Cambridge PE cares. PE is so much less scary without damaging operations. Killing any number of Mushin no Shin is huge.
Trashing Econ and OAI from R&D is a real issue for blue sun. Also, means you can’t hang on to OAI until you have a good target. Especially because you can/should also run Imp to trash expensive Assets/Upgrades.
Edward Kim will be a big deal. I can’t think of any corp lists that play fewer than 9 operations. If you get half of them then you’re doing real damage (~10 credits worth I’d guess). If you kill scorched earth, punitive counterstrike, midseasons, trick of light, fast track, psychographics, closed accounts or biotic labour (and others) you’ve just seriously advanced your board position. RP probably cares the least, but even then it’s not wise to hang onto your celebrity gifts - which you often want to do. Supermodernism style decks are really really sad.
Not to mention that against PE you generally want to be slowly digging through RnD before they get there so you can trash traps before they make an appearance as well as get agendas. As Kim, while you’re rooting around in there, you’re also trashing economy operations like Hedge Fund and Sweeps Week. PE is a LOT less dangerous when they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel money-wise, and being able to deny them their most powerful burst econ while doing something that you already want to be doing is fantastic.
Again, I think folks are missing the point a bit. Snagging a Hedge Fund off R&D isn’t much better than if the Corp just never draws it. Some incidental econ denial may result from Kim’s ability, but that’s not what it’s really targeting. Your main advantage is that you can remove combo pieces which sit in HQ waiting for their counterpart, and most Corp decks have those. Astrobiotics and other FA decks have Biotic or Trick of Light, Caimbridge has Neurals and Mushin No Shin. Oversight AI in Blue Sun. Flatline decks have their Scorches. Even RP likes to hold their Celebrity Gifts as they develop an appropriate hand. Those pieces are the ones that are vulnerable, because they can’t be immediately deployed and are important to the deck’s game plan, and they are virtually ubiquitous. Anything else you can disrupt is just gravy.
Strangely, I think that unlike Imp, Kim might threaten R&D more than HQ.
A large majority of operations in corp decks are economy operations. Most corps can quickly play economy operations when they need to, getting them out of hand and making them invulnerable to Kim. They can play in such a way that they’re prepared to play operations the turn they draw them, especially against Kim. However, there isn’t a lot they can do about R&D. Kim’s ability to trash R&D and get another access right afterwards or just deny the corp from ever drawing economy operations might be his general strong suit, rather than attacking HQ, (which would still be pretty good against flatline or combo decks).
Oh, absolutely. I wasn’t saying that trashing econ opps is the reason to run in RnD, it’s just an added bonus if you are able to, and a bonus not provided to other runners. If you use your opp-trash ability for the turn to trash something like a Mushin or Scorch or the like in HQ, that’s almost always going to be a better target for it. But the added perk of screwing econ as well is always a nice thing.
If we look at the current meta you can expect the corp to run between 18% and 29% operations in their deck (between 9 and 14 operations, stats taken from worlds t-16 removing the deck with least and most operations). When you run R&D you can expect those odds of accessing a operation. Trashing a card less than every third R&D access is not a very good ability in itself, especially if it becomes less than every fifth access.
Since you generally need about 17 R&D accesses to win that means that you in the best of cases can expect to trash 5 operations this way (with the corp running at least 14 operations, this is reasonable expectations for a game against Blue Sun). Against corporations that don’t use that many operations your expectation is about 3 operations (this should be expected from NEH & RP). That’s probably not enough to disrupt the entire corp strategy even if it depends on those operations.
For me the value gained from Edward Kim by R&D accesses is not nearly enough to give up the ability of other Anarch runners, so you need to find value elsewhere and the only place for that is HQ runs. Any corp facing Edward Kim should do what it can to limit their operations in hand by playing them as fast as possible which means you have 3-6 targets in the entire deck of your opponent to find, those odds are not great.
Meeedium though. With any number of counters, really. Sure, single accesses won’t do much, but you increase the odds of an extra run in any given turn seeing new cards because the only cards you can’t interact with (without Imp in play) are Ice… which he can be destroying anyway with all those lovely new events + all the old tricks.
Kim with Medium & Imp really does seem like the simplest way of going about things, to me. He makes that old play significantly better, even more than Whizzard does.
So hit R&D to kill ops econ and the occasional other operation you don’t like. Hit HQ to kill combo pieces they’ll want later. Use Imp to mop up those you can’t get normally/easily and kill ice before it hits the table, then focus on murderizing what Ice actually hits the table.
Seems rather eminently doable, to me. I might tinker around with a list some later.
You just said it yourself - the ability means Ed is already disrupting them by making them play their operations as fast as possible. In other words, he’s gaining value even without getting accesses. It’s the same kind of Anarch-typical disruption Reina gets from making ICE more expensive (“hey, it’s only 4-6 credits per game, right?”) and Quetzal gets from making singular small Barriers ineffective (“she still needs to play a Fracter!”).
