I thought it was more of an upgrade on the Root.
The higher rez/trash costs and three instead of two recurring credits make it harder to directly compare, I think.
But forced to make the comparison, I agree; Temple is a neutral card that is clearly way better than at at least two corp assets of very similar design space.
Mumba Temple vs. Dedicated Server
Temple pros:
Can use credits to rez assets and upgrades in addition to ICE;
Only a third of the rez cost.
Temple con:
Deck ICE limit/influence.
Mumba Temple vs. The Root
Temple pros:
Much cheaper rez cost.
Not unique.
Temple cons:
Only two-thirds of the strength.
Cannot use credits to install or advance cards.
Deck ICE limit/influence.
Mumba Temple only has the deck restriction disadvantage versus Dedicated Server. It’s better in every other way for the same functionality. Compared to The Root, it is more that it’s different than strictly better or worse. There are arguments either way for different situations.
That is assuming each card is considered in faction of course. Outside of Jinteki, Mumba Temple is strictly better than Dedicated Server (since the influence is identical, but you have the deck-building alternative with Mumba Temple)!
2 Likes
Man, we can only imagine how different things would be today if Faust was indeed released as a Criminal card! Crims don’t have an amazing native draw engine and Whizzard might actually have to make some hard deckbuilding decisions.
If Crims were to import 3 Wyldside + 2 Adj Chrono (13 Inf), typically they could only afford 1 TME/RDI after that. No LARLA. Although, Faust + E3 in the same faction could be potent. Weighing other pros and cons, I’d agree that Criminal seems like the more balanced home.
It makes a ton of sense in Criminal, too. No recursion limits the power of things like D4v1d pretty quickly (Lady in Crim would never have driven barriers from the meta as much as Lady in Shaper did, and to some extent still has).
Where is your LARLA ?
You could maybe go with 2 wyldside / 2 chronotype with Andromeda, 1 Faust and 3 spec orders.
But there’s still no place there for LARLA 
You could also do 3 wyldside / 1 Faust / 1 Larla and Rachel Beckman but goodbye to Syphons…
Don’t forget I’ve Had Worse. Faust’s downside is supposed to be that it leaves the runner open for “aggressive retaliation”, but when was the last time an Anarch got Scorched?
Sorry for the confusion. I was still assuming Faust was Criminal in that example. Assuming the same, it is true that you could probably drop Wyldside to pick up a LARLA in Andy. Were you to not import Wyldside + Adj Chrono, then Faust would be relegated to normal “edge case” AI-breaker status.
Thinking about this entire thread, it seems that there are two major things that lead to the dominance of Dumbleforks in the meta.
The first is that Faust is unique in the world of AI breakers so far in that its downside has primarily been solved and elevated its use to that of primary breaker - the ‘holy grail’ of icebreaker solutions. AI breakers exist in a tricky design space in that they violate the typical rock-paper-scissors of ICE interaction. They must come with some hefty downside to keep them from being simply better than non-AI solutions. FFG has explored this space to a significant extent and generally done a great job keeping AI advantages in check. Limiting your primary suite to a single necessary card to solve a vast majority of ICE is a huge deal and something many people had attempted over the course of this game, to varying success (Darwin, anyone?).
Until now. We have ‘cracked the code’ with Faust (essentially with Wyldside/Adjusted Chronotype), and it’s completely understandable that it creates a deck of a power we have never seen before. I’m one of those people who have wanted to ‘solve’ an AI breaker combo, and I like that it exists.
The other piece is a side effect of the solution that made Faust playable. The draw engine is just so effective at helping you play the game. It allows you access to all your tools and lets you choose what to feed the breaker. On top of that, it translates to ‘life’ against anything that does damage. These things are valuable outside of Faust, and make this deck in particular even more effective.
It remains to be seen if specific hate-tech will be worked out or introduced that can curb it’s power, but like I said before, that has been the case with every previous top-tier deck. I trust the design team and above all the community to work out the solution.
TL;DR - The culprit to Dumblefork’s power is that we can use an AI as a primary breaker, something never done effectively before
1 Like
Katman was pretty good at using an AI breaker as its primary. But it didn’t have the additional perks you correctly identify as part of the Wyldside+Faust combo: the additional options +draw gives you, and protection against damage.
To be fair, parasite was the primary breaker in that deck. it’s also an MWL nightmare.
2 Likes
Crypsis worked with Noise, Reina Knight etc.
The strenght of Wyldcake Faust is “Run and ignore a Bastion or a WoS or an Enigma once a turn”.
This is all it does.
This means a corp player have to find one of these, put it on each server and rez them to cancel Wyldcake. That’s a maximum of 4x 3-4c aka 12-15c, +4c for next ices, for an investment of 9c.
