Debutante Shaper (old)

Some change that made the deck better : -3 Daily Casts, +1 Armitage Codebusting, +2 Beth Kilrain-Chang.

See it on stream : youtu.be .

This deck looks super poor - especially for a beginner deck where getting the fundamentals of money and draw should be the main focus.

There’s a lot of tech cards here that are taking up influence (flip switch, 2nd miss bones, 2nd corrodor) which could be spent on money - and dropping daily casts from a deck that is already poor and click intensive is unwise.

Also please check your interactions before suggesting them to new players - flip switch will not save you from SEA source as it cannot be used on the Corps turn!

I’m being harsh here because you have posted this as a deck suitable for beginners and I don’t believe it is a good introductory deck and may cause confusion and frustration for those players.

While your enthusiasm is certainly impressive - please spend a little more time testing and crafting decks before publishing them when doing so as a ‘teaching deck’

Thank you

Baa Ram Wu

@Baa Ram Wu Thank you for the correction. I edited the text. I might have used Flip Switch like that in the past . I still keep Flip Switch because it allow the runner to have an escape mechanism in case of miscalculation.

In my tests, the deck performed well. You can see it played on a french stream : youtu.be .

The definition of a beginner deck will varie for each player. For me, it mean to be light on tricky combos (Armand "Geist" Walker: Tech Lord would never a beginner deck for example). I dislike the idea of using the current Core for teaching, because I feel it is too far removed from standard games.

I tend to favor Armitage Codebusting to Daily Casts in shaper decks. With the extras clicks the shapers get, it make clicking for creds much better. This is a preference. You could switch them out and I'm pretty sure you would still get the same result.

I believe this deck is simple to use. But ultimately, it need to be tested by a real beginner (somebody with less than 100 games to their name). Testing by veteran will tell if there is glaring problems with the deck, but it need to be used by a beginner to qualify a deck as "beginner friendly".

I tried to make a deck for each faction with the following goals in mind : Straightforward game plan, able to demonstrate some tools of tropes of the faction.

As usual in any design, preferences will change things even if we keep the same goals. Like my preference that I stated previously.

What would you change?

Thanks for the inputs. Building a beginner friendly deck is actually complicated ;-)

Hey @Diogene

I agree with your definition of a beginner deck - it always wants to have a simple game plan and keep to basic interactions.

Also I think your right that after learning the fundamentals of how the game works using System Core then standard is a better for getting people excited about the game.

Also - your 100% right that making a learning deck is tricky - but in my mind that is why extra time needs to go into making them before publishing.

However I do think there is nothing more frustrating than playing a deck that can’t afford to do the things it wants to do.

Looking at your deck (with the changes you’ve mentioned) you have 9 econ card in a 45 card deck, plus 3 Pro Co which will give money and draw but after an initial hit to the tempo. The rezekis are good, but with no way to get them down early (except a single SMC) they are not going to do much in the early game.

In regards to daily vs Armitage: 3x daily cast will net you 15 credits for 3 clicks, Armitage will net you 33 credits but cost you 18!!! Clicks to get there! If you take away the fact that you can just click for a credit. Your only actually gaining 15 and have spent a lot of clicks to get there! Play Armitage by all means - but I don’t think dropping casts for Armitage is ever a good play - especially when your planning on clicking Pro Co multiple times in each turn.

I think if I was going to make a teaching deck for Kit at the moment it would look something like this: netrunnerdb.com

This has 24 econ cards with a mixture of fast burst and slow drip econ, it has decent draw with Annicam (+ diesel & deuces)

It has 3 SMC & 3 Stimhack as a way of getting Engolo out early which means they can pressure and face check any ice early on.

It has makers eye as it’s sun con, but can be changed to Khyshuk or a mixture as they get more confident with the deck (fwiw indexing is stronger but trickier to play in a Kit deck where you are best off running 1ce a turn)

I have tested this and it is very much playable in current standard without any tricky lines of play or hard to explain strategies.

Have a look and see what you think, hopefully you see where I’m coming from here.

Cheers BRW

@Baa Ram Wu I like your ideas. I agree about your analysis of Daily Casts. Also, I think the inclusion of Deuces Wild is great, since it is such a versatile card.

In my case, I had played about 25 games before 2020. I still remember how it felt for a beginner. It might be why I favor Armitage Codebusting. I also remember that it took me some time to understand the interaction between Self-modifying Code and Stimhack.

Once that interaction is understood, it is such a revelation (at least it was for me). So, I think the include it good. In this, it is a matter a preference, even if the interaction of Self-modifying Code and Stimhack is so powerful. I'm on the fence about this.

Aniccam is the best in-faction console for shapers. I will replace Supercorridor.

I tend to avoid token based cards (except for Medium, where you don't have to do anything with it. Here, I prefers Corroder because it will always work. Again, a matter of preference.

But I totally agree that the deck should have more econ cards. I will rework my version of the deck. Edit the deck to show the link to the reworked version.

You'll notice that my development process is iterative. While I do test, I think feedback is the most valuable thing. Your comments here are very much appreciated.

If you have the time, could you look at the other factions? Note that I'm reworking the jinteki one, after comments from another player.