Itās a shame the backwards- and cross-compatibility of mechs etc stopped at 10-speed. If I stuck with Shimano and SRAM between my bikes, it was quite handy being able to share cassettes and various other bits between them. On the SRAM-kitted bikes they could mix and match between Rival and, say, X7 depending if I fancied drop bars or flat bars. Similar on the Shimano-kitted road bikes where I could flip builds between 105 brake/shifters and 10-speed downtube shifters for a more classic-looking build, use any classic-looking derailleur and even take cogs off the cassettes to fit in old spacing without excessive stretching but still maintain perfect indexing.
1x started working really well with 10-speed. 9-speed was just a bit gappy with 1x, but by 10-speed it was good.
NW chainrings work really well. Great innovation. Iām sure they were invented way back when, but they werenāt around.