The Winners and Losers of the 24.12 Banlist

NSG have announced a new banlist update, with broad implications for the netrunner tournament meta. With Trick Shot, Reality Plus and Luminal Transubstantiation all gone, a massive shakeup of the meta is predicted. But who are the biggest winners and losers?

Losers

Shaper

Every shaper deck was playing a playset of Trickshot. Aruzan’s worlds winning Ariassana, every Lat in the top cut of worlds, Kit and even Girls! All of these decks packed the most powerful shaper card to emerge from Rebellion Without Rehearsal. Is the faction dead now? No, but it will have a weaker matchup spread generally. Trick Shot was famous for being a great card against midrange and glacier decks, while also shoring up asset matchups at the same time, a historical weakness for the faction.

Many of these decks were already playing the second best version of this effect (Overclock) and there simply isn’t a third best version of trickshot to play. Some shapers may experiment with Into the Depths, but I imagine that other economy cards will find their way into lists. Arissana looks to be the most promising shaper deck to iterate on in the future—with access to instant speed Physarum and also being the best abuser of Muse.

While Shaper is happy to see Luminal leave the meta, it feels pretty indifferent about R+ going. It was already good into R+—or could be built in a way to be better against it—and losing Trickshot hurts more than never having to play against R+ again. Shaper will still be a force in the new format, but expect decks with more specific win conditions and tuned economy and breaker suites, rather than a pile of generically good cards.

Reality+

Reality+ kept making the cut of tournaments. While the asset brew of R+ took the UK Nationals cut by storm, a variety of archetypes out of R+ have been making waves this past year, including End of the Line kill combo and tempo oriented scoring plans. With R+ being banned, cards like Ping, Behold and Oppo Research will always present an economic hit to the Corp.

This means that the pool of NBN archetypes will shrink. Asset combo kill out of Near Earth Hub and Azmari Reducation have been the two best performing non-R+ decks. Both of these decks have their issues and will remain fringe. Many of the R+ decks don’t port well into other ID’s, leaning on the discount provided by the R+ ability. Expect the NBN faction to narrow down just to the kill decks.

Weyland

Well, if you’re a Weyland fan I have bad news: It’s going to get worse. The least played corp faction at worlds is having a rough go, with only one Weyland player making top 16 —and that’s more easily explained by “the Sokka effect” rather than because of anything tangible in the Weyland card pool.

More players are going to shift to Criminal and Anarch, especially with less NBN in the field and a potentially narrower Corp meta to exploit, and Weyland really doesn’t want to play against Anarch or Criminal at the moment. Weyland’s only hope has been to build a deck that could exploit Shaper explicitly, while hoping to duck Criminals or Anarchs. Instead, they now need to play into a more diffuse runner field—always a tough sell for weak factions.

Ob continues to look anemic while BTL glacier looks less viable in a world where people have more permission to play Arruaceiras Crew. The present is bleak, but the future looks bleaker. Here’s hoping rotation can fix Weyland’s woes.

Asa

Asa isn’t a loser in this update for the reason you might think. Yes, the deck lost Luminal. Will that hurt? Absolutely, but Asa was uniquely positioned as the anti-Shaper deck. The combination of assets, ice and rush gave it the highest win rate against Lat at worlds. With a predicted meta shift, Asa’s matchup spread looks a lot dicier.

Asa hates playing against Bankhar—which invalidates its one ice remote strategy in a single card. Criminal is problematic for Asa as well. Boomerang, Diversion of Funds, Aumakua and Miss Bones all present a variety of threats that aim to dismantle the boardstate and stop Asa from scoring. With the meta likely to see an increase in the share of Criminal and Anarch players at the table, Asa will need to answer the question of whether it was being played simply to exploit Shaper, or if it has the chops to handle the runner field more generally.

Sable

Sable was a dark horse anti-meta Runner in the previous format. Well positioned against Asa, PD and Weyland, it had a reasonable game against NBN and struggled versus AgInfusion. With potentially less Asa and PD seeing play, Sable is less likely to see her best matchups. If AgInfusion becomes more popular as a response to more Anarch and less Shaper, then Sable is not excited.

A potential avenue of development for Sable is to move away from the “Reg Crim” style and into Deep Dive Sable instead. Underexplored, its AgInfusion matchup isn’t as bad as you might think on paper. It is worth saying, though, that while DD Sable is well positioned as an anti-meta deck facing into an established meta, it’s not great at leading the way through uncharted waters.

Don’t expect Criminal to be picked up by the mainstream playerbase, but do expect to see more of it once the Corp meta settles into place and Criminal can attack its weaknesses.

