Oh hey sweet, it’s a Virtual resource, so running a singleton of Foxfire in all my decks continues to be justified.
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Yeah, I think we are agreed though.
Stealth Breakers, at their core are like:
“There is a longer setup time, but you don’t need as much money once it is setup.”
That has been the bargain, ever since the olden days. Gordian Blade will get you through any code gate Refractor will, but the extra time setting up the cloaks and such for refractor means that it will cost less. With me?
So, now they are releasing a money card and a money ID for stealth. So now stealth is just better than traditional breakers. But, like, so what? Paperclip is better than any other fracter. Everything is better than Peacock. Refractor killing Zu off is just more of the same. Game gets fiercer every year. Better ice demands better breakers, etc.
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I like how, if you use it right, Mercur basically turns Ghost Runners into Sure Gambles.
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This goes far beyond “Let’s all run Paperclip,” though. It’s is a whole archetype, involving a specific set of breakers, a specific set of support cards, and now a single identity. We’re (potentially) more in the realm of “Let’s all run Prepaid Kate”
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I think potentially is probably the key word here. The card is obviously strong, but in terms of speed I doubt it makes much difference, as you’re probably cutting a ghost runner or maybe lockpick for it. The biggest difference I can see is being able to play switchblade much more easily as this can sub in for at least 1 silencer.
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It’s smoke that increases the tempo. Being able to get a Refractor / Dagger / Switch powered up without needing additional pieces is huge.
Mercer isn’t a tempo increase; it’s the answer to the runner only having a few stealth credits.
The theme as a whole leaves very little reason to play anything that ISN’T stealth Smoke, if you’re going shaper.
Curious if Chameleon will get something to balance LLDS cycling. Houdini is likely Refractor’s replacement. Earnestly hoping it is (subjectively) worse than Refractor so that other themes have a leg to stand on.
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I don’t agree.
There aren’t really as many total archetypes of runners as there are IDs, yeah? Some aren’t played, others are similar, etc.
Basically, for each faction, there is a 3 breaker variant and an AI variant. Beyond that there are gimmick variants (Surfer, Blackmail, Noise Mill, Apex…)
Stealth getting stronger at the expense of 3 breaker shaper isn’t a big deal. There may be a small subset of players who fiercely debate whether Zu/Paperclip/Shrike is the TRUEWAY or whether it is Refractor/Paperclip/Switchblade, but no one outside the debate really cares.
When you come up against Big Rig Shaper in a tourney you don’t care about the specifics of what the setup is. You know how to play vs. that. Heck, we recently had Camera Hayle, who basically has infinite credits, and that got managed fine.
Really, people getting better at breaking ice is not a huge deal, because so little of the current game is about ice. There are decks out there with 2 cricks, 2 cortex locks as their only ice. There are entire yellow decks where you could break everything they do with a gingerbread. There are innumerable decks whose ice strategy can be best described as “make them install all 3 breakers”, who go with like vanillas, enigmas and a cobra or two. Most corps have maybe 13 pieces of ice, and expect to install maybe 4 per game?
Runners getting better at breaking ice is about the LEAST disruptive way that the game can lurch forward.
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I’d much prefer if Net Mercur didn’t give you the option to draw a card - it’s unique enough on its own.
It’s a whole lot less tricky to get Desperado to pay you.
Most relevant examples of situations where Desperado pays you (or John Masanori draws a card) and NM doesn’t, IMO:
- Draining Temujin or playing Dirty Laundry on Archives (or both).
- Runs against un-protected central servers.
- When you access, but do not trash, a card in an unprotected remote server.
These are near-ubiquitous things for a Desperado deck to do in the first 3-4 turns of the game, and, if you’re comparing NM to Desperado, you really have to factor in not being able to do them (especially given how important it is to have money early against HHN decks).
Sure, but NM also draws you a card if you need that, and can give you extra stealth credits.
Maybe bad pub is a better analogy, which is what you get if it triggers off itself.
Note that ICE is not necessarily what matters; it’s having an ability to use Stealth sources.
Example: use a NM buck to pop SMC mid run.
Another example; trashing a card using a GR buck (or NM itself).
Yet another; PW + NM.
Honestly, factoring in that you don’t need to actually be successful for NM, it looks way easier to proc than desperado.
If you’ve got the Mercur setup (i.e. you have stealth creds and a way to spend them), there’s nothing stopping you from loading it during those activities – you can still spend your stealth credits to boost a breaker, even if you don’t need to break anything. Outside of Ghost Runner (and Mercur itself), stealth creds are all recurring anyway.
This, I think, is the main thing. Desperado is a single card and unless you draw it in your last 2-3 turns, it is highly likely to pay significant dividends. Mercur has other moving parts that come along with it, and needs at least two other cards to do anything at all (granted, one of those cards might be your ID, but that comes with its own opportunity cost).
