Originally published at: Alexfrog’s Honor and Profit Set Review - StimHack
Discuss the latest StimHack article here.
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I know where Alexfrog is coming from; I took a hiatus from November to February and have since regained my admiration for the game.
I think this last month has shown improvement in the metagame, largely thanks to Red Coats and PADman, both of which are more oldschool and avoid most of the annoying tactics you mention. Granted, other annoying tactics have emerged (CI combo decks that are uninteractive until the last turn, etc). Hopefully the metagame continues to move away from Siphon. I think it will.
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Also, my own Soapbox.
Consider Psychic Field. In NBN. It costs 1 influence and the runner MUST run it, else risk an Astroscript/SanSan through. They must also trash it for 2 else I can use it to protect SanSan. Sure, it has counter-synergy with Sweeps Week, but swap your Tollbooths for Flares to punish anyone that doesn’t draw up, and possibly throw in a Scorched since Flare destroys hardware, and you have a pretty efficient kill condition only using 5 cards. Devote the rest of your deck to the Astrotrain and you have a Tier 1 deck.
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I might be in the minority, I don’t know, but I want the runner to use Planned Attack to Siphon me. Or at least, make the attempt to.
They can’t run to face-check my ice, install any breakers, or do anything else if they have to click away those tags. I run cards in each corp deck meant to punish tag-me runners for their hubris, so much of the time I can Closed Accounts them (or even, heart of the cards willing, Scorch them) and make sure that nobody’s walking away happy (least of all them).
It lessens the swing of the Siphon by 2, eats an extra click, and helps me decide where to put the ETR Ice. It also isn’t a good way to Siphon turn 1, for Criminals especially. What it’s going to do that I’m not looking forward to is Criminal use of other run events, like Demo Run or Indexing or other 1-of out-of-faction things, and non-Criminal reliability of Siphon increasing.
Even then, though, I still won’t worry about it turn 1 nearly so much, most of the time, if they have to Planned Attack their way to it. It hurts them quite heavily – and if they hold off even one or two turns, most of my decks ought to be in a decent position to deal with future Siphonings (though that’s obviously never a guarantee).
EDIT: It’s annoying, for sure, but I don’t think that Siphon is a big threat with PA. If it is, it’s because now I need to cover both R&D and HQ on turn one to prevent them picking Indexing/Siphon based on what I leave open.
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@Alexfrog, are you sure about “Combined with E3 implants this is a Super Faerie that breaks any ice for $1” for Grappling Hook?
If you break zero subroutines with Grappling Hook on a single sub piece of ICE then surely E3’s trigger condition is not met? Grappling Hook is surely only any good vs. multi-sub ICE.
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Call me crazy, but what do you guys think about Oracle May with no support? Let’s use Criminal (or PADman) as an example. With 20+ events, you’re gaining a passive 2c per draw half of the time, and typically once you get your rig installed (which in some decks you aim to do in 5 turns or so) all you care about drawing is economic operations and tricks.
Edit: just realized I could only do it once per turn. I’m much less excited about it now.
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maybe in shaper, where recursion is more common. the last thing I want to do is lose a corroder to oracle may
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I am also returning to the game after a months-long layoff, and I find this expansion much more intriguing than Creation and Control. Corp gets an agenda tutor and Runner gets an event tutor… other than these potentially meta-narrowing choices, this seems a very solid pack. Hopefully the wealth of new tools for both sides, but particularly Jinteki, will counterbalance the printing of these unnecessary tutors.
I find it a bit of a missed opportunity that this review had way less in-depth musing about interesting card interactions and way more moaning/doomsaying, compared to the previous set reviews. Some ratings struck me as way off, as a result.
Also, since it got mentioned a bit in the review: my problem with Hearthstone is that many decks are largely neutral cards, with only a couple cards from their respective class. So, after an evening’s worth of play I feel like I’m just seeing the same 10 cards over and over again. It ends up being almost the polar opposite of Netrunner’s influence system, in a way.
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re Oracle May: Play her with Mr Li, draw half your deck, put the other half on the bottom and then actually remember all of them ^^
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I actually have a name for such a deck : the asperger deck.
Are you a former SWCCG (the one from Decipher) player, by any chance? We used to do crazy shit like this all the time in that game 
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Destiny draws!! 
Solid article. I agree with many of the ratings but I do think some of the Criminal central-only breakers are better at the moment than the ratings give them credit for, particularly Passport. The spare influence will allow Gabe to be even more aggressive with a few extra R&D dig cards to more reliably diversify his attack.
Fast Track makes me sad, also. :-/
Let’s call this “The Professor Gambit”.
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Sorry to disappoint, but I am not a SWCCG player.
So, you’re saying “play hard mode” by using only singletons? 
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Good point, it only works on multi sub ice! I’ll go edit that.
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Red Coats & PADman, recycled/refined ideas both coming out of that stroooong Wisconsin meta.
Ph34r us. XD
Yeah, agreed. But, comparing these simple card games like Hearthstone to ANR is downright Criminal.
future perfect is very good. played with it and against it 4 times tonight. the psi game had a factor in all the games.
guard was solid. denying the inside job is great.
komainu - i feel like this is ruthless splash outside of jinteki. everyone i played went right for the sentry breaker so i never got to rez one.
pup - nice taxing card.
rainbow was ok. its nice to have a non tracing tax ice.
security testing was an interesting way to spread out the corporate defenses. it was very nice to never “access” archives vs the shocks and the anti agenda trap. i would like to test with doppleganger.
iain data dealer medium rnd lock is interesting. they keep funding medium runs by feeding all the agendas to data dealer + iains ability and try to win by stealing so many agendas the corp cannot win and deck themselves. i know there was a noise data dealer deck floating around awhile ago
logos - underwhelming so far. i never feel like paying 4 for it. maybe in a deck that can get a discount on its install.
jinteki is in general terrifying. so much weird stuff is going. i cannot imagine not running infiltration and/or deus ex now. they have so many ways to leverage their money now.
fundraiser was decent. its a nice alternative to gift in decks you cannot afford to show the runner your hand.
harmony medtech seemed quite strong. when the corp scored even 2 points my clock as the runner sped up. i found myself taking more risks running in situations i felt were avoidable when the corp player needs 7 to win.
overall im quite pleased with honor and profit and cant wait to test more of the cards. any expansion that made me consider how a 1-of exploratory romp wouldnt be bad is a good expansion in my book lol.
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I think that Gingerbread is an underrated card; I think it does wonders for a deck built around recurring credits with Spinal Modem as the Console.