One of my top fears as corp? That a runner will drop an Imp out of nowhere and go to town on my hand. Ed, he has that almost built-in. Besides, “playing Ops as fast as possible” might be a tall order in the first place: econ Ops might be largely unaffected (unless you, say, wanted to hold a Sweeps for post-Vamp recovery), but good luck “playing your Biotic as fast as possible”
Medium doesn’t change how many cards you will be able to trash with Kim’s ability and gives it some minor chance to actually whiff since he can only trash one operation each turn. Also if you are getting repeated accessess with a Medium you are likely winning anyway, Edward Kim or not.
The opportunity cost for rushing non-combo/fa operations is not that high, most decks should be able to get good value the turn they draw them (or be in a boardstate where losing them is not that important). In general a corp that doesn’t eco if available is either scoring or threatening a score. If we are talking utility cards then we are back to the meta requirement everyone here seems to be against.
Before O&C was spoiled, I built a very similar one, but with Dyson Mem Chips to improve link and hopefully avoid brain damage more easily from Spinal Modem’s negative effect. The spoiled memstrip is fantastic though, doubling up on the efficiency of overmind and (most of) djinn’s ability.
I’m not talking four accesses in a turn, but two isn’t uncommon if you’ve built up some cash. I also don’t think you’re getting the benefit there, while you can only trash the first per turn you both increase the chances of hitting any (making whiffs less likely) and you get to see more cards if you make the hit first thing.
I’m not planning on trying for Progenitor decks at all, nope.
I disagree more strongly about the opportunity cost of rushing FA ops. Sure, as NEH I might be able to do something with my Biotic Labor or Fast Track. But if I’m not scoring that turn that something is probably a waste of time or otherwise a bad play. And kill ops have requirements that need to be met, which means they can often sit and wait a while as well.
The point with the meta argument is that the corps that need ops to function well (combo, FA, flatline) are pretty damn common at the moment, and even if you just hit econ that’s still a benefit because it removes cards which, again, is pretty useful for R&D locking opponents.
I just hate dyson, the ROI on 3 for 1MU and a barely relevant link has been meh to me. Though, I think tracers are becoming more viable, as the zodiac ice start to see play (they have great cost to str ratios, and people don’t understand how tracing works), so maybe I could see re-evaluating, but with memstrips, why bother!
As for his ability, the key is both deeper digs on R&D and being able to make the attacks at the hand shrinking the number of cards between you and agendas, AND trashing shit the corp WANTS to hold onto. Forcing the opponent to do something that they wouldn’t normally do is a secondary effect of an ability, and is still an effect none-the-less.
To say “no different than if the corp didn’t draw it at all” is, IMO, a bad way to assess the ability. This was a good evaluation in magic where you get 1 maybe 2 cards per turn, but in ANR, we can spend clicks to draw, and draw is a much more complex animal. Hitting the limited number of econ cards in the corp’s deck will have an impact on how their economy flows, and I can tell you that Kim’s ability would drive a stake even deeper into BWBI’s heart if it weren’t already spurned by BS.
An Edward Kim Supplier deck has been a pipe dream of mine, ever since I saw that 1 link. It suddenly makes the ROI suck a whole lot less. Add in some more drip economy, and we have a stew going.
I just made a few tweaks to my deck to allow for some of the new cards. This is a first pass through them:
You will be able to dump incubater / viral breeding group viruses on EITHER nerve agent or Medium. You don’t have to commit to which is better. Kinda fits with anarch attacking the weak link.
I was thinking about Scavenge, and how it would be nice to have more of them to potentially reset Overmind once I had more MU available… but no influence remaining in my current build,
Then it came to me… another INFLUENCE FREE card coming out in Order and Chaos that handles this exact situation, for just one extra click.
Uninstall.
Have you considered it in your build? I’m sure there are lots of nice things you could import for 6 influence.
I’m just cutting out Hostage and Scavenge and going 3x Supplier in mine. (with 2 inf to spare all the sudden, yess!)
Has anybody been trying / thinking about a Edward Kim Siphon-recursion deck? It seems like credit denial might be a good strategy since it would cause economy operations to accumulate in HQ.
My mind automatically goes to Rincewind/Mariachi style whizzard, as Ed Kim. You increase the value of 1 of accesses by being Kim, and that deck likes to run anyway. I feel like in siphon you’re more often just keeping the corp poor, flooding hq, and milling cards…none of this is better because of the ID.
I think the Opus/Vamp denial combo is better than Siphon recursion, because Corps have too much money for Siphon to really slow them down these days. You focus on R&D to kill things coming up the deck and hit HQ with Vamp to make them poor. No idea how it’ll work in practice. Seems like it sucks if you don’t hit Opus in your opener since you lack Shaper tutor tricks.
