[Updated] I for one welcome our new Whizzard Overlord

Netrunner General
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This was my experience at the Portland regionals. I was the Butcher, and there were way, way too many Whizzard players. It is so hard to get ahead on money to threaten death when the assets that I’m relying on the runner either trashing and setting themselves behind or leaving alone because they’re too expensive to trash (and in the mean time making me money/getting me cards) when this nerd comes crashing into the server and spends two bucks to trash a Marked Accounts. It doesn’t matter how much meat I have dangling around in HQ if I can never get far enough ahead on money to Midseasons.

Now, I almost never play against Kim, so I don’t know how good or bad that matchup would be. I do know that I do not like seeing Whizzard across from me. If I have to enter an extended game, it’s probably going his way.

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This got out of hand as far as its length is concerned, so:

TL;DR: Whiz and Ed approach the matchup fundamentally differently: Whiz plays the money denial game, Ed plays the “what’re ya gonna spend it on?” game.

a) show me a MaxX list that runs three Imps while having enough reduncancy to not get completely fucked by a Blacklist

b) Noise can use his Imps to trash the naked assets, but it gets significantly more dicey once we start talking centrals accesses and ops trashing - Wraparound, Gutenberg and Data Raven are all problematic pieces for him, due to his dependency on resources (Aesop’s specifically)

c) we’re still talking about a card that you have to

  • find
  • pay for
  • play

and then you get to use twice (at most, provided they don’t purge and you don’t hit CVS). Comparing it to an ID power that’s up click 1 like it ain’t no thang is not exactly prudent, and I’d have thought people learned this lesson in the whole Whizzard vs. Scrubber debate.

The world of SanSan is different from the world of O&C. Career Fair make both Earthrise and Liberated Account affordable, Blacklist makes MaxX risky, and Wyld Pancakes are a thing if you want them. Having played Anarch pretty much exclusively in the last 2 months, getting reliable accesses was rarely the problem, money was. We can debate whether MaxX helps with that - I’ve gotten knocked out of double elims on some pretty ridiculous MaxX self-mills before, and if you’ve played enough MaxX, you probably had this happen to you as well.

Here’s the thing you seem to be missing: think about why those money-generating assets are a problem in the matchup.

  • It isn’t “because then they’ll rez so much ICE I’m done” - Butcher Shops rarely run more than 14 pieces (half of which do nothing if you’re tagme and have a Corroder out), with the median value hovering somewhere around 11 from my experience. Literally the only two problematic pieces those decks run are Tollbooth (usually a one-of) and Infomation Overload (usually two-of), with UCF being a distant third (yes, it can cost you an agenda, but it goes away afterwards).
  • It isn’t “because Psycho-Beale is an instant loss” - I don’t think I’ve even seen a Butcher Shop list with Psychos, there usually isn’t enough space.

So the main problem has got to be “Because they can Midseasons you and then keep nuking you until you’re dead”, right? This is the part you’re going to be attacking with Kim, not their PAD and Marked bullshit. Hitting Midseasons out of hand is huge, hitting Reclamation Order is game-changing, and every meat damage card you trash instead of taking to the face prolongs the game significantly. They can drown in credits for all I care, if they don’t have a win condition to turn it into.

Everything you guys pointed out is only a problem if
a) you’re resource-dependent
b) you care about how much money they have

The thing to solve here, I think, is how to not weaken your RP matchup overly by going for event- and transient resource-based econ and card draw.

Having run both Ed and Whiz in regionals in the last month, my conclusions are:

  • For old-school netrunner (money, breakers, accesses, win), Whiz is the superior ID
  • For tagme-based denial strategies, I’d rather have Ed than either Whiz or Reina - with the exception of UCF and Information Overload, all tag punishment is operations-based. As a result, this is where Ed shines. Instead of Scrubber, just load up on Imp and Imp-recycling tech that you want to be playing anyway.

So yeah, the IDs aren’t interchangeable, and the matchup has to be navigated differently. Whizzard has the advantage of getting a doable Butcher Shop matchup “for free” by teching for RP. I do maintain that vs Butcher Shop, Ed is actually the best, though.

