Just the ID. Having proxy tested Spark a little bit I found it lacking. That looks like an interesting Haarp build though.
As for Spark being trash, it’s amazing for the troll factor. But as to actually being a Corp ID ability that help you win the game in some fashion, I’m just not sure. Runners have too many strong econ options. Product Placement is really sweet though.
You can actually make it so your ability fires on both turns fairly consistently. You can consistently make it so the runner can’t play Sure Gamble T1. You make good money fast, so it is set up nicely for rush. Typical NBN strats with a new twist. Give it a shot.
Then they spend some of that money and you over the course of the game steal 10 credits of theirs and get them to run into traps/upgades/ice that net you 20 on top
Spark agency probably really wants to hate resources and loves closing accounts. Probably reversing them too. Can we see a build that plays city surveillance and dedicated response team to troll the runner into running with tags, and inadvertently leaving them tagged after successful runs?
TL;DR has the potential to make some waves. I’ve been experimenting with 2 of them in ETF Glacier and the tax is real. Ya’ll thought 3 sub Ichi was bad…
That’s one way to look at it, maybe the right way. Chum can sometimes be run through, if IHW is in hand or cards Runner doesn’t particularly care about. Both suffer to Atman 4, though. TLDR can be run through once the Runner knows what’s next, since sometimes 2 extra subs on Architect/Eli/Markus are cheaper to break than the TLDR itself. It’s still an experiment.
Dedicated Response Team is a legitimate reason to run Rebranding Team and Ad Blitz. Probably no more than 1x Ad Blitz. 2x Rebranding should be enough. None of that Media Blitz business just hope you can you score it. Is Rebranding worthwhile if you can 3x Response Team, 3x Jackson minimum??
I’d be interested to hear more on this, as when I tried the ID I was only getting some 5-6 triggers on average, even bending over backwards to make it work. I was running 3 Pad, 3 launch, 3 Product Placement, 3 popup, 1 special offer and firing the ability happened less often than I expected. Was I just unlucky? (This was only some 6-7 games tried).
The fact that firing the ability on turn 1 often requires the suboptimal play of rezzing a campaign prematurely doesn’t help either.
I will give it another try again soon, as I really like the ability, but initial impression is that it doesn’t offer enough to make it worthwhile.
It’s probably the strongest ID in the game post closed accounts, but you do need to find a way to get the runner near zero initially. On very lucky openers, you can have the runner at three before their first click, which can be crazy.
dropping a runner down to 4 or even 3 credits on their first turn can be a good whack to the kneecaps to slow the runner down while you set up.
i imagine any starting hand with Popup / Special Offer + just about any advertisement asset will be a mandatory keep. you’ll make a lot of credits and tax the runner quite a bit.
Special Offer can also go in front of those assets to protect them (where i would normally play a Popup window) and let the Popups just continue to do their thing on centrals
i think the ability is strong. it can only ever happen at most once per turn per game, so it’s on the same level as Kate and HB, but here’s where it’s different
the bad: not that many advertisements yet without a scored Rebranding Team, and two of them cost quite a bit of influence
the good: easier to rez things on the opponent’s turn (unlike installing), so you can get the most out of what assets you do have, and ICE is almost always rezzed on the opponent’s turn, so Popup and Special Offer can help fill those gaps as well
it can also mess up solitaire runners like traditional Noise
the ugly: it’s credit denial instead of economy for the corp. it can cause some real problems for a lot of runners and mess up the math of the economy they’ve put into their game plan.
it can also potentially do nothing or very little against, say, broke Nasir.
in general though, with some interesting currents like Predictive Algorithm, or further credit denial with Reversed Accounts or tagging + Closed Accounts, you can really mess up the runner’s tempo