Are 5/3s without self-protection dead?

Netrunner General
41

very few 5/3s actually do anything when scored, so the defensive ones are almost always better. prireq is still the best when scored (hri is close now except its weyland), but none of them have abilities on the level of nisei, astro, beale, breaking news, abt or atlas.

3 Likes
42

HRI is amazing in Titan. Unfortunately, Titan lacks any reasonable tools to actually score the damn thing.

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43

I’ve scored it behind a chimera, once. zzzzzzzzzz

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44

Sure, I’ve scored it once or twice too. But that’s not the same thing as saying that Titan is equipped really to score 5/3s.

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45

One thing the game doesn’t have is a 5/3 that is punishing to steal. Something like a 5/3 super-fetal. How about a Weyland one that trashes hardware (plascrete) when stolen :smile:

Such a type of card could be playable.

4 Likes
46

I think so until we get 5/3 with powers worth playing. As with 3/1 and 4/2 they need to protect themselves or have an ability (chronos, the world of tomorrrow, nesii) that justifies their inclusion over 3/2s. Maybe this changes if Ffg doesn’t print new 3/2 after rotation

47

Thought experiment:

Mandatory Upgrades as a 5/3. Would you play this in some redcoat-y thing?

48

That’s an interesting question; the problem with balancing 3-pointers is that scoring one is already really good. So, if you have the window to score one, getting 3 points AND a really fantastic ability like ManUp puts you way ahead of the runner. I really like ManUp’s design as it is; it’s really difficult to score, but losing it doesn’t hurt as much as losing a 3-pointer, apart from the clicks and credits you’ve presumably invested in it.

I like BigBoy’s suggestion that the design should move in the direction of 3-pointers with powerful ‘when accessed/stolen’ abilities. Or we need more combo cards like Punitive to make them playable again.

49

Vanity Project, or government takeover, how else do you get to 6 agendas? If you focus your deck on being richer than the runner, and have moderately taxing ice and the right defensive upgrades, scoring 2 agendas is a great plan I think. I’d rather have my hq flooded so I don’t randomly lose points out of my deck, which doesn’t happen super often, but us a concern at times. HQ defend itself, not everyone plays legwork, and when multi hq cards come out, you’re either playing criminal, and basically win, or you put a defensive upgrade and another piece of ice over hq and be done with it. If the runner is poking around for random accesses in HQ, the 1 in 5 chance of getting a single card really helps, and it’s likely to open a window to score a 5/3.

I think it’s important to tax clicks more than credits when trying to score 3 pointer or anything with a 6 advancement requirement or more. It’s especially good when you have a hand with an agenda or two in it to protect your hq more and let the runner break their back on r&d. Playing glacier is unfortunately not very competitive in tournaments because of the time limitations, and I feel the best glacier decks play a lower density of agendas, so it would make sense that 3 pointers have fell off. If we see a way to make glacier faster (makes no sense) then 5/3’s will get better, until then, it looks like FFG decided to go a different direction with that 4/3 in mumbad.

This all begs the question, how fast is the game going to get from now on?

50

There are very, very few agendas in the game, so few that each faction only has a couple of reasonable spreads and practically none that include 5/3s.

1) The ability of most 5/3 agendas are simply not useful to most decks. The gains gotten from Priority Resquisition, Project Wotan or Executive Retreat are so small so as to be meaningless.

2) Global Food spreads are better than other similar spreads because forcing an additional agenda steal is better than any ability you could get from other agendas. For example, I used to run an HB deck with 3xProject Vitruvius, 3x Priority Resquisition, 2xFragments which is hard to justify over a 9 agenda spread with Global Food in it.

  1. Weyland has High-Risk Investment, can put The Cleaners to use and gains a lot more from Priority Resquisition than other factions but has an awful time scoring any of them.

4) NBN can’t support non x/2 agenda spreads at this point. Seriously, I’ve tried but they don’t seem to work.

5) The slowest decks (That is, those the most suitable to score 5/3s) gain very little from agenda abilities because they start scoring very late hence a self-protecting agenda or a big, beefy one (Vanity Project) is preferable.

Personally, I feel the small amount of icebreakers and agendas to be one of Android: Netrunner’s biggest flaws.

