First of all, I agree on pretty much every count about how supermodernism is on its way out (except I’ll add that archer also sucks). Weyland’s power level, even for non-scorch decks, has always been buoyed up by the scorch threat, and runners are growing more and more ways to simply not care about it. It’s sad when the best scorched earth deck in the meta is out of faction entirely (NEH butchershop).
However, blue sun is a glacier identity. I think for a long time people have not realized this, instead focusing on the fact that, in terms of the game’s flavor, weyland is all about winning in a totally over-the-top way (trashing the runner’s rig or catching them in a flatline with their pants down). In terms of the game’s strategy I call this “win-more”.
The ID ability gives so much flexibility in terms of reacting to what the runner is doing, which on paper seems like it might be about sudden influxes of credits for SEA source, but it’s really about finding really crazy scoring windows out of seemingly nowhere. One moment the runner has spent $10 on the remote to trash adonis or take NAPD, two turns later the corp is up 3 points, has a free tollbooth, and the runner needs 4 agenda scores to win. This article complains about the lack of in-faction aggressive secretary effects, but NAPD contract is the best advanceable trap in the game.
The key is that this playstyle is possible without spending an arm and a leg on deck slots (which supermodernism needs to do), giving blue sun the luxury of an extremely consistent deck composition: 19 ice and 7 recursion/tutor effects. There may not be any “free wins” like with astroscript or with scorch, but there are no bad matchups.
I’ll also agree that the in-faction ice suite is terrible. Wormhole was a small breath of fresh air here, but the faction has been reeling ever since the loss of Hadrian’s wall (to Lady, of course), which had been a godsend for crim matchups. Most of all I’d really love to see an early-game 4 strength sentry that isn’t a destroyer or AP.
Finally, on one particular comment:
Ice Wall is an excellent aggressive piece of ICE, but Weyland decks, with the exception of Argus, cannot be aggressive. They do not have the economy to defend against increasingly diverse threats to centrals whilst scoring out multiple agendas early, behind small ICE.
Both here and in the podcasts, I think you guys at TWA are focused overly much on classifying deck archetypes into the same buckets you’d use for magic the gathering, and in this case it’s stopping you from seeing why blue sun is good.
Honestly, chess is a closer game to netrunner than magic is. You start the game with 49 pieces, and you are trying to deploy them to build your board position at a faster rate than your opponent. You build tempo by making multiple threats at the same time that they have to lose resources defending against. It’s not about being an aggressive deck, but about evaluating the board state and deciding whether you need to play an aggressive role or a controlling one. Blue sun’s ability gives it so much flexibility and reactivity that it can switch between roles faster and better than any other deck in the game.