Ooh yeah, missed that. Was doing it from memory. That’ll teach me to read the cards. Hmm yeah, trickier then - it’s NACH and Fall Guy or nothing I suppose. It could still be worth it because that fifth click is still very powerful, but as you say it starts looking like a significant chunk of your deck that’s not pulling its weight.
I’m partial to public sympathy. Not as strong as plascrete vs. lots of scorched but more all around useful.
I’ve been using wyldside so that may be a caveat.
There are ways to cheat her into play already.
The real killer for Rachel is breaking news, against which decoy does nothing, and NACH taxes you for 4 credits, as well as being hard to keep in play. In a meta in which NBN is dominant, I can’t see paying for Rachel working out that well. If you take away breaking news I’d think it had a chance, but as it is, probably not. The only hope for Rachel is if a Eureka! deck ends up being playable- if you’re getting her for free, it might be worth the risk.
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For an 8-cost card, I don’t really consider 3 credits, 2 actions and a card slot “cheating into play”, especially once you also factor in the 10 turns of using Motivation that you’ll have to undertake before you can actually pull it off 
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Huh. Must say that this discussion is making me appreciate Origami one hell of a lot more.
Yeah, these and Psychographics are the two reasons why I greatly prefer Midseasons. It’s a bit trickier since you have to lose an Agenda, but that’s a big part of why I like have 1-pointers.
I’d be interested in why. Origami has the same disadvantages as Public Symapthy (first one doesn’t offer protection against 2x Scorched; have to maintain cards in hand to keep the protection), it costs MU and Weyland have Archer, Power Shutdown and Grim to get rid of it.
There are a few benefits to origami over public sympathy. Origami are tutorable, anarch’s have some good memory options (djinn and grimoire), and with wildside and duggar’s they can use the handsize well, even in non-scorch matchups. Plus, you can’t trash origami when I’m tagged, making it more suitable for tag me anarch builds (although you will need to watch out for badtimes). I think origami is worth testing, at least.
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Basically what @benjaminwald05 said. It’s easy to Power Shutdown, but doesn’t go away when you’re tagged, necessarily. Sure, Bad Times might kill it, but that’s what Djinn stacking is for. The fact that it can go well with Anarch’s otherwise all-but-unusable draw engines is just a bonus. If you’re using Duggar’s and Origami anyway, they can’t really Scorch you out. They can kill your Duggar’s to slow your drawing, but if you’ve used it already (Joshua B. on install turn, perhaps? Seems needlessly complicated.) then you’ve got, what, a 14 card hand? Triple Scorching won’t kill you, and only HB can dream of a quadruple Scorch (usually a turn after tagging, and eating up a probable minimum of 16 credits).
Not saying it’ll be amazing or perfect or actually end up as better than Plascrete, but it’s a plausible alternative and that makes Origami more interesting to me, where I’d previously been panning it. We’ll see how it turns out.
With regards to Bad Times, assuming you’re using Djinn to host your Origami, and have Grimoire out, it takes triple-BTs to kill your Origami-Djinn… and that has to be in one turn. Power Shutdown is more dangerous, for sure, but there are things that can help against that somewhat (other 0-cost hardware/programs, sacrificial construct splashes, deja vu/recovery run, etc.), and either way the loss of it won’t take effect for a full turn. And hell, even two Origami + max handsize means you need to be Triple Scorched to get killed, because you’ve got a max handsize of 9.
(Thinking of Bad Times, Deep Red means that Triple Bad Times (which costs 12) won’t kill everything. I dunno if I’d do it, since, well, you lose your breakers, so unless you’ve got nested Djinns it might be necessary to let things go to keep up accessing… but again, you’d have a full turn in which you’ve got all those cards, and the corp is down 12 credits. Seems not unsalvageable to me.)
I’m interested to re-open this conversation as it seems more and more plascretes are getting cut from decks. (Possible meta occurrence)
Yet where once plascrete was an auto include x3, that seems to be falling out of public opinion. Is scorched earth still to be feared? Do we need to build our decks around it? Options I have seen…
Plascrete (pc)
Magnum Opus/money machine (mo)
Decoy/NACH (d)
Public sympathy (ps)
Imp (i)
Less card specific and more play style oriented (in my own words)…
Aggression
Super caution
Calculated
And lastly self imposed ignorance.
