Would a Core Set Sealed event be viable? Crack a Core Set, randomly distribute the Runner and corp decks amongst 6 players (set the extra Corp deck aside). Randomly distribute the Neutrals? Players swap decks for the second game in their match.

Just trying to find a way to:

a) Justify the cost of another Core Set

b) Get people playing

Are the starter decks unplayable without the Neutral Cards? Should the Agenda Point goal be lowered for this type of event?

edit: After looking at the Neutrals, I could give each of the 3 corp players 1 Priority Req & 1 Private Security force. Maybe give each of the runners 1 Crypsis and 1 Armitage Codebusting?

It's really not feasible to make legal decks without the Neutrals.

The corps each need all the neutral Agendas to come up with a legal Agenda count. The runners aren't going to make it up to a legal deck size without some neutrals, and if they don't use almost all the neutrals, they'd need to be splashing other factions, which won't work either if you're giving the factions to different people.

The best suggestions I've seen involved doing drafts. You could probably come up with two separate legal Runner decks out of one box, and if each match-up shared their Agendas with their opponent each round, you could draft two Corp decks out of one box, too. So you'd draft from a number of boxes equal to half the number of players. That's the only way I can come up with to force people to deckbuild on the spot.

And, of course, a "sealed box" tournament is functionally equivalent to a "1-Core-Set" restriction, otherwise.

The decks are barely with a full set of neutral cards for each deck. With your method, the decks will be too small (under the 45 card limit) and the corp decks will not have nearly enough agenda points (6 of the neutral corp cards are agendas). Not to mention there are 22 neutral corp cards, which doesn't divide by 3.

I'm afraid your nice idea won't work.

I was trying to go with something similar to a Magic sealed event, where the decks have a minimum size of 40 rather than the regular "legal" minimum size of 60. I know the decks won't be "tournament legal", which is why the Agenda goal could be lowered to 5 ish.

The agenda limit is not in agenda cards, but agenda points (1 agenda card is between 1 and 3 points currently, and the distribution depends a lot on the corp identity). The problem with randomly distributing neutrals is that the bulk of agendas is provided by the neutral agendas (6 cards for 15 points). Here's the distribution:

• Haas-Bioroid: 3 cards, 6 points
• Jinteki: 3 cards, 6 points
• NBN: 4 cards, 6 points
• Weyland: 5 cards, 5 points
• Neutral: 6 cards, 15 points

You might want to give out one copy of each neutral agenda to each player to guarantee them 5 agenda points. That would give them 10-11 points, which, extrapolating from the rules would support 20-24 card decks. With 5-7 agenda cards, that would tilt the game too far in the runner's favor.

This was also asked on BGG.

It is not a good way to introduce the game to multiple players.

It is like asking if 6 players can play off of one chess set.

You would need at least 3 core sets for 6 players to be able to play. Then this would be possible, with each pair of players sharing a core set and switching between corp or runner for a match. Doing it this way you would allow everyone to play whichever faction they wish to play.

byronczimmer said:

I thought it was more along the lines of asking if you could build a 40 card magic deck out of six boosters (ie sealed play).

It's cool- I'm just gonna proxy up the Neuts.

zedward said:

Probably the best solution for the time being, though I really do encourage multiple sets in the long term.

The Magic analogy doesn't hold though, since your opponent would also need to build a deck out of six boosters, as would the other four players.

6 Magic Boosters: $24 per person (are they about $4? totally not in that scene).

1 Core set for 2 players: $40

Seems comparable.