https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/9/27/arrest-warrants-issued/

It includes a short article from Michael Boggs explaining the reworking of the list and why it was done.

The list is now much cleaner to use mechanically. A card is either Banned outright or it is in a special pool from which only one card (three copies of it) can be included in your deck.

And yes Faust is history!

My thoughts are with Rotation, the new Core and this the ANR braintrust has done a pretty good job of stamping out the toxic stuff in the current card pool. And with this new list structure plus quarterly review they have the tools to act pretty quickly if needed.

I found more elegant old MWL influence system...

It required more work from Design Team side, but it allowed more flexibility than plain and effortless Ban...

The old MWL was proving inadequate as the article and indeed posts in here note. There are some cards where no matter what you do to the costing are just ticking bombs. In that case ban is the only solution. Here is what Boggs stated and I agree 120% with it:

While the levels and universal influence introduced in version 1.2 took this curtailing of the meta a step further, it had the unfortunate side effect of complicating the deck building process, one of the most exciting aspects of any LCG. Additionally, though the efficiency of problematic decks was limited, the Most Wanted List didn’t entirely remove these decks from the environment, sometimes still allowing for negative play experiences to arise. For these reasons, we’ve decided that a more direct, streamlined, aggressive list is the way to go.

The new way both attacks cards like Faust that just had to go and also cards that by themselves are okay but in combos are toxic.

Rather shocking to see such new cards on the ban list. Did they not do any play testing?

Not sure I get MOpus, the MU kinda restricted that to begin with. If they really felt it was too OP they should have just removed in from core 2.0.

And RIP Princess Space Kitten, you were far too cute and far far far too pink.

It doesn't shock me. The larger the card pool the more problematic playtesting becomes. This is true of any card game. And in LCGs before Rotation it gets REALLY hairy as the sheer number of combinations to test is insane. The only other way to avoid cards getting banned is to make the cards all rather weaker so they are all close to the same power level. Frankly as FFG has chosen to give us wilder cards I'm surprised the number of OP ones has not been higher given the size of the card pool.

Boggs evidently has his own ideas of what the game of Netrunner should be. Damon loves to push the envelope and find new archetypes and new ways to play, and even if Boggs supported that approach, it's one thing to work with it and another thing to start writing new material that carries that type of thing forward.

Boggs seems to want to take things a step back to more basic Netrunner as a platform for his designs.

Plus some of this stuff was just really OP.

Hmnn....personally I don't mind the fact they banned cards but more the fact there's a ban list and a semi-ban list. In terms of ease of deckbuilding, I would rather they just have a ban list and no semi-ban list (what they call restricted).

Thankfully there is a online deckbuilder, which hopefully can be updated to reflect the changes to ease deckbuilding...

However it does irk me that quite a few of the the cards that released in the recent cycle are on the list, it gives the feeling off...ooh check just these new cards and the oops we screwed up coming up with them, time to nuke them. Owning a lot of FFG games, I saw them as a 'competent, professional' game design company but I'm getting a sense of being involved with a Kickstarter game (or a Blizzard video game) where this game is going. There's a a lot of ongoing chop and changes...and it just annoys me.

It just feels like a lot of chop right now because you have three elements coming into play at the same time:

- Rotation

- Core 2.0

- MWL 2.0

The other element is some of this stuff has needed to be done for a long time but Netrunner stayed stable for a long time. Simply put, the only way to put the game back on a proper trajectory was to have a period like this.

14 hours ago, XTrueFinale said:

Hmnn....personally I don't mind the fact they banned cards but more the fact there's a ban list and a semi-ban list. In terms of ease of deckbuilding, I would rather they just have a ban list and no semi-ban list (what they call restricted).

Thankfully there is a online deckbuilder, which hopefully can be updated to reflect the changes to ease deckbuilding...

