What do people think about Service Outage in Spark?
Have we seen any answer to boom! in the cycle? Except for Citadel sanctuary?
The way the cycle has been going, a good answer to Boom! will be in the 4th data pack. 
(That said, Obelus could be one answer, though youâd rather prevent the damage than soak it up with hand sizeâŚ)
I think Escher works nicely. Itâs pretty good for stealth decks anyhow, but for Houdini itâs pretty damn nice. Stack the code gates on R&D and you need 1 stealth credit to get through there. 
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So Adam players can now cut out their least favorite directive during the deck building phase and start with a Globalsec security clearance instead? Thatâs pretty good.
New decoders are also acceptable for influence-starved runners. Peregrine is tuned to fight tollbooth. Black is not very versatile, but hits the important 4 Str for lotus field, and is also good if you care about the resurrection ability like in maxx.
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Or perhaps before drawing starting hand? Or after mulligan? Who knows!
I feel like Houdini is better most of the time. Ice placement, and particularly stacking a single ice type, is the main way for corps to deal with stealth decks. Houdini means you never have to worry about that, and the minor inefficiency of having to pay just 1 more cred against some singleton midrange code gates seems absolutely worth it.
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I was hoping the new code gate breakers would be better against Tracker. Houdini breaks it for less than a Tollbooth, but both the others struggle. Orchestra only breaking 2 subs is going to be killer vs Tracker and Mausolus, but other than that I really like the card.
I also really like the trend of powerful resources alongside more agressive ways for the corp to destroy or mitigate them.
Sol rush to slow down the runner while you score out?
I guess black orchestra should be played alongside Yog, dumped in the heap and only installed if you get purged or hit a lotus field
First responders will be a good one of for a hostage package to beat house of knives stuff.
3.0 bioroids seem cool, play enhanced login protocol and they become normal ice
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Adam didnât really need a new directive from my perspective. He needed an economy card, or a way of gaining an extra click. Really he just needs decent cards to fill out his deck that he doesnât have to pay influence for. I donât really get the design logic of this or sunnyâs card.
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Personally Iâm really enjoying a lot of Damons design this cycle. Also he clearly loves code gates. First responders, outage and all the HB card seem really cool.
Iâm intrigued as to whether Alexa will see any play before jackson rotates.
The Directive seems cool, hopefully thereâs now enough econ in the game for Adam to get by. Unfortunately heâs hit by all the resource hate.
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So very true. That leaves my with little hope for the Apex card, which means he will stay unplayable. 
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Houdini is worse than Refractor. It installs for more, has the same strength, and uses 2-for-4 instead of 1-for-3. Yeah sure itâs remainder of the run, but in order for that to be more efficient that Refractor, you need to have to have boosted Refractor 3+ times against 2+ different ICE. The extra stealth cost of Refractor has never been a big deal, and certainly wonât be with NM out.
Iâm happy itâs worse though because when Refractor cycles maybe people wonât play only stealth shaper.
Black orchestra is a complete lemon. One sec lemme just pay 9 to get past that booth/DNA. Quandary? NBD just 3 credits. Even at itâs optimal values your breaking for 3 credits, which would be a 4 strength 2 sub gate.
When you have a breaker competing with Wyrm for efficiency, you have a lemon. Almost prefer deck FoN.
He said in an interview, that the cards were more about doubling down on thier strengths + identities, rather than diversifying or filling holes.
You realise that of the 2 creds to boost Houdini, only 1 needs to be a stealth credit, right? So in terms of stealth creds itâs never less efficient than Refractor and is more efficient nearly every time youâd have had to boost Refractor more than once.
Itâs true that Net Mercur will possibly make locking out stealth decks by ice stacking an irrelevance anyway, but in any situation where ice stacking is relevant, Houdini is usually better. This includes the early game, where Houdini requires significantly less support to get up and running than Refractor does.
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So what are the odds we see Fairchild 4.0 in Intervention?
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Time to break out Akshara Sareen! Youâll need to save the Hyperthreaders for 5.0 and 6.0.
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I can understand the thought. The mini-runners should feel unique, and so far they do. The thing is, if your identity has only one game plan and that plan is known to anyone who has ever played this identity, you should be at least good at that. And at the moment I think neither Apex nor Adam are there. Not even close. As nice as it is to have a very special deck, Netrunner decks are simply not good if they do not cover the basics.
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Itâs basically got the efficiency of force of nature but is a lot cheaper to set up (both the two creds and not costing a click to install) which makes it more like Zu. Yeah it sucks against quandary and tollbooth but thatâs what parasite, Datasucker and d4v1d are for. The important thing is that it can break lotus field which was the main problem code gate for non Faust anarchs. If youâre going to speak of the new code gates, no other decoder has been tested against them. DNA tracker isnât cheap even for Torch, so you wouldnât expect an anarchs decoder to be good against it.
Yeah Adam does need more maindeck cards, but that doesnât mean a new directive isnât good for him also. Previously you only had one choice about which theee directives to use, now you have four choices. If you need an extra click, just donât play ABR.
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Adam now does not need to pay influence for r&d pressure, so you could spend that influence you freed up on economy or whatever you think he is missing.
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