Hello everyone! I’m Girometics, and I will be taking the role of Lead for the Startup Curation Team going forward. As you may have guessed from the various positions that were opened in the latest General Recruitment Drive, we are currently looking into fundamentally changing how the curation of the Startup Format operates. One big change is that we have now formed a team of people dedicated to making Startup the best it can be. Let’s meet them!
Introducing the Startup Curation Team
Lucy (she/her)
How did you get into Netrunner?
In late June 2023 I read yet another comment on Reddit recommending the game and talking about how tales of the game’s death were greatly exaggerated. I took the plunge, messaging a close friend and fellow long term card gamer and following what to us felt like the natural pipeline: System Gateway, then adding System Update 2021 for the full Core Set, then moving to Startup. A little while after we started playing Startup, The Automata Initiative (TAI) came out and flooded us with new cards and excitement. I was hooked.
What drove you to care about the Startup format?
After going through the ‘getting into netrunner’ pipeline myself, I introduced the game to my local gaming community and brought them through the same pipeline. That group has evolved into what is today the Reading Indie Gamers Netrunner Locals scene. Startup presented a uniquely accessible format for the game, and with some unofficial and then official bans on Drago and Endurance the format was dynamic, diverse, and truly a joy to play. One of the things that always stood out to me about the format was the ease with which people could take to deckbuilding for it, a task which often feels unassailable to all but the most experienced of Standard players. It’s that unique accessibility that drives me to care about it!
What is your favorite Startup deck, past or present?
It has to be my pet deck from the TAI Startup format: World Tree Arissana! I know this is having a heyday in Standard at the moment, but in Startup it played as a very different beast. Instead of an infinitely cycling economy (difficult without Daily Casts) you were focused on popping as many Environmental Testings as possible. This incentivised a fast playstyle of trading Slap Vandal and other temporary breakers into a permanent breaker suite in the mid to late game, eventually building the doom-rig of Cleaver, Unity, Echelon and K2CP Turbine.
Stwyde (he/him)
How did you get into Netrunner?
I originally learned to play with the Revised Core Set when some friends from high school recommended I try it out with them. I hadn’t really gotten into card games, but was immediately hooked by the asymmetric nature of the game. Sadly, I ended up becoming really busy in college and I dropped the game due to time constraints.
I later heard about Null Signal Games taking over Netrunner and decided to revisit the game in 2023. Looking at the cards in System Gateway, I was hooked back in, and this time I couldn’t let go. It’s been a great experience so far. I’ve found the community around Netrunner to be one of the best there is, and I’m incredibly thankful to have met such a diverse and supportive group, both online and in meatspace.
What drove you to care about the Startup format?
Playing this game with the full Standard card set can be really intimidating. This game especially has so many different deck archetypes, combinations, and pieces to keep track of. When I first jumped into Standard, almost everyone recommended netdecking. While that made sense for my situation as a newer player, I hated it because I wanted to craft my own deck that I could test and feel happy with. I found myself returning to Startup every now and then because it gave me the space to scratch my deckbuilding itch. I think that sort of beginner-friendly deckbuilding and exploratory space is really valuable for new players, and can provide a space for more intermediate players to also develop deck building and play skills that might be harder to attain on the much larger scale of current Standard.
What is your favorite Startup deck, past or present?
Oh this is a really tough question! While I’m a Shaper player at heart, I absolutely loved playing Esâ decks in Startup when the Borealis Cycle and The Automata Initiative were in the card pool together. The whole concept of sabotage and balancing core damage was so fun, and made the game feel really fast. Seeing the number of core damage I had taken and viewing it almost as a timer made the game feel like a race between winning and flatlining.
Girometics (he/him)
How did you get into Netrunner?
Back in 2021, during Covid, I was looking for a two-player board game with good replayability to play with my buddy at the time, and first stumbled onto Android: Mainframe. We were somewhat dissatisfied with that game, but I noticed the advertisement for Android: Netrunner on the side of the box, sending me down a rabbit hole and eventually landing me here.
What drove you to care about the Startup format?
I was already quite enamored with all of the concepts and strategies that could be found in the “core” card pool of System Gateway + System Update 2021, which had been recently released when I started out. It was only natural for me to eventually graduate to Startup and start experimenting there. The Startup format, which was those two sets plus the Ashes Cycle and Midnight Sun at the time, was where I took my first step into competitive card gaming.
What is your favorite Startup deck, past or present?
I consider myself a deckbuilder at heart, so when I attend a tournament, you will often see me pilot a weird brew of my own. This “Punitive RH” list that I cooked up with only a semblance of knowledge of competitive Netrunner at the time had exceptionally weird play patterns and landed me at 5th place at my first competitive event. I hold it in high regard in my mind, for that memory alone.
The Future of Startup
One of the main advantages of having a team of people overseeing Startup is that we can ensure that the format is being continually overseen by someone willing and able to take corrective action, in whatever form necessary. Moreover, this way we can react to changes in the format faster by being able to discuss proposals internally, instead of having to call in a panel whenever we would like to do so.
The plan is still to run panels to consult the community, but these will differ in function from how they were previously approached. They will mostly be used to gather player feedback at times when the Startup metagame has not quite settled yet, for example following a new set release. We will provide a separate update on how future Startup panels will work when we next call for one.
With that said, we have decided that we will not be calling a panel before Worlds. We believe that we have already gathered enough feedback and data from the current state of Startup to formulate and test a Startup Ban List. We hope to release one in time for it to be legal during the Startup Event at Worlds, so be on the lookout for that.
Beyond that, we are also looking into how Startup fundamentally operates as a format as a whole, and how to better promote it in the wider Netrunner community. What exactly that means will be announced in due time.
As Startup is the format that I grew up with as a Netrunner player, it lies incredibly close to my heart. I hope that we can do it justice by giving it the love and attention it deserves.
