I think the issue isn’t that Eater is inefficient, but more that Eater is easy to tax for the job it’s trying to do. With regular multi-access like RnD Interface or Legwork, you don’t mind paying a good bit to get into HQ or RnD because you’ve increased the value of the payout. I don’t think this is true for Eater’s go-tos of Account Siphon and Keyhole (maybe it’s true for Wanton Destruction? But in terms of agendas Jackson can hurt that plan pretty well). With Account Siphon, if the corp has any kind of recovery plan in mind you’re mainly looking for the burst economy pay out. If you have to pay 6 to get through an eli and a datapike over HQ, you’re already looking at just 4 credits back from the siphon in the best case, and probably less if you don’t want to float tags. In the meanwhile, maybe there’s a rezzed sansan behind a piece of ICE now and you’ve got to find and play Singularity to get rid of it.
Keyhole is even worse, since it honestly isn’t that powerful over a single run. Keyhole is made for repeated oppression and if you can’t get into RnD cheaply, it quickly becomes a card that will bankrupt you.
The main point isn’t that Eater is inefficient (it’s as good as Corroder or Gordian, which are both fine breakers). It’s that its downside of not being able to work with cards like RnD Interface, Medium and Legwork means that Eater’s payoffs are going to be less valuable per run. It’s not clear that the gain of not needing to find 3 breakers (Mimic, Zu and Corroder do not cost that much more than Eater in terms of credits) outweighs the loss of turning off central and remote accesses, which is a very efficient way of winning the game.
Huh, that is my decklist. That is a first. That deck was not what won the championship, though, I would wholly suggest going more from bblum’s lists. It went 3-3 due to some bad ICE choices, Leela going 6-0 won that championship.
@bblum, in looking to make my Blue Sun better, I had a few questions on your list, if you don’t mind.
I am surprised by 4 14+ cost ICE. I feel okay with 2, sometimes meaning I will oversight a 9 cost space ICE. More than that felt too expensive when I wasn’t seeing oversights. What made you go with 4?
I am also surprised at 3 Hive, no Changeling or Firewall. Hive tends to give me trouble from ‘turning off’ late game. You still think it is good enough to be worth 3x over longer-term ICE?
One factor is that curtain wall is a pretty decent piece of ice, despite its big cost. A lot of games I can make a late-game scoring remote out of just a curtain and a tollbooth. I play 19 ice, despite the “blue sun factor” which should mean you’d need less ice, to offset the downside of some of the ice being too expensive to rez the hard way. I put orion as a 4th copy because I wanted to make the OAI combo more consistent; but if you want to lean on it less, you could go to 2x or 3x 14+s, 2x OAI, and perhaps 1x private contracts. Orion is better with OAI as you can protect it with an ice out front; maybe 2 and 2 curtain is better than 1 and 3.
Hive is the best ice in the deck IMO. The top priority early game is to get an atlas counter, or to make adonis stick and gain tempo as the money advantage snowballs. Even prepaid kate will think twice before spending 3/4ths of a lady on turn 3 on your remote. Late game, the very worst case scenario is you reclaim it and dump the 5 extra creds into an ash trace, but the 19 ice count should make that justifiable. But on top of that, when you get to match point, either you’ve scored 2 2-pointers so the hive is still at least a wall of static (beats sec testing, taxes a shaper who plans to index you), or you’ve scored the pri-req already in which case that’s a massive enough advantage that I’m ok with a blank ice. Don’t try to win by scoring 4x 2-pointers though.
How come Caduceus is still in the deck? When I’ve been playing with it, it was quite bad most of the time (70% of the opponents are Kate/Andy, against which it taxes only for 3 and does not ETR).
And that’s before the any extra link that pops up every now and then.
Is Errand Boy better than Caduceus? 1 strength makes me nervous, especially in BS (where you can often keep 2+ str ICE alive). The Deuce is really good against zero link runners. I think the ID link is one of the most questionable design decisions in the game.
I will defer this question to the Blue Sun aficionados… In my own limited experience with Blue Sun, I have not felt the need for small lightly taxing ICE. My gut on Errand Boy is that it’s too soft to The Grub.
That’s my feeling too. In other decks you can sort of make the - if you parasite my errand boy, you have one fewer parasite for my archer - sort of argument. In BS, you needn’t lose any ICE (except maybe ice wall) to parasite. In the absence of parasite, Errand Boy is no joke.
Disagree. As Kate I’am deeply annoyed by Caduceus. Hate to face plant into it early. Later on when Blue Sun drowns in $ it forces out my Mimic - slowing me down and most importantly draining my cred pool.
You run, corp pays 3, you pay 3, you access. Net gain is 0 for corp (unless corp wants to keep you poor, but let’s leave that argument aside for now, it’s dependant on many things).
Then as PP Kate you rock on few more credits and then BAM it’s porous as fuck.
Against 1 link runner, I’d much, MUCH rather have Datapike in my hand instead.
Link 1 runners do make Caduceus a bit sad, but blue sun has decent matchups against the strongest link 1 runners, making caduceus round out your ICE build quite well.
Kate for example, is going to have trouble keeping up with all your barriers if she just has Ladybird, so getting to walk through Caduceus for 3 (still more expensive than mimic) still feels pretty good to me.
Andysucker gets through with her mimic, but Stealth has to either spend 3 or waste a switchblade, also feels pretty good.
I run 2x each of Caduceus and Errand Boy and have been quite happy with it. However, my meta teched hard against Blue Sun in the last couple of weeks, so I’ve switched.
Wow really? Cad is great. Taxing for 3 without ETRing is almost as good as what eli does. It’s the cheapest way to gear check for mimic there ever was. If you pair it with some other expensive defense on R&D, like curtain or booth or crisium, then the trace becomes threatening enough (i.e., you can put 2 cred into it if that’ll put the runner at less than 4 cred during accessing) that they have to get out a mimic to take that option away from you. Remember late-game traces are at their best after the runner has already paid their way through a curtain wall.
Errand boy, as little as the runner should want to let the corp choose between cards and creds, in the end does not defend R&D or remote a single bit. Not to mention the parasite issue. It’s a card for aggro and/or combo decks, not for glacier.
Usually I don’t even feel bad when the runner installs a Mimic. There isn’t really another good target for Mimic in the deck, so it’s only good vs those 2 pieces of ice, and even if I never increase the traces against a 1 link runner who then installs a Mimic, they’re paying 3 credits to reduce the break cost by… 1 credit. Okay, carry on, Mr. Runner.
I’ve noticed that too, and I couldn’t think of a single reliably competitive male runner. Gabe, maybe? Edward Kim also seems to be doing some work. The Shaper guys seem pretty unreliable, though.