Full disclosure: I did lose the last regionals game I played as Ed vs. Butcher Shop, but:

  • I was teched for RP (2 Vamps, 0 Plascretes, 0 Imps) with zero consideration for kill decks in my list
  • There were two IHWs in my 5-card hand that he both missed with the Traffic Accident
  • I was on 6 points at the time, positioned decently to grab the 7th (reasonable access both to RnD and HQ, with a Medium out)

I did wish I was Whizzard for most games of that tournament, but this one sure as hell wasn’t one of them :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’d rather have a broke corp…

Corp: “I’m gonna spend it on the top card of my deck and maybe hold some not op cards in hand. Yawn.”

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Man, I really want to reply to this as best as I am able, but as you note, your post is somewhat gargantuan in scope, so I’m undoubtedly going to end up with a similar textual behemoth. Props for responding so comprehensively to our counter-arguments.

Huh. I guess I’ll address the first point first. Given that this was in direct response to my claim that Data Ravens and Gutenbergs are a problem and @kenobob’s related point about resource-based Kim struggling against Butcher Shop, it seems to follow that you are advocating floating tags fairly early (though not necessarily off the bat, perhaps not until you have taken out a Scorched Earth or Traffic Accident?). This changes things a lot, so I’m glad to know this - I was under the impression that you were advocating for a more standard ‘Good Stuff Edward’ with the expected Liberated Accounts and Earthrise Hotels.

That being said, you respond to this

with this

which sort of suggests that you are, in fact, (unknowingly?) advocating the use of resources, in order to accelerate your set-up. Perhaps I am misreading you, though. If you were simply making a general statement about Anarchs not struggling to get reliable accesses aside from MaxX, then it would be much appreciated if you proffered some of your alternate, ‘Ed-specific’, rapid set-up methods. 3x I’ve Had Worse, 2-3x Inject with prerequisite Clone Chips to save trashed programs? If so, the 3x I’ve Had Worse clearly can’t leave your hand in the Butcher Shop matchup (because they’re serving as damage prevention), which sort of just leaves the 2-3 Injects, which doesn’t really seem like enough. Maybe splashing some Special Orders to fetch required breakers? Are you delineating between resource-dependency, e.g. large numbers of important resources/one key resource, and simply using resources, e.g. a couple of Symmetrical Visages, maybe two Earthrise? Genuinely curious.

[quote=“PeekaySK, post:142, topic:3942, full:true”] [quote=“divadus, post:140, topic:3942”]
Seems like Whizzard has a HIGHLY relevant ID power in said matchup. I’ve always found it be fairly useful, myself.
[/quote]
Here’s the thing you seem to be missing: [/quote]

Before I address any further points, I would just like to say that the following argument you go on to make is not actually an argument against my point of Whizzard having a “HIGHLY relevant ID power in said matchup” at all. Your argument is about why Edward Kim’s ID power is also highly relevant against the Shop, albeit in a different way, a point which I admittedly contested somewhat, though not in the quote you used. You made this exact point in your “TL;DR”, so I suppose I find it a little odd that you chose to use the above quote.

[quote=“PeekaySK, post:142, topic:3942, full:true”]think about why those money-generating assets are a problem in the matchup…

It isn’t “because then they’ll rez so much ICE I’m done”…

It isn’t “because Psycho-Beale is an instant loss”…

So the main problem has got to be “Because they can Midseasons you and then keep nuking you until you’re dead”, right? This is the part you’re going to be attacking with Kim, not their PAD and Marked bullshit. Hitting Midseasons out of hand is huge, hitting Reclamation Order is game-changing, and every meat damage card you trash instead of taking to the face prolongs the game significantly. They can drown in credits for all I care, if they don’t have a win condition to turn it into.[/quote]

