I wouldn’t call it broken, exactly.
I mean, it’s still forcing you to put Motivation and Monolith in your deck, amirite?
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I talked to a playtester last night, that’s what he reported.
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*i shed a single tear for my beautiful stillborn baby*
On second thought, what can we do with Trope…
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Yeah, that interaction is what makes the most sense to me.
Also, I think it might make Parasite not nearly as good, since one of the hardest times I have with running Parasite window as one (to three) of my 15-18 ICE is how prevalent Parasite is (and Parasite recursion).
I think the biggest compliment I can give to this big box is that with the above assumption being the case, I think its the best big box for Corps in likely forever. Honor and Profit is a close second, but every card for NBN does new and interesting things, and while not every deck is going to want every card, there isn’t any NBN card right now that I don’t think some decks wouldn’t want.
Although honestly, the corp IDs I think are kind of lackluster in comparison. Sync is the one that stands out as the most interesting me, just because of how much they are pushing non Butchershop styled tag punishment (which is good), and Sync supports that rather well.
But I was going through old big box cardlists, and it seems like each one has one corp ID that is niche playable, and two that are close to being good, but end up not making the cut for various reasons. In C&C it was Cerebral Imaging, Tennin Institute for H&P, and in O&C I think it was Titan Transnational.
The more I think about it, the more that it bothers me. Why do they end up printing so many corp IDs that see little to no play because of abilities that are close to being good?
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If an ID is generally useful (ETF/NEH/Blue Sun) then the thing that it does the best will be for most archetypes. IF they didn’t print “general good stuff” ids, then you’d always be picking between crappy options, which would make all of them a bit more useful, but maybe not strong enough to deal with runners as they are now. Basically, if each ID is a bubble on a ven diagram and all of the less powerful IDs fill the same design space as the most powerful one, you see underused IDs. RP and PE are not on the same spectrum. And IG does enough work that RP and PE don’t always conflict with it. Meanwhile only NEH and MN do anything right now significantly different. In weyland, Argus/Titan/Gagarin/Blue Sun hold the main archetype space. The world is yours is just going to do the same things NEH and MN do with a smallerdeck. GRNDL & Core Weyland do what Blue Sun does (money) worse. Stronger Together does glacier worse than ETF because any money you give to Stronger Together also goes to ETF, and that’s the main difference. Next Design doesn’t do rush as well as ETF does rush. CI is a different combo-y space, so ETF can’t replicate it. Tennin is just generally bad at what it does since there’s not a lot of ETR in jinteki, a few players have mastered this deck type. Harmony Medtech doesn’t do anything well to create an Archetype. Same problem with engineered for success. You can go through them all 1 by 1. I don’t know why we keep seeing what we see, but that’s why some don’t get played.
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Haarp is great for Butchershop, no doubt. I’m not sure it’s a straight move from NEH though - in my testing so far, the consistency NEH brings to the table in drawing your combo pieces is still extremely valuable. That said, I’m sure it could be built far better than what I was running. Probably more 1 pointers is the way to go?
Yeah, I guess the reason that bugs me is because of a few IDs in particular that could be amazing, if they were just ratcheted up a little:
Argus: Runner picks (1 tag or 1 meat damage) when an agenda is scored or stolen
Gagarin: 2c to access a card in a remote
- Gagarin is a particular sore point with me, because 1c to access a card in a remote is nothing, given that Weyland is the bad pub faction (pretty much) and 1 BP turns off their ability entirely.
But as far as the stuff in Data and Destiny:
- SYNC: I think this ID has a really good ability, given the increased focus on tags.
As far as the other two:
-
Spark Agency: In my opinion, not enough of an upside to justify building an entire ad based deck (NOTE: It will get better if Rebranding Team is clarified to work as me and gumOnShoe thinks it does). Noise gets to mill a card every time he installs a virus, and Spark just saps them of 1 credit the first time an advertisement is rezzed each turn?
-
New Angeles Sol: I will go into this saying that I don’t like currents much. I think that corp deckbuilding is hard enough as is with all of the constraints placed, and that an entire ID which relies on having currents at hand is kind of meh.
Also, (and I know this is a side point), but what silly person released Haarpsichord Studios, 2 more agendas that rely on ‘when accessed’ effects, and Film Critic all in the same pack, and why? Haarpsichord Studios is at least interesting enough in a metagame where its all about multiaccess.
I haven’t tested it yet - I’m waiting to get the actual cards still - but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if a new ID changed the optimal deck composition a little.
That’s not Gagarin’s problem. Gagarin’s problem is that it doesn’t help you in centrals, which is the place Weyland usually loses their game. If the ID also covered upgrades in centrals’ root, it would be a good and synergistic ID.
As for Weyland being the BP faction:
- plenty of non-BP agenda comps around
- plenty of BP removal around
- if all else fails, you can still read Gagarin as “ignore the first BP you give out”
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lmao. strong ID
“Remove the bad publicity you gain from the first Hostile Takeover you score.”
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I can totally agree with this, actually.
I forgot the corollary to that, which I’ve talked with a few people about. Make Gagarin either 2c to access a card in a remote, or 1c to access a card anywhere.
But I do wish that given that I think each faction has kind of a definitive ID (NBN NEH, Jinteki RP, Weyland Blue Sun, and HB EtF) that they were more aggressive with the power level of other IDs. Not that I think other corp IDs need to be able to supplant them, but often when deckbuilding and trying to use an ID that isn’t one of the four above, I feel like I’m gimping myself. That I could take that deck idea, slot in one of the above four IDs, and its either as good if not slightly better.
You can’t do that without making it bonkers strong - that’s why I worded it the way I did. The goal here isn’t to make Maker’s Eye cost 5 cr, it’s to strengthen the synergy between Gagarin and an Upgrade-centric playstyle.
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How many upgrades constitute that would you say? I’m having reasonable success with 11 must trash assets (i.e. IT departments, contract killers etc). And an archived mem for a little recursion when I know the guy is going bonkers for one in particular.
Shell Jinteki has 15+ or so … Anyway, 2C to access would be absolutely crushing in IT Dep Gagarin.
As an aside, I’ll give three virtual hugs to the person who comes up with a decent way to pop Helium Deposits onto the IT department…
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I don’t think the Gagarin tax needs to be stronger, it just needs more compelling reasons to make the runner…run…often
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No hugs for me then!
Biotic’s are an option. Where to for inf though. That’s a lot to give up.
Victor 2.0, Marcus Batty, defective brainchips 2x, Jackson 3x, biotic. Or two archived memories instead of biotic. You know, there’s no good way of doing this
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Lol. Hence the bravado for e-hugs. I think I’m pretty safe here.
Yeah, you won’t be virtually violated any time soon
A fun uber-janky thing you can do is rez illicit ICE on a server with chilo. Then rez a broadcast center to negate the bad pub and generate a tag.
Someone plz unlock that achievement 
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And with surveillance sweep, this is no longer terrible I think. I want to bow to your creativity