Insipired by this thread http://forum.stimhack.com/t/what-is-the-worst-card-in-the-game
In each pairing, vote for which card you think is worse.
- Toshiyuki Sakai
- Salvage
0 voters
- Record Reconstructor
- Zed 1.0
0 voters
Voting closes in 2 days
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Voted Sakai / Zed 1.0
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Record reconstructor can be installed for nothing by Hayley and sold to Aesops next turn for max gains, so I voted Zed.
Toshi is the closest card there is to having zero effect on the game, which actually makes it slightly better than salvage if you do anything other than bluff other ice with it.
2 Likes
Toshi / Zed.
Toshi is closest to zero effect, Salvage could have an effect if you need to tagstorm the runner and have lots of ice-adv cards against a crimina without Yog.0.
Record reconstructor can also be used to make safe archive runs to get ds tokens etc.
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This is embarrassing that RR has more votes than Zed. Shame on everyone involved in this travesty
4 Likes
Zed should be unmade. Record Reconstructor protects your NRE from shutdown!
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It also buys you 3 clicks of runs against CI if they have Interns in the discard. Run HQ twice, R&D once, then reconstruct the interns to R&D so they can’t combo.
2 Likes
Wow. As of 77 votes each, both polls are at 51/48. Toshi is “winning” the top (that’s correct) and RR is “winning” the other one (clearly incorrect).
Or parasite. Strength 0, remember. Zero! Even Zed has 1 strength.
These are great uses for RR that makes it have many niche uses - in a Shock-heavy meta, making a safe archives run is quite useful.
Zed is positional ICE that’s worse than other positional ICE because it has to be Bioroid and nothing else. Chum and Inazuma will at least combo with anything - Zed requires that you get it early (when it’s doing absolutely nothing, mind), and then you need another Bioroid ICE to put in front, and then they have to click through it instead of breaking it. But wait, there’s more! Once you get out of the early game, any copies you draw are useless because they’re going to go on the outside of the server, in front of all your Bioroid ICE instead of behind.
Zed is clearly inferior here. It’s only good as a bluff/deterrent ICE, and even then I would prefer Salvage because Salvage has the potential to actually tax someone someday if it doesn’t get hit with Parasite.
A couple brain damage isn’t even that big a deal.
2 Likes
Sakai against Salvage was hard - Toshi is useless outside outlandish combos with other bad cards, but Salvage is so ireedeemably bad that I couldn’t hold back my hate.
RR has some niche uses (Execs/Shock/Shi Kyu/News Team), Zed is just impossible to use.
Voted Salvage Zed as well. It’s so even at the moment…
Someone mentioned before that a trap is different depending on which click the runner runs at it with and what he’s done before that. Toshiuki Sakai lets you decide from two different traps when you know what has happened. Or just Hudson it for maximum Jank. 
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Explanations on zed are stupid. Innermost positional ice can ALWAYS be put in a new remote at no cost, for bluffing purposes.
RR explanations too. This cards is the worth card in the game because it rollback one corp turn at the cost of… 1 runner clic + cost of a run. Removing schocks makes the corp overdraw, and putting interns for CI makes CI install whatever they like OR do not play Interns, at their will.
And for primary Aesop purpose… Wow. There you have a dead end combo. There’s dozens of 0c cards for no inf, including shaper that actually have a better niche effect, starting with SoT or Construct.
That assumes you’ll ever have a use for such a remote; if you never use it, it was just a wasted click. It’s not completely unreasonable to think you might be able to sneak out an agenda this way - in HB it probably looks like an asset covered by a decently taxing ICE, so you could never-advance one out. But any ICE can do this just as well as Zed, so I don’t think it deserves points for that.
Yes, this not specific to this ice. That was about people saying it have no use in late game. It have the same use as any other little ice you draw late game. Close to none.
Now I’d rather play that card than RR because you can bluff with it, it’s a general use, than RR which have maybe a niche more narrow than even Sakai.
Slot to use Zed cost nothing in HB2. Slot to use RR cost, well I don’t know ? Maybe keyhole I wonder, bumping the card the runner choose. So that cost inf.
How can you argue that Zed is good merely by virtue of being an ice (to pretend there’s a serious ice there) but that the same logic does not apply to Record Reconstructor merely by virtue of being a card that can be sold to Aesop’s? If I wanted an ice, I could use literally any other ice in the game. I could use Quandary, that doesn’t cost any influence, can actually gear check the runner early, and still costs them a credit on most icebreakers. Against someone using Cy-Cy it might even cost them a Scavenge.
Not claiming that it’s not an outlandish combo, but, as I pointed out in the original thread, Salvage is probably the best ice to use for the negative hand-size Valley Grid flatline. The funny thing is that it’s an integral part of a mostly new archetype, not just a somewhat useful card in very specific situations.
1 Like
I’m not sure if you know the CI 7-pt shutdown combo, but most of the time Interns needs to be in Archives to combo off using Accelerated Diagnostics. Most likely if you RR their Interns it saves you a whole turn before they can combo off, until they find another path to the combo without the Interns or stopping the Archives runs.
Let’s just make a how to use bad cards thread
1 Like
Because Zed have a (narrow) use with no dependencies / conditions ?
There supposed to be a stoping ice in front of archives… Else the runner run archives and win.
Unless it’s a combo I did not know.
Panic button reuse biotic Jackson whatever rigth ?
Is it more rare or less rare than a NA action behind a new remote ? More generic use or not ? Unconditional or not ? It’s just what I say.
Zed is a crap card but at least it’s flexible, RR is an inflexible crap card. The only flexible use is food combo for Aesop. Providing you prefer RR that solve 1 / 1000 problem vs Inty / SoT / whatever for exemple, which solves more problems.
I agree salvage vs zed, zed win the crap crown, but RR have no generic use, no bluffing use, when the corp see it they say “oh god, thank you, he won’t mill me, let’s take my time”.
When the runner see Zed, well if the corp know her job, she won’t rez for lulz if the brains aren’t there => that’s at least a cost for the runner. RR gives gifts on top of the pile it is. It does not disarm shocks, it gives them back on R&D (no more R&D run until next turn, and next turn, no more HQ / Remote runs (playing RR to avoid shocks mean you’re so afraid of them…) until you know where shocks are.
RR is not a runner card, it’s a fracking corp card in disguise.
For Sakai vs Salvage, I don’t really know if Sakai or Salvage is better they both combo with Tennin, and Sakai combo also with Gagarin but its bluff effect is more crap than salvage to me.
We’re talking about top of the filth there, so anyway all those cards never see play anyway