imp

Oh that's a really good point, the deck was originally Wyldside-free and had 2 hostages, 2 donut and 1 Kati. Influence bloat is a real danger of incessant tweaking! Although the idea of playing a double event with Wyldside and Donut already on the table out pains me beyond belief!

Here's a deck I've been tooling around with recently. Almost took it to a game night tournament over the weekend, but ended up wussing out after a horrendous losing streak on Octgn. The basic idea is that you're going to hopefully land a Donut in your opening hand, install it, and then proceed to trash all your opponent's asset economy using Whizzard's recurring credits. Drunken Donuts Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead) Hardware (5) 2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) •••• 3x Grimoire (Core Set) Resource (21) 2x Aesop's Pawnshop (Core Set) •••• 3x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set) 3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control) 3x Donut Taganes (Honor and Profit) ••••• • 2x Ice Carver (Core Set) 2x Kati Jones (Humanity's Shadow) 2x Liberated Account (Trace Amount) 2x Public Sympathy (Cyber Exodus) 2x Wyldside (Core Set) Icebreaker (9) 2x Corroder (Core Set) 3x Knight (Mala Tempora) 2x Mimic (Core Set) 2x Yog.0 (Core Set) Program (10) 1x Crescentus (A Study in Static) • 2x Datasucker (Core Set) 2x Djinn (Core Set) 1x Medium (Core Set) 1x Nerve Agent (Cyber Exodus) 3x Parasite (Core Set) Also Wyldside is in there to help with the anarch tutoring problem, and Aesop's is in there for when you get overwhelmed with cards, even though public sympathy helps with this. I love the idea that Whizzard just needs to keep dancing every night until he meets Aesop on the dancefloor, who very nicely offers to buy his VIP wristband so that Whizzard can finally have a nice sit down.

After a group of us all finished firmly in the middle of the pack at a recent Chronos Protocol tournament, we were each dared to make a silly deck based on a fun/uncompetitive idea or archetype. I was given the task of making Data Leak Reversal work, and this is the best I managed. It actually has a surprisingly high win ratio in my local meta, which is almost certainly not deserved. Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire (Core Set) Event (15) 2x Account Siphon (Core Set) ••••• ••• 3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control) 2x Déjà Vu (Core Set) 2x Lucky Find (Double Time) •••• 2x Queen's Gambit (Double Time) 3x Sure Gamble (Core Set) Hardware (5) 3x Grimoire (Core Set) 2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead) Resource (11) 2x Data Leak Reversal (Future Proof) 3x Fall Guy (Double Time) ••• 2x John Masanori (Opening Moves) 2x Joshua B. (Cyber Exodus) 3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control) Icebreaker (6) 2x Corroder (Core Set) 2x Mimic (Core Set) 2x Yog.0 (Core Set) Program (8) 2x Datasucker (Core Set) 2x Imp (What Lies Ahead) 2x Medium (Core Set) 2x Parasite (Core Set) 15 influence spent (max 15) 45 cards (min 45) Cards up to Double Time It's way too heavy on money, but I'm terrible at budgeting, and installing all the goddamn cards needed is a little costly for a poor old anarch. The basic idea is to run aggressively with Masanori, sucker(s) and cheap breakers installed before the mid game, and then get out Joshua B and two fall guys (perhaps even a plascrete or two). Once I'm guaranteed a shot on HQ, I take the extra click from Josh B, use it to account siphon (maybe twice), install Data Leak Reversal and click it a few times to trash off the top. At this point I'm gambling on the corp not being able to scrape enough cash to get rid of both fall guys and DLR (they're certainly not going to be able to scorch me at this point), and so the plan is to keep taking the extra click (and tags), trash cards with DLR and check archives once a turn, siphoning again when necessary.

I actually shudder with delight whenever I think of the Jinteki possibilities presented in the Honor & Profit expansion. And then a little more when I think about all the meta changes going to happen because of it and the lunar cycle stacked on top. Can we expect any H&P chat in the next Terminal7 episode? Also: give us timezone-challenged people who live outside the americas a little more twitter notice to send questions/input before episodes are recorded please!

I guess the real mystery is what Janus is doing mixed up among all those Norse dudes...

