Yes they are!
Fast-tracking 4/2s is a thing!
3 Likes
Hostile is also great. The only 2/1 I can think of that’s underwhelming is Clone Retirement.
Even that has more to do with the faction than with the card. The risk of getting bad pub is very bad for glacier strategies, but if there were a viable fast advance jinteki deck the card would be a role-player in it.
Not if Punitive counts as protection.
Some “normal” 5/3’s that might still see play:
- High-Risk Investment is really powerful for Titan and any deck with Midseason.
- Hades Fragment is essential for any super-slow deck and is still decent anti-mill tech.
- I think Priority Requisition remains a defensible choice for Blue Sun - Global Food cuts into Weyland’s already-tight influence.
- Hollywood Renovation has combo applications.
- Utopia Fragment is pretty cool in some Mushin decks.
5 Likes
High-risk is definitely real, but the one-per-deck is an annoying mechanic to build around IMO.
I’ve seen a Blue Sun variant that goes for the two agenda win with VP and 3-pointers, based on Mushin/Crisium/OTG. The cards are there, but the high variance makes it fundamentally casual.
You mean Government Takeover? You can have as many HRI as you like. I’m pretty glad you can’t play 3 Government Takeovers and an Atlas and call it an agenda suite. Those would be some loooooong games.
1 Like
Its hard to give a 5/3 such a massive benefit when scoring because it gets your nearly half way to winning the game by default. 3/1’s should have the best abilities (and mostly do) 3/2 should have the worst and 4/2 should be somewhere in the middle of 3/1’s and 5/3’s. unfortunately 5/3’s are just terrible to get stolen so i can never bring myself to play them. Apart from GFI, GFI is just amazing.
2 Likes
Agreed.
I think 5/3’s without protection are dead because they shouldn’t design 5/3’s without protection (aside from crazy unique effects like the shards or flavour ones like HRI). The positive effects should be for smaller agendas; the majority of 5/3s should have a defensive effect to enable glacier play.
The Cleaners could do meat damage at the end of a turn when accessed
Government Contracts could have a credit cost to steal (like a big NAPD)
Labyrinthine Servers could have a version of its effect happening whether its scored or stolen
Restructured Datapool could trace for tags when its accessed
Project Wotan could search and install/rez a bioroid when stolen/scored
5 Likes
My bad with confusing text. I meant high-risk is a good card. With regards to the other cards @tmoiynmwg was talking about (e.g. fragments), I think that the restrictions are really annoying when it comes to building a consistent deck. Maybe hades would need a rewording so you can only put one card on the bottom.
I think a good glacier deck with decent draw (cough cough Jackson) sees a one of 5/3 often enough, that you can plan for it being there eventually. The only one you can really build around is Hades, and that’s an ancillary function of the deck, aka to not be decked. You could potentially build a deck based on Utopia Fragment, but it’s not like you can casually draw into it at the end of the game and have it do anything like Hades can.
I play a lot of 6 agenda/7agenda builds, and I think there’s something to be said about a deck that plans on having the runner have to score 3 agendas to win because there’s nothing but 3 pointers and a single 2 pointer. If you have the right defensive upgrades, defending your 3 point agendas in HQ is the best case scenario, and I often want to be flooded around the midgame, so I know what I need to do to not lose points. The competitive potential for 5/3 agendas depends on the future support of FFG to make them viable. I don’t think anyone wants a Jackson Howard situation, where everyone puts in food, and not having food in glacier is unthinkable. 3 point agendas are an important part of the game I feel, it’s important that don’t go out of style.
2 Likes
I’m so confused. With your 6/7 agenda builds, you both have to score 3 agendas. Except scoring for you as the corp is really, really difficult. I mean, what if they steal that one 3/2?
Also, why do you want to be flooded?
Yes
4 Likes
We might be too late for that! At least the number of Foods is adjustable unlike the 3-of Jacksons.
3 Likes
I like Food a lot. I really enjoy Glacier play and having agendas that you can use in good, but not perfect, windows is really liberating. I think it’s really improved the game. I kind of hope there are alternatives, but Food might be that powerful, simple and efficient design that’s almost impossible to displace.
At least it’s neutral.
1 Like
There is an amazing amount of design space for 5/3’s that do protect themselves. Lets hope this gets explored in the future.
Just off the top of my head
Holistic Dataset
(NBN) 5/3
When the Runner accesses Holistic Dataset, trace0 - if successful shuffle Holistic Dataset into R&D.
At the end of any turn in which a trace was initiated, the Runner loses 1c.
Mercenary Company
(Weyland) 5/3
10c, [click]: Deal three meat damage and add Mercenary Company to HQ. The Corp can trigger this ability while Mercenary Company is in the Runner’s score area.
Project Frija
(Haas-Bioroid) 5/3
When Project Frija is scored or stolen, if there are no cards named Project Frija forfeited the Corp may force Project Frija to be forfeited and then install and rez a piece of ice named Frija from outside the game, ignoring all costs.
Frija (Unique)
●●●●● (Haas-Bioroid) 8c
Ice: Code Gate - Bioroid
└>As an additional cost to trash a card this turn, the runner must spend [click]
└>As an additional cost to steal an agenda this turn, the runner must spend [click]
└>As an additional cost to access a card from a central server this turn, the runner must spend [click]
Strength 6
4 Likes
They’ve been dead. High Risk is a rare example of one that’s powerful enough to consider including to round out your points, but there’s a reason that TFP and GFI are the only 5/3s seeing play at a high level. Losing three points out of nowhere is way too crippling.
2 Likes
This is exactly it. This is not a new development beacuse of GFI; no T1 decks have run non-defensive 5/3’s for a long time. High risk is very interesting in that regard (it does far more for flatline support than the cleaners ever will) but ultimately even in my weyland lists I’d rather have GFI most of the time.
2 Likes
I only see two good reasons to play non GFI/TFP 5/3s:
-
You’re playing a combo deck that TOTALLY relies on all of it’s influence and can’t afford the influence to max out on GFI, or your combo relies on the ability of a 5/3 such as Hades Shard or Hollywood Renovation. This mainly just applies to Power Shutdown combos, as nothing else in the game takes up nearly that much influence.
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You’re playing an agenda suite that’s all 5/3s (or all 5/3s and a Government Takeover) so switching some of them to food doesn’t matter because the runner is going to have to score 3 of your agendas anyway. This pretty much only applies to kill decks, such as Punitive Blue Sun or Mushin Cybernetics, as even with the possibility of using Domestic Sleepers to score your last point, scoring 5/3s is so hard that I don’t think it’s reasonable to put yourself in this position if your main plan is to score. Hinke’s IG deck would maybe fall into this catagory if it didn’t have TFP in faction, but it does.
6 Likes