I guess the question I ask is what is everyone doing now days? I personally like playing a calculated aggressive early game with a slower later game having a good amount of money vs possible SE decks. I find it frustrating finding deck space for specific counters and would rather just add more money.
Tell me your thoughts! What do you PERSONALLY do?
if NBN midseason w/ scorched wasn’t around id cut plascretes but NBN Midseason + the handful of players in a big tournament who will still bring supermodernism type decks is enough i still put 2 in most decks.
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You could look at it a couple ways:
Let’s say you tech your decks against what is likely going to top 8 a tournament rather than the gamut of other deck types (in my example, that will probably be Astrobiotics, with maybe some RP and EtF to flavor), you will do better ONCE YOU’RE there, if you anticipate that you can win and/or take a calculated loss against the couple scorched earth/punitive counterstrike decks that might not make the top 8 cut (or will have to work harder to get there and stay there) then you can basically ignore plascrete entirely. So when you see these top decks running 0-1 plascrete carapace, the lesson isn’t “the meta is changing” its people relying on skill and that they won’t have to face these decks as much in the top 8 to justify giving up 3 slots.
The other way to look at plascrete carapace as a card, in a microcosm and not dependent on how flush of missing scorched earth is in the meta. What does this card do for you? It prevents meat damage? How does meat damage work? Generally you combo it out (tag+SE, steal+PS) to take somebody from full to dead in one turn. If you lack strong draw, if you lack the funds to compete with midseason/SEA Source, you should be looking at plascrete as your tag protection.
I think of it this way: right now you CANNOT prevent tags reliably. Not entirely, that means that decoy/nach are unreliable. you CANNOT prevent closed accounts. Tournament decks are all about low variance, and you can account for how Plascrete protects you. and when a retaliation on corp turn is not an option, running on click 4 becomes much less risky. Having more options means you’re deck is more agile, so being able to run on your 4th click is surprisingly valuable. Being able to walk through ICE that hurts knowing that they can’t KILL you for it is valuable.
when i was still running crim i used crash space a lot. saves from three meat damage and can remove tags with recurcreds, so it’s still useful against some decks that don’t run SE. i had a lot of success with it. in anything other than crim though it’s hard to spend the influence.
Why oh why wasn’t Plascrete printed as an Anarch 2-inf? It would make the deckbuilding decisions so much more interesting, and actually somewhat legitimize Muresh Body Suit*
*well, not really, but, you know.
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Muresh + Box-E!!! Is this 20 characters yet?
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I think that if Plascrete wasn’t Neutral then it would be Criminal.
edit:
Flavorfully, Anarch is the tag-me faction (Vamp, Activist Support, DLR, Joshua B, Tallie Perrault) and Criminal is the deal-with-your-tags / don’t-die faction (Lawyer Up, Networking, Paper Tripping, Crash Space, Decoy / Muresh Body Suit, Leverage). And it makes sense flavorfully that Criminal gets Account Siphon. But man is it ever rough for Anarch functionally. I’m just glad that Plascrete is neutral…
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While true, I feel like flavor should be second to function. FFG doesn’t agree, but…
Strongly disagreed for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Plascrete is quite obviously the “do your worst” kind of answer to tags, while Crash Space is the “I’m dealin’ with it” answer.
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Plascrete is hi tech body armor, criminals get all of the equipment because they are in the field first and hacking is just part of the job. Criminals have guns and body armor already, plascrete wouldnt be a shaper or anarch card because they have only gotten equipment that relates to being a decker (cyber feeder, spinal modem, omni-drive)
Well, they could retheme what the fiction of plascrete is, but I think the effect still makes the most sense as neutral. Prevention is the boring answer, factions get the appropriate interesting answers. Anarch’s in-faction answer is imp style effects. Do unto others before they do unto you.
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