Steal an agenda and swap for an overadvanced Atlas.
trigger the counter to put a 5/3 in to HQ.
Legwork?
Agenda text is blank when in the Runner’s score area (unless stated otherwise on the, er, agenda text…).
3 Likes
Oh, right. Well, you would have to have multiple copies of Power, and run on archives on separate turns. It’d be pretty funny to see someone run at the same agenda three times and only steal it on the third time, gaining 21 creds in the process.
Power to the People fails the Quadrant test sooo hard.
For those not familiar with it, the Quadrant Test (also known as the Bucket Test, I think), is a thing from Magic about dividing the game into four parts, and seeing how many of those parts a card is good in. It’s a very good way of seeing how useful a card is. It’s not a perfect crossover to Netrunner, but for the most part it’s still close enough.
The four times a card can be good are:
- As you are developing the board state in the opening of the game.
- When both sides are roughly even in power and have arrived at parity to some degree.
- Once you’ve started winning.
- While you’re losing.
A great card is good in three or four of those situations. A decent card might only be good in two of them. Cards good in one situation only are usually kind of bad, though there are some exceptions due to relatively low costs (hi, Quandary).
Power only really works when you’re winning, because you need to be hitting an agenda reliably at all costs that turn. It helps keep your economy afloat, but won’t help you actually break into anything to get the agenda, just prevent a scoring window from arising if you’re successful.
Super early? Not a lot of help. When the situation is even? Still pretty rough. And it doesn’t help you from losing positions, either, because you do need to get in to begin with.
Compare to Stimhack, which is usable early on as set-up or as a means of breaking a stalemate, can be used to keep your credits up while winning to avoid leaving a scoring window, and helps you come from behind to make a surprise access the corp isn’t ready for.
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People should apply this test to Netrunner way, way more than they do.
4 Likes
Fine, I’ll bite.
[quote=“GreedyGuts, post:1688, topic:2197”]
Power only really works when you’re winning, because you need to be hitting an agenda reliably at all costs that turn.[/quote]
I believe this to be a faulty assumption - knowing with a decent amount of probability you’ll be hitting an agenda that turn happens a lot more often than just “when you’re winning”. For starters, it’s not that uncommon for a Corp to bleed accesses intentionally in one place, in order to achieve something more important (to them) in another. There’s also cases like taxing you out with an NAPD in the scoring server, ditching shit into Archives to Punitive your ass, Midseasons bait, never-advance remote shell games, and other things.
[quote=“GreedyGuts, post:1688, topic:2197”]
It helps keep your economy afloat, but won’t help you actually break into anything to get the agenda, just prevent a scoring window from arising if you’re successful.[/quote]
It won’t help you get into the first server that turn, but it sure as hell will help you get into the second one… in a way that’s compatible with run events. This could very well be relevant if you were to Legwork, Escher, Vamp, or do something similar.
Not by itself. With a charged Medium, played Keyhole or possibly an Indexing? That’s a bit of a different story, I’d say.
When the situation is even, it helps you keep it even - consider PttP in the context of this particular post about high-level play (which I consider pretty accurate). What this card does is let you regain footing (or at least not yield more ground) after you had to get aggressive. Could you have played a different card in its slot, which would have prevented you from getting to that place? Maybe, maybe not. But it still doesn’t strike me as useless in the scenario.
It’s a particular, situational card that isn’t a good fit for every deck (in other words: “anarch”), but I wouldn’t be so harsh on it, as far as the quandrant test is concerned:
- If you’re running copious amounts of multi-access, it can speed up your early-game considerably (also depending on matchup)
- If you’ve achieved parity, it lets you be aggressive and keep the parity
- If you’re winning, it’s decent
- It’ll suck to have when losing, I’ll give you that
Overall, it seems to me as a pretty obvious 1-of, but definitely not binder fodder.
3 Likes
Agreed, if a runner is sitting on lots of money, sometimes a good play is to drag them down your remote to steal your NAPD so you can ram-jam the 5/3. Playing this before running helps prepare you to run against next turn.
And before you all hit me with that “edge case” bullshit, when I said sometimes, I meant like every other game in the glacier world of corps that we’re in right now.
1 Like
Also butcher shop likes that lose lose situation where you either steal breaking news and get mid seasoned or don’t steal it and get tagged. With Power you can steal it and have credits to fight the mid season.