However it does irk me that quite a few of the the cards that released in the recent cycle are on the list, it gives the feeling off...ooh check just these new cards and the oops we screwed up coming up with them, time to nuke them. Owning a lot of FFG games, I saw them as a 'competent, professional' game design company but I'm getting a sense of being involved with a Kickstarter game (or a Blizzard video game) where this game is going. There's a a lot of ongoing chop and changes...and it just annoys me.

A Game Of Thrones LCG had a long experience with a Restricted List. It really is much less of a headache than managing multiple impacted MWL cards.

FFG has limited time and resources for playtesting. They're not that big of a company, and really nothing compares to what a few thousand dedicated players, with infinite time, and cards that are entirely finalized can accomplish.

On 27-9-2017 at 8:58 PM, Mep said:

Not sure I get MOpus, the MU kinda restricted that to begin with. If they really felt it was too OP they should have just removed in from core 2.0.

Same goes for Aesop’s Pawnshop, they should just have removed them completely and reduce the MWL in size.

The idea is that neither Magnum Opus nor Aesop's are degenerate by themselves but rather when in combo with one or more of the other cards on the list. Hence putting them in Restricted. Had they been degenerate by themselves or made degenerate combos with too many cards then (like Faust) they would have been banned.

The question is, was there another good shapper card that could have gone into the core instead of the cards on the restricted list? There are enough cards that can do econ that Magnum Opus goes from an auto included to collecting dust. Why not just get rid of it? It is an odd choice to both include the card in the core and restrict it.

Personally I think that Aesop's Pawnshop is a problem card in that it tends to open up degenerate uses and not really all that Shapery. Although it's not a problem in Core, I would have been happy to see it removed. My preference would have been to have the helpful AI as a one-off instead. It's unique anyway, gives 1 link and a boost to breakers. It feels like a really good Shaper card for Core, adds an extra link into the set to turn on Underworld contacts and gives a pseudo-economic boost by making it cheaper to get into a server one or more times on a big turn.

The other thing to remember about Core 2.0 is the parameters that had been set for it:

- No brand new cards

- Can only use cards from either Original Core or the two Rotated cycles.

Those were set so that someone who has Original Core and the first two cycles need not buy the new Core.

The problem is not Magnum Opus or Aesop's Pawnshop per se. The problem is the suite of Shaper econ, where you can run Opus for essentially infinite money, Aesop for clickless drip, while being able to consistently and cheaply access programs in your heap with Clone Chip. Moreover, Jinteki's been held at Tier 0.9 for a long time because Shaper's long term resilience has meant that such decks, in addition to very resilient econ, have also a very resilient...call it deck depth, which makes them very difficult to wear out using incremental net damage due to Levy AR Lab Access , let alone how much Film Critic has distorted the meta by affecting how much value there is to be had from cards like The Future Perfect, Obokata Protocol, and Haarpsichord Studios. With TGTBT in the core set, it also doesn't make sense to hose that card so much right out of the gate either.

The big interaction I see is that Aesop and Levy is just too much guaranteed long term income. You shouldn't be able to trash things in play willy-nilly and rest assured that you're going to see it all again. And if just those two cards were on the Restricted list, then Opus is still able to supplement your cash flow. Having both Levy and Film Critic in the same decks makes Jinteki a very safe matchup. Overall, I think that they really wanted to break up that core suite of cards that were in essentially every Shaper deck, with the exception of Opus which is a go-to solution once you start applying constraints to Shaper econ.

And ultimately, I think people need to relax about the Restricted list. I played AGOT 1.0 for years with a quite extensive restricted list and I'm here to tell you, just because you have to pick your one card doesn't mean that card isn't a staple card or doesn't belong in the core set. (AGOT's core set was notoriously weak, but the first two cycles were replete with power cards and even the FAQ linked above was notable for how many cards came off the RL.) These cards will see play; they're not suddenly persona non grata, they're just either a bit above the curve or are above the curve in concert with other cards on the list. It really is a solution that works perfectly fine. The only time you'll see it function as a soft ban is when a card is only good in concert with other cards, and is lackluster on its own.

