Originally published at: Blood and Water – Community Review and Meta Predictions - StimHack
Discuss the latest article here.
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I love everything about this.
This card was so good that it became neutral instead of Weyland.
As a masochistic Weyland main, this hits too close to home. I would argue that advanceable ice is no longer bad, and is now solidly in the “it’s fine” category, and that Anson Rose is one of two low-rez high-trash must trash Weyland assets. I still doubt we’ll see a W deck in the top 16 of Gen Con this year, but you can build some solid tier-2 decks with advanceable ice.
I started writing a response defending Alice, but I think the reviewers are pretty much on point. It’s not that her ability is bad, but there are more effective ways of pressuring all the centrals as Anarch.
In conjunction with Maw, her ability to keep the corp in a headlock in the late game is good, but it’s probably better to have a smaller deck and build for a faster direct attack.
reviewers smart
As a big fan of Tennin, I’m one of the only people who looks longingly at Weyland’s card pool on the regular and thinks “sigh… why do they get all the best cards”.
So psyched about Mass Comm.
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I really appreciate the article. Thanks to those who wrote it.
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I think Alice is a bit better than suggested. Getting the most out of her ability relies on the order of your actions too. If you’re going to use Maw, for instance, run Archives first to lose the “worst” card from HQ, then Maw later and you’ll hit a “better value” card on average. Or if you’re running HQ, likewise do it after an Archives run. You get a free “I automatically can’t access the most rubbish card” bonus on HQ. As Rotage noted, she’s best early game. Therefore I think you have to build your Alice decks to maximise this rather than hard, all-in hand destruction. Alice with Account Siphons, Lampreys, Keyholes, Mediums plus her ability (and almost mandatory Archives Interface) means that you ought to be able to draw a hand (or quickly draw into) something that can attack any central. And taking a liberal approach to head-butting ICE means the Corp hopefully can’t defend them all immediately even if the have drawn enough ICE.
I am surprised at the talk on Miraju that no-one mentioned HQ. It seems like it is built for HQ (and why would you put it anywhere else?). Jinteki has traditionally lost on R&D accesses, you can ICE R&D to the heavens and probably want to anyway. While HQ now can be reasonably-well defended with a single Miraju (serendipitously freeing up more ICE for R&D, hooray!). If they break it, they can’t access HQ. If they don’t break, you can shuffle away one agenda (note that the draw is optional, so you can always reduce your agenda count by one in HQ if you have any there), and hopefully that is enough to make them whiff on HQ access. You only need to make the outer Archives ICE taxing enough that draining you out on repeated 2 credit rez costs for Miraju isn’t viable for the Runner. I love this ICE.
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Miraju is also a god send in AgInfusion since it derezzes itself. You can protect HQ from normal runs by rezzing it and thwart Account Siphons and Legworks by trashing it. It’s the same reason I’m surprised more players don’t include a few copies of Chimera in AgInfusion, the self-derez can actually be a really positive thing in this ID. Gear check them for an early Nisei MKII score and then have some fodder left over in the late game when you need to reroute a run.
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We had the same discussion yesterday. I think Alice needs a different approach, just as @popeye09 says: Punching left and right on Archives and HQ. Her ability gives the HQ more quality and so a run with HQ multi access (Turning Wheel, Nerve Agent, HQ Interface, The Gauntlet) might give her value. To keep up the pressure, she needs a clear path into Archives in the form of ICE destruction.
Message from Janktown: Maui shows promise when used with Au Revoir…with something else to spend it on. Probably in Nero?
Really, the review is fine. Looking to give the card any chance at all, and even in the above situation, we’ve got a 3-4 card combo required. At least Maui gives you your credits on the front end of the run.
Study guide maybe?
I don’t think Au Revoir decks need the additional economy of Maui.
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I’ve been seeing some really strong siphon spam anarch decks packing Jarogniew Mercs, Josh B, WNP, and Fall Guy to make ridiculous Counter Surveillance digs. When Fall Guy rotates, Dummy Box can take over (and you just do without Josh).
I think it’s going to end up being fairly high impact in terms of making tag-me decks that can withstand a lot of punishment.
Been playing one of those for a while now. Josh is surprising important at self tagging (without it you’d be doing two Ares most of the time just to get the requisite number of tags), so losing it hurts a lot and the extra clicks are super valuable.
I play a build without Josh B that just spams Account Siphon a lot instead. That can pile the tags on quite quickly.