Yes - if “the card you planned on swapping” exists. If you aren’t sure yet what you want to swap, Toshi gives you flexibility at the cost of a doubled chance of a mindgame fail.
ITT: people trying to defend impossible to defend bad cards.
It’s the data hound hypothesis all over again.
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yes, I suppose this is true, but the scenario in which what trap is best to play changes depending on what happens in runner clicks 1-3 just seems… incredibly narrow to me.
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The worse the card is, the more fun it is to try to come up with edge-cases.
So I think this was brought up elsewhere, but do ekomind, window and bug just have a bye or something? because they’re definitely worse than SCF and hellion alpha test
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Yea I lean HAT is only bad because of its faction and inf, it’d be goodish in MN. Bug is bad in nearly every case.
you are speaking as if the runner chooses first, which he does not. the corp must choose the card first
and almost no one is actually trying to argue about a card being worse or better than its pairing.
all of these cards are terrible. they were nominated for the bad cards bracket for a reason. trying to justify their supposed usefulness is just an exercise in futility because in the end, everyone still agrees that they’re all bad cards.
i also wonder how Bug managed to skip the list. even Multithreader can’t make this card good. it’s just a bad card that makes runners make bad decisions, starting with including it in a deck in the first place.
I still think bug and multithreader can be good together. Not fringe, not OK in certain cases, but good, and no one has tried to do so. It seems we’ll have to fight to the death
If you’re good enough at mindgames to know what they will do, that doesn’t matter.
I picked the cards based on what I’d heard people talk about and what I could think of at the time. Window probably would have made it in if I had thought of it. Bug’s only crime is being inefficient, and Ekomind is a Johnny card that has support.
You could make a case that Hard at Work is similar to Bug in that regard and Ekomind is similar to The Professor, so yeah they could have been in the bracket, but they didn’t “have to” be in the bracket.
[quote=“xerxes, post:51, topic:4761”]
If you’re good enough at mindgames to know what they will do, that doesn’t matter.
[/quote]really? you were confused about what the card did, and you audibled to this? wouldn’t it just be easier to admit that Sakai is what he is, which is clearly a trash card?
i revoke my vote for Sakai. i’ll change it to the professor (sorry in advance fans of the professor)
I’m not saying he’s not a trash card - you’re clearly not understanding my position. I voted for him over Leviathan.
I wasn’t. In retrospect, I can see how confusing what I wrote was, though. I could have said
For example, if they run him without drawing up, you can install a Junebug or Ronin, depending on whether you think they’ll access or not. If they draw up, but are last click, you can install a mandatory upgrades or a Plan B depending on whether you think they’ll access or not.
The real value lies is bringing him back in hand to attempt to bluff the runner further. Or just scoring an agenda. His thinking is pretty standard by now, so people should get savvy and use Sakai to throw down nothing but traps, and to then score 5/3s or if jinteki.
So you choose, ok. But nothing tells you have both cards in hand.
You’re talking about a 3 cards combo, everybody pretty can do wonderfull things with any cards involved in 3 cards combos.
Now consider that card without support, it’s just a card having problems living alone, rigth ?
Sakai is very very bad alone, is bad in most situations BUT in some 3 card combo situations : if you have to rely on a very lategame combo so it saves the card sometimes, you have precisly the definition of toilet paper.
The only person that you are bluffing with Sakai is yourself…
Gosh.
You IAAed a card. For the runner it can be Junebug / whatever OR an agenda. Once he hit Sakai, that does not change a single thing. The card you will put there is either Sakai or an Agenda (or whatever). The only guy who have question about what to put there is the corp, NOT THE RUNNER : the runner just decided to run an advanced server, he knows the risks he’s taking => Sakai is minding the corp, not the runner 
The only nice move is like @wrathofmine said, put a 5 credit trashcost something there so the runner would have to live with a card having 2 tokens on it waiting for a ToL or use 5 credit to trash that thing.
But this is what ice walls in Jinteki’s decks are for.
I stand by the adage that any advanceable card has great value in the game. Using Toshi means you always have one in hand. If this means the runner is less willing to run on an advanced remote, that is real value, to me. Granted, this was more important before Jinteki had all the different styles of play now, but to that end, there are still more reasons to include him in the deck, and they aren’t all terrible. I mean, if you make the runner pay for Hudson a couple times, you’re getting the good end of that exchange. Or whatever, perhaps you are too spineless to include the great Japanese herald of technologies new rising sun, the future of the great Jinteki Corp. He will usher in the new beginnings of this great and glorious nation. Or he won’t, and the next generation will, and he will simply do his duty restoring the face of the company. You know what, I’m done defending Toshiyuki Sakai. Someone will take him to the top tables. Or not. Fuck yourselves “champions” of the game. Think you’re so hot. The bioroid Asian alliance will bloom with the hatred of hundreds of years of anger boiling, rising over the top in a swell of great anguish! Your parasites will be consumed, they shall not quench the thirst of the generation that will come after, insatiable, unyielding, undying. Realize greatness my friends, or lose yourself in the past. Sakai 2016
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Legwork…
I guess that if you really wanted just any asset you could IAA, and didn’t want to splash outside Jinteki for it, there were only 2 cards you could use at the time he was printed - Junebug and Ronin. These days you can run 5 in faction assets that you can IAA, for a total of 15 cards in your deck… I’m sure no one needs more than that.
Ah ha, but a single Sakai can be used multiple times, saving you from putting in so many traps
Only if you have an asset to swap him with
Ok, I will admit that giving extra flexibility to your Snare! is cool, use either like a regular snare or like a “snare and save Toshi”