Even with the setup considerations, it is almost certainly better than Desperado in a stealth rig*, but it’s not exactly the powerhouse that could probably improve any deck (influence notwithstanding) like Desperado.
*Because:
a) It gives a stealth credit.
b) It gives the credit mid-run, which can further fuel stealth breakers or pay for trashes, etc.
c) It allows mid-run draw shenanigans (i.e. if you’re afraid of a fetal/snare!/etc.)
d) It allows draw, period.
ETA: Also worth noting that it doesn’t require a successful run. So even if you’re going to bounce off an ice wall, you can still extract value from the run. I don’t think this its biggest selling point – given that it is setup intensive and almost certainly being run out of Shaper, you’re probably not doing a ton of ETRing after this hits the table – but still worth considering.
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You’re still capped at “number of currently-installed recurring Stealth credits”, though.
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Sort of. Provided you have a single recurring credit to start it, you can still spend 1 free cred per run off the Mercur itself, akin to a BP. That’s not quite as versatile as Desperado, but since you’re almost certainly running this out of Shaper, you’re also not too likely to be making a bunch of Sec Test runs (or similar value runs, like you are out of criminal) in a single turn anyway.
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Like I said, I think the most relevant cases are checking (but not trashing) a bunch of naked CtM remotes, and draining a Temujin (which basically every runner deck does these days).
But you can still spend in these scenarios. SMC, PW, unload recurring sources onto NM via boosting a breaker, etc.
Not 100% reliable on un-ICE’d like desperado is, but still pretty reliable I feel. Probably more so than un-ICE’d servers themselves (meta dependant).
Sorry for the multiple posts, but just wanted to add that I think these were made (and reflect) two very different data points in Netrunner’s life cycle.
Desperado is still amazing, but it was beyond-belief-incredible a couple of years ago. Part of this is due to better runner econ in general, but much more than that it reflects a significant change in the nature of ice. I mean, really up until Architect was released, an aggro criminal could drop a Desperado turn 1 and just start making value runs to pressure the corp with very little concern for the consequences. I mean, I remember discussions on this very board suggesting that Fenris (lol) might put a stop to that – that’s how hard up corps were for any sort of meaningful deterrent to raw aggro play.
Mercur isn’t going to pay great dividends in that kind of play style and would probably have been lackluster in that environment. (It also wouldn’t really be worth it in a PPVP-style deck that only makes a handful of high value runs throughout the game.) This is meant for something different, obviously – a Smoke-and-Mirrors-style deck that wants to be making a couple (~1.5-3?) runs a turn by the midgame. It also opens up some interesting possibility for more-aggro (if not quite criminal-level-aggro) lines of play out of stealth decks to extract value from those recurring creds, rather than sitting back until you have all the answers.
I’m not saying this is a bonkers economic engine by itself (Desperado was and still largely is) or that stealth will be blowing up worlds, but it definitely hits a sweet spot in stealth decks by providing some flexibility to what those stealth creds actually “do.” Until now, the restrictions on stealth meant that every slot spent on the idea was dedicated solely to icebreaking (apart from GR, which sometimes worked as an inferior Easy Mark in a pinch). The draw option shouldn’t be underestimated in this regard – it helps find the rest of your stealth rig faster and keeps the card relevant if you’re heading into a late game where credits may not be the most important factor.
OTOH, it’s one more card slot and one more install click spent on something that augments your icebreaker engine (a part of this game that seems to be continually dwindling in significance), and that slot/setup intensiveness was already stealth’s biggest problem. I’m not really sure how to evaluate this, since in this case the investment makes the engine more flexible (rather than strictly doubling down on “break all the ice for freesies!,” as every previous stealth card has done). My rough sense is that we shouldn’t really evaluate the utility of this card on its own merits, but rather that whether or not this sees serious play will largely depend on how viable stealth is as an archetype – and that has much more to do with the corp meta (and the role of ice within that meta) than with the relative value of runner cards.
Oddly, the direction of the design (adding some (limited) flexibility to stealth creds) on this card may be one of the most interesting things to come out of Flashpoint for me thus far, even if it may not end up being widely competitive.
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I feel like this card ends up slotted in every good stealth deck, and I feel like most good shaper decks are going to be a stealth decks.
Might be wrong about this; certainly been wrong before. It just looks like it provides too much to omit though.
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Just wait for the dedicated virtual hate after another bomb virtual drops.
This cycle is about twists and turns. I fully anticipate something will drop corp side that will hit stealth. We will just have to see if we all get motion sick after this roller coaster of a cycle is over.
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Why haven’t they given us the release date instead of / along side these piecemeal spoilers?
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