As far as the legality of the default decks out of one core: it couldn't possibly matter less. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The default "all of Faction X plus all neutrals" is only for teaching the basics of the game and they should be abandoned as soon as you're familiar enough with the game to know what the pips in the lower right corner are for. The MWL matters about as much as the speed limit on the interstate does for a high school driver's ed class.

13 hours ago, Grimwalker said:

the first two cycles were replete with power cards

Indeed, the only 2 cards ever to be banned came from the first cycle (btw, it was designed to be played in the CCG as well, which explains the higher power level). They were unbanned when FFG reprinted the cycle as all 3-of's (monthly packs were initially 10 1-of's and 10 3-of's) with errata'd versions of those cards.

I'd be more worried about how many cards are on the "removed" list, though if they are mostly from early cycles (AGoT1's restricted list was organized by cycle, making it easy to tell), rotation will reduce that list eventually (provided the designers stay careful).

21 hours ago, Grimwalker said:

The problem is not Magnum Opus or Aesop's Pawnshop per se. The problem is the suite of Shaper econ, where you can run Opus for essentially infinite money, Aesop for clickless drip, while being able to consistently and cheaply access programs in your heap with Clone Chip. Moreover, Jinteki's been held at Tier 0.9 for a long time because Shaper's long term resilience has meant that such decks, in addition to very resilient econ, have also a very resilient...call it deck depth, which makes them very difficult to wear out using incremental net damage due to Levy AR Lab Access , let alone how much Film Critic has distorted the meta by affecting how much value there is to be had from cards like The Future Perfect, Obokata Protocol, and Haarpsichord Studios. With TGTBT in the core set, it also doesn't make sense to hose that card so much right out of the gate either.

The big interaction I see is that Aesop and Levy is just too much guaranteed long term income. You shouldn't be able to trash things in play willy-nilly and rest assured that you're going to see it all again. And if just those two cards were on the Restricted list, then Opus is still able to supplement your cash flow. Having both Levy and Film Critic in the same decks makes Jinteki a very safe matchup. Overall, I think that they really wanted to break up that core suite of cards that were in essentially every Shaper deck, with the exception of Opus which is a go-to solution once you start applying constraints to Shaper econ.

And ultimately, I think people need to relax about the Restricted list. I played AGOT 1.0 for years with a quite extensive restricted list and I'm here to tell you, just because you have to pick your one card doesn't mean that card isn't a staple card or doesn't belong in the core set. (AGOT's core set was notoriously weak, but the first two cycles were replete with power cards and even the FAQ linked above was notable for how many cards came off the RL.) These cards will see play; they're not suddenly persona non grata, they're just either a bit above the curve or are above the curve in concert with other cards on the list. It really is a solution that works perfectly fine. The only time you'll see it function as a soft ban is when a card is only good in concert with other cards, and is lackluster on its own.

As far as the legality of the default decks out of one core: it couldn't possibly matter less. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The default "all of Faction X plus all neutrals" is only for teaching the basics of the game and they should be abandoned as soon as you're familiar enough with the game to know what the pips in the lower right corner are for. The MWL matters about as much as the speed limit on the interstate does for a high school driver's ed class.

Well they sure did that as the entire suite is in Restricted. Which as you say puts the Jinteki “deck the Runner” strategy right back into play.

Yeah, I was trying to suss out exactly what the reasoning behind Restricting that entire suite. I think Aesop is one card too many, but I certainly see the argument that Aesop+Levy being a bit too much--it keeps Reavershop on the table. (But then I love me some Reavershop so my personal bias is incredibly strong)

I think we are seeing Boggs philosophy at work here; especially now that he has the ability to issue bans and restricts. He really does seem to have declared war on certain playstyles and is using the MWL as part of a "blunt intrument" approach to push ANR back to a much more basic approach where the Runner HAS to run to progress and where it is actually possible for Corp to actively oppose those runs.