Clot’s arrival was controversial in that I think people are still divided over whether or not it’s made FA too difficult to play. There’s cyberdex virus suite, faking traps as agendas, and combining abilities like San San City Grid with APP counters, shortening the timing window in which a runner can bring clot into play.
In contrast, I feel that Turntable is a far more elegant and damaging solution. Consider its advantages:
There is no workaround for its ability.
It’s protected from Power Shutdown/etc. by other cheap hardware
It nullifies the value of not just APP counters, but also Nisei Tokens, Fragments, Mandatory Upgrades, and any other agendas with useful abilities, which every corp deck runs.
It has the added allure of causing point swings in games.
There is no special timing. You just play it and go.
It’s only real disadvantage is that it’s not Desperado or Grimoire. But as long as your deck doesn’t revolve around Desperado runs, I feel like its ability is too versatile to pass up. What are your guys’ thoughts? I’m kinda surprised there’s been little discussion of it, given the hullabaloo surrounding clot.
I ran Turntable in Noise at NorCal Regionals and came in 9th (Noise went 5-2). In two of the games I won, I was able to Turntable an Astro counter, which I bet made the difference in at least one of those games; I can’t say for sure, since I don’t know if my opponents had 3/2s in hand. On the other hand, I didn’t get any usage out of its ability in my other 5 games. (My two losses were to RP and Blue Sun.)
It’s possible that with Grimoire instead, I would’ve been able to pick up the game I dropped vs. Blue Sun, since Grimoire makes it easier to pull off those same-turn Parasites, and would’ve helped with the Medium dig I desperately needed. I’d lean toward saying Grimoire is better in Noise, as seems to be the general consensus. Medium dig is also a pretty solid answer to NEH, and you get a lot of value from Grimoire throughout the game.
In my admittedly limited testing, it was a lot less good vs. RP than NEH, just because it’s a lot harder to randomly steal an agenda - and if you do, sometimes it’ll be Future Perfect, and then you have to decide if you want to give up a point just to clear a Nisei token (usually not, I think).
Can’t comment on other Anarchs, but I’d say it’s a solid choice if you’re struggling with fast advance; I’m a lot happier running 2x Turntable than running 2x Clot.
Disagree: Don’t most RPs run 3TFP 3NAPD 3Nisei? So even if you make this swap they still have to score 3 agendas total to win. You’ve saved them one click advancing and denied a Nisei token. Absolutely worth it IMHO.
If you turntable a future perfect steal for their nisei, you still only need 2 more scores to win since you can later turntable a 2 pointer to get the future perfect back.
That’s…a really good point. I was going to say I don’t like needing to find 3 more agendas to win, but yeah, that totally works.
Well, I do stand by the point that it’s less good vs. RP than NEH, since there are going to be fewer agendas in the RP deck that are harder to steal, and RP tends to run a tighter ship in terms of not giving up random accesses. But it’s better than I thought.
As for comparing to clot, I think clot overshadows turntable by a huge margin. 2 influence and 1 deck slot is a lot smaller of a sacrifice to make in shaper than 2-3 deck slots and your console slot. The ability is a lot more elegant but the costing is wrong. I think it would have been quite playable if it cost $0 and was a unique non-console hardware that gave +1 MU or something. That would have been fine at keeping astrobiotics in check without the devastating splash damage clot caused.
I don’t think it’s better than clot (which is a weird comparison in any case), but I think that it’s a legitimate console. I think the big thing is that it makes paying for a NAPD a lot easier to swallow if you are swapping it for a Astro/Niesei/3-pointer.
Paying 2 credits to remove an Astro/Niesei counter is a pretty good deal.
The thing is that it’s not really a console you can build your deck around like Grimoire or even Spinal Modem, Vigil, or Deep Red. But in cases where the console’s ability is only “sometimes relevant,” I think it has the strongest “sometimes relevant” ability.
It’s only costed wrong if you were designing it explicitly to hurt NEH. It’s plenty playable as printed. Any Anarch deck that doesn’t need Grimoire’s memory or mesh with Vigil should consider it. Currently the runner best suited to play it is Quetzal (no Corroder = don’t need the Grimoire memory).
I got turntabled yesterday by @Marsellus and it wasn’t pretty. Hard earned Nisei got swapped for Chronos Project ultimately costing me the game. That and playing IA NAPD vs Val…
Yeah, that’ll do it. I forgot myself one game, but fortunately went IAA on the first turn since I was trying to hurry it out and install something else. I had to forgo my third click on T2 to get it out.
Did you feel like, if not for the turntable, you would have won the game?
hmm, this a good point, though part of my issue with clot is that it’s basically a green-only card. it takes a minimum of 6 influence and 5-6 deck slots to make it work in its native color. Meanwhile, grimoire is the only console of note in-faction for anarchs (vigil being solid but not the kind of thing you can’t live without) and it’s pretty much a dud if you aren’t running certain other cards that use its ability well.
So that’s really interesting. Here we have a very highly skilled player (presumably - top 8 SHL is no mean feat), thinking that turntable actually managed to turn a losing game (for the runner) into a winning game. I guess for complete verification, I should ask: If you properly advanced that NAPD after the Turntable, do you think you win? Do you think it’s really close? Do you still lose because losing the Nisei token was that big a deal?
I dont know if it would work as consistently stealing a nisei token, but it could force its use. If you have turntable out, and i have a nisei scored, im locking down RND and pushing out another agenda pronto, if you want to steal it then im going to use the token to defend it. It’s not that this would be every single game but its a play i could seeing happening more with RP than say, NEH FA.
$0 Hardware that gave 1 MU (without being QCC) might well see play. I don’t think you want to make every anarch deck really really want it. I think it might be better than clot against NEH fast advance in anarch. Playing clot in anarch is pretty awkward.
I’m coming round to the idea of turntables (oops, bad pun). I think I’ll definitely give it a look in Noise. If Lotus comes out of decks because of NRE (not sure it should, but it’s certainly less valuable now it has a good answer in Orange) then I think Noise gets a load better.
Well not sure if breaking this game down in such a detail leads us anywhere. But I can tell you this: Turntable was a massive swing, but partially due to the runner hitting a singleton Chronos in R&D. Not only I lost a Nisei token, I also got the inconsequential agenda for it. It was like he has stolen my agenda after I invested all the resources to push it through. The swing would be bearable if I was given 2 points not 1 in the process.
The problem is we’re always going to remember games where Turntable made a 3/1 turn in to a 5/3. We’re far less likely to remember games where you didn’t score an agenda because your Parasite + DS was 1 counter short of killing the Ice that would let you in to R&D to look at 2 cards, one of which would have been a Fragment. Turntable especially seems like a card that will suffer that fate.
I don’t know that Turntable “turns off” Astros or Niseis that much. It turns off a scored Nisei if you can steal an agenda from R&D or from HQ. How often does those situations happen? That’s what you need to check. Otherwise the token is just going to go to keeping your away from whatever agenda you would swap for it.
It turns off Astro when you can steal an agenda the turn after the Astro is scored, mostly. Which again is going to be from R&D or HQ 99% of the time. Otherwise that token is just gonna get another agenda scored the turn after.
I’m not convinced that the situations in which you benefit from Turntable enough to forgo Grimoire or Desperado happen that often.
In a deck focused on deep R&D digs, it’s probably more useful - turn that 3/1 Gila Hands in to an NAPD or an FP or what have you - it means the corp no longer feels safe letting you see 8 cards out of R&D because they’re all 1 pointers, and they’re up 6-2.
But I feel like the other options are likely to be useful more often, and more broadly.
