24.05 Meta Review
A look back at the 24.05 meta
With the new banlist set to come into force at the end of the week, now is the perfect time to look back at the last 4 months of netrunner. We analysed the results of 3398 games played across 27 of the most competitive tournaments, and this is what the numbers tell us about the 24.05 meta.
It was Corp favoured
Hit from almost every angle by the 24.05 banlist, and despite an early panic about Ashnikko being unbeatable, it was surprising both how quickly Corps were able to find a winning groove, and how stubbornly they held onto it throughout the season. From American Continentals onwards, Corps dominated every major tournament—with only a handful of exceptions (North Australian Nats, AMT - July 27th, NANPC Montréal)
What’s particularly striking about this data is how consistent it is. You can slice the data by region, or by offline vs online play, and Corp win rates always sit at a solid 53%. The only thing that might be worth noting is that Corps tended to perform slightly better in Top Cuts (54%) than in Swiss (53%), suggesting that the players that performed best in 24.05 were those that maximised the Corp advantage.
It was a Shaper meta
One response to the Hoshiko upset at American Continentals was to stop playing Anarch and start playing Shaper, and any player that did this was quickly rewarded.
You can see this most clearly in the overall win rate data, which shows that Shaper was the only of the three runner factions to win the majority of their games (51%). You can also see this by comparing the faction diversity of Top Cuts with overall tournament attendance. Shaper made up 44% of Swiss, but 54% of Top Cuts—squeezing out Criminal. It’s pretty clear that if you wanted to do well at a tournament in 24.05, then Shaper was the best faction choice.
The best Corps were trying to kill you
The highest performing Corp identities (by far) were those that most effectively included a flatline component to their strategies. Across the season, Azmari and RH had 64% and 63% win rates, respectively.
You can see an echo of this if you look at Top Cut diversity, which—when compared to overall tournament attendance—clearly favoured Jinteki. Jinteki made up 21% of Swiss, but 28% of Top Cuts—squeezing out any Weyland players that weren’t playing Ob.
Lat was the best runner ID
Possibly because he is so much more difficult to flatline, Lat was the highest performing runner ID—by a very wide margin. Lat had a 57% win rate across 470 games, and is comparable only to Arissana who managed a respectable 52%. No other runner identity was able to achieve a positive (greater than 50%) win rate.
NBN was unpopular, but hugely successful
Having been hit the hardest by the 24.05 banlist update, NBN was the least popular Corp faction of the season (only 588 games played—which is less than PD!), but those few people that did bring NBN to a tournament tended to do really well with it (58% win rate).
This might be the most important takeaway when it comes to looking ahead at the 24.09 meta to come.
Conclusion
24.05 will be remembered strangely. It will be remembered as a time where players struggled to decide on what to play as Corp, despite Corps being ahead. It will be remembered as a time when PD—with no new cards—suddenly started performing again, while people couldn’t really get Ob or Sable to work in the way that they used to. But, mostly, it will be remembered as a time when Shaper dominated the top tables, and when very few people could figure out how to play as, or against, NBN.
Was it fun? 3,400+ games suggests that it was. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed playing in it, and hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading about it in The Surveyor.
Stay tuned for more analysis and speculation about the impact that banning World Tree might have on the meta in 24.09!
The COMPLETE 24.05 meta analysis is available here
Loved this meta, Loved this analysis, excited for the new meta, and more Surveyor reports
Netrunner match win % data is truly fascinating to me.
For example take this tidbit:
" Corps tended to perform slightly better in Top Cuts (54%) than in Swiss (53%), suggesting that the players that performed best in 24.05 were those that maximised the Corp advantage."
I would not have guessed that to be true a priori, since pure theorycrafting strongly suggest that open decklists should generally advantage the runner-side player. I still think that's roughly correct, but maybe this meta really rewarded specific strategic Corp choices overall.
This meta has also really highlighted the power of Punitive Counterstrike, a card that in the past I've generally mostly dismissed as a "scrub check" (which, to be fair, was a check I often failed). It's a linchpin fork in both RH and the more recent Azmari lists. The way to win as the Corp is to put immense time pressure on the runner to simultaneously beat ice and maintain enough econ. If they can't, they die. By virtue of being the "least squishy Shaper" (due to occasional 6 hand size on Corp's turn) Lat has a natural ability to beat Double Punitive on a 3 point steal; hence statistically-detectable advantage over Arissana.
As for how enjoyable the meta is given the propensity for losing to extremely fast decks or punitive... I mean, I prefer it to 70 minutes games of getting thousand-cut to death by PE or drowned by Thule traps any day. Overall, it has been fairly fun, because even the fastest Corp decks cannot perfectly consistently execute their forks and there's room for yomi type stuff.