O2 Shortage is one of the most discussed terrible cards in Neturnner. It has been ridiculed by players and became the subject of an epic argument on Facebook between Damon Stone and members of the ANR player community.
It is a bad card. That is taken as given.
Now that we have all agreed on that, as a deck-building exercise, what is the best deck you could make that features O2 Shortage? Don’t just take a deck and hide O2 Shortage in it somewhere. Design a deck that actually intends to play that card when it shows up.
The thing is, it’s such a terrible card that I cannot imagine any situation in which it would make sense to play it. Like, in order for it to work you would need to have the Runner in EMP range and then instead of killing them advance a Braintrust or something. So yeah, it’s a card that cannot even being to function if you are not a) 1 damage away from killing the Runner 2) You don’t have an agenda to FA.
It’s beyond awful. I truly can’t imagine any deck making it work. Ever.
the thing is, O2’s intended best-case use isn’t anything you can really build a deck or strategy around.
Damon himself said that he could see moments in the game where the runner really wouldn’t want to lose a particular card in their hand, and he could always use an extra click
honestly, the only time i could see this having any use is to bring them down to -1 cards with Scorch/Boom!/etc., and if they give you the extra click, Archives > Scorch or something
trying to snipe the I’ve Had Worse doesn’t work because 1) you could very easily miss, 2) it wouldn’t help you kill them anyway unless you had extra kill cards in your hand, which you should have just played anyway, 3) Salem’s is way better anyway
this card’s intentionally-designed best-case scenario is just waiting for a moment when you think the runner might have something they don’t want to lose and thinking ‘i can always use a click’ while also thinking ‘3 credits isn’t that much for an extra click to just install something or draw a card’
I could see it being alright out of Skorpios. If they give you the extra click you Fast Advance an Atlas, if not one of their cards gets Removed from the Game. The ID ability makes the random trash sting a lot more and would probably make the runner more likely to give you the click provided they had something in their hand they couldn’t lose. Throw in House Keeping for good measure. If you go all in and run 3 O2, you could probably work Jeeves in there too and potentially score a 4/2 if they give you the click.
Probably jank still, but it’s the most functional thing I could think of.
What about one of those tedious brain damage decks I see all the time on Jnet? Reduce their hand size using the Cybernetics Division, then play the current I’ve forgotten the name of, then score the 3/1 with the bad art, then use one of the H-B cards from Terminal Directive that do a thing.
NOW it’s time for Clone Sufferage Movement and O2 Shortage.
I think i went to nutritionalzero’s route Get the hand size to 0 and now you can get biotics for 3cr, unless they have increased hand size. I mean, saving a dollar on biotic has never been harder.
Pretty normal deck based on TBB’s teaching PE. Probably not as good (I mean it has O₂ Shortage in it so…) but having it in Biotech means you can O₂->Neural->Flip (or O₂->Neural/O₂->Neural). Still would rather play PE with more money instead, but I can’t think of a better deck for O₂.
I have to believe it would be a Jinteki deck with Philotic Entanglement.
In order for O2 to be a playably good card, both options should be Game-Endingly Bad for the Runner. Either lose a card and die to 2 more Neurals, or don’t and I’ll score a Philotic to nail you for 3 damage, which is also killing you.
So the issue here is getting that situation to occur… Brain Damage is probably good stuff.
Also, Ronin might play a role. (Oh wow, Mushin out of Jinteki, importing O2 and Cerebral… If they’re at 3 cards, they have to let you have the O2 click.)
If you can reasonably force the runner into a scenario where they would be foolish to trash a card from their hand, it can be in a deck that only has o2 in it and nothing else, acting as a cheaper biotic. It’s still risky and would never work meta wise, but bluffing damage, or inversely, bluffing fast advance might be the best case for this card.
As always, I’m wondering what’s going to happen to FA when so many of the 3/2s are rotated out. If you might need to try to score a 4/2 at some point, you’re probably going to want more FA tools, and O2 can be an interesting backup. One extra click will be worth less post-rotation, and if they don’t think you have an ABT or whatever in hand, the runner might just give it to you, but how confident will they be that you aren’t about to follow up that Shortage with a Biotic/Jeeves/Work Crew?
It seems like NBN also has a decent number of opportunities to make use of O2 with effects (on the one hand, like Archangel, and on the other, like Data Loop) that increase the density of needed cards in hand. (This is some pretty deep jank, but could something like Salem both add further pressure and help you identify just the right time to spring an O2 shortage on the runner?) Needless to say, NBN is also in a pretty good position to capitalize on the FA side.
I’m happy about this thread. O2 shortage is pretty undeniably a weak card, but I’ve found a lot of the discussion I’ve seen elsewhere pretty gross; it’s hard to shake the impression that a lot of people are just looking for their last chance to dunk on the lead dev that everyone loves to hate.
The only way I can think of to set up the perfect combo for O2 is to run it out of CI with Brain Rewiring, Show of Force, and Neural EMP.
I’d have to work out the combo, but it would break down to two branches:
Brain Rewiring > O2 > They Discard > Neural EMP
Brain Rewiring > O2 > Get Click > Score Show of Force
This is, of course, worse than just doing some normal combo with CI and winning. However, we’re not looking for the best decks. We’re trying to make this card useful.
Yes. The card has to be active when its trigger happens to be able to use it.
Also, since the Work Crew trash has to happen immediately after playing an operation, if you wait until the rez window after the click, you are no longer immediately following the play of the operation.
My PE kill deck could use O2, but my current agenda mix wouldn’t play well with it. With more 3/X agendas, O2 could enable a kill that is otherwise 1 damage short. It has the advantage of being able to trigger without a run the previous turn. I have had times where the flatline was ready but I needed the Neural EMP and no runs had been made.
I just have better ways to spend influence and like my current agenda mix. Philotic is currently my only target for that play. It’s a great target, but too narrow of a situation.
There is no trigger for Bioroid Work Crew, just a limitation on when it can be used. From the ufaq, we are to interpret it as being able to use it in the next paid ability window after resolving an operation whenever that may be. Also from the ufaq it’s confirmed that you do not have to have it rezzed when playing the operation.
It has a trigger, though. You must play an operation to be able to trash BWC. It is poorly templated as a trigger but that is not new.
What does the word “immediately” mean on that card? If your first action is to rez BWC then trashing it does not come immediately after playing the operation. There is an intervening rez.
If the UFAQ says it and errata gets released that settles it, but I think the ruling changes the plain meaning of the card. Not that my opinion matters.
That’s not a trigger, that’s a restriction on when a paid ability can be used. It’s the same reason you can use Maxwell James even if he wasn’t installed before you made a successful run on hq.
I definitely agree that the word immediately is confusing for a paid ability, since a paid ability can only typically be used in paid ability windows, hence the need for the errata.