About “when you’re losing”… Sometimes when the corp is losing its the easiest time for them to score an agenda - the runner will let it fly rather than “taking the bait” because they know they’re still in control. Is there a comparable situation where the inner is losing so the corp becomes less protective of their agendas? I guess the sell the Napd is exactly that scenario
I feel like this card is powerful enough to be good somewhere, but not powerful enough to put in any old deck. I don’t know exactly what deck most consistently KNOWS it’s going to get an agenda at the start of the turn, especially in RP world, so I’ll stick to Queens Gambit until someone figures it out.
Hivemind Maxx / Valencia deck.
One of my opponent lost because he didn’t had enough money to steal more than a single NAPD from my R&D and that pretty much lost him the game.
3 Likes
As often as not, though, you don’t know before your first click. At least, I don’t. There are definitely counter-examples, and you’re right that it makes leaving an NAPD on the table as Midseasons bait riskier, but by the time Power hits Film Critic will have had a month out already, so NAPD-to-bait-Midseasons already ought to be on a downward trend.
Which is one way in which it can help sustain parity. Not saying the card has no use-cases where it isn’t terrible – you can always just lucky topdeck an agenda first turn facecheck, too, I just don’t think that it’s reliable enough to be worth it – case in point, two of your scenarios there require a run event to set up another run elsewhere to try and make a steal, and while Legwork can be excellent I’ve seen it whiff even when it oughtn’t all too often to want to pin my economy to it. If you read a situation wrong, all Power did is waste you a card and a click, and it’s not as easy a situation to read as Dirty Laundry (though it helps more directly against NAPD, sure).
If you have a charged Medium, Keyhole, or Indexing that you can layer appropriately and the corp can’t keep you out? You’re winning, at least in terms of board position, which is what the test is traditionally best at looking at. If you’re winning that early, sure, it helps, yeah.
[quote=“PeekaySK, post:1690, topic:2197”]
When the situation is even, it helps you keep it even - consider PttP in the context of this particular post about high-level play (which I consider pretty accurate). What this card does is let you regain footing (or at least not yield more ground) after you had to get aggressive. Could you have played a different card in its slot, which would have prevented you from getting to that place? Maybe, maybe not. But it still doesn’t strike me as useless in the scenario.
[/quote]When it’s even, it’s usable, but rough. I think that’s a fair analysis, it won’t help you gain ground inherently, but it does allow you to take a risk and – if it pays off – not suffer overmuch by leaving a huge window for Corp scoring, yeah.
I think you’re overestimating the length of the “early game” being defined here, perhaps because I wasn’t clear – it’s definitely not the same as the traditional “early-mid-late” in Netrunner and I should’ve clarified that better. In terms of actually getting what you need out on the board, it doesn’t do a tremendous amount, but it does allow you to leverage an early-game board advantage to fund later stuff… you just need to get there without needing it to be something else.
At parity, I think it’s a gamble. Maybe that’s just my local scene, but a lot of the corps here have ways to either “guarantee” a shutout (RP with Nisei stuff), or fake out agenda plays (bluffing out ashes as agendas to bait a run, etc). Now, not all of that will necessarily stick around, but it’s not a straight-up win at parity by any means.
I’ll confess, part of it is that I also tend to look at cards (when I’m being more serious) from what they do when I’m losing. I like the win-more cards that don’t look at that as much, but I’m trying to be more critical, these days.
TL;DR: You’re not totally wrong or anything, but I think that with Film Critic coming before it most of the situations where it’s a known guarantee NOW won’t exist as much, and that you’re overextending the opening to cover a state where you’re pretty clearly winning.
There are decks that might like it (Hivemind, as Calimsha notes), and I can see it as a one-of or even a two-of if for some reason Film Critic changes nothing. But I feel like a lot of the situations being discussed upthread (keyhole, then run NEXT TURN on archives, giving them a turn to set up to Jackson it back if they aren’t ready already; bounce off the same NAPD multiple times without the runner stopping you; assuming midseasons/punitive bait will be as common) were overvaluing the card pretty heavily.
TL;DRtTL;DR: It’s got a lot of potential, and I’d love to see it work, but it’s got so many restrictions I don’t expect to see it in many strong decks.
2 Likes
deep thought, or legwork after you use bug to watch them draw the agenda duh.
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If the installed face up Agendas end up being good. Then maybe . . . .
. . . Maybe?
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Use this, install-trash Hades shard ? You’d better have tutors 
Will Mushin No Shin work well with the faceup agendas? I’m thinking in particular the 3/1 that trashes 2 cards off the stack per counter, or 4 if it has 3 or more. You could trash 10 cards in one turn for the cost of letting them steal a 1-pointer. I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but it would be hilarious against Noise.
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I feel like you’ll just end up trashing a bunch of Viruses that he’ll Deja Vu back into his hand. There are quite a few runners who would happily trash the top 10 cards of their stack in all but the slowest of games.
