Setup time. Either you hard drop that 8 or you pitch it and Retrieval or any other number of tricks. 2 Mem is also a space issue if you want that sucker and then other stuff out too.
Itās great in maxx with inject, which is how I run my maxx, 3 MS, 3 Femme, lots of RR targets, and blanking lots of their ice for 3 credits and a run is awesome, especially when youāre adding at least 1 sucker token in the process.
A final rig of MS, 2 femmes and a yog is pretty bad news for the corp 
Edit: for high str ice? D4v1d duh
So Iām trying out CI glacier this week in league play running 3x Ashigaru, Iāll report back on how it goes. I think it could be a very solid choice, provided you arenāt expecting a lot of MS in your metaā¦hopefully this time tomorrow Iāll have good results to report.
While Morning Star is especially awesome with Test/Retrieval Run, Iām currently hard-casting it and itās still fine.
Well, since you asked so nicelyā¦ 
Two things:
- Mid-range barriers and barriers whose taxing properties primarily come from the number of subs
- Sucker token exchange rate
NEXT Silver is an extremely common piece of ICE that you really, really donāt care about. Some other relatively common pieces are Bastion, Markus, Mother Goddess and Wall of Thorns. Any combination of high strength and multiple subs - actually, itās great even for a Hadrianās or Asteroid Belt. And if you know you might need to run through Orion sometime soon, three Sucker tokens are probably easier to get than 9 more credits. Which brings me toā¦
Hereās one other way of looking at it - Morning Star lets you save a lot more money with Datasucker. In a way, it completely breaks this already borderline broken card.
With a Corroder, you can get through a Wall of Static for 1 credit, if you use a token (essentially turning it into a credit). With a MS, you either donāt have to and can save that token for other uses, or you get a much better āexchange rateā for your Sucker tokens - with a Corroder, a token is always a credit. With a Morning Star, the exchange rates become quite insane, never dipping below 2 credits in the currently existing worst case, and sometimes spiking up to 6 credits per sucker token! Hereās a handy chart I just made (please excuse the lack of polish):
If you think about the consequences of this chart, youāll actually come to a counter-intuitive conclusion: MS actually becomes better the more big, fat barriers see play (with the caveat of you being prepared for the eventuality of a purge).
Other notes:
Like I said somewhere else, the two things that really helped MS become better lately are D4V1D and MemStrips. D4V1D stops a ācomplete lockout after a purgeā situation, MemStrips helps you actually be able to have both a MS and Suckers out without clamping your other options (like, say, multi-access). D4V1D also gets you through Wraparounds cheaply and lets you delay your MS drop until some Elis get rezzed.
tl;dr: The common perception is that Morning Star is bad because you have to play around it, but I posit that itās the other way around: the corp actually has to play around your Morning Star, if they hope to have any chance of taxing you at all.
7 Likes
Damn you now I want to try out MS as well 
Before Lady came out, I ran the MStar is my PPVP Kate deck. Worked really great, only felt a tad too slow vs NEH. I donāt doubt it will be good in Anarch as well with D4V1D support.
You can thank me later. Iām a diabetic, so no chocolates please, although flowers are fine 
Would we put things like Tinkering? The Tinkering program as wellā¦ Or do we just keep it as breaking barriers efficiently, and have other things forā¦other things.
Depends.
Tinkering + MS is great for the Prof, and I can sorta see it in a weird Quetzal deck that saves David counters by Quetzaling through Wraparounds (since Anarchs can now afford that insane 4-inf splash cost on Tinkering). Paintbrush (thatās the program youāre thinking of) is problematic because of the 2 MU cost - maybe if you had a Leprechaun to put both of them intoā¦ again, smells of Prof to me.
I wouldnāt go overboard on ātrying to get value out of your maceā, though - some games, you donāt need to install it, or the 8-cost install makes it impractical. If you build your whole deck around it, youāve just built yourself into a corner where you have to get it out, or your entire deck stops functioning.
I used to run Morning Star in my Quetzal deck (an idea I stole from, I believe, either you PK or @bayushi_david) and it was pretty amazing before I ever got a Datasucker on the board. Any barrier below 5 got busted for a credit, allowing me to save my Quetzal power + E3 for the big boys like Wotan or Heimdall 2.0.
It was great for the psych factor alone: youād watch people finally figure out how to play against Qās power (which is to stack barriers, if thatās all the ice thatās turning up, instead of not playing barriers at all) and then their faces would just fall when Iād hit Inject > Retrieval Run and toss a Morning Star on the table.
If youāre already cheating icebreakers onto the table in some fashion (most recently, RetRun), I highly suggest trying 1x MS + 1x Corroder instead of 2x Corroder.
3 Likes
Enjoy bashing your Morning Star against a Curtain Wall.
Iāve found Knifed (and Parasite for small generic stuff) in a normal e3 + Quetzal deck lets you keep the stacked barriers under control. I have a silly deck with Yog.0 too, and itās a nightmare to keep her out when half the ice you draw does nothing against her.
D4v1d is pretty good against Curtain Wall if you go the Morningstar routeā¦
This is exactly my experience, me just too stupid to articulate that. Morningstar came into the light for me when I first made my girlfriend a deck to learn the game with, it was test run + scavenge Chaos Theory with opus, femme, morningstar, torch (edit). In playing against it, I kept saying āJesus Christ, that thing is making all of my ice suck!ā Now with Maxx dunking that shit into the heap for me to Retrun, its even faster to set up.
And yes, Iāve said it before, memstrips was the unsung hero answer to all the IDs that wanted to run viruses, but not focus on them. Typically youāre building a Reina deck, add parasite, datasucker, then grimoire, then you add imp, medium, and then you go change the ID to Noise. Every goddamn time.
5 Likes
- D4v1D
- 5 sucker tokens are still more doable than 11 credits, most of the time
Or, āyeah, I do that regularly, itās less of a problem than you think.ā The worst part of the matchup is actually the bit before youāve found any of your Grimoires and MemStrips, when the 2 MU is actually gimping you.
1 Like
I loled 
Start with Rook, add Deep Red/Spinal Modem, 2x zu and 2x Dyson. 
I think youāll find the rest of the deck no longer wants to be noise, but youāve still got room for some parasites and suckers without necessarily wanting/needing grimoire which only helps on immediate install (good, but not necessary). And on the bright side, zu+dyson in Reina leaves room for Morningstar 
Also, nothing frustrates blue sun like Rook on an unrezzed piece of ice (sure they can trash, but pawn quickly cuts down on the benefit of bouncing and re-rezzing all that ice)
Blue Sun and ashiguru, now thereās a thing.
1 Like
I do find that my want for spinal modem over grimoire is the strongest pull to NOT be Noise.
Just want to pop in here and give some love to Ashigaru.
These guys just kick ass right now. Try 'em out and see.
Hereās my current RP ice list. Ashigaru was working so well I added another.
Barrier (6)
2x Ashigaru
3x Galahad ā¢ā¢ā¢
1x Himitsu-Bako
Code Gate (7)
2x Lotus Field
3x Merlin ā¢ā¢ā¢
1x Quandary
1x Viper ā¢
Sentry (5)
3x Lancelot ā¢ā¢ā¢
2x Pup
Other (1)
1x Excalibur
Viper is another piece of ice on my āhotā list right now.
Iām fine if you make fun of the Excalibur.
3 Likes
Haha, I mostly meant that Iām not sure about it yetāitās a fresh addition and hasnāt gone through the ringer. It has kept my remotes run-free in the early game (keep it in your hand, donāt actually put it on a central) and has locked down a scoring remote in the end game with a Nisei counter tag team situation.
But I know the cool kidz donāt like it