I don’t want to say “I know”, as I worry that that would undermine the considerable effort you put into constructing your response, but… I KNOW! Yes, I know that the money-generating assets are really only a problem because they enable Midseasons. And yes, I am very much aware that Kim’s potency in this matchup is that he has the potential to trash combo-piece operations, such as the aforementioned Midseasons, as well as the kill pieces. I suppose a large part of the point I was making was that Kim’s angle of attack is highly luck-dependent, whereas Whizzard’s is not. I’ve witnessed many, many games (and been in a few myself) where Kim (even in the ‘optimal’ matchups, such as this one) ends up trashing next-to-no significant operations because random is random. In fact, I distinctly remember a game where I trashed a Midseason Replacements (second trigger yo) off the top of R&D, stole an Astro next card, and was Midseasoned the following turn (the deck runs three of them after all). Assets, on the other hand, have to be installed in order to provide their benefit - there is no ‘luck of the access’ required in Whizzard’s asset denial.

As you note, if the Corp isn’t swimming in the money that they would otherwise be if I couldn’t deny their money assets, they are not going to be Midseason-ing me any time soon. Meaning I actually don’t even have to worry about hitting Midseasons out of their hand, whereas you do, because you’ve let them get away with money in the first place. On that note:

Now I’m really quite confused. Are tags a problem for your Edward or not? You’ve stated that Data Ravens and Gutenbergs are only a problem if you are resource-dependent (I don’t see how else to interpret this, apart from ‘don’t be scared to float a few tags’); then, you went on to say that consistent central accesses are reasonably achievable when you can Career Fair out Earthrise Hotels/Liberated Accounts or set up Adjusted Wyldsides (as mentioned, I struggle to reconcile this with the previous comment); and now, you comment that knocking out Midseasons is highly impactful. I am the bewildered. Again, I’m really, really not deriding you here - sincerely trying to follow your logic. Are you drawing a line between floating a few tags (holding one or two from Gutenbergs, plus a couple of Raven counters) and being absolutely tag-flooded (Midseasons for 15)? Because Information Overload with 10+ subroutines is much nastier than with 4 subroutines (I would agree)?

Anyhow, I don’t want to misrepresent you, so I shall wait upon a response (no obligation), before I attempt to better understand your approach.

[quote=“PeekaySK, post:142, topic:3942, full:true”]Having run both Ed and Whiz in regionals in the last month, my conclusions are:

For old-school netrunner (money, breakers, accesses, win), Whiz is the superior ID
For tagme-based denial strategies, I’d rather have Ed than either Whiz or Reina - with the exception of UCF and Information Overload, all tag punishment is operations-based. As a result, this is where Ed shines. Instead of Scrubber, just load up on Imp and Imp-recycling tech that you want to be playing anyway.[/quote]

And I guess this is where your own words cinch things for me. I’d comment about being perplexed by your mention of ‘tagme-based denial’ Edward with what you’ve said up to this point, but my befuddlement is already well-documented at this stage. Instead, I’ll focus on the fact that old-school Netrunner, as you describe it, is a tried-and-true method of winning games. ‘Tagme-based denial’ devoid of economic denial (you stated yourself that you don’t care how much money the Corp has) is not (a tried-and-true method of winning games). Which is to say, there may be merit to it (I’ll readily admit that I am not positive there is), but it certainly hasn’t proven itself yet.

Last point I’ll make, and only very briefly, because it’s absurdly obvious what I’m going to say - if you wanted to be Whizzard for most games of that tournament, but in one particular matchup were glad you were Edward, I’m pretty sure that means that Whizzard is clearly the superior choice at present, especially when he still has a “doable Butcher Shop matchup.”

Ultimately though, it just sounds like we play Netrunner entirely differently, and are unlikely to see eye to eye on this one. You like to live dangerously - “I’m okay to let a few tags stick, because I’m about to royally fuck up those Scorched Earths and Traffic Accidents in his hand, anyway!” - while I definitely prefer to be a little bit more in control - “I think I’d prefer to deny you the option of burning down my apartment block entirely. I’ll wait until match point approaches before I start risking life and limb”.

TL;DR: Whizzard is the bomdigi, but if you want to play Edward, that’s okay too.

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You can catch Whizzard with a Midseasons much easier than most with a naked agenda. Whether or not you’ll have the money to do it is a different story.

