Yeah, I mean, you can Aesop’s away his directives, no? I don’t like that thematically. Unless they are like, chips installed in his brain or something. Which I suppose I’ll accept.
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I’m actually thinking Dr Lovegood. Selectively and temporarily turning them off depending on the situation seems pretty decent.
Edit: Could Dr Lovegood make The Source playable??
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Bravo everyone, such good card synergies. I can’t wait for this set to come out. I always seem to miss the discussions nowadays, and end up spending hours of my life reading them. Either way, I’m pumped.
Tl;dr Adam is definitely good, everyone is nuts, I can’t wait to play nbn glacier, fuck yeah
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Seems like Dorm Computer will be a pretty useful safety card splash when all this junk hits.
Sorry, Casting Call, I’m phoning in from a DORM COMPUTER
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Paper Tripping!
With all these tags, Crims could be a little happier with their ability to dodge some tags. Maybe that will help bring them back into the fold.
Adam really screams Faust to me. Get his handsize up and he’s drawing a card every turn. He’s drawing with Independent Thinking, he’s drawing with, probably, a Chop Bot. And then he has a turn 1 HQI and the ability to click through a sub? Honestly, the main thing will be to turn 1 protect from SEA+Scorch. Scary.
[guess you can just jack out ;)]
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If’n you don’t mind tossing out what makes Adam so great, I’d love to hear it. I really, really want to like him.
Dr. Lovegood seems largely limited in use (though being able to turn off The Source or Donut or something might be nice, I guess). I kinda like it, but given how easy it is to splash, it might be better in other decks, even. (Other potentially funny use, if you think you’re going to hit a Cyberdex during a run, use it on Clot or something during your turn to keep it safe.)
Independent Thinking requires trashing installed stuff, which he doesn’t have much of in-faction. It can draw you a tonne, but if you wanted the stuff you trashed, it’s rough.
Brain Chip is useful if you’re able to score early, assuming you’re going for lots of programs.
Multithreader will pay for itself in a couple of turns and seems generally pretty useful so long as you’ve got lots of programs you need to be using. Recurring credits to use for breakers, always nice, and you can use them for SMC and whatnot, too.
Always Be Running’s ability is… kinda nice, I guess, but the mandated first click run is kinda painful, particularly early in the game. First turn, do you make a useless run on Archives or risk plowing into a dangerous piece of Ice before you’ve played anything down? If there’s only one sub, sure, you can go through… but then you have only one click left for next turn, when you have to do it again – and the corp can always ice Archives to make it all the more frustrating. At least it allows run events, so Dirty Laundry is a way around at least a portion of the penalty early on, if you draw it.
Neutralize All Threats is a pretty big econ drain, since you can’t sidestep it with Imp. Adam has no in-faction econ. The HQI effect is nice, but checking what you think is an agenda to find out it’s an Eve or SanSan and go broke trashing it doesn’t seem worth it. Or hitting two cards in hand, having to trash an asset and being unable to steal the NAPD you see second.
Safety First could be useful later in the game, if you can get Brain Chips going. Until you’ve pumped your handsize, though, it makes you easy prey to damage, and if you draw things out of order you’re SOL.
So, his best cards are easy to splash. While he can run duplicate directives without counting against the three he starts with (meaning, theoretically, that you could have 4 of each, I guess? I dunno), they’re largely at least as negative as they are positive.
25 influence vanishes pretty quickly when you need to import all your breakers and other tools as well as other tricks, because he basically doesn’t have any tricks of his own, really. Not that come without substantial drawbacks.
If they made the directives one-ofs or more diverse so you could customize what he began with, that’d be one thing. If he had more influence, that’d be another.
But without influence he’s only got Overmind and Crypsis as breakers, and while he’s got a bunch of neutral economy options those don’t really let him get in all that much better, because he doesn’t have a strong economy of his own, really.
If you use Aesop’s or Chop Bot to handle the Directives that makes Independent Thinking less useful by eating up the feul.
He could maybe be neat with Faust trash a directive and five other things to draw 10 cards and run, but then either your handsize is boosted and you hold them for next turn, or you have to ditch ABR first, and Multithreader’s kind of pointless. Or, at least, less useful than when if he had any programs that cost him credits in-faction.
