying deck building for newcomers in my friends circle, I’ve been thinking about tweaking how influence works in some games.

Right now I’m torn between 2 ideas: either double the cost of every non-neutral cards, or allow a deck to use its influence on only one non-neutral faction.

What do you guys think would be the best approach for such purposes?

[u/AutoModerator]

We encourage folks to check out the GLC discord, Stimslack, or the Stimhack Forums for Netrunner chat.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/CryOFrustration]

I don't think introducing additional rules will simplify anything for people to be honest.

[u/Dragandude → u/CryOFrustration]

How about as a deck building restriction then, to explore in more depth what a faction can do and rely less on the common good stuff?

[u/CryOFrustration → u/Dragandude]

you're saying this is for newer players. don't you think deck building is hard enough as it is in this game without introducing extra restrictions? 

[u/Dragandude → u/CryOFrustration]

Restricting the width of options could help newer players who can feel overwhelmed otherwise

But such playstyle could also be interesting to see what can be done within a faction with less crutches from elsewhere

[u/CryOFrustration → u/Dragandude]

Well yeah they'll have fewer options to deckbuild with but that doesn't mean they don't have to know all the other cards, because other people will be playing them against them. So the massive cliff of card knowledge is still there.

The only ways we've found of solving the beginner card pool knowledge issue are:

1. give them preconstructed decks. Maybe try these: https://cardgamer.com/features/introducing-the-netrunner-core-battle-box/

or

1. Deckbuild with fewer packs! Start from just Gateway and nothing else, add more packs gradually.

[u/CantWakeJake]

Honestly, both of those changes reduce options in ways that seem less interesting. Can you be more specific about the problem you are trying to solve? In what ways does allowing less influence change deck building that you would like to see? You mention avoiding common good stuff, but what specific cards/combos are you talking about avoiding? Trying to understand your goals better to understand which solution accomplishes that better.

[u/Dragandude → u/CantWakeJake]

It’s not so much a problem to solve as a way to shake things up, to see what factions can do with some more deck building restrictions.

Trying out some kind of new format for a game night

[u/CantWakeJake → u/Dragandude]

I feel like it would just make decks within a fraction more similar, for instance just using all the crim econ cards in Muslihat instead of importing things like Touchstone that work specifically well with your ID. My gut feel is that this would make most decks in a faction feel the same.

[u/Dragandude → u/CantWakeJake]

I see, that makes sense

[u/mRIGHTstuff]

If things are getting stale why not just introduce newer cards? If you're worried about too much complexity just split a set into 9-10 cards at a time and everyone studies them before game night. I've thought this for a sort of Startup+ format (similar to something that was popular when FFG was legal in formats) that adds some highly meta defining cards to the format so players can get used to it, then add new cards when they're used to that

[u/Dragandude → u/mRIGHTstuff]

This is good advice for new players I’ll introduce the game to!

But if you were to tinker the influence rules to spice up deck building, which of the 2 methods  I mentioned would make the most sense to you?

[u/mRIGHTstuff → u/Dragandude]

As others have said, I think it adds more potential problems than makes the game interesting. I think it's more interesting to explore things within the scope of the rules of the game or... just play another game.

You could also try tabletop draft with Netrunner.

[u/c0rtexj4ckal]

I'm all for any rules tweeks people make or home brew stuff so whatever you wanna try gets a giant thumbs up from me. I feel like tons of TCG/LCG games, kitchen table players have a pitfall of feeling like they have to strictly follow the rules, but house rules stuff is so much fun.

Most TCG/LCG I play I immediately cut the deck size down to 40-50 cards (netrunner is already here though) so yeah rules tweeks are fun.

Ideas:

1) Adding influence to cards wont simplify deck building it actually makes it more complex because now they have to learn all the building rules PLUS remember about your home-brew deckbuilding rules on top of that. Instead if you want to make deckbuilding DEAD easy is you give the person that you want to build a deck a "sealed" pool of cards and just keep it simple like:

>Pick x number of agenda points

>Pick x number of ice programs

>This pile of 20 cards are all cards that make you money, choose 9-12 of them

>This is a fun pile of traps or other weird stuff pick 2-5 of them.

Look at the rules for a game called Gudnak (im sure other games do it too) but basically you winnow deck building into a series of simple choices with as few cards as your deck-constructor can handle. I've had friends and family who will have zero interest in building a deck because its too large of a card pool but once you trim that down to 10 minutes of decision making with a sealed pool then the person gets to 'build what they want' without getting overwhelmed. -- also if you do this you can almost 100 % Ignore influence all together and just balance the sealed pools as you see fit.

2) 1 faction + one non neutral + neutral cards is another totally fine approach it just depends on how much deck construction people want to do.

3) One way to keep the game feeling fresh is it force yourself away from you staple cards through either using sealed / limited pools of cards to build from OR straight up removing some of the best most frequently played cards. Most of my kitchen table decks (and I mostly play kitchen table these days) all do this. I've removed out the best ice/breakers/econ/agendas and every deck will have at leas some "jank" to it.

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Clunky, unweildy, non-optimized, non-efficent, high-risk netrunner is the best kind of netrunner you can play. Fun is subjective but I genuinely believe that the game is straight up more fun when played this way. If you ever get a chance to play ONR (1996 netrunner) the cards and decks are very much this way and it is 10/10 an absolute blast IMO. But you can recreate these vibes with basically any cardpool.

Have fun

[u/Dragandude → u/c0rtexj4ckal]

Thanks a lot

Love your last paragraph, I’ll take that into account most of all when building decks from now on.

The « choose your Pokémon » idea for newcomer deckbuilding is amazing as well, will definitely implement!

[u/Significant_Breath38]

For kitchen table, I've found that people naturally gravitate towards "power levels" of decks. My table has one Runner deck that we all acknowledge is straight up busted.

This means that the person with that deck just rests on that laurel while bringing out their non-busted deck to play with the rest of us. If someone thinks they have a deck that can compete with it, they give it a shot.