Fantastic episode guys! As a Japanese speaker, I just wanted to maybe clear up that anecdote about Jinteki's name. Jinteki (人的) is a compound word, made of two kanji, The first, 人, meaning 'person', and the second, 的, meaning 'of, or relating to'. So when the two halves are put together, the dictionary definition of the word is 'personal' or 'human', as in human resources, or human error. It is possible, should you really want to stretch the meaning by breaking the word back down to its constituent parts, to read jinteki as... 'humanish', I suppose. I suspect a native wouldn't necessarily make the same leap, though I could be wrong, but as your friend points out, it would be damn cool if the naming was intentional. On the whole the use of Japanese words in the game is pretty good! All the names sound like actual plausible names at least! So, more to the point, apparently 'haas' is is Dutch/German for 'hare'. Any rabbity-themed ice coming up? Oh jeez, I actually intended to write that as a (poor) joke but just realised the Germanic origins of the company name must be why they use the name "Wotan" rather than "Odin". That's pretty rad.

I'll have to take a photo next time. I totally agree, in my experience the mental exhaustion has actually been kind of intoxicating. I went to the meetup the week after, and was genuinely disappointed I didn't end up feeling as frazzled as the time before. I guess that just means I've actually learnt the rules by heart now, so I'm not expending as much mental energy trying to follow along. I suppose I'll have to start making up for it my upping my machiavellian strategies, or maybe by trying to make a Reina Roja deck work...

Ooh, synergy? Blind coincidence? I actually met Quinns earlier this week, going to the first Netrunner meet I've ever been to. It was an utter joy. The people there were just as passionate and knowledgeable about the game as one might expect, and very welcoming to boot. It was actually one of the most intense evenings I'd ever had. Firstly, the location was really cool, just on the south of the river near London bridge, which boasts an excellent view of the financial district skyscrapers just across the water, framing the night in possibly the most appropriately cyberpunk scenery imaginable in the country. I played seven games in total against three different people, runner 3 times (1 win) and corp 4 times (2 wins), not bad for a newbie, I'd say. The whole experience left me absolutely drained though, in all honesty, the closest experience I've had to that level of mental exhaustion was after the six hour (!) exams I took during my finals at university. Well, maybe not quite as bad as them but you get the idea, Netrunner can be taxing! I'm pretty sure I took some actual brain damage. I cannot wait until next week. And the next podcast! I need more Netrunner nutrients to absorb!

I played my first game of Netrunner about two weeks ago now, and was completely lost. There are just so many procedures, unique rules, and arcane terminology to juggle in your brain. To be honest, after hearing about how good the game was for so long, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed at first, due to a couple of slightly wacky matches with my (also beginner) flatmate, in which the balance seemed to be off, or our fates had seemingly been decided by the shuffle of the deck, rather than the strategy of the player. Not to mention the endless redoing of turns and pauses to look up rules as we struggled to remember what each modifying element was doing to the game at any given time. Anyway, after a bit of pestering from a friend, we stuck with it and have since learnt how to play properly (I think, I'm not 100% sure we're playing perfectly rule-abiding games yet), and I'm now really, really enjoying it. Like you guys were saying, win or lose, it's just a really fun mental activity. After further needling from my aforementioned friend, my mind is thoroughly agape at the potential deckbuilding brings to the game. Just thinking about constructing a deck feels a bit like trying to learn Chinese there's so much completely foreign data to absorb. Now I find myself longingly looking at amazon before bed most nights, and cursing myself for not starting to play earlier; buying cards to "catch up" is quite daunting in terms of both money and learning! My head will probably explode from all the new knowledge before I manage to get them all anyway. Aaand anyway, all of that was a preamble just to say that I'm really enjoying the podcast too! Mainly because I understand at least 50% more of what you guys are talking about. Thanks very much, looking forward to hearing more!

Oh sweet, my flatmate just ordered a copy of this since we spend approximately 10% all of our free time playing Dominion. Looking forward to my first game and then listening to this!