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It will not work very well since you need to advance the agenda to trigger its effect. Mushin no shin don’t advance card, it just places advancement tokens on it.
On your example you would trash “only” 4 cards, not 10. 
1 Like
I am wondering if Underway renos might end up being decentish in a glacier deck that doesn’t want the Bad Pub/does want to bait Midseasons. IAA in a taxing server, AAA it the next turn, then AAA it again and either score it or leave it there to advance further at your leisure. Milling may not be the worst, but if you can pitch a third to half their deck you’re probably going to hit something, and if you can protect a Blacklist at the same time you solve most of the recursion worries – though then you’ve got to have two servers they can’t get into easily.
Don’t know that it’ll be worth it, but I’ll probably give it a shot just to see. Has a looot of potential to hurt Criminal, which I like the sound of, but Shaper and Anarch are bigger local concerns anyway and Blacklist does a lot to them in the first place.
I imagine Underway Renovation is why Student Loans got nerfed so hard, but I couldn’t say for sure and even then they went overboard (I get why they want to be safer than sorry and agree overall, just sad that it happened to two otherwise amazing Weyland cards when they still feel like they need the help).
Still not as good as Oaktown or Hollywood, but those are high bars to clear. Aside from maybe the Sensies or Ancestral Imager I can’t think of an agenda we know about this cycle coming close, and I’d compare them favorably against most agendas from Lunar or O&C, even shit like High-Risk, Domestic Sleepers, or the Fragments.
The face-up drawback is the only vague issue, because you can’t run a full suite of the renos and ever bluff something else as an agenda, but since that still wouldn’t be everything you’ll be running a set of Atlases anyway I imagine and that gives you some options. But when you can effectively be advancing by clicking for credits or can simultaneously either drop the cost of the space ice in play or potentially pump things like Fire Wall, Swarm, or even Ice Wall to crazy heights in the process, secrecy might well be overrated, and you can bluff punitive or midseasons threats pretty hard just by using them in the first place (or have them, that’d work too).
Looking at other cards, as I do:
Becoming more and more enamored with Product Placement. Going to be so sad when it turns out to not be super effective. Kinda hoping I’ll be proven wrong on that one.
Hoping Criminal gets another Vitrual Resource. We were told that the “trash all virtual resources” sub on “Thor” would be useful, and right now I’m not quite seeing it. Fan Site maaaybe has some spots, but Spoilers seems really marginal unless you get a few of them out early, and Rolodex isn’t good enough in the first place to get run, I don’t think. Maybe in some janky Shaper Aesop’s thing, but jank doesn’t count, dangit. Relatedly, am curious if Shaper will get a connection in Underway or not, they get Film Critic in Old Hollywood, but I’ve really liked the micro-cycles.
Keep forgetting Laramy’s ability triggers off of any centrals run. Awkward for the first turn (though the corp is likely to have played low (down to 3-4 cards, with intent of playing another 1-2 next turn unless they’re in a bad way and needing the draw), so unless you FIS and facecheck/Dirty Laundry I don’t see it being worth triggering right away anyhow. His ability does let him rock Indexing-Wait a Turn-Go In stuff, though, because if they don’t draw as much as predicted he can clear a useless card out of the way. So once he gets an R&D lock, it’s locked in more than anyone not running Medium will have it.
Team Sponsorship continues to excite me in dreadful ways, I keep forgetting and then re-working out that it keeps ABT relatively safe to trigger because you can pull one agenda into your scoring server after it hits the bin, or a bit of asset economy if you lose one of those instead. All on top of the whole Research Grant (which does require all TSs to be out and rezzed before the first thing is scored) combo, or just using them to build bigger servers. Either way, break even on the rez of the first in ETF, what with the gain a credit on install thing. That ID doesn’t stop being crazy good.
Hoping we see more Currents, leaving Jinteki, Shaper, and Criminal out in the cold with just one seems rough. Dunno what they’d be, but some actually useful things would be nice in general. A Criminal version of Paywall Implementation is probably too good since they already have Desperado, but a Current that gives credits for failed runs (and is free to play) might be useful for the facecheck game, or something to make Corp end-of-turn discards random or reduce corp hand size so as to make Leela and Laramy more terrifying (that costs like 3 I guess, given the balance on currents so far?). A Current that does something long-term like up Link or MU could also be super cool, but seems less likely. I dunno what sort of thing Jinteki ought to see, something that makes their ice less killable might be well received by them as a whole, but might be too good for RP.
Occurs to me now that Film Critic won’t turn off currents. So that’ll be a thing to watch for.