Aka a grand maximum of 10c credit swing, with a 3 card combo. Meanwhile, Criminal is playing with a 1card 15 credit swing event since the coreset that cost them 0inf, 6 less slots (don’t forget LARLA), -1 to 2 less clic to obtain cards, 3 less clicks to install and people still whine here.
You have Enigma.
You have Komainu.
You have Hunter.
You have Wall of Static.
You have Dataravens.
You have Crick, Turing & co.
You have Ash, Caprice, Corporate Troubleshooter, Markus Batty, Will-o-the-wisp.
You have ENDLESS ways of countering Faust be it with agendas, ices, assets, upgrades, operations or identities (RP !!1!oneonedamniteleven).
This is a lot easier to counter Faust than to play against IG-MoH and you guys, since the card just mess with the piece of China all your corporate decks are, are just asking yourselves too many questions in front of a river you must cross.
“Alright, alright, but apart from the remote gear checks, the constant stream of cards letting you ignore single pieces of midrange ice, the remote lock, the facecheck safety, the ice destruction, and the dangerous lategame potential of a Medium dig you realy can’t stop - what has Faust/Wyldside ever done for us?”
“It’s also a draw engine.”
“Oh, 'eff off.”
18 Likes
Bevare of my dyrtah remote lock you filthy corp, I’ll break your 2x enigma to dust, what you gonna do when dang snare hokusai grid well let’s just put all my cards with the other card in the trashbin and I’m lock for next 2 turns.
Faust Wyldcake are the easiest to lock than any single credit-based deck ever ? Hello ? Did you know you can’t store cards when you can store credits ?
Or the runner doesn’t run that remote and mediumdig you to death. That could, you know, potentially happen too. Especially if you are at zero points, I’ll say the odds are pretty high a competent runner will let you have a 2-pointer.
2 Likes
The result would stay “dang snare hokusai” though. Or wtfKomainu. Or whatever things you stuffed your deck with and put in front of R&D. Assassin : 0 inf = 5 cards.
I remember people stopping putting all same str ice back in the days of Katman, and nobody cried, people just did this + each run worthed 2-3c pump with a little ice selection aka a wayyyyy worse situation.
It seems to me that today you want now ppl to hold your hand or something ?
What are you waiting, that someone in sneakdoorzeta count for you with how many cards it is broke by Faust ?
While I agree that Faust can be countered by smart play and deck building choices, I do think you are perhaps understating the efficiency with which these decks operate. Parasite, Datasucker, and Cutlery and David are all in faction, cheap and easy to play. All of the Faust-countering ICE you’ve mentioned can be, and usually is, dead almost as soon as it hits the table. At the very least, something like WoS is a lot less imposing when a single Datasucker counter saves a card and Enigma they can just run last click. Most Faust taxing ICE is easily solved by other in faction tools. Ash, Caprice and Batty are helpful, but it’s not as if Wyldcakes decks are completely broke. Plus if they just annihilate all your remote ICE, going back in 1-2 more times against an upgraded remote isn’t that big of a deal. And “just play Jinteki” isn’t a satisfactory answer. Snare Hokusai RP is fantastic anti-Faust tech, but not everyone plays red.
Tldr I agree that there are smart ways to play against Faustcakes, and I definitely think there has been a lot of overreaction, but I also think you are trivializing the pure power of the archetype a little bit.
Let’s be honest about these things, now.
Crypsis and Knight both have significant problems being used as a main breaker that Faust/Wyldcakes does not. Crypsis is a click/tempo hog and vulnerable to purging (if you stack counters for a big run). Knight is a great tool but is easy to trash, and can’t break more than a single ICE in a run - something that hardly qualifies it as a primary breaker.
Atman may be a better example, but if I recall correctly the build used multiple Atman along with Datasucker support to really get into servers reliably. That’s starting to look like building a full rig to me, something a ‘holy grail’ AI set up is looking to avoid (at least in my mind). Dumbleforks only needs one program to get in - Faust.
I still maintain we have never ‘solved’ a solitary AI breaker solution before the way we have with Faust/Wyldcakes.
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The closest thing was Eater/Keyhole, which was oppressive when it first came out, but was pretty quickly solved. Also not solitary; at least two programs needed, and still can’t crack remotes.
I have no interest in complaining about a type of deck that “wins too much” when there’s decks that stall out because of a fundamental way the deck works. Corping against 3 Faust decks in a row and craving a smidge of variety is a 1000th of the negative player experience compared to when I have to run first against an IG player and make rushed suboptimal plays to ensure I get the privilege of playing my own corp deck after the shuffle storm.
3 Likes