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This is probably going to turn into a rather long discussion, but I’m interested in it and it seems like nobody’s using the thread for anything else anyway - if they’re not interested they can just ignore us, right? With that in mind, let’s do this thing!

I won’t be chronological in this reply (want to structure my thoughts better), hope it won’t make stuff too unreadable.

Let’s start with the particular experience I was describing and then move onto general strat discussion.

This was the tournament in question, here’s the list I was running at the time:

Vienna Ed

Edward Kim: Humanity’s Hammer (Order and Chaos)

Event (11)

Hardware (5)

Resource (11)

Icebreaker (9)

Program (9)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Breaker Bay

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

(yes, this was before @spags made a very similar list popular out of Whiz - there’s really not that many ways to build an Anarch deck once you go “woot, Career Fair is awesome and Atman will be my Lotus Field solution”)

First, I’ll say that I had very little time to test before the Regional, so it was unpolished. The Vamps in particular were a last-minute swap (the day before, those were Injects a the Knight was a Cyberfeeder) because I was expecting a field of RP with a smaller degree of ETF and the occasional Blue Sun. What I got was… all yellow, all the time. So that’s why I wished I were playing Whiz, really - it was more a reflection on my bad meta prediction.

Now, the list itself. If you take a look at it, you’ll notice it’s Carapace-less. That’s because Ed’s power keeps you safe vs. Blue Sun just fine (been there, done that often). If I expected to run against Butchershop with any regularity, I’d have the Knight as a Carapace instead and be totally fine (the Vamps should still be Injects, though - the list turned out to be fine at keeping RP reasonably poor without Vamps, and doesn’t have the cash for a big Vamp hit through a Crisium anyway).

The general strategy I employed in the matchup was far less careless than you seem to think. I tend to be hard to kill as a runner (barring freak accidents in turn 2, but hey - you can’t always be completely safe, that’s the price of aggression), to the point where people from my playgroup toast whenever someone does flatline me.

Now, going tag-me and resources: Here’s a deck that I’ve played for a very long time*. One of the lessons it has taught me is that going tagme is always an option, with specific costs and benefits. That deck was built very much to go tag-me, but it still sometimes made more sense to clear tags. Similarly, the one I just posted above, despite having a bunch of resources, can still manage in a tagged state (unlike, say, a typical Noiseshop, Aesop’s Wyld Mill or similar things that completely fall apart). The only card that’s pretty much completely useless when tagged is Kati, and you can still do 3 credits for 2 clicks out of her. Liberated Account can pretty much be emptied by the time the Corp can trash it, and even Daily Casts are doable, although more tricky - basically, if you save the install for a turn when the Corp totally needs to do something other than trash your shit (scoring an agenda and virus purge are the two most common), you can trade one of your actions and one of your credits for one action and two credits of theirs. If they don’t take this (probably bad for them) trade, you’re starting to turn a profit. And Career Fair actually improves this trading significantly, as you’re getting essentially a Sure Gamble’s value out of it, and it makes even an Earthrise trash an unfavorable trade for the corp. So it’s not like your resources stop doing anything once you’re tagged, they just start performing in a different capacity, really.

When to float tags is a question with a simple answer: when it benefits you more than shaking them. If there’s a Gutenberg protecting RnD and I’d just get a single access, probably not doing it unless desperate. With a Medium in hand? You can bet your ass I’ll install it and run three times. Now the Corp has to either kill me, beef up the RnD defenses significantly (on rather short notice) or tough it out and try to rush for the win. This is why I commented on your list of “problematic ICE” - they’re all completely inconsequential in tag-me mode.