Regarding fighting game macros: As a long term fighting game fan, and ignoring momentarily the implications of different types of characters being controlled in the same way leading to certain advantages/disadvantages (you could always balance things like recovery animations and move damage to sidestep that), I'm actually not opposed to the idea of a fighting game in which controls are massively simplified or perhaps even macros allowed. I've always preferred turn-based to real time strategy, and think it might be a cool thing to have a 2D fighting game where the strategic element is a little purer by removing the executional barrier to entry. As an aside, it might be a cool sub-genre, or perhaps a way to teach the basics of fighting game strategy, as I wouldn't like to see it as a feature in traditional 2D fighters - SFIV on 3DS allowed you to shortcut moves to the touchscreen which resulted in a really imbalanced game. Anyway, while I do think it's a shame that there's a dexterity-barrier to really getting the most out of fighting games as they are now, I think some of the richness in the meta-game would be lost by having macros or simplifying inputs. I'm going to use SFIV as the basis for my argument as it's the best known and most popular fighting game right now, I'm going to try and keep this simple, but would be happy to go into grizzly detail if anyone would like to discuss specifics. Basically, I think macros would oversimplify combo decisions in SFIV. They tend to boil down to confidence, and are influenced by a number of factors. Firstly, every decision you make in a game of SFIV is going to be influenced by the current game-state; things like you and your opponent's life and super meters, relative screen positioning, and even character choices (not all combos work on all characters! And some only when crouching, some only when standing, etc.) Even before landing a combo, you need to make decisions about what you'll do whether the first hit connects are not. Are you confident enough to go for max damage right from the off, knowing if that first hit doesn't land, you're most likely in for a world of pain? Or would you rather play it safe with a combo that lets you adapt mid way through, allowing you to either ease off if it isn't connecting, or, if you see it is connecting, see it through to the end for a smaller amount of damage than if you'd gone all in? And in choosing exactly which buttons to press, you also need the confidence you won't drop the combo mid-way through, as dropped combos tend to lead to huge punishes from the other player. So, say you do get a hit and can combo from it, the type of combo you do is going to be based on all the factors described above. (You'll have moment-to-moment goals at different point during each round, which you can think of as your 'current ambitions', CKII fans). So, if you're winning, you might want to think about maximising damage. If you're cornered, you might want to do a combo that gets you out of there. You might want to do a combo which could stun your opponent (if you've been taking a mental note of how close they are to being stunned). You might want to prioritise building super meter, if you think it will afford you more options offensively or defensively. And of course, it's not only a matter of choosing the right combo for the right situation, there is the difficulty of the combo to consider too. Combos range from 'baby' to extremely difficult. Some of the very hardest combos require timing that can be as strict as inputting a button press in a window only 1/60th of a second long. I can't say with a straight face that these are 100% necessary to win, but combos are fairly scalable in difficulty, and add to the richness of possibility the game offers. It's up to you to find the sweet spot between risk and reward depending on your situation and abilities, something I think macros would take away from. Added to which, difficulty isn't the only deciding factor in combo use - muscle memory can also be a bitch! For example, let's say Ryu is cornered with 50 health left. Not low enough to be chipped to death, but low enough that the next hit will take the round. Ken jumps in and bets everything on a Dragon Punch. Ryu blocks and Ken is sailing into the air. Now, as Ken lands, it's likely the Ryu player might panic, knowing he has only a short window to punish Ken, and enter a familiar combo. Let's say he does crouching medium punch, crouching hard punch, Dragon Punch. Good damage, but when Ken recovers, Ryu is still in the corner, and any move he can do can be easily countered by Ken to earn him the round. Now, if Ryu was being clever, he would have done crouching medium punch, crouching hard punch, Whirlwind Kick which would have got him out of the corner. The combos are of the same difficulty, it's just muscle memory that trips the player up. Overcoming this kind of thing is the mark of a good player, as he's constantly thinking about his situation rather than relying on rote memorisation. I think if you had a macro for each combo, though the temptation to press your favourite macro button is still there, I think pressing two familiar buttons then a different one is slightly more of a mental/physical barrier than just pressing one button for the appropriate situation. Similar to the above-described situation, external factors also have a way of affecting players' execution, and therefore their decision making processes too. Perhaps you haven't played the game in a month and you might not be playing as well and maybe choose to simplify things a bit... until the moment comes you need to bust out the flash in order to save your neck. Or maybe you're a top player and the match you're playing is a high stakes tournament, being streamed on the internet for all the world to see, and you don't want to embarrass yourself by messing up, but you also don't want to be seen missing your chances... With macros, I think you'd be losing a lot of tension! And you'd also use the "execution as intimidation" aspect of the game too!

Hi thumbs, what an excellent cast! It felt tailor made to my specific tastes, as a big fighting game fan, Civ V maniac, and Dark Souls aficionado. I just wanted to chip and say as well as providing hours of rolly-smashy hilarity, there's kind of a cool reason for including all the pots and crates in that game. Well, a good excuse anyway. A little way in, you can purchase a spell that allows you to transform yourself into one of those giant clay urns. Though funny enough by itself, you can also use to either hide from invading players, or, as an invading player, use it to conceal yourself and lie in wait until the time is ripe to pounce on your unsuspecting victim. Or, my favourite use, pretend you're Ye Olde Snake in his ye olde cardboard box and creep around stalking people.

Hi thumb people, I got the kickstarter postcard in the post today, it's pretty sweet! I will treasure it until I lose it. Anyway that prompted me to finally join the forums. I like the decor. Looking forward to having Bloody Good Time(s) and so forth with you guys.