The bootcamp BS does a lot better vs Nasir. If you can just rez all of your important bigger ICE on your turn he’s a lot worse off, and at that point you can bounce ice walls around to create relatively safe scoring windows at your leisure, as they need some way of bursting up a whole lot, like Stimhack or Kati or infi Ghost Runners, and even at that point NAPD or ash is usually enough to fuck them.
perfect, the corp spends 1/3 of all their clicks every turn, credits (if there’s more than one ICE, which there must be if they want to keep you out with this little trick), and they get to keep me out of one server - assuming I don’t have a stimhack, magnum opus, or ghost runner.
I hear this “control over your credit pool” thing a lot, and I just never feel that way with nasir. I don’t keep a deep credit pool, and when I do money up for runs I’ve always got expensive toys to dump that money into if they want to play games with ICE walls- 99% of the time I not only do not lose money when they “control my credit pool” but I gain one, from them rezzing the ICE wall. two if I’ve got Order of Sol.
This is very true. Nasir hates corps who rez ICE ahead of time, and there are a few blue sun builds out there that do this (not counting OAI, ofc). It certainly makes it a tough matchup but spending resources to trash those EBCs the bringing in the crescentus for the tough guys usually gives a fighting chance.
This is too true. he’s too weird to ever be “the best.” That said, he’s a powerhouse if you know how to play him. I wonder if one or two more strong nasir-specific combos come out (a la order of sol or ghost runner) if he could be bumped up to being truly competetive…
“they get to keep me out of one server - assuming I don’t have a stimhack, magnum opus, or ghost runner.”
Congrats - you just took a brain dmg for no purpose, or wasted clicks on magnum opus. You run. He rezes ice wall. Use your credits where you can. Go to 1. The already rezzed piece of ice behind ice wall you then have no answer to.
Look, I like Naisir. Its a lot of fun - and its strongest advantage is probably that most corps are not geared for it and will play poorly against it. But this is not true at a tourney.
All my blue sun decks sport boot camp; almost all of the sport ice wall. Not only does Naisir have problems with low cost ice, he also has problems with asset trashing, and links. And surprise rezzes may well provide a scorch window.
It seems like Social Engineering was supposed to help Nasir (or potentially letting everyone be Nasir?), but with the timing as it is, Social Engineering credits just get lost to Nasir.
If they could have printed Social Engineering thusly,
“Choose an unrezzed piece of ice. If the Corp rezzes that piece of ice this turn, upon encounter gain credits equal to its rez cost”, then that would be at least one way to help Nasir bob and weave. Errata??? Please.
edit: ah actually on second thought, all that would do is make Social Engineering as good for Nasir as for anyone else, which … is not very good. Maybe if they changed it to “gain 8-x credits, where x is the rez cost of the ICE”.
Post clot. What you guys thinking?
I’m in the -1 stimhack -1 crescentus, +1 scavenge, +1 clot space.
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I think this is a reasonable way to go - clot can even be a decent scav target if the corp plays around it instead of clearing it.
Personally, I’ve been testing -1 crescentus -1 Utopia shard +1 clot +1 escher! I know if i’ll stick with this, but it’s been fun so far! losing utopia is rough, but I think stimhack is too too good for Nasir to go down to 1 copy. Escher helps to put the pressure back on HQ, and a timely mid-to-late game escher can completely wreck a corps board-state.
My early testing shows clot is ridiculous for nasir - FA can be a serious problem for him both early and late (as he has a tough time threatening HQ) but he’s tops at sneaking into any remote with minimal resources. Don’t be afraid to pop it early against weyland to bag an early HT and slow down the credit train. That said, it’s dead against Jinteki right now (no one’s playing polish tennin anymore) so the best route long-term may be just to stick with the current influence layout.
For a long time I ran Nasir with Cache/Ghost Runner/Spinal Modem to power through unrezzed/rezzed ice servers. Weirder still, I didn’t run Workshop or Order of Sol. I used Crescentus and Ice Analyzer instead, and focused on SMC/Clone chip mid run to get what I needed.
It was a lot faster than Workshop Nasir, and he won me a lot of games, but he had trouble with NEH for obvious reasons.
workshopless Nasir is definitely doable (watched a bunch of vids of a german player doing atman-parasite recursion shenanigans… cool stuff) but it’s rare that I can’t find 3 card slots in a Nasir deck for it. I think one of the #1 mistakes players new to Nasir make is leaning far too much on it, to the point where they’re digging for it while agendas are getting scored - but just because you don’t need it doesn’t means it’s not incredible if you have it!
Ghost runner is an mvp, but I’ve found cache to be too vulnerable and weird (can’t be used for NAPD or psi games unless you know 100% that they’re coming). Spinal modem is definitely interesting, although risky (guaranteed brain damage every time they rez an Ash… say nothing of caduceus etc etc…) If I were going to go the “more recurring credits” route I’d do cyberfeeder I think.
That said, best not to fight so hard against Nasir’s ability imho: lean in and embrace losing all your credits and skating by on whatever silver bullet you tutored! And hey, if you happened to have a femme or a couple of RDI on a workshop, all the better!
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Regarding recurring credits and the drawbacks of spinal modem in Nasir… I’ve thought of (but never tried) putting a 1-of Toolbox. Yeah it’s old school, but there are periods where I have nothing on the workshop. If it were just a couple credits cheaper it might be worth it because it has three things Nasir needs: memory, recurring credits, and link.
Maybe as the meta shifts a bit to slower corps, it will be more viable.
it’s possible. Right now my biggest thing to test isn’t “is it worth it to put clot in” but “what can I do now that clot can combat my main avenue of losing.” I’m definitely eyeing a few of the bigger toys like toolbox and torch. Harder-to-pull-off strategies like escher are also more on the table now that we have a bit more breathing room.
One thing to note about tool box is that it precludes other, possibly better consoles (like astrolabe) and that the link is functionally useless against traces the corp wants to spend any money one, like SEA source, midseasons, ash, etc.
Not if you also play Aesop’s Pawnshop : P
Have you actually played with Toolbox lately? Best card in your deck whenever anything remote glacierish is concerned.
I’ve tried Nasir for the past couple of weeks and while he’s undeniably fun, he’s unreliable. There are just so many things that kick him in the balls, chief among them Ash, Midseason, Government-Punitive, Argus, …
Mine was an Atman-Sucker build with all the usual suspects, Toolbox over Astrolabe (tried both, slight nod to Toolbox imo), and Codebusting and Daily Casts over Opus (amazing). If I hadn’t given up by now, I would probably try out Escher.
-1 crescentus -1 Utopia shard -2 astrolabe +1 clot +1 escher +2 toolbox
Ended up staying up last night and testing a couple different changes, including toolbox. With clot in the picture, it is really really nice as you don’t so much need the speed from astrolabe. Also, I am becoming a hardcore convert to escher - in addition to the regular fuckery that everyone can do with this card, shuffling around rezzed/unrezzed for Nasir’s benefit is really good. I’ve even had really good luck just using it to reverse the order of unrezzed ice on a remote - pop-up into tollbooth is rough for nasir, but tollbooth into popup is pretty easy!
I’m missing hades shard a lot… it almost, almost makes me think about giving up the second stimhack… but stimhack wins so many games.
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I’ve found Nasir’s main and devastating problem, is that he’s so very easy to tag. So very, very easy. Relying on things like Personal Workshop, Kati, or anything where there’s a large investment in resources just seems like asking for a kicking when you run up against anyone running any tagging operations.
If there’s a way to resolve this issue, I think he’d be fantastic.
Honestly, the best way around this is to have your late-game not rely on resources. I’m a big fan of a hybrid of this and the Natman versions, and when most of your econ is from Opus and Toolbox, Midseasons isn’t that scary. (Well, no more than for other runners.) My resource suite is usually 3x PW, 2x OoSol, 3x Ghost Runner, 1x Utopia and sometimes Earthrise. Nothing that will ruin your day once you’re a few turns in to setting up.
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Nailed it. get MO and plascrete on the board, and go crazy. honestly I hope they waste credits and clicks trashing resources after a midseasons. more time to find those scorches and imp em.
The tags are one thing. Being unable to stockpile credits and then run on a server with any unrezzed ice is probably worse. Can’t stimhack, cos the creds get lost, bad pub too. The flip side of this is that the recurring credit stealth nasir builds are just too slow and don’t have solid answers for what you need them to. I love Nasir, but my playgroup all have reliable tricks to keep him too poor to get into the scoring remote.
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If all the ICE is unrezzed, you’re getting in. No questions. A few recurring credits from Toolbox or Cyberfeeders will get you past a lot. Running, hitting a Pop-up Window or whatever trick they pulled may bounce you. THEN you Stimhack.
I’ve played Nasir quite a bit over the past few months, first a version of the No-Sleep Natman build and then since about February an adaptation of CJFM’s ‘Nasir Hates Ice’. Although it seems like the obvious draw back of Nasir, I find that if I’m clever in my play this worst-case ‘unrezzed low cost ice into rezzed hard-to-break ice’ thing very rarely stops me. I just make sure I have an answer to the rezzed ice, like any runner would, as well as one of the many answers a good Nasir build has to losing his creds - Ghost Runner, Toolbox, OoS, Workshop, SMC, Datasuckers (counters save you money), etc. Yeah, that’s one more thing to think about than any other runner, but in a well-built Nasir that stuff gets set up real easy on your spare clicks. After that Nasir has just as much chance of getting in as any other Shaper. And as a plus side, if you can’t get in, you can dump all your credits on SMC-ing or Workshop-ing out a way to get in to a different server.
So yeah, Nasir’s super-versatile and easy to underestimate. Main problem I have with him is he’s incredibly hard to pilot. I’d take him to tournaments if I didn’t feel so mentally exhausted after every game. Maybe that’s just me though - I’ve always had trouble keeping my eye on all the moving parts in Shaper, as much as I love them.