It’s definitely a cool idea, the issue is that you could be advancing an agenda instead of Plan B.
No; I don’t think anyone is proposing that. I am proposing that Clot is an overly powerful, overly broad way of reining one NEH/TWIY build in. There are plenty of other ways to have done this, but instead we have a situation where we have a war against an entire archetype, which is, in my opinion, bad for the game.
There are a handful of lighter-weight interventions that could have been employed that we could review off the top of my head if we wanted to :).
NBN has been my favorite faction since core, and FA has always been the engine that makes the corp work, whether you’re all-in FA (which should be an aggressive, zerg strat), threatening damage, punishing tags, etc. It’s the threat that you might be all-in zerg FA that has made NBN’s other game strong :).
On a lighter note, Lukas also said he was surprised to see nobody playing 7pt CI at worlds 2013 :).
3 Likes
It’s definitely a cool idea, the issue is that you could be advancing an agenda instead of Plan B.
The other issues are that:
- At 2 counters it’s never going to score an agenda for you
A) This means adding in support cards like mushin-no-shin, matrix analyzer, or something else. You need to essentially guarantee that it’ll be at 3 counters for it to do damage.
B) If you can advance it past 2 counters, why didn’t you just score an agenda
C) If the runner suspects plan b, they should be playing legwork because that’s likely to defuse the plan b anyways.
D) A fizzled plan B doesn’t do anything to the board state.
This actually suggests some ways to play around it.
- Use Mushin/Matrix Analyzer
- Use cards like atlas/vitruvius to retrieve the agenda you want to score after access has been comitted to.
- Install upgrades on failed plan bs that the runner wants to trash. Shell Corp, SanSan, Cyberdex Virus Suite
- Use TOL to retrieve counters and FA when B fails
Almost all of these strategies don’t work with FA decks as we know them and insinuate there’s something else out there (that likely isn’t very competitive). But now that I’ve looked at this I’m wondering if TOL-Titan wants Mushin-No-Shin/Matrix Analyzer and Plan B… ? WTF?
2 Likes
I don’t think Diagnostics was out then. I think he just said he was surprised not to see CI in general.
To be completely honest, I think old-school HB FA is just as much bullshit as NEH is, even more so - they have an identity that is just as ridiculous, better ICE and a shit-ton of really strong cards in-faction (effectively giving them like +20 influence or so). Clot hits this one as well, although arguably less so because they’re better equipped for remote-based play (because purple ICE and Adonis, respectively).
I do like the existence of counter-play to FA that isn’t faction-specific and dependent on accessing the combo pieces (Imp, Demo Run), overly complicated to set up and fragile (Chakana) or hamstringing the Runner’s ability to race the Corp for points (The Source). At 1 inf and 1 install, I agree that Clot would have been overkill, at 2 and 2 I no longer think this is the case.
3 Likes
That could be, but Lukas’ Mental Meta is like… far ahead :). BLC wasn’t out then either, which is IMO key to any reasonable CI deck :).
2 Likes
I was actually winning a good amount back then with a CI deck back then that was just Gifts, Restructures, taxing ICE, and Biotic Fast Advance. I think until BLC came out, CI was basically married to Gifts, which kept the Scorch plan from working terribly well. EffCom/Sfss was out but I wasn’t playing it.
2 Likes
Restructure wasn’t even out for worlds 2013. CI was totally unplayable against parasite Andy for a long time, although you could win some fun games with shipment from kaguya/efficiency at smaller tournaments
2 Likes
Nice!
DAN CEREBRAL IMAGING #1 
1 Like
I know. :(. It’s never worth it unless you have a 2/1, a 3/*, and a bigger agenda on hand. Then you could double, see if they run, triple, see if they run, then… Cry.
Without being broad and powerful, this card sees no play, and has no effect on the meta. See also: chakana, the source (though ofc now chakana has that silly noise hivemind build 
)
NEH is simply the strongest and most frustrating example, but the heart of the matter is that scoring out of hand is very, very hard to combat right now, assuming that you even know what’s going on. God forbid you’re a newer or more casual player and just lose without even knowing what happened.
imho, NBN has way, way too many great cards in faction to be without recourse here, and other FA archetypes already have other great lines of play (HB has ICE and $$, tennin has… jinteki cards). It’s just that NBN’s FA decks are so strong right now that there’s never been a reason to develop alternate lines of play.
4 Likes
woo! i was playing astrobiotics before it was cool!
1 Like
Some of us were playing the original 7-point CI to top five finishes at Plugged-In events before Celebrity Gift, Blue Level Clearance, Restructure, Accelerated Diagnostics, and Power Shutdown were even in the card pool. 
If anyone needs a demonstration of how it worked, albeit an updated version months later with Restructure and Blue Level, this is still one of my favorite YouTube videos. Thanks Dan. 
I would’ve been playing CI at Worlds 2013 if Second Thoughts was available and legal. Unfortunately, it was available but not legal to play until the second chance tournament after Worlds.
Ah well, it was fun. An archaic archetype that Clot will render obsolete and probably unplayable.
4 Likes
I’ve been thinking about this, is there not a window to play one of the Cyberdex cards in your Shutdown combo. You might need 1 more piece in hand at the start, but then you’re golden. Also you have power shutdown to kill clone chips and stuff. I think that you crazies with your 7 point shutdown combos will still be ok. If you can win in a world with Shards and Leela with that nonsense, I’m sure Clot won’t make it unplayable.
Also, I saw @mediohxcore win turn 3 or 4 on his stream. That’s even more BS than astrotraining. 
Yeah, I’m not 100% convinced that 7-Point Shutdown is completely dead. However, it’s way less reliable. The best I can come up with is making it an 8 card and 15 credit combo by having an extra Jackson Howard and a Cyberdex Trial in hand and using a Shipment From Mirrormorph instead of Interns off the first Accelerated Diagnostics. This will let you score through 1 Clot, but knowing Shaper, seeing multiple Clone Chips on the table won’t be out of the ordinary. That pretty much puts me as dead in the water as Noise with a Clone Chip. I don’t think it’s dead in the water, but it’s definitely struggling and felt something brush past its leg.
You need to kill at most 2. 1 to score your efficiency committee and 1 to score out. It might hurt enough that it’s not viable. If that’s the case it means all the shaper toys are being used for clotting. I guess it’s whether or not you can take advantage of that fact. You don’t have to ‘go off’ to win with the 7 point nonsense deck either. It’s just the best way. I don’t want to underestimate the power of Clot. But cards exist to counter it.
To be very clear, the first 7-point CI was not a Shutdown combo and was played in tournaments well before Power Shutdown existed in the card pool. For that variant at least, it’s not so easy to fit Cyberdex in. And yeah, Leela killed my deck long before Clot did. =)
I’ve said this elsewhere in the thread - clot at 2/2 is still a big hit to pure FA, but if you’re hybrid FA then it’s just a pain in the ass - which is exactly what the game need, in my opinion. FA for 2 or 4 points is alright, FA for 7 (whether in one turn or across several) is kinda bullshit.
4 Likes
Not to derail too much but are you talking about the 2xBiotic Efficiency Committee -> 2x Shipment from SanSan 5/3 -> Biotic 3/2, verision of 7 point CI, or something else?
I’m hoping the cool CI decks do stick around, maybe tweaked a bit. Team Sponsorship looks like it shouldd help big scoring combos, but I’m not sure where it would fit. Also with clot it’s the first score thats the hard one.