As written it is unclear whether “can be advanced” refers to the Corp act of advancing or other forms, such as placing advancement counters. I honestly don’t see the need to restrict Builder in this way. Woodcutter wasn’t even played in serious Tennin, much less its own gd faction.
FREE WOODCUTTER 2015
Would it be nicer if it worked that way? Totally, would make so many cards better. But that’s not how it works, and it… it pretty much is clear. I’m sure there’s been a ruling with Shipment from SanSan or Kaguya or whatnot at some time previously about the distinction.
I think I’m with 'Guts on this one. I’ll go over some cards as examples and explain my thought processes. I’ll probably be retreading a lot of known and well established things for the sake of clarity, so bear with me.
A working card combo is the Efficiency Committee -> Shipment from SanSan combo. Efficiency Committee says that you get two clicks, but you can not advance cards, and Shipment from SanSan says that you can place 2 advancement counters on a card that can be advanced. In this case, let’s use an agenda in a remote as the target of advancement. It’s been ruled that placing advancement counters is distinct from the action “advancing,” which is what Efficiency Committee is referring to, so playing SanSan is legal (and sneaky) as a way to advance the agenda. So on the surface you have a card that lets you advance a card that couldn’t normally be advanced under the circumstances dictated in Efficiency Committee.
So let’s look at a Shipment from Kaguya -> Tyrant combo. This case seems similar, in that Shipment from Kaguya lets you place counters on an advance-able card, and that Tyrant says it can’t be advanced until rezzed. So, placing counters, being distinct from advancing, seems like it should work on Tyrant as well, at least on the surface.
However, the key difference that I see is that in the case of Efficiency Committee -> SanSan on an agenda, the target for SanSan could always be advanced, just not under the circumstances dictated by Efficiency Committee. With Tyrant, the card can not be advanced at all, except in the circumstances dictated on Tyrant. Tyrant is not an advance-able card, just like any other piece of ice; ice’s default state is to not be advance-able. Heck, any card’s default state is to not be advance-able, even agendas. They get around this by including the text “CardName can be advanced.”
However, Tyrant does not have that text. The only text is has in relation to advancement is to let us know that when it is rezzed, it can be advanced. So it’s default state of being unadvance-able remains, which makes it an invalid target for Kaguya in an unrezzed state. To be a valid target, the card would have to say “Tyrant can be advanced; however, Tyrant can only be advanced while rezzed.” In this case, the circumstances would most likely be correct for Kaguya to be able to target it while unrezzed.
Anyhow, that’s my super-detailed analysis of the situation.
And I wish the rez-while-advanced ice had text more like that. “XYZ can be advanced, you may not advance XYZ unless it is rezzed” would make all of them so much better/more usable in general. Now, especially, but even previously it’d have made them more viable with Kaguya and all.
I share your sentiments pining to live in an alternate universe that allows sneaky workarounds for Woodcutter, Tyrant, and Salvage (?!), but at least the powers that be in this universe have added a couple cards (Satellite Grid, Firmware Updates) that make our friendly unadvancables a little more playable. Unfortunately they still don’t make the cut.
I threw together a BWBI today and played against a Valencia and a Leela. In both of those matchups Executive Bootcamp was seriously important. Don’t go anywhere without it!
What is your main use of Executive Bootcamp? To tutor, or to rez stuff like Woodcutter and Tyrant so you can start advancing them?
It was a meta call. I was expecting to see a bunch of Valencia Blackmail decks, so I wanted a way to rez ICE on my turn. Also, it was nice to be able to rez all my 3-advanced constellation ICE before Leela could send them back to my hand. But I guess against other ID’s it would not be very useful. It would be good against Nasir too, but the constellation ICE kick Nasir in the nuts even without Executive Bootcamp.
I’ve been extolling the virtues of EBC for a long time.
So you’re the one that got those packs where all Caprices were misprinted, eh?
Pretty interesting, but useless asset you have there.
I mucked around with a BWBI deck on Tuesday night with Groober, Kesterer and a couple of other guys in London. BWBI was … surprisingly effective early on, but they all quickly realised that, because it was poor, it couldn’t possibly threaten a scorch. In fact ,there’s very little in BWBI that can threaten the runner at all and stop them from facechecking if they have no programs out - I tihnk I’m going to need to splash for traps.
Hi, I think i played you yesterday as Leela. A good game. i definitely agree with BWBI being viable now, you can run an almost cashless economy with constellation protocol at 4 trash cost making it just a touch expensive for me to trash. I won’t make that mistake again!
lol no way…
There’s only one ice that can kill on rez (Shinobi), it actually costs a lot more and one is allready too much in a faction that allready have an out of nowhere kill combo in her turn, rigth ?
A kill combo would be to easy to set with a Troubleshooter, more easy actually than Scored HoK / Komainu / Knife (not out of nowhere) or Sea / SE / SE (out of inf 
) in my opinion. That one is coming from nowhere for 3 inf.
What forbids you to splash Shinobis in a rich Weyland if you want to kill on rez doing nets ?
yeah bwbi doesn’t scorch really. And for the samereason I wouldn’t go the trap route. But if I did shattered remains, space camp, and perhaps psychic field are the ways I would go.
Yup, making them run your servers is an issue if you’re running light economy, which is why I think trick of light to threaten a 5/3 agenda score on an unadvanced remote is necessary. I still put in Scorched Earth to prevent them going too aggressive though.
Merlin can also kill on rez (assuming you have two more in hand).
Theres also some level of jank you could pull off in the foundry with merlin and the twins where the act of tutoring allows you to do 6 damage by using the twins or 12 if you have another merlin in hand.
And on topic considering how much the woodcutter telegraphs a flatline (the advancement counter), the time and money it takes to set it up and the generally bad stats of the ice itself I’d be perfectly ok with woodcutter being advancable while unrezzed.
Matrix Analyzer
Meh, Builder is better.
There are some problems with BWBI no one has mentioned before - it has got a terrible match up against Leela and Noise. Moreover, since it does not get any credits and always operates at < 5 it is not really flexible, so the runner can predict what and when you can rez. Not to mention the terrible early game the identity has - it takes a lot of time to advance all that space ICE. Also, when you see the new Anarch cuttlery, you want to cry.
It’s eight damage with two because Grail subs last for the whole run. And it’s 22 with three (6 + 8 + 8 because you can use the twins multiple times on the same ICE). And my league results to date suggest “jank” is seriously underestimating it.
But to return to the original conversation - give the Twins a go as a cheap alternative to Ash in an Weyland glacier (espec if you run Archer or where like BWBI you don’t have the creds for Ash).