A Hard Look at the hatred of Card Games

A bit of a rant but I'm in the mood to vent.

As a 90's kid, I grew up in the era of Card Games. And to be quite frank I absolutely hate them. Yes I still play netrunner and a few others, but I hate them. I hate the strategies, the marketing, the ideologies, and the investment.

To explain, I'm going to use Netrunner. Pokemon got weird, Yugioh and Magic couldn't stick to a power-curve, and all those other odd games like Duel Masters fell apart (despite some awesome card art.)

Netrunner starts out in my good graces by throwing out entirely the random purchase methods used for other games. It wraps everything into nice, predetermined sets. The cards are specifically chosen so that if you want a full set (like the Morph ice) you need to buy three or more separate packs but hey, it's still cheaper than buying two dozen "boosters"

The power-curve of individual cards is nearly impossible to figure out on this game because while there are cards that are obviously more efficient, they usually have some crippling flaw that balances them back out. sometimes these flaws aren't even intended. I will say that anything which can wipe out the other guy's economy is straight up broken however, and it can easily paralyze the other player, and it's not fun sitting there waiting knowing there's nothing you can do and that those 10 credits you just lost where 2-3 turns worth of cash. It is well established that a 5 for 3 agenda or 3 for 1 agenda are good framework points.

Power-curve of multiple cards becomes increasingly insane however. For example, today I had a game against a guy who played Wireless Net Pavilion, Fall Guy, Data Link Reversal, and Joshua B. which basically said that he keeps pilling on tags, get's an extra click a turn, either stops or punishes me for try into get rid of any of his cards by way of the clicks. He took an idea, the tag, that was supposed to be a boon for the corporation and turned it inside out, weaponized it, and burned through four of my cards a turn and used his fifth action to further reinforce this. This kind of BS is not unique, and unfortunately net runner sees less of it than many other card games.

Unlike other games, Netrunner has a lot of draw acceleration. this removes one of my usual gripes of luck based progression and replaces it with another... deck composition. A lot of players tell me that the game, and all others like it, are entirely skill and luck. But the fact is that it's not. Netrunner, perhaps worse than any other game, boils down to deck composition.

During the aforementioned game,my only viable countermeasure (that i could control) would have been to play All Seeing I, which is widely considered the equivalent of a nuke... and all it would have done was make him vulnerable to follow up attempts at removing his combo. He would have retained his Joshua BH, data link Reversal, and another card of his choice thanks tot he three Fall Guys he put down in two turns. With Paparazzi on the field as well, he was immune to most of the other cards out there that make being tagged dangerous.

I did not have ASI in my deck, I had no inclination to think that I should be playing the faction that does use it or that it would ever work in the deck I was using. My deck by it's very design was incapable of stopping him, not because it was bad design mind you, I was exploiting The Board, which was untouchable to his deck, to make it so that he could not score enough points to actually win. But as the runner, running a hard core mill deck, all he had to do was out wait me.

Another possible countermeasure would have been to play a trap heavy deck, but at the rate he was burning through my deck, four cards a turn, he would have trashed most of my traps and scrapped out the agendas as he desired, just as he was doing.

My point is, that you hardly even need to play the game to know who will win. since neither knows who they will run against, it's more or less a blind pick. the decks hit the table and their composition can already decided who wins barring really, really bad play.

Win More is also a problem. Once one player get's ahead, they not only stay ahead but can easily widen the gap. While this was not a big issue early in Netrunn, it is an increasingly common problem. Runners often need to spend a lot of money to make every run, five credits or more, where as the corporation can pull any number of tricks (such as Sundew and the Jenteki identity that says you must run a central server each turn before running a remote) to double their efficiency (have to run one nightmarish protected server to even be allowed to run another lightly protected one.) I've seen several corporations end the game with eight or more solid ice on the table with four or more unrezzed and over 20 credits in the bank.

Accelerating meta is another issue. Despite what I've heard several players argue, once meta speeds up it does not slow down. even when certain cards are introduced to slow down the speed of acquisition, it pushes a fast advance corporation back about one click (read 1/3 a turn,) or full turn at the most. But some fast advance can negate even that as there are quite literally cards that do the EXACT opposite of other cards.

In a way, this wraps back into deck composition.

Players who will not accept your surrender, insisting that you "play it out" are equally annoying. When I can dictate, and doe so accurately, the next six turns at this exact moment, with every possible win condition having already been removed from the game by card effects or the removal of cards, save for one wich can only be accomplished by one of the two players, I think that it is simply sportsmanlike to allow the other player to bow out and not force them to stick around and watch for six turns as you forcefully mill their deck away.

TL;DR version... Meta acceleration, cost, refusal of concession, out of control power curves, out of control card interactions, constant rule changes (monster reborn, anyone?,) and deck composition and luck dictating the outcome more than skill.

I'll stop here before I start talking about the war gaming community.

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