My ranking is:

a) Getting rid of Account Siphon

b) Getting rid of Yog

c) Getting rid of Noise

d) Getting rid of Parasite

e) Adding in Swordsman

I could do all the changes but thought this a good start.

The Core 2.0 changes affect the game more than you would expect with the number of cycles out. Basically, the toxic things like non-interactive decks and also having penniless Corp players took a big hit. In a way, the blow of losing Jackson Howard has been lessened by also killing a fair amount of the stuff that made him so necessary in the first place. Another plus is the Core set is now a better and more balanced play experience in and of itself, which will help in attracting new players.

I like the new art work on the IDs. It is great that they aged them. It is a good clean up and I guess the MWL will some what clean up the rest.

Think there needs to be a lot of play testing to see if corp decks can keep up with runners. The loss of Jackson may still take its toll on a lot of decks. Noticed how NBN has one fewer cards than the other 3 corps?

I suspect that if you are talking straight Core cards Corp got a BIG boost. Add in the rest of the meta and it probably tilts back to Runner though not as badly as before.

My happy zone is that they specifically targeted (per Damon on Bad Publicity) cards that were supporting toxic play styles (non-interactive) and cards that were compromising the design space.

To me, Rotation as an overall item almost needs its own topic as I would have been more extreme than they were. Likely I would have nixed the first three cycles instead of the first two and made the Rotation rule simple - once the newest cycle completes the oldest cycle rotates out. Wash, rinse, repeat. Also, I think I would make Core revision part of Rotation with new Core set being built at the end of every third cycle (so Core sets would last three years).

I also was glad about WHICH cards from the cycles they promoted to Core. Some out there I'm glad were not promoted include:

a) Caprice Nisei (and I'm a Jinteki player). For the good she did she also warped play and limited design space pretty severely.

b) E3 Feedback Implants - Same issues I had with Caprice - warped play and design space issues. Also it singlehandedly made a LOT of ice useless.

Where do I begin? Probably the biggest difference, that will have the most wide-ranging impact on the game, is the removal of Scorched Earth.

Something I said to Damon at Worlds 2015: "Can we please have something more interesting to do with tags than just kill the runner?" For five years, being tagged has meant staring death in the face. It severely restricted design space for tags and it made any such cards, starting with simple things like Closed Accounts which is in the Core Set , kind of useless because it's a question of "I could build around this, or I could just kill the runner and win."

Now, one tag? NBN will probably make your life miserable but it probably won't be game-ending. It'll be a tempo hit, you may lose resources. It takes two tags to really be killed.

Hand in hand with this is Weyland's kill threat moving from Scorched Earth to Punitive Counterstrike. It's so thematically appropriate: we don't care about tags. If you **** with us, we'll kill you in person.

Good times. I just hope we can overcome five years of tag-allergy to let the new design space they've opened up actually breathe.

I agree that the pulling of Scorched Earth and inserting Closed Accounts puts tags back into an appropriate design trajectory. I would put that up with junking the wildly OP Account Siphon and also the radical surgery on Anarch as stuff that had to happen. I am MUCH happier with the ANR design space and faction balance now.

I'm honestly most excited about the removal of both Noise and Jackson Howard. The fact that pretty much all competitive Corp decks had multiple copies of J-Ho is a pretty good indicator that he was too good. Noise I don't like because I find milling to be a particularly un-fun strategy to play as, and even worse to play against.

Another thing I'm excited about is the much larger numbers of singles in the revised core set. Buying my third core set for the third copy of just 11 cards was money spent very begrudgingly.

Although I'd rather see full play sets of all cards included, at least with the revised core, people buying three to get all the singletons will be getting quite a bit more bang for the buck.

I have to admit I will miss Chimera, and was hoping Core 2.0 would give it a reprieve. Dirt cheap ICE which to be honest wasn't super strong but was only breakable by an AI or a Runner with a full Icebreaker suite.

I wish the core set was all singletons of faction specific cards and doubles of the generics.

19 hours ago, TylerTT said:

I wish the core set was all singletons of faction specific cards and doubles of the generics.

I don't mind it the way they did it - it provides a newbie a more complete experience.

And, I just realized why they did not reprieve Chimera. It is because Swordsman has entered the Core 2.0. Put Chimera as the front ICE on a server followed by Swordsman and you have a VERY bad situation. Only an AI can attack Chimera and Swordsman eats AIs. Silly me

Personally I think all those cards could be put back in if errata and FFG is going heavy on errata. So here would be my changes for each one.

1. Make Account Siphon 1 for 1. What made account siphone so good is that each corp credit was worth 2 runenr credits. I know abstraction a corp cred was like millions of creds and a runner cred was like a $20 bill (or something like that) but honestly a 10 cred run was too much to pass up. Make it only 5 creds and HQ behind a 6 cred glacier will shut that down.
2. Yog being a static strength made it a card that could be out done by ice, but 4 strength ice is very expensive. I would make Yog 2 or even 1 strength. That would have been perfect especially for 0 cost breaker. 1 strength Yog would have been balanced and still be good as Yog.
3. Considering a lot of virus programs are gone I don't think Noise would be that much in effect. Now Whizzard, that was OP we had to send a cruise missile after him.
4. I think the problem with Parasite is that data sucker was a partner that made them so effective. I like the idea as Anarch being the faction that trashes Ice which seems like an anarch thing to do. Parasite would have been fine if it could only be paired with say Wyrvenn Ice breaker AI. Well this change would not pair it up but when ever runner passes through this ICE add 1 virus counter. When there are more virus counters than the strength of the ice trash the ice. There it never loses it strength and forces the runner to keep passing though the ice.
5. Swordsman was a must if they didn't put in Jackson Howard. I still miss the early days f the Jentiki cup game when which server was an agenda and which was project junebug.
6. Scorched Earth was something that made every run a hazard. Now I know that they want other tag punishment other than flatline and win but there needs to be something that makes runs hazardous. I guess add if the runner is taged trace X. X is number of tags runner has. If trace is successful do 4 meat damage.

