Feeling Blue About Blue Decks

^This

Multi-exposing single cards with multiple GPI could make Zamba good(ish). But…I ain’t doin’ it. It’s just a ton of slots to build up an expensive econo rig without teeth.

Reg 419 may be a good rebirth ID. Strong for early game advantage and long run against trap decks and spam. But birthing into Steve or Ian for late game boost.

Moreover, I don’t think a critical mass of expose effects is good for the game. Hidden information is a key aspect of the design, can’t make it too easy or profitable to take it away. I’ll allow that it’s possible that we’ll continue to see expose cards that don’t do much else, which carry a high opportunity cost of playing them over actual business, so even if there were tons of Infiltration-level expose cards, it’s not a problem because only a fool would play them all. Fingers crossed we don’t get like, Temujin but you get to expose a card on successful run as well.

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You know, as soon as I hit enter, I thought “that sounds pretty dumb” but then I thought nobody would read it…

I guess I was wrong!

Maybe there is some room for a criminal deck that exposes everything to create some niche identity, but I agree with @Brandon_Gannicott that such a deck where all/most hidden information becomes revealed would be kinda dumb, whether or not the runner was getting money for doing it.

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In order for Zamba to be good, you need to be exposing multiple things per turn, or it’s worse than similar options like Underworld Contacts or Data Folding which drip in a credit. I feel like persistent expose is harder than getting link or having free MU. There’s a GPI Net Tap deck that stacks them and gets a bunch of Zamba triggers each turn, it plays similar to the old Au Revoir decks, that’s the only place I see the console getting value.

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There are a lot of possibilities for responsible expose effects. Cards like Silhouette and Deuces Wild are independently worth using, get a little better with Zamba, and don’t reveal everything to the runner. They could also release cards that have a useful primary effect, and a less useful expose as a secondary effect…for example, something that forces the corp to choose and expose a card. Speaking of which, 419 is a good example of a card that gives the corp a lot of control over whether and which cards get exposed. The corp could also get effects that reward it for exposing its own cards, or impose doing so as a cost, like a Celebrity Gift for installs.

And so on. I’ll believe that this is a viable archetype when I see it, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea.

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Watch out for psychic field!

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Psychic Field would be a general problem for our new expose