Breaker Bay Set Review

StimHack.com
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I feel like the “don’t replace Data Raven with Gutenberg, or maybe do if you’re Butchershop” and the “Is Ice Wall or Meru Mati better?” discussions each kind of miss the obvious solution.

You can run 3-of DR and Gutenberg, making more than one server a right nuisance of sentries that tag. It also helps alleviate the Switchblade problem if you’ve got an R&D with two or three sentries on it, especially if one of those is a Data Raven, because that’s 6 stealth credits to break (and, with DR, a tag to handle). That either eats into Ghost Runner or uses all your Silencers and Cloaks.

Similarly, any Weyland deck other than Blue Sun probably wants to run 2-3 Meru Mati alongside 3 Ice Walls, because most of their IDs and decks right now are built around rush strategies and cheap ETR is super important (see also why Quicksand looks nice, even if it starts out as a 3/1). Worst comes to worst, going 2 and 2 or 1 and 1 even in BS seems more than reasonable, even if the 2/1 isn’t ideal in the remote, because the 2/4 is an amazing opener. I can’t think of an equivalently taxing hard ETR ice off the top of my head – Eli is more but can be clicked through.

I’ve rarely been sad just tossing another Meru Mati on HQ, either. 4tman is the only expected reason to be wary about stacking them, and against Criminal especially it makes things too taxing for effective Siphoning – not as much as having 3, say, but 6 with corroder and 4 to ditch tags means it’s 3 clicks to deny me 5 credits for little to no monetary gain (1 credit with Desperado and no tags, 5 with Desperado and a Scorch risk).

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Nice solid review, the only quibble I might have is that I don’t see Meru Mati being a “4” or expect to see it outside of a few Weyland decks. It’s a solid card and a good alternative to Ice Wall but other factions have cheap barriers that are just as good or better (Wraparound, Eli, Himitsu Bako).

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Yeah, but it’s a straight swap for the omnipresent-in-Weyland Ice Wall.

The card is very strong, and if it was Neutral it would certainly see play elsewhere. Not sure it’s good enough to get splashed, you’re right, but then, lots of good cards don’t get splashed often, and I’m not sure that how-splashable it is should be used to indicate how good it is. Astrolabe and Lady are two prime examples.

I’d say it’s because the card effect is strong, and some half decent Sysops would make this card very good. 2.5 is about right, I’d say. It’s currently not great but the effect could be extremely good if the cardpool supported it.

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The rating system I used is specifically not just raw power level. It was an attempt to solve the problem of how to rate cards like Aesop’s Pawnshop, Personal Workshop, or Cache. I am not completely happy with the distinction between 3 and 4: I think it puts a bit too much emphasis on “does this card always do something for you” relative to “how good is this card”. If I do this again I will rejigger it somehow.

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Yeah, really need to get down to a letter grade level of granularity, but, then we’re splitting hairs.

I just see Blacklist as a card that easy to splash, and wrecks a lot of the current meta. It directly won me games in RP, and is essentially in NBNFA currently. Even HB could get some usage.

Great read! Always appreciate the reviews!

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It also wouldn’t take much to make Recruiting Trip good. Even if they’re just Jinteki’s, a couple of new Sysops that do exciting or useful things (preventing ice from getting trashed, adding strength or ETR subs to Jinteki’s sentries, some kind of “if the runner breaks all subroutines on a piece of ice in this server, they must spend 1c, if they don’t, gain 2c” thing even if the trash cost was solid" maybe, all kinds of options) would be good, yeah. Don’t need to be splashing for 'em, just need to not want to run 3 copies of one and none of the rest.

Sysops that stack well would make sense, too, especially just a duo. Recruiting Trip for 2, grab them both, install them both in whatever server(s) you need, if they’re good enough that’s not a half bad turn, particularly with any drip economy you might have.

Though from the sound of it we may not see that much this cycle, even if we are getting a couple new Sysops (Ryon Knight, and Jinteki’s getting one in the Underway).

