I think Netrunner doesn't work so good with drafting. There could be some rules of course but Netrunner main strengths lies elsewhere. CCGs works very good with drafting because booster packs makes this very easy. Of all LCGs I would say Netrunner drafting would be the most difficult to try to implement in a good way. I am interested to try draft format anyway.

Also cherry picking might not be so big issue with Netrunner. Usually you pick a focus for your deck and build your deck according to this. Factions picks the focus for you and you will cherry pick best faction cards anyway but it comes from smaller card pool. I see factions limiting deck building but not adding much for the game. Factions can be important for the theme and feel of the game for me tho. But again we don't know much about Netrunner factions yet.

 In AGoT in drafting you used to be able to pick your faction after you drafted cards, and you could play two factions in an "alliance" where the normal gold penalty didn't apply to things in either faction, but it required more power to win the game. Something like the first could work for Netrunner, and some sort of variation on the second could probably work.

We'll have to see how factioning is done in the game and what kind of deck building restrictions go along with it.

Factions are such a sacred cow in CCGs, and I have no idea why, outside of the fact that they have existed since Magic: The Gathering, and that they are necessary to fit the setting of certain games (AGoT for example). They allow players to "explore the flavorful distinctions" of each faction, but they also restrict deckbuilding to a certain degree, which admittedly varies from game to game, but always puts some sort of obstacle in place that limits what players can create, what types of strategies can be viably merged together within a deck, etc.

Shouldn't the goal be to afford as much customizability as possible? I feel that factions are counter-intuitive in that regard, and to that end, I say it's time to slaughter the cow. In other words, let's leave out factions when they aren't necessary for a specific game, as is obviously the case with Netrunner given its prior success.

MarthWMaster said:

Not necessarily. If there were no factions e.g. in CoC, everyone would include the most cost-effective cards and combos in their deck, and deck diversity would dwindle drastically. That's just the reason why there is a list of restricted or banned cards.

In addition, each of the different factions (or to an even higher degree, also traits) can focus on a specific concept / theme. Thematically, that's nice, imo.

This doesn't mean that factions are a must-have in A:N. I haven't played the original NR, and don't know the Android universe, so I absolutely can't tell. But we are getting away from the original topic… Drafting would be really nice for LCGs, but I can see it can come together with difficulties. I look at it as Penfold does - until we know how faction restrictions are realized in the game, there's too much speculation…

 Did you play Netrunner competitively? Seriously within a year it was ridiculous, with a handful of deck archtypes that used the biggest and best cards to accomplish the goal possible and everything else was ignored unless you didn't have enough of the rares or uncommons to field the deck you wanted. If that was the case then you used cards that were distinctly less efficient, than everyone else and generally got squashed early and often.

IF bag and tag is a viable deck type in the new game what you will see is decks that are going to be 80% (or greater) the same and that variance of 20% will slowly be reduced as specific decks start racking up wins or the card pool deepens. What will prevent this from being the case? Because almost undoubtedly the most efficient cards are going to be split across 2 or more factions. This means that each player is going to have to make some serious decisions about how to build a bag and tag deck. Which corporation has the best means of Tagging the runner? Which corporation has the best means of bagging the runner? Which one has the best way of being able to afford the proper ice and winning the trace attempts? Which corporation is going to have the best protective/stall cards to slow down or punish the runner while you are setting up all the pieces?

Any artist knows that restrictions demand for more creativity, not less. Finding how to say/do what you want within the restrictions is part of what makes a creative genius stand apart.

MarthWMaster said:

I agree partly with this, it depends how factions are done. The genius idea in MTG was that factions can be mixed freely but you have to have specific resource to play specific faction card. This sounds very basic now but it wasn't then. If you want to cherry pick just the best cards for your deck you have to have specific resource to play them also (like if you want to play powerful blue card you then need blue resources). This factioning offers a lot of thinking to the deck construction. Just putting the best cards to your to your deck might not be good because you might not be able to play them. This kind of factioning is IMO the best. Basic problem in MTG was that you need boring and sometimes dead land cards in your deck just to play other cards. CoC later fixed this (well CoC was not first one) to allow every card work as a specific resource or "land".

In AGoT there is just gold resource and there is not Lannister or Stark gold resource. So there is a heavy penalty to play other factions cards. This kind of factioning limits the deck building a lot and there is rarely many cards from different faction in the deck. This is a bit lazy game design IMO. But I am ok with AGoT factioning because it adds a lot of theme to the game. It is always cooler to play Baratheon deck than a random knight deck.

In Netrunner there is also just bits, no Jinteki or Weyland bits. So factioning could be something doing with card cost or something with deck building. I am interested to see how they handle the faction question in Netrunner. I don't know anything about Android universe but what I understand there is not huge amounts of background material. That is one reason I was surprised to see factions. I don't think many know what is Jinteki or Weyland. In W:I and AGoT factioning made more sense with a theme of the game because every faction is very well known and they work as a different factions in background material also. I hope making factions to Netrunner was a choice that made sense with the game play and was not made just because there are some kind of factions in every game. I am looking foward of the game anyway.

Just a thought, what if you didn't separate the corp and runner cards, instead of 4 "packs" of 15 runner cards and 4 "packs" of 15 corp cards; how about 6 packs of 20 runner/corp cards.  Maybe 10 of each, maybe 20 at random, but it would give a bit of flavor, sacrificing the corporate side to be more efficient runners and vice versa.  You do have the problem with making sure each player ends up with 2 legal decks, but given that Netrunner has fewer limitations on deck design than other asymmetric card games(World of Warcraft comes to mind), it should be easy enough for each corp player to come up with their own agendas provided the skill of the players is sufficient.