6 Likes
51

I really wish that Hollywood Renovation had a real effect outside of Shutdown combo. A 5/3 that does a lot to help you score it is perhaps the only chance non-protecting 5/3s have, and I think there’s design space enough for a card that does this sort of thing, but I doubt we’re revisiting faceup agendas any time soon.

4 Likes
52

I think using Hollywood Renovation to advance ICE is powerful enough to be meaningful, the problem is that all the ICE you can advance is…not what I would call good. You have Ice Wall, which you don’t want to play in Glacier, Fire Wall, which is expensive and unthreatening, and Hadrian’s Wall which is even more expensive and even less threatening than Fire Wall.

And you run into Weyland’s usual problems, namely that they don’t have defensive upgrades, that scoring agendas is expensive and that you aren’t gaining money if you are advancing an agenda because you don’t have a lot of assets.

1 Like
53

Nebula/Asteroid Belt/Wormhole/Orion are pretty good if you can advance them for free. It’s not tier 1, but there is a lot of synergy there. I really need to stop thinking of Swarm every time someone discusses advanceable ice. That isn’t and never will be a Netrunner card.

There’s theoretically Atlas + Hollywood Renovation combos, but I’m pretty sure that only helps you win games that you were winning anyway.

1 Like
54

Yeah but you really want ice that’s okay on its own before the synergy’s come into play. Most of the game you won’t have a Hollywood Renovation in play after all.

For an ice to only work once you have the setup it needs to be Archer level of power.

3 Likes
55

I agree, those cards aren’t strong enough. But I still think they’re the strongest of the advanceable ICE. They have merit against various denial decks too.

I’m 100% in the GFI is amazing, why would anyone play any other 5/3 camp. But if you want to play Old Hollywood Renovation in a ‘normal’ non OTK deck - those are your starting points. I think it’s a ‘these are some interesting synergies, cool things can happen when I play this deck’ deck. I’m pretty sure it’ll never be anything else.

2 Likes
56

The best use I’ve come up with for Hollywood Renovation is a Bootcamp Glacier-ish deck with the option for a 5-point burst to close the game out.

Hollywood Explosion

Blue Sun: Powering the Future (Up and Over)

Agenda (10)

Asset (8)

Upgrade (3)

Operation (10)

Barrier (8)

Code Gate (4)

Sentry (5)

Multi (1)

  • 1x Orion (Order and Chaos)

The idea is that you use your tutor cards to set up the combo, then IAA Hollywood when you have a scoring window. Next turn, Biotic, install Atlas, AAA, score 5 points. The deck runs just like Bootcamp Glacier if you can’t get the combo off, so it’s not all-in on the concept. Benefits include Hive keeping 3 subs for the entire game and the look on your opponent’s face when you score 5 points in a single burst as Weyland.

The downsides are that you have to run the two 3-point agendas (and that’s why I don’t play this deck much any more) and the fact that there’s not much advanceable ICE in the deck to synergise with Hollywood, since (as people have rightfully noted) most advanceable ICE suck a lot. The deck is actually pretty good, but it still suffers from that 3-point problem we’re all talking about here. If Weyland actually got good advanceable ICE (and maybe an ID that actually makes advancing ICE attractive), it could maybe be a thing, though.

1 Like
57

Just curious. Would you consider playing BWBI if the ability read: “At the start of your turn, you may spend 1 credit to place one advancement token on a piece of ice.” instead of what it says now? Basically, Tennin for ice only without the run conditional.

58

I think that would have been a lot better. It’s the click more than the credit that hurts advanceable ICE.

4 Likes
59

These are responses to Dis’s ideas way up mid thread. Do people think adding abilities to 5/3s that have “light” self defense is good design.

Holistic Dataset is great design. So smart to let it score before firing the ability. I also think it could have an on scored ability as well, like if this text was tacked onto Restructured Datapool, that would be fine.

Love Mercenary Company too. Back to HQ is an interesting trade-off. I wonder if there’s room for paying, clicking, and putting an agenda in Archives. For instance, if Govt. Contracts let you pay 5c to click it to your bin, would that be broken?

15-minutes brings up an interesting dynamic. Maybe a 5/3 that let you click 3 times to shuffle it back to R&D.

60

I think that the 15-minutes inspired 5/3 would be really really strong. However, if it was limit 1 per deck, and in Weyland, then it might be interesting. You could shuffle it back in and then find it with atlas when you needed it later- might be the kind of boost Weyland needs.