Actually interesting to see how much you like Breaker Bay Grid, @Crunchums, I’d kinda written it off as being too easily trashed, but it certainly does make a wide variety of assets easier to rez. Somehow hadn’t thought of the fun connection with Will o Wisp, removes outright one of the biiig weaknesses Wisp has. Not the only one, but still makes it seem more plausible as an include, even if just as a one-of if you’ve got other things to rez with BBG. The Sexy Robot Money combo was more obvious, but making it a case of “come trash this and lose a breaker for a while or at least need to clone chip your SMC and then use it again and also pay 5-7 to stop me from being stupid rich” is kinda nice.

Sooo sad that Breaker Bay Grid can’t combine with any other Regions. Sooo many of them seem like they’d be way better at reduced cost. Ruhr Valley, SanSan (though it’s far from bad as-is, obviously), Crisium even plain Valley Grid. Ah well, that’d be busted (though I do kinda hope we see a way to do that someday, along with a double-console runner (group of runners, maybe?)). Off The Grid for 1 seems not the worst ever, though Crisium is the better help there.

If the Sysop deck ever does materialize, I imagine either BBG or Oaktown Grid will be a key component. BBG if they’re rough to rez, Oaktown if they’re easy to rez but also easy to trash.

But yeah, this is a really solid deck review. Appreciate that even on the more marginal cards you did look at what they could do – if Butchershop really becomes a thing I start seeing everywhere with 3 Gutenbergs and 3 Data Ravens, I might actually try slotting a Dorm Computer just to save time and money trying to dig on R&D. Doubt it’ll ever be so bad as to be worth it (or that DC’ll ever be so good unless there are more things with triggers like John Masanori’s or that otherwise interface with tags on your side).

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Yep, thanks for the deck review. It’s so hard to rate cards based on their value currently vs. their potential value. That may be a way to rate cards more accurately.

Recruiting Trip; a “1” in the current meta, potentially a “3”

Tyson Obsevatory, a “1” currently, possibly a 1.8 in the future.

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Yeah but you could say that about any card in the game. You could conceivably design cards that would make even the worst cards in the game playably decent if you put your mind to it, which makes any card in the pool a potential sleeper. It would be more useful (on NRDB as well as in set reviews) to have a “rating now” and a “potential”, as a single rating is too one-dimensional.

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Yeah, that’s a fair comment. I think Recruitment Trip is certainly easier to make good Comet, Haley, Dorm Computer or whatever else, though. Recruitment Trip just needs one good Sysop to be good.

Still, you’re very right. Speculation about the future is subjective and often pointless. I do like the idea of a “potential” rating, though.

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There have been several different rating scales used in these set reviews, what we apparently need is a way of rating rating systems. We should assign each system a grade based on their intuitiveness, practicality, easy of use, and relevance in the future. :smile:

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Good idea. I think it would be safe to combine all those metrics into a single number on a 1-5 scale for the sake of simplicity.

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On Meru-mati, one thing you have to remember is that 2 vs. 1 strength are basically indistinguishable for barriers (only corroder and Lady matter really). So off HQ its a 2 cost gear check. Baku is playable. The upside is that its 4 Strength on HQ, where it is Eli levels of good (2 rez, 3 to break for corroder, and hard ETR, same vs. lady).

HQ is probably the second most important server to benefit from (behind R&D) also. 2x Mati’s is basically all the HQ protection you’re going to need 95% of the time.

I think 2x copies are going to be played in 95% of Weyland decks for a long period of time. Its really good.

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After reading several of the replies and thinking about games I’ve played both against and with some of the positional ice, I’ve actually turned the corner on Meru to thinking it’s pretty good. It’s super annoying to see a couple Meru on HQ, knowing that it’s a 6 credit investment for Corroder, and it’s just as bad as seeing 2 Elis for Lady. I play 2 Gutenberg in my NBN deck atm, and I never mind seeing it, despite the fact that I only ever throw it on R&D. I guess my real disappointment was that Meru is just another 1-sub barrier in Weyland with a boring ETR sub. But it’s still pretty good despite that, as others have said.

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That follows my feelings about these ICE as well. I don’t think you’d every get the whole set of them, but they’re designed really well for the faction, I think. NBN needs cheap taxing ice to throw over RnD; the first pop-up often plays this role. Having a couple of pieces of RnD only ICE in the deck that do a good job adding a tax to the runner doesn’t hurt the flow of an NBN deck at all and feels really easy to play. Likewise, HB is always making remotes it wants to defend, but defend lightly. Throwing one Turing over an Eve/Adonis turns that into a really taxing trash; I don’t think HB players are going to find Turing sitting in hand a lot.