Winners

Freedom

Freedom was in a weird position in the previous meta. Part of a group of runners I would describe as a “Great deck, but do we get to play trickshot?” Freedom wasn’t bad per se, but Lat and the Shaper gang had a more attractive matchup spread. With shaper looking worse, suddenly Freedom looks better. Maninthemoon’s list from worlds looks especially well positioned. Crew-Charm to deal with ice focused decks like AgInfusion, built in anti asset hate and Bankhar to give Asa a headache.

With his theoretically weakest matchups being Weyland rush—a faction that is very much in the dumps—Freedom looks to be the next best runner deck, and has a broad variety of positive matchups. But don’t expect this deck to be played widely—it will likely only be picked up by the most competitive players, due to the difficulty in learning to pilot the deck.

Is Crew Hoshiko a winner of this ban list? Probably. I imagine that we will see more Crew Hoshiko in the first few weeks of the meta, until people realize that Freedom has the overall better matchup spread.

AgInfusion

AgInfusion had a theoretically good matchup spread into the broader field, but struggled at the upper end of competitive play against Lat and other Shapers. With Trick Shot gone and people shifting to other runners, there is an opportunity for glacier AgInfusion to have a second wind post-banlist. The largest question for AgInfusion is how to beat Crew-Charm decks. Freedom looks like a difficult matchup, although some ice suite tuning and inclusion of several Mavirus could turn it from a losing matchup to an even one.

Personal Evolution

Louder has had its ups and downs over the competitive season, but DeeR showed us all at worlds that, when piloted expertly, the deck has a variety of threats and win conditions that will make any Runner sweat. It’s an open question what combination of Jinteki cards are going to be in this new meta’s PE deck, but the cardpool has shown it can happily support a variety of net damage and fast advance win conditions in the classic ID.

With hopefully less Stoneship and Annicam to worry about, PE looks well placed to put pressure on Anarchs and Criminals. More so, the flexibility of the cardpool for PE and the net damage soup it presents enables it to adapt to the runner meta. Freedom could be a potential problem for the deck, especially if Buffer Drive finds its way back into Audrey engine decks. Expect PE to keep its position as a strong meta pick, but not a leading deck.

NBN Kill

This one is a stretch, but bear with me. The two cards NBN kill wanted to see the least on the board were Annicam and Stoneship. Both of these cards mitigated against Punitive, Neurospike, Reaper Function and End of the Line. If people start playing less Shaper and more Criminal and Anarch, then NBN kill might be able to find more equity into the field.

I think this is only sort of likely. Neurospike Azmari has yet to prove it has serious legs outside of the UK, failing to make a splash at Worlds or UK Nationals. NEH kill combo has shown to be the specialty of the United States, played at several NANPC events across the continent. Whether it can hold up to Freedom playing Steelskin Scarring is an open question, and something to keep an eye on as the meta develops.

Conclusion

The biggest question arriving from the 24.12 banlist is whether we will see Shaper play rates decline. Shaper domination has been the story of this year, from Worldtree Arissana all the way to “Boring” Lat. A set of efficient economy tools buoyed by Trick Shot and efficient breakers turned shaper into the faction to beat.

If Shapers are played less after a Trick Shot ban, then Corps will adapt in unpredictable ways. Expect a fluid meta as those Corp archetypes that were put down by Shaper come back into relevance, only to be swatted down again by the next best Runner deck—probably Freedom. Criminal will continue to be the purview of the obsessed. Expect most of the playerbase to either stubbornly stick to Shaper, or to move on to the next best Anarch brew.

Many predicted that NBN would be dead after Bellona was banned in the last update. Despite rumors of an early demise, lists innovated over the summer and NBN won worlds. Many different archetypes will need to be revaluated in other ID’s as deckbuilders try to salvage the tagstorm archetype. Combo kill decks could prove an interesting choice in a world with less shaper, but will likely be soft to any future Anarch decks.

Luminal being banned probably won’t move the needle. If Asa gets worse, it will be because more people are playing Anarch—and Bankhar—not because it lost Luminal. Are PD and Asa worse? Absolutely, but not in a meaningful way that will significantly change their matchup spread.

The next large event on the calendar is the New Years Online Showdown followed shortly by the Circuit Breaker Invitational after. The meta will likely be explored at the Online Showdown, then solidify into place at the CBI. Either way, things look ripe for experimentation as we head into a new competitive season. Be sure to stay tuned to The Surveyor for up to date tournament coverage!