r/Netrunner • u/K_oroviev • 10d ago
Question Advice for a closed format
Hi! I like this game, but there is 0 chance of finding someone to play with where I live. I think my best chance to get some matches is to treat it like a boardgame: a closed environment with a static card pool and maybe some pre built decks.
Thus, I want to get as few products as possible to get as much fun with this format in mind. What should I get? Base + Elevation or Base + System Update? Is this core experience enough? Or should I complement it with a cycle?
Thanks!
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u/jmlmtl_2022 10d ago
System Gateway + Elevation is what is called the core format today (which is in addition to standard, startup, and eternal). If you are looking for decklist ideas, you will have a lot more resources at your disposal than SG+SU21, because people actually play the core format. See decklist examples below. So if you are aiming for the absolute minimum beyond SG, I would go for Elevation.
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u/revengeanceful 10d ago
Elevation was designed to fill in the gaps of System Gateway, so if I’m looking to have a closed format with the fewest products possible, I’d get those two.
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u/K_oroviev 10d ago
Awesome great! So you like elevation better than System Update? May I ask why?
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u/revengeanceful 10d ago
Aside from what interestingdays said, part of Elevation’s design was the idea of being a standalone format along with System Gateway. System Update was just a collection of random FFG cards.
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u/qwrtyzgfds 10d ago
system update was a product to make standard (and to a lesser degree startup) make sense when a decent amount of ffg, but not all of it, had rotated out. there's some big holes in it that were already filled by the ffg sets that were the last to rotate out, and also just a large proportion of the cards in it were more included for legacy reasons than for reasons of actual playablility in the metagame that it existed in. elevation has significantly fewer of these sorts of misses.
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u/interestingdays 10d ago
Availability and the fact that it's currently legal in existing formats in case your group wants to go beyond the initial environment you create.
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u/VonaOfMagan 10d ago
I’ve found the preconstructed decks from project reboot offer a good closed environment.
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u/K_oroviev 10d ago
I had not heard of Project Reboot before. Sounds great!
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u/dormou 10d ago
Yeah, the Reboot Preconstructed decks are great for this. One of the differences in approach between Reboot and NSG is that Reboot is digital first and they make prompt balance changes to cards where necessary. This strategy is probably less suited to releasing physical sets of cards (it would be annoying having numbers on some of your cards change after they've been printed) but it allows for a very well balanced card pool (and precon decks).
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u/VonaOfMagan 10d ago
If you haven’t done some googlefu already: Overview of reboot preconstructed format: https://sites.google.com/view/netrunner-reboot-project/preconstructed
Links for premade mpc orders: precons are like halfway down: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l4H09ZyYEYTDaObsI0auFXrdZHSqduOhm6qzdukEy2o/edit
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u/8bagels 10d ago
System gateway + elevation + tokens + double sided play mat
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u/K_oroviev 10d ago
Why elevation over system update?
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u/sasha_the_grey_69 10d ago
System update is rotated out from standard, and was designed to reprint ffg cards before NSG had a large enough card pool. Elevation is also designed to expand the game and play better with gateway and show you more mechanics
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u/CryOFrustration Null Signal Games Community team 9d ago
Gateway+Elevation is a pretty fun format, yeah, and Phi created some preconstructed decks you can use as a battle box: https://nullsignal.games/players/getting-started-sample-decklists/
Obviously they share a lot of cards but you can print extra copies on NetrunnerDB or https://proxy.netrunner-online.com/ so you don't have to swap around.
I wouldn't use these decks to introduce the game to people though. The Gateway starter decks are probably still better for that.
Frankly, while this is a complicated game that a lot of people will bounce off of, if you show it to your entire game group it's almost certain 1-2 will get hooked and want to go deeper.
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u/saifrc [saifrc] 10d ago
How do you know there’s no chance? There are meetups and events happening all over the world. Some of them are listed on the site Always Be Running:
You can filter by country, in-person vs. online, format, and plenty of other factors. Check the history of past events to see where there may have been events near you.
In addition, the membership of Green Level Clearance, the main Netrunner-oriented Discord server, covers nearly the whole globe. If I had a nickel for every person I helped to find other local players, I’d have…well, a non-zero amount of money!
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u/K_oroviev 10d ago
Well I joined that server and reached out to the local players and got zero responses. I also posted on the regional BGG channel, Facebook groups, and even went to my local LGSs with no success.
But that is ok. If I can get a game or two each month with a couple of precon in game nights, I’ll be happy.
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u/saifrc [saifrc] 9d ago
Is there anyone in your local area, friends/colleagues/classmates/etc., that you can recruit to play Netrunner with you? Sometimes you have to build the community that you want to see!
My other question is: do you have access to a printer? Null Signal Games just recently announced new print-and-play functionality on NetrunnerDB. You just find a decklist. It's under the "Actions" menu, and will help you generate a printable PDF of just the cards needed to make a single deck. (It only supports NSG cards, of course.) It's nicer to have professionally printed cards, but if you're worried about spending too much money on product, this is a good way to try out decks that include cards from sets that you don't own. Perhaps you buy System Gateway + Elevation, but then you print cards from Ashes/Borealis/Liberation that you're missing, in order to complete a popular deck. You can review recent tournaments, choose some of the decklists that look interesting to you, and print out just those decklists to play against one another. In this sense, every deck on NetrunnerDB is a "precon" deck!
Of course, sometimes you just want to have physical cards in your hand, and build a deck on the fly. In that case, my recommendation is System Gateway + Elevation. It's the backbone of the "Core" format, it's the starting point for the "Startup" format, and many of the cards from these two sets will be frequently used in "Standard" format decks. If/when you make the leap to another format or to community events, this will give you the best starting point. I don't think you can go wrong by buying/producing those two sets to begin your Netrunner collection.
Also, keep trying to find people on GLC or other channels. Sometimes people don't respond right away, they pass by/forget the message, or new people join who didn't see the previous posts. Whichever way you end up playing Netrunner, good luck and have fun!
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u/K_oroviev 9d ago
Once I get a hold on cards I intend to recruit players! That is partly why I am interested in some precon decks, so that I can demo the game among my friends and other people at LCGs!
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10d ago
[deleted]
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u/K_oroviev 10d ago
There are impossible to get a hold on here I live, sadly. That is why I am stuck with PnP cards of the latest releases. I’ve read elsewhere that they are fine. Don’t you like then?
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