He’s got great flavor, but unlike Sunny and Apex I don’t feel like his cards synergize all that well, for the most part. Maybe I’m overly pessimistic, but the cool stuff I could see him doing feels like it’d require him having more ability to do… pretty much anything without spending influence on it. If he gets something decent, an AI breaker of his own, maybe, in Mumbad Cycle, then yeah, I could see him being good. He’s close. I just… don’t feel like he’s got all the stuff he needs, yet.
Sunny and Apex both have clear directions, and the stuff they need to follow them.
Apex can install lots of stuff, tank damage, and get in through most ice (though destroyers may give him a problem). Eventually he’ll be able to get rid of everything the Corp was working toward and leave himself in a decent enough position to just keep going. He’s got draw, economy, and an interesting breaker.
Sunny’s got expensive gear but a lot of effective MUs thanks to her Cloud Breakers. They may not be the most efficient in all situations but she can boost them pretty well, and reaps some significant benefit from playing plenty of Link cards by allowing her to bypass one piece of ice each turn. Topping it all off, she can use that bypass ability in the free run she gets at the start of each turn before any clicks. She’s also highly resilient against any/all traces as part of this, which usually isn’t a big deal but is both looking to be a more useful thing and already means that even beyond Film Critic she’s safe from Midseasons, Punitives, Ash, and SEA-Source the vast majority of the time. She’s also the first runner to have any plausible reason to run UWC and expect success, and can likely do the same with Data Folding a la Qimpossible, though for different reasons.
Adam can put a bunch of early pressure on with the right cards, there’s no denying it. It’s just that his options are kind of limited, he’s pushed down particular paths even more narrowly, and while it’s very thematic it seems like he’ll have a hard time making use of that pressure to actually win. Maybe I’m wrong, I kind of hope so, but it’s the lack of in-faction options that might hurt Adam most.
(Though I suppose it’s not quite as bad as could’ve been, as you can run extra copies of the Directives in the deck, too, so that you can play them out again if you find yourself in need/want to boost Independent Thought, but don’t have to if you just want them gone, I guess?)
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Desperado + sec testing in sunny, anyone?
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Fair point. They would if they understood the implications of clearing the current. If CI magically got next-level again, I could see this being the case. Until that point, you’re likely correct.
I think my knee jerk reaction is to continue my mission of making CI work without FA. @camelCase and @higgs_bozo are likely right that in practice DS is a reasonable counter.
Based on how much Giest love there is in is in Sunny’s cards, I’m going to assume there’s some kind of connection there. Maybe…
Coming This Summer…
She Hunts Cyber Criminals by Day…
He Breaks into Corporate Servers by Night…
In between, they try to raise a family together!
It’s a barrel of laughs in NBN’s latest comedy. From the writers of Friendship Upgraded, comes a brand new show on your favorite NBN content streams*. Staring Miranda Rhapsody as Sunny Lebeau, Cole Zavaleta as Garry “Geist” Lebeau and Chasidy Mika as Kati “Chaos Theory” Lebeau.
*Only available on premium NBN content streams. Additional fees and restrictions may apply.
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It’s way too early to start saying what ifs, but I imagined Adam’s cards as a clear negative but maybe with a flip effect. Something like You must pay the trash cost of any card you access. Place a power counter on this Directive for each credit spent this way. Once Directive has 12 or more counters, flip Directive. You may access an additional 2 cards from HQ.
Instead they made them virtual resources, playable out of faction cards with more flexibility but less power. Totally agree with your post, all of his best cards are 1 influence and have no in faction support. So you could trash the directive, but lose the potential flip if you so desired.
I would actually watch this.
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Or, you know… one of those Directives you don’t want active this turn.
You’re right, though… all his best crap is easily taken elsewhere. Which is probably easier and better than bringing teh good stuff to him.
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Would you play more of Neutralize All Threats in your deck? Unlike the other two its drawback doesn’t stack and it doesn’t consume clicks, so for Adam it’s a 0-cost HQI. Use dat influence for Fisk investment seminar and gang sign? Faust to combine with FIS as well?
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Not_Han_solo on Reddit did some math regarding Sunny’s breakers that seems relevant, so I’m just going to dump the post here below.
Relevant math for Sunny’s breakers (Comparing to the most efficient permanent
breakers in the game for common ice in question, with the asterisk that
the compared breaker must be commonly played somewhere, and also
ignoring stuff like Wraparound, which is always just the break cost for
one sub):
Sherman break cost for Meru Mati: 4, vs. Corroder’s 3.
Sherman break cost for Spiderweb: 4, vs. Corroder’s 3.