Actually becoming excited for Little Engine as part of the NBN Rush/FA Ice family. Takes more to break than Tollbooth even if it doesn’t have the same punishment (and refunds them if they get through). But a stacked Tollbooth > Little Engine server costs 10 to break with Cy-Cy and 11 with Gordian, even if the costs drop to 5 and 6 once you’re through. That’s kinda rough for 14 credits between installing and rezzing. Separately, both remain pretty decent – though stacking Little Engines is a baaad idea. It wants to be in the base of each server whenever possible, I feel like, but barring an inside job it’s about as safe to try scoring behind as any ice its price is, though it can’t protect assets or NAPDs. Surprisingly, is taxing enough even with the payout to make a bad Security Testing server. And, of course, you’re not going to complain if they Femme it, especially if that’s instead of a Tollbooth.
I fear Ryon Knight will not be worth it even in the Brain Damage deck. Even with Bioroids, getting them down to last click on a run will be tricky, and if they get in earlier he’s not exactly hard to trash. That said, can bluff him as an Ash, can stack multiple copies in one server, and can combine him with Ash to make a truly terrifying scoring server. I just don’t think he’ll be worth the slots in the end, even if the deck turns out to be a thing that’s good.
Still curious abut Paparazzi. It’s easy to trash, since you’re tagged, and you can get slammed by Closed Accounts or Freelancer or Targeted Marketing… but at the same time, outright immunity to meat damage. Shame they’re not a Connection, too, but combined with Street Peddler and/or Fall Guy I suppose you could use them to protect yourself from meat damage deaths if Plascrete becomes insufficient and being tagged for a turn or so WITHOUT that consideration isn’t enough to give you the screaming heebie-jeebies.
Keep vacillating between “Contract Killer seems useful!” and “when will I ever get this to work? maaaye in Argus or Gagarin? I dunno about that…” Is a slightly shittier Ronin (given the meat damage prevention out there, and the less of it being dealt) but is also a slightly better Ronin (requires half the advancements, costs more to trash, can nail a connection like Kati Jones if that’s more important in the moment/they have Plascrete and a full grip and you just have the killer).
Quicksand is the last card I’m hyped up for at the moment. 3 cost ETR gear-check barriers are nice, and it draws a parasite faster than anything other than maybe NEXT Silver. Quetzal will never not be able to break it, but on an oft-run server like R&D it’ll eventually grow to start taxing out things like Corroder or even recurred Lady – though that requires them to run in a lot and not hit anything or Parasite it early while it’s still weak. Glad the boost is on-encounter and not on-break like I first though, means that an insta-parasite still needs the one counter, at least.
EDIT: Dear god I am a loquacious bastard, my apologies to all of you that read all of my ramblings.
7 Likes
Which one is the other card?
Student Loans was spoiled as having “a surprising rez-to-trash ratio” and “the runner cannot play events with the same name as events in their heap”. Pretty obviously broken, but got overfixed. The current text on a 0/3 like Blacklist might actually be decent, but the 2/3 requires rezzing before they play the copy of a card, which is hard to predict, and then protection until they suck it up and do so anyway. If it was a 1-2/3 that prevented an event from being played if it’s got a copy in the heap in exchange for trashing, that might even be decent. No such luck.
The other is Negotiator. Is current 4 to rez, 3 strength sentry you can pay 2c to break subs on with the subs “corp gains 2c” and “trash 1 program”. Originally, was 5 to rez, and those subs were followed by “end the run”. If they upped the rez cost to 6 or 7, or made the strength 2, or yanked the “gain 2c” sub (even if it’s a Weyland staple), Negotiator would’ve been great but not as broken originally. Buuut that takes time and I get why Lukas doesn’t have enough to check. If it’d had another credit knocked off the rez cost to go with losing the sub, even at the cost of 1 strength, I think it’d be pretty playable. But 4 to rez a Mimicable sentry that only ever threatens if the runner has no money and takes two runs to break even on the tax generally… waaay too much to be worth it. Was clearly meant as a taxing ice for Weyland, which they really, really need in the current meta outside of Blue Sun, but no such luck. Then again, I guess the bouncability WITH BS is probably why they did it like they did, because balancing cards for EVERY ID in a faction is very hard when some of them are Blue Sun, NEH, or (especially) EtF.
But apparently there’s a pretty exciting Weyland Ice in the Underway, according to spoiler-ken, and a transaction in Old Hollywood, so maybe Weyland non-Blue Sun decks/players will be getting happier in the not-super-distant future. Universe of Tomorrow’s 5-influence Weyland asset is supposed to be pretty cool as well.
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