I think I read Rumor Mill about 10 times in my head because I was convinced I’d misunderstood it.
Nope, it really is that great. And good, Anarchs have needed a buff for a long time.
Rumour Mill Val basically wins everything, right? 3x Deja, 3x SOT. 3x Rumor Mill, 3x Blackmail, 38 other cards that could all be blank.
I mean, the card even blanks Elizabeth Mills so you can’t clear the BP.
It doesn’t blank any ambushes, advanceable or otherwise. Swap your defensive server tech for bluff tech.
I was going to make a similar post, wondering if Rumor Mill will lead to an exodus from defensive upgrades, back to Ambushes. The issue with ambushes remains: the Runner can always decide to ignore the advanced card if it’s deemed too risky, and hit a central instead, in which case the Corp just lost tempo and gained nothing.
I’m not sure that this will ever be ‘solved.’ There are two possible solutions IMO: higher impact agendas, and ambushes/assets that reward the Corp if the Runner doesn’t run them. Reversed Accounts is a great example of the latter, and I’m glad it is seeing some play. Breaking News is the standard for the former. Both of these happen to be in NBN. Weyland has a weaker BN in Posted Bounty, but Contract Killer is not quite strong enough to threaten a Runner into panicking about the IA play.
Higher impact agendas would mean the Runner can’t just ignore IA/IAA plays in the scoring remote. They would have to run, knowing that it was risky but necessary to prevent the scoring of Project Example. This would make ambushes more playable.
In short, I think pushing the curve on 3/1s could increase the value of ambushes, although 3/1s would eat up premium slots that are generally used for supplements like ambushes. It’s tough to say. I do think Rumor Mill will change the meta and I won’t be surprised if we start seeing more ambushes. Weyland still needs a viable ambush in-faction. If there were ever an appropriate time for them to get over their Litsingerian transparency, it’s now, in the wake of a financial collapse.
Yeah the general thrust is probably right, but very specifically for the Blackmail question if they ignore your risky remote to spend their finite copies of Blackmail on centrals instead, you’re probably happy as the Corp.
Blackmail abuse already had strong tools against heavily-loaded defensive upgrades, and the deck’s weaknesses still exist. Rumor Mill (edit: does NOT knock out EBC, and) as others have mentioned, a current + Mills torpedoes Val.
The big winner of Rumor Mill I suspect is fast advance, which suffers only tangentially and puts the runner into an awful situation where, if they can’t stop a Biotic or SanSan-enabled score, they have to decide whether it’s worth jumping through hoops to get back the Rumor Mill or concede that that battle is lost. Which is also a victory for Shapers. As for ambushes, I bet they won’t see an appreciable uptick in decks that aren’t already running them. If you can’t turn a Snare! or whatever into a continuing advantage/threat to the runner’s life, you’re probably better off just playing never-advance mind-games. And nobody does that better than HB.
One must admit that it would be thematically appropriate if the Blood Money datapack resulted in vegan / non-tag punishing NBN / straight fast advance decks fading, being replaced by a host of corp decks trying to murder / ambush / NBNTag#)*% the runners.
I bet they planned it : ). Certainly not having a stale meta w/ this cycle. Glacier had, what, 3 weeks with Sandburg? Heh.
Or maybe just Biotic everything forever.
Also, Paperclip is much more tolerable for Anarchs than it looks on paper, because the listing of Wyldside gave Inject its time to shine. If you Inject over a Paperclip, you net a credit while still effectively drawing the card, and that credit cuts the difference in cost from Corroder in half.
Couple that with effectively saving a click over having to install the Corroder (which is itself worth an effective credit), and Paperclip is actually already “breaking even” with Corroder, before you account for its better breaking.
So I agree that, at least in some Anarchs (Inject-based decks and MaxX), Paperclip is the new gold standard.
Bonus points: You can get extra value by tossing it to Faust too!
I think, and go with me on this because it us truly earthshattering stuff, maybe the issue with Anarch is that the designers just can’t stop making their cards so damn synergistic?
That’s not a problem IMO. Synergy is fun for players. I wish Criminal had a similar synergy engine. I guess they’re getting (more) economic synergy with Temujin.
I surely will shock some ppl but Nfr is a bad, really bad, really really bad card.
Forget what I said if you consider Study Guide a good card.
I haven’t seen anyone vouching for NFR; it’s Paperclip we are excited about.
If Anarchs are getting another breaker that can install from the heap, they are basically going to have counterplay against the one effective strategy against them (Faust notwithstanding)–Rush. We are going to be able to Inject through a healthy amount of our deck and have instant access to our breakers when Weyland and NBN try to rush. We will be sitting pretty economically due to Inject and the money we make from trashing our breakers.
I can’t wait!
Ew why? Gross.
I like NFR, I always love it when they try out new design spaces. In theory this should scale, so in the beginning you would rely on data suckers/null/etc, and in the late game, when sucker tokens might be harder to come by, it is hopefully strong enough to break any troublesome ice.
One thing it does is completely screw NBNs barriers at the moment, wraparound becomes a power token bank, to use resistor the corp must tag the runner faster than the runner can gain tokens. Most Weyland run ice wall or vanilla, both are easily broken by this. And as usual with fixed strength breakers, add something that lowers strength.
The problem is of course big barriers, but outside of blue sun they are not that common. Besides, D4v1d is still a very good card which every anarch should run.
Honestly, ice in general is so mediocre to almost irrelevant now that I’m not sure why we are getting excited about icebreakers. I like both NFR and Paperclip, but right now the biggest factors in determining if you can even run a server is how much money you have relative to the corp and if that server has an upgrade.
HHN is just so strong that it’s mere existence is the biggest deterrent to running. Combined with things like Mumbad Virtual Tour and, and now Prisec, I feel like the game as become less about “what ice do I need to break?” and more “how do I not get tagged?”
Also, Hatchet Job.
I agree with you that right now the most relevant question as Runner is “How do I stay tag-free?” This is of course largely due to HHN and CTM, neither of which I foresee going away any time soon.
Anti-rumour mill + val blackmail tech: News Now Hour, Off the grid, Executive boot camp and anything else that prerezzes ice. And of course BP removal.
If you put News Now Hour into your deck the runner has already won.
I 100% agree with you. But it sure is a counter! 
Eh, rumor mill is just another card that helps if Val has blackmail power. Just get rid of BP. The best part is going to be when that one player plays the news now hour and totally screws the runner once in NBN then retires the card forever. Ibet someone will take it to a tournament though, the numbers on the card aren’t really bad.