(using the quote more as a chapter title “On setting up”)

But the thing is… you don’t need to particularly rush your setup vs. Butcher Shop. It’s a slower deck than Fastrobiotics - hell, they don’t even run SanSan if memory server, there’s just no room. You’re a 2015 Anarch, have a full complement of Clone Chips, Atmen and god knows what. Have you played much Anarch before, say, the Lunar cycle? Today’s orange is a cakewalk compared to those times. Draw a bunch of cards, install whatever decent comes up, play some standard aggressive Netrunner and you’ll manage. If you find a single Sucker and either a Mimic or a Clone Chip+Parasite, you can disable the biggest threat (Info Overload), and the rest is just speedbumps. Will they be a problem? Maybe, maybe not. Their whole deck is geared towards killing you as their primary win condition. Them going for their secondary (i.e. AP victory) will quite possibly be slower than you doing the same thing.

(a.k.a. “The relevance of ID powers”)

Overall you’ve got a decent breakdown, but here’s a couple aspects I think you missed out on:

  • First of all, consider the NEH ID power and the impact it has on the math. If I’m NEH and you’re Whiz… my installed Marked Accounts / Pad Campaign was essentially “click for a card”, while for you it’s a click to run and 1-2 actual credits to trash. Overall, a good trade for me
    • Furthermore, if you’re Whiz, you will probably be trigger-happy on remote runs, making it super-easy to feed you a TGTBT (as @whatisthistreachery mentions)
  • Trashing assets out of RnD - I will maintain that it’s less useful than trashing ops out of RnD. For one, quite a few of the assets cost more than 3 credits, thus costing you real cash. Also, you have to keep your cash up while you’re spending clicks to run and credits to break, which makes it more likely you’ll get within Midseasons territory. Also, remember that not all ops Ed trashes will be kill-related, some will be economic. Edding (Kimming? Hammering?) a Hedge Fund is a loss for the Corp equivalent to 6 turns’ worth of an active PAD Campaign, while actually being cheaper for you as Ed (it happens during a central run you wanted to do anyway, Whiz has to run the PAD).
    • The above denial aspect becomes even more pronounced in the RP matchup, actually. Killing a single Giraffe takes away more money than a ticking Health Clinic usually makes over the entire game. I kept RP poor with Ed just fine, Whiz had issues (because of the goddamn Hedges and Giraffes).

Of course they are a problem and I’d be insane to say otherwise - Closed Accounts is a card that exists and wins games, being tagged means you can’t ever end your turn with less than five, etc etc etc. What I’m saying is that:

  • Ed has his own, unique counterplay to the problem that Whiz doesn’t
  • Ed can cope with being tagged easier than Whiz can, because said counterplay works both before and after being Midseasoned

This still doesn’t mean that I would prefer to be tagged against a deck that desperately wants me tagged, it just means that giving up my tagging cherry isn’t as huge a deal, so to speak.

Apparently, my attempts at explaining play and counterplay patterns I have in mind ended up being really confusing, sorry! Tell me if my soliloquy on resources and tags made more sense this time around, if not I’ll try again with some more context.

*vanity comment: yes, I played Atman in Anarch waaay before it was “the cool thing to do” :smiley:

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Really? I remember @aandries losing 2 games in 13 or so at Gencon 2013 with 3 Atman in Noise. Huh.

Also, thought this was the Whizz thread?

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Depending on your tech, tag me can work fine against butchershop. I went tag me in 7 of the 7 games I played at the DTW regional Saturday. I played butchershop 3 times in swiss and 1 in elim, and lost just the 1 in elim by wiffing an ive had worse on traffic accident on what was amounting to the corp’s last turn.

My tech was to wanton D (3 copies) HQ before going tag me, and try to deja for one as time passed, but more often that not, rushing their shitty ice with keyhole lead to wins in under 10 minutes. Keyhole lets you end the game far faster than they can recover from siphon and wanton, if they even want to waste time trying to kill you through IHW. I was maxx with inject though, showing them my IHW count. Ed’s ability can stand in for a few copies (or all) of IHW.

Long story short, if you can rush down butchershop the anarch way(medium/keyhole), their gameplan is largely worthless, and their ice suck, so you can do tag me just fine.

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I kinda missed my Wanton Destructions from my keyhole-MaxX build on Saturday, for sure.

