Cards that don't work in-faction

Was looking at Hayley decks, and was noticing the rise of Cache. It made me chuckle to myself that Cache is only ever used in Shaper and Anarch, never Criminal.

I’m curious if there’s any other cards that are like this. Cards that are by the vast majority used out-of-faction, and very rarely in-faction. I think I may have to disqualify the mini-factions’ cards here, otherwise Apocalypse, Multithreader, Security Nexus, and Shrike would potentially all count. Nothing really comes to mind, the closest being Mimic/Corroder/Yog, except that Anarch plays those cards, too… It’s pretty weird to have a card be powerful out-of-faction, but not in-faction.

Also since it’s on-topic, why isn’t Cache used in Criminal decks? My guess is: a) Criminals don’t need a Virus like Noise does. b) Criminal has no in-faction way of leveraging installed cards lying around, and c) Criminals have memory issues most of the time anyway, so having an extra Program installed doing nothing isn’t that good. I suppose it’s also true that Easy Mark exists and does everything Criminal would want Cache for, only better.

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I don’t know about a vast majority, but Clot seems to be used much more frequently (and more effectively) in Green than in Orange.

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Perhaps, but it’s still used in Orange as well. Noise uses it because it’s a Virus and pawnable. L4J Whizzard uses it because he runs Clone Chips.

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Most L4J lists I see skip Clot, and with the MWL coming I imagine the trend will continue. The only anarch ID I see it in with any frequency is Noise. That said, you’re right that it certainly isn’t at the same level as Cache.

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Account Siphon, but that might just be because no one plays Criminal anymore :wink:

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Not limiting ourselves to just Runner cards, I would put forth Traffic Accident. The card does everything for yellow, and nothing for the tag-poor Weyland in my experience.

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That’s a good one.
As an extension, SEA Source only saw play in NBN until Midseason came out… Does it qualify?

(And no, we can’t say the entire Weyland card pool qualifies. That’s just mean.)

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Because Cache is only used in Pawnshop decks, and there aren’t any Criminal Pawnshop decks.

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Which is interesting, because Bank Job is another card that synergizes very well with Pawnshop. I guess they’ve never been necessary before, because Criminal is a faction that’s already very good at making money?

Aesop only gives you 2 undeserved credits off of Bank Job, whereas Imp gives you 3, but Imp costs too much influence to import. Lamprey can be considered to be a full 3 undeserved credits if you ran HQ a couple times so they’d ice it, and now it’s no longer exciting to do that.

What’s funny is I remember playing Bank Job and Aesop’s together, but I don’t remember what deck it was, or WHY I was mixing the Peanut Butter with the Jelly. (A Goober deck.)

If Cache has so much inherent synergy with Pawnshop, why is it a Criminal card? That’s the fundamental question, I think… Which we won’t get an answer to, but is still interesting to ponder. I do remember seeing Cache and wondering why it was Blue. There’s not many cards like that…

It cannot be Anarch because it would be too good for Noise if it costed him no influence.
It cannot be Shaper because they have too many ways to abuse it (Scavenge, Aesop etc) to get it for free.
So it went to Crim, as it does no harm there so it doesn’t need to be made neutral with influence cost.

I’ve seen Bank Job played with Aesop in Kate decks which used econ of Cache/Bank Job/Daily Casts/Aesop, played Grimoire and abused Parasite/Datasucker. I guess now you would play such deck in Hayley and use Harbinger instead (as it is less influence than Bank Job and works with Sheherezade). And abuse Chameleon instead of Parasite as that plan got killed by MWL.

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because it needed to cost shapers and anarchs influence, and they were light on the blue part of the color wheel that pack? seems straightforward enough.

Traffic accident is a way worse example, because it was clearly intended as the big-box boost for green kill decks (everything else was aimed at the terrible advanceable glacier concept) but sees literally zero play in faction.

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Agreed.

Disagreed. If you’re using Scavenge on Cache… Congrats, you just played an Easy Mark that requires a memory and two cards?

Still. I’m not really trying to argue Cache should’ve been Green. You can definitely bet that if Cache wasn’t Blue, it would NEVER see play in a Criminal deck. Being worse than Easy Mark AND costing influence? (There’s a whole slew of cards that NEVER see play in Criminal decks though, so that alone isn’t a compelling reason, but it’s a damn good one.)

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My crew wrecked a ton of the 2013 “regionals” with Wyldside / Aesop’s Gabe (which ran Bank Jobs). Paleolithic ANR tech.

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There are a trio of Criminal viruses - Cache, Gorman Drip, Pheromones - that have just never made it in to viable Crim decks. Gorman Drip is almost kinda nice, too, and Pheromones feels like a card that should be good but again, isn’t.

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Cache is crim for flavor right? It’s like a virusy swiss bank account. Anarchs aren’t gonna do that. Shapers aren’t gonna do that. Then once you see the interactions with Noise ID and Aesop are so strong it seems like a good idea to stick with that.

Choosing to make it 1 influence instead of 2 actually seems partial to Noise and Shaper. At least when compared to the choice to make Aesop cost 50 influence in Apex.

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I think it’s because “viruses that make money” are deemed a part of the Criminal ‘color pie,’ as evidenced by Pheremones and Gorman Drip. Which I always thought was a neat concept I’d like to see explored further, but the blue viruses are…kinda lackluster. :expressionless:

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I’d love to see the blue virus theme explored more. Crins like money, why not use a more code-based vector to take it from the corps. Something along the lines of “when your turn begins, place a virus counter on this card. Then gain x credits, where x is the number of virus counters.” At 3-4 inf, Noise wouldn’t care. At 2 MU, it would require building around and youd be less worried about it getting out of hand. Lamprey really could have been Criminal.

The one that always gets me is Career Fair. Not only are all the good targets neutral or out of faction, but applying for a job through valid channels doesn’t feel very criminal. Even with the social engineering angle, that flavor has always been even throughout the factions. It almost makes more thematic sense as a neutral, 1 inf card.

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I think Cache kinda works with Drug Dealer. It’s a place to stash a little money safe when your Drug Dealer(s) come around, but ready to spend if you need it after they go. But otherwise it doesn’t do anything for Criminals, it would be a lot better if you could click some credits back onto it.