Cerebral Static-Why aren't more decks running it?

Cerebral Static - Operation: Current • Cost: 2 • Influence: 2 - This card is not trashed until another current is played or an agenda is stolen. The Runner’s identity text box is blank.

Why is this not seeing more play with the current meta being dominated with Runners with very strong abilities such as Leela and MaxX? Against Leela she completely looses the ability that makes are so dominating and forces her to play the game in a way that she hates, which is running and allowing ice to be rezzed. Against a typical MaxX deck, which is super light on draw since her ability natively gives it, it completely removes her tempo from the game.

What am i missing? Why is this card not being included in more decks?

I think it’s mostly because it doesn’t directly help you win. There are very few instances where the ID is directly is directly causing you to lose, so the slots are better dedicated to what is actually making you lose. For instance if your CS slot is 2 pieces of ice, the runner can’t steal an agenda, and thus can’t trigger Leela’s ability. If you had the CS, they might be able to just fizzle it by stealing an agenda since you didn’t protect your RnD for a turn with the ice CS should have been. Or the economy you needed to rez the ice, etc.

Also Andy is a heavily played runner, and it is dead in that, one of the most difficult match ups already. That said, if hacktivism turns out to be as good as people are thinking, I do believe adding in a good current to cancel currents that hurt you very badly will tip it into playability.

If your deck only loses to Maxx and Noise because of their abilities, and maintains a high winrate with 2 slots changed, then sure, try CS.

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Because Kate & Andromeda just don’t care that much; Kate does a teensy bit, but not that much. And the second point is that one reason to play currents is to counter other currents and up until recently a lot of decks haven’t been playing currents. (This is changing).

Maybe we will see more of it; but its often only good in a % of matchups. It often comes down to: include this to deal with a portion of my matchups or include this other thing thats good in all of my matchups.

That said, people often say use it if noise is a problem, so I think we see it going both ways.

I also happen to this it’s not even the best corp current available. Manhunt is a vicious tax when successful runs are necessary (really hurts Sec Testing-Masanori Andy), and it makes the runner want to play around it, by preparing for a turn with many runs to minimize the tax, which hurts their tempo. Housekeeping is extremely oppressive, even though you pick the discard. It can force a lot of difficult decisions if you get one out early and keep on it on the field for a few turns.

Add to this that’s its dead in an already difficult Andy match-up for the most common Jinteki decks right now, and we can see why it doesn’t see much play.

Corp deckbuilding is really tight: you have 9-12 agendas, 15-18 ICE, and 10ish economy options, leaving the average corp with 9-15 slots to put “interesting stuff that makes my deck different”. That’s only 3-5 cards in 3x multiples, so… yeah.

You won’t see many situational cards that aren’t total powerhouses in those slots, except as tests.

I’ve starting running them here and there in my Jinteki Decks, as a 1 one of usually. Hacktavist Meeting is the card that pushed me over the edge towards playing it. It was already good in a lot of a match-ups, now it’ll be a little better. The way I see it, the IDs that get really roughed up by it are Noise, Maxx, and Kitt (and Quetzal but she’s a real rarity). Leela and CT are the next step down in that it doesn’t completely ruin their game plan like it does for the other guys, but it can wreck quite a bit of havoc if played at the right time. It does a little something against Kate (getting it early can be pretty decent, but never great or even good come to that) and does nothing against Andy. That’s a pretty good spread. Some times it’ll win you games all on its own, but I wouldn’t pack more than 1 unless you know that no one in your area is playing much Andy or Kit.

just won a tournament with it last weekend :o) won a few other SC/GNKs with it too.

i’ve played it since early lunar cycle, but it’s become really strong as more people have drifted away from Andy. it definitely has helped me win dozens of games against Maxx, Leela, Noise, Gabe, Chaos Theory, and most other runners. i see people often argue that it doesn’t do much against Kate, but every match where i’ve played it early (pretty often), the runners have struggled to keep up, econ-wise. there’s a big reason why people choose Kate to play their Prepaid setups, and when you take away their discounts, that’s a BIG hit.

sure, it does nothing against Andy, but if Andy isn’t as big a worry for you as other IDs, it’s worth considering.

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It’s a great card and I’m starting to see it ocasionally, there are several Store Championship decklists that pack it as a one-of.

The main reason it’s not seen much is simply that it doesn’t fit in too many decks. In faction, both Jinteki RP and Genomics aren’t interested, they would rather play Enhanced Login Protocol and Jinteki PE doesn’t have many reasons to care. Outside of it, NBN is not going to play it when you have Making News and Manhunt, leaving only HB and Weyland behind. Weyland right now is going to push hard and keep the Runner on his toes, which doesn’t seem to fit Cerebral Static too well.

It does work well in HB and Tennin and that’s where I’m seeing it the most.

Lots of great discussion here. I would like to pose this question though. Everyone is saying Kate doesn’t care if she is blanked by this; which means I can extrapolate then that her ability really doesn’t matter (which i disagree, its what makes her so good). If that is the case, why play Kate at all over any other shaper runner?

Kate’s ability does matter, but it’s not like this permanently deletes her ability.

The average lifetime of the current is probably around 3-4 turns depending on how much your agendas protect themselves. If she only would have installed on 2 of those turns, then you’ve paid $2 for her to lose $2.

While Cerebral Static deos have a reasonable effect you don’t really want to pay influence for it.
PE doesn’t really care since even if some lists could use it, they often cannot keep currents around (high agenda count and RnD is often leaky) so that pretty much leaves RP as a home. In there the trend has been playing ELP instead but that might be changeing now.

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Yeah, if you want to save influence on ELP, Cerebral Static can fill the role, though I don’t know for sure if it or Lag Time would be better (as that pushes many common pieces of ice out of easy parasite range, even if it doesn’t make them hard to parasite. Does make Lotus D4V1Dable, though… so you might want the Static, especially if you’ve got a MaxX/Leela heavy meta.

I feel like RP really wants to be running at least one current just because of how hard scoring can be super early, so that they can shut down Hacktivist Meeting.

Because it does very little to reduce her ability to score agendas so you can’t expect it to last very long. You can cripple Noise and Kit’s ability to score, and make Maxx’s set up excruciatingly slow which makes this more likely to last and continue to inhibit their ability to score. It’s not as good against Leela because her ability to access is only tangentially related to her super power (though it’s still a good defensive play before you score to prevent yourself from being blown out). Against CT you can potentially cause some serious damage to her ability to get accesses by hitting them at an opportune moment with mini bad times, though a lot of the time it’ll be irrelevant or underwhelming. Kate’s power isn’t wrapped up in her ability to score, it’s just a fairly evenly distributed econ buff (which is great, look at ETF). When you CS her you’re not taking all that much away per turn it’s out and CS is likely to be out fewer turns against her than it would be against and ID that relies on their ability to get accesses.

As a side note I wonder if they intended to make CS hurt G-mods and Cyborgs more than Naturals. It’s not universally the case, but it does seem like for the most part the Naturals are less effected by this current than the others are. I doubt they could’ve seen that far a head, but it’s cool that it worked out that way flavor wise.

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I was running CS in 3-pt Harmony Medtech. The small agenda density, plus half of them being future perfects, really helped it stay online longer. Unfortunately, I’ve found that Harmony Medtech is just not very good for other reasons.