Interesting.

Me, I think Account Siphon should have been banned a long time ago. It was the centerpiece of a ridiculous paradigm of "rich runner poor corp" which was part of why a lot of deck archetypes could not even be explored - AS made it child's play to render the corp penniless and thus unable to rez its ICE or advance its Agendas.

I also think Parasite had to go away. Again this is because I think the entire notion of ICE destruction was terrible and OP in the favor of the Runner.

As to Swordsman I was ecstatic to see both it and Ronin in the new Core. BTW Junebug is still there and now that Jinteki actually has Econ the days of Jinteki trap decks may return because they now can actually Rez their stuff.

So...just me but I don't ever want to see cards like the ones they bounced in ANR again. They made Runner WAY too strong and made it actually unpleasant to play Corp.

13 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Personally I think all those cards could be put back in if errata and FFG is going heavy on errata. So here would be my changes for each one.

If we learned anything from Salvaged Vanadis Armory, it's that FFG will ban cards before nerfing them with errata. The last thing we want is to have to have a sheaf of papers at our elbows all the time to keep track of all the cards that don't do what they say they do.

1. Maybe a future card design that won't be account siphon.

2. if it's balanced, then by definition it's not as good as Yog ;-)

3. Noise's existence constrains the design space of Virus cards.

4. It was a lot more than Datasucker. If it didn't trash the ice, then maybe. But again, that would be a new card design.

5. Jinteki shell game still exists ;-)

6. Scorched Earth constrained the design space of what to do with tags, because then 1 tag is a kill condition. They deliberately made that go away. Now you either need 2 tags or enough money to pull off a Punitive Counterstrike, so the notion of bringing back a 1-tag kill card is not going to happen.

11 hours ago, Grimwalker said:

If we learned anything from Salvaged Vanadis Armory, it's that FFG will ban cards before nerfing them with errata. The last thing we want is to have to have a sheaf of papers at our elbows all the time to keep track of all the cards that don't do what they say they do.

1. Maybe a future card design that won't be account siphon.

2. if it's balanced, then by definition it's not as good as Yog ;-)

3. Noise's existence constrains the design space of Virus cards.

4. It was a lot more than Datasucker. If it didn't trash the ice, then maybe. But again, that would be a new card design.

5. Jinteki shell game still exists ;-)

6. Scorched Earth constrained the design space of what to do with tags, because then 1 tag is a kill condition. They deliberately made that go away. Now you either need 2 tags or enough money to pull off a Punitive Counterstrike, so the notion of bringing back a 1-tag kill card is not going to happen.

Not as much though, I still see many 1 remote server games.

As for scorched earth what about putting a trace requirement on it. Makes sense since a Tag just marks you it doesn't exactly pinpoint your location. Well I guess Tags are supposed to pin point your location but with scorch going to trace it makes it not an instant kill.

They are not going to errata the cards, that much is clear. However we may well see cards that fit into the same role.

e.g. Urban Redevelopment, Weyland, Operation, Black-ops cost 4.

Terminal. After you resolve this operation, end your action phase.

Play only if the runner is tagged

Do 3 meat damage.

or Edited Shipping Manifests

Criminal Event. run. Cost 1. Double

As an additional cost to play this operation, spend click

Make a run on HQ. If successful, instead of accessing cards you may force the Corp to lose up to 2, then you gain 3 for each credit lost.

or Parasitical Biocode

Anarch Program: Virus • Install: 1 • Memory: 1 • Influence: 2

Install Parasitical Biocode only on a rezzed piece of ice.

Host ice has -1 strength for each virus counter on Parasitical Biocode.

When your turn begins, place 1 virus counter on Parasitical Biocode.

when the host Ice is trashed, return Parasitical Biocode to your grip

None of these are as powerful as the originals but they are playable and fill similar roles. E.g. Parasitical Biocode cripples a problem ICE but doesn't kill it (like any good parasite), indeed it may keep the ICE alive because the Corp doesn't want it spreading.

We already are seeing replacement cards for vacant niches:

Urban Renewal

Asset: Hostile; Rez 1; Trash 3

Place 3 Power counters on Urban Renewal when it is rezzed. When there are no power counters remaining on Urban Renewal, trash it and do 4 meat damage.

When your turn begins, remove 1 power counter from Urban Renewal.

As for the others above, imaginary cards are only kind of minimally interesting.

Agreed. Urban Renewal is an interest card. It does a lot of damage but the Runner sees it coming. Now of course if the Corp has a card that moves or removes Power Counters they could mess with the clock but overall it is using a different design space than Scorched Earth did.

I just hope we never again see Runner cards that take multiple credits from the Corp. The game is unpleasant to play when you have a penniless Corp player.