Sherman break cost for Fire Wall: 6, vs. Corroder’s 5.
Sherman break cost for Curtain Wall: 8, vs. Corroder’s 11.
Sherman break cost for Hadrian’s Wall: 6, vs. Corroder’s 7.
Sherman break cost for Hive: 4, vs. Corroder’s 2-6.
Sherman break cost for Eli 1.0: 4, vs. Corroder’s 4.
Sherman break cost for Hiemdal 2.0: 6, vs. Corroder’s 8.
Shrike break cost for Tsurugi: 4, vs. Mimic’s 4.
Shrike break cost for Komainu: 2, vs. Mimic’s 1-5.
Shrike break cost for Cortex Lock: 4, vs. Garrote’s 3.
Shrike break cost for Susanoo: 6, vs. Garrote’s 7.
Shrike break cost for Archer: 6, vs. Garrote’s 8.
Shrike break cost for Ichi 2.0: 6, vs. Garrote’s 6.
Shrike break cost for Gutenberg: 6, vs. Garrote’s 6.
Shrike break cost for Terminator 1.0: 6, vs. Garrote’s 7.
Shrike break cost for Grim: 6, vs. Garrote’s 4.
Shrike break cost for Janus 1.0: 8, vs. Garrote’s 10.
Shrike break cost for Architect: 4, vs. Mimic’s 2, or Garrote’s 3.
Shrike break cost for Caduceus: 4, vs. Mimic’s 2, or Garrote’s 3.
Striker break cost for Lotus Field: 4, vs. Torch’s 1, or Gordian Blade’s 3.
Striker break cost for Viktor 2: 6, vs. Torch’s 2, or Gordian Blade’s 5.
Striker break cost for Tollbooth: 9, vs. Torch’s 5, or Gordian Blade’s 8.
Striker break cost for Yagura: 2, vs. Torch’s 2, or Yog.0’s 0.
Striker break cost for Turing: 6, vs. Torch’s 2, or Gordian Blade’s 4.
Striker break cost for Crick: 6, vs. Torch’s 3, or Gordian Blade’s 5.
Striker break cost for Enigma/Datapike: 4, vs. Gordian Blade’s 2.
In summary: Striker’s just plain bad, because really good decoders
like Torch, Yog, and Gordian Blade exist. It just never beats ANY of
them on any ice that sees play, and while it sometimes can break even
when compared against Zu.13, you’re probably just better off splashing
some of your 25 influence for a real Decoder. Much of this is because
very, very few code gates run multiple subs, and those that do don’t
fall at the y*3+1 efficiency break point that Sunny’s breakers all sit
at.
However, both Sherman and Shrike have some definite game. Each has
notable inefficiencies compared with the field (Shrike doesn’t compare
well against > Str 3 sentries, because Mimic is a thing, and Sherman
wastes credits on low strength barriers, because Corroder is a thing),
but each is actually the most efficient permanent breaker in the game or
ties for that honor against several pieces of important ice. Of note,
Shrike defangs Archer, Terminator, Ichi 2.0, and Komainu very, very
efficiently, while Sherman is excellent in the Blue Sun & HB
matchups, breaking Curtain Wall, Hadrian’s Wall, and Hiemdal 2.0 for
significantly less than anything else out there.
What we should take away from this, though, is that almost every
inefficient break for both Sherman and Shrike comes at a y*3+2 piece of
ice, and with a 1 str differential, they match or exceed most other
breakers there too. Hence, a Sunny player who’s running in-faction
breakers should seriously consider importing Datasucker and/or Net-Ready
Eyes, as those cards turn both Sherman and Shrike into efficiency
powerhouses.
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Gotta say, I like the idea of being able to get Morningstar-like performance without the hard strength limit if SHTF. Law enforcement grade software ain’t nothin’ to fuck with.
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I see what you did there.
The Directives are unique.
Because the breakers and her console are pricey to install, Sunny might want some Moddeds.
Keegan Lane is just going to be crazy effective against Medium dig. Him on RnD plus Gutenberg (or double Gutenberg!) makes Medium really hard to play effectively, since if they take the tag you just trash their Medium for them.
EDIT: In general, I think Gutenberg is going to do loads of work over RnD and RnD protection is what NBN needs the most, with their high agenda density builds. Gutenberg will make the 3/1 self scoring and allow you to blow rigs up as you need them. Wicked strong.
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