Meru Mati and Crick are the weaker ones, I think, but if you put 1x or 2x in your deck I think you’ll usually find a way to play them without having to hold it in hand too much. It’s not like Chum where it needs to be in a specific position, just over a server that your faction is going to want to put some kind of defense over anyway.

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I think they’re both stronger than Turing because the alternatives aren’t as good, (Ice Wall and Yagura are fine but the high upsides of the science ICE makes them worth including at least 1 for positioning on the relevant central). Gutenburg, I think, is generally a good deal stronger than Data Raven on R&D. The tempo hit from rezzing DR and having the runner bounce really sucks, so half rez cost and forcing a tag on the facecheck is positively insane).

Crick, in RP is completely bonkers, and you don’t even need to draw it. Running facedown ICE on archives against RP when they have anything relevant in the bin is a fools errand these days. You could put Susano on Archives and 80% of the time they’re going to never run it just because it MIGHT be Crick. It’s also probably the single best piece to install somewhere besides “where it goes”.

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What? I’m pretty sure Crick is easily the strongest one.

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Turing is the weakest by a mile

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Well, that’s me schooled. I only have play experience with Gutenberg, so i hadn’t seen first hand what they could do, but I’ll take your words for it. Just reinforces the strength of the set in faction, which is neat :slight_smile:

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The biggest issue Turing has is that it’s really expensive for what you get off-location. Crick may be Yoggable, but it’s only one credit to rez, no big deal, and it’s 2 for Gordian and 3 for Zuul so that’s not terrible for how much it costs you. Meru Mati remains a gear check like Ice Wall even if it’s not a tax, so you can try rushing something or buying time at the very least. Gutenberg is pretty easily taken down off-target by most sentry breakers (and who doesn’t run Mimic) but R&D lock is one of NBN’s biggest weaknesses so there’s rarely a need to consider installing it elsewhere anyway.

Turing as a 4 for 5 on remote with that subroutine makes sense more or less, but it’s only 2-strength on a central, so if you draw it as one of two bits of ice in an opener it’s pretty painful unless you know they’re only running AI breakers. Even then, they can get through, albeit at stupidly high costs.

Turing is also harder to stack on remotes because of the increased cost. A wonderful thing about Gutenberg, Crick, and Meru Mati is that if you draw a second or even a third it’s never awful to just build that server up some. Maaaybe for Crick, if they’re not running Yog, because Archives rarely needs the same amount of defense as R&D/HQ do. But it can go on any other central and stay more taxing to them to run through than you to play.

But I’m happy to pay 3 credits to install and 2 to rez a Gutenberg as a fourth piece of ice on R&D. Likewise Meru Mati, if the need is great. Crick is wonderful most anywhere.

The other thing Meru Mati does is provide hard ETR. It’s probably a mistake for the runner to spend 3 clicks getting through Turing on a remote server, but they can, so it’s not safe enough for me to want to rush an agenda behind alone. If it was unbypassable as well, maybe, because it’d at least replace Guard in some respects, and they couldn’t try to do the Criminal trick of Inside Job to check, then run through because “lol, Guard, I have Mimic”.

If Turing had the rez/strength of Meru Mati it’d be much better. Only a datasucker away from Yogging, but much cheaper, not D4V1Dable, only barely more parasitable on a central, and immune to 4tman anyway making it not a terrible strength for inclusion. Make it cost 3 at that point and it’d still probably be good enough to see real play. At 4 for something that can be easily handled by either D4V1D or Yog, not so much, especially in comparison to the other Ice HB has access to.

EDIT: The stacking thing seems important. Turing is meant to be good on remotes, while the others are early centrals defense, but adding Turing to a remote that’s already got ice there is a huge extra cost. I’d rather put Crick on most remotes than Turing, because it’ll be a nuisance tax and potentially hilarious even as a 1-deep protection if they can’t break it because you can install an ice from archives over it and make them encounter that next if they keep going, or put something else in to protect the server, or build it up for future turns, or whatever. Put a snare in there at the last minute to protect your upgrade, whatever you want.

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Pretty sure that doesn’t actually work.