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Here’s the Whizzard deck I won the Detroit/Warren, MI regionals with (and the corp, if anyone cares):

- Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now - Warren Regionals 1st Place (Whizzard)
- Perfection Replicated Fast - Warren, MI Regionals 1st Place (RP)

It was pretty much the “L4J (Looking for Job)” deck with an added Progenitor, so there’s nothing too interesting in the deck composition that we haven’t talked about, but maybe you’re into reading the notes. If you told me two weeks ago I was going to win a regional with Whizzard, I would not have believed you. Thanks for the deck, @spags and Steven.

As for changes I’d personally make, now that I’ve had enough practice with it to make informed cuts, I’d swap a Datasucker for the Progenitor to go down to 45. I’d also go for SMC instead of the Atman, as I used it only once – installed it at 3 against an ETF with just Atman and Corroder out, allowing me to attack either HQ (Architect, put NRE on Corroder) or R&D (Eli, put NRE on Atman) cheaply.

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Congrats!

Those are both fair moves. I think that Wooley’s, with 2 Atman, is perhaps fine. But, with NRE, I agree that the Atman can go.

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To be clear, I’m not saying I was first (which would be stupid, because it neither matters at all nor is certifiably true) or anything, just that I’ve been doing it long before “1x Atman” became a staple of pretty much every published Anarch deck everywhere. On my end, the comment really stems from having to defend the inclusion in all sorts of discussions and analyses for over a year, so now I feel somewhat vindicated by its popularity :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve heard tales of Aaron’s wild Gencon exploits and have always wondered what that list looked like. Do any of you gentlemen still have, by any chance?

Our discussion still concerns Whiz, just not… him exclusively. Unfortunately, until such a time as humanity develops three-dimensional forum threads, we might be stuck with topics bleeding into each other, I fear :slight_smile:

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For what it’s worth, I think that would weaken the deck. Mind you, I placed 5th with my take, so take it as you will, but:

  • SMC is useless late, when Atman shines (because you’ve seen pretty much all the ICE and can see what to set it to in order to save the most money)
  • SMC gets tricky if you draw it after you’ve slapped down a Medium/NA, a Sucker and a breaker, but before you’ve found and played one of your Grimoires
  • High-strength sentries become more of a problem, especially in larger quantities (i.e. overloading the D4V1Ds) or in combination with other ICE you need to insta-parasite (i.e. overloading Clone Chips)
  • when you’re out/low on Sucker tokens, SMC doesn’t give you an out for stuff like Kitsune and Excalibur,
  • you can’t use SMC to make fun of Curtain Walls and Archers by setting it to 6 :smiley:

Personally, I’d play an Inside Job if I wanted to swap the Atman for something. That is an include that wrecks havoc with people out of Anarch.

edit: damn, sorry for double-posting. I’ll shut up now (for a while, at least)

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Love it.

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14-1 Between Ice Breaker, Swiss, and Elims

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Has anyone had Power Shutdown played on them with NRE out? I’ve been playing the 2 Atman version to see how well it works. The flexibility 2 Atman provides is good, and playing another Career Fair is also nice, but NRE definitely seems like it’s worth it as long as you aren’t getting shutdown. If you are though… 2 Atman seems a lot more resilient.

Either way the deck seems good, just wondering what people’s experience against the potential hate is.

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I ran against it in PE and Titan. They told me they each had 1 Lotus but didn’t draw it.

If they did I would be locked out completely. I don’t think its a massive problem, but any Weyland deck could pull it off. RP can’t spare the influence.

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I slotted two Progenitors, and I think it’s likely the best buffer against Power Shutdown you can find, without running whatsitcalled, Enery Regulator?

Turns out Progenitor is also a pretty good card on its own, from my experience with it. @cspieker was a proponent of that card, props.

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This is long, and wrote as I caught up, so some stuff got covered by others… but I’m posting it, dangit! I put work in!

In testing, his ability + archives interface wasn’t enough to reliably overcome Butchershop. That may change, and as people flee Asset Econ in fear of the Mighty Whizzard his utility will increase once more. The two of them can run startlingly similar decks (swap in a Scrubber for Kim, though, it’s damn useful, more evidence of how great Whiz is right now).

But @divadus is right, here. Whiz’s economic advantage comes even more into play against Butcher Shop because you can trash things without taking HUGE econ hits, which hurts the Butchershop economy without the same hit to you that other IDs face. If they can’t out-money you pretty heavily, then you can just check all their remotes, and when you can do that, well… the only other method they have of landing a kill (surprise Breaking News) gets neutered, too.

[quote=“kenobob, post:138, topic:3942”]
Kim would be really interesting if they took away his unthematic link and gave him 17 influence.
[/quote]Not saying 17 influence would be bad, but I think as leader of a pretty big gang, the Link makes plenty of thematic sense. Just because they’re not all on the up-and-up doesn’t mean he doesn’t have connections – and there are probably plenty of law officers and corp workers that secretly agree with Human First, judging how Hate Groups historically tend to operate.

[quote=“divadus, post:140, topic:3942”]
Really, if you wanted to specifically tech against Butcher Shop, Dorm Computer (I realize no one plays this, but, believe me, it saves you so much money against Gutenbergs), Security Testing and Bank Jobs in an aggressive Criminal list are the way to go. The problem is that you’ll be hamstringing yourself against anything approximating glacier.
[/quote]Yeah, Dorm Computer is AMAZING against Butchershop and other tagging NBN decks. It’s just awful elsewhere, generally, unless you want to protect against a failed Masanori run (I thiiink that works). Glacier is tough for hyper-aggressive Crim anyway, though.

I’d argue tossing a Wanton into Whiz would be more useful, though. “You probably have the combo ready, let me make sure you have to go draw into it again, and maybe tax out your Jacksons if I hit an agenda, too” is a nice feeling for the runner and a frustrating one for Butchershop, take it from me.

And, of course, adding a Plascrete is an option. Plascrete + IHW is impossible to double-Scorch regardless of hand size, and can help mitigate the “Traffic Accident missed your IHWs, now to kill!” issue.

[quote=“Saan, post:141, topic:3942”]
Now, I almost never play against Kim, so I don’t know how good or bad that matchup would be.
[/quote]In my experience, the amount of money Kim has to spend to get in reliably makes up for the inconvenience. You’ve got to play a bit more quickly, and definitely don’t discard a spare Midseasons… but he’s as likely to hit an Agenda as a Combo Piece, and unless he declines an NAPD you can 'Seasons him if you’ve got it.

Wanton Destruction was the biggest source of problems, as noted above. Archives Interface caused issues, but unless he’s getting something else out of the runs it’s not TOO hard to shut down Archives enough to make it less appealing (a Data Raven and almost any other ice will do it, in my experience, though that was pre-NRE).

[quote=“PeekaySK, post:142, topic:3942”]
Instead of Scrubber, just load up on Imp and Imp-recycling tech that you want to be playing anyway.
[/quote]I dunno if I agree on instead of given how much Scrubber can do, but yeah, Kim still wants Imp, because then he can multiaccess and still make them hurt. Though I’d again argue for a Wanton or two, because that kind of hand-slam is really painful in almost every circumstance.

Worth noting, relatedly, that Butchershop does tend to run a fair few Ops Econ cards, as well as the kill combo. Personally, I try to keep at least a couple econ ops in hand along with midseasons unless I’m pretty far ahead and sure I’ll stay there, so that I can boost my econ up before 'Seasoning so I can have a full turn to kill them later and can land the tags more easily than they expect.

[quote=“spags, post:147, topic:3942”]
Also, thought this was the Whizz thread?
[/quote]Most every ID-centric thread seems to involve some off-ID discussion, but I think the similarities/differences between Ed and Whiz make that even more the case. Am honestly surprised a bit that there’s a thread for each, rather than one, but I like grouping stuff and folks here like separation, so whatever.

[quote=“steve_houston, post:158, topic:3942”]
Turns out Progenitor is also a pretty good card on its own, from my experience with it.
[/quote]The only problem I see there is the pain of losing whatever you’re hosting on Progenitor. Or do you wait to host something until you see the second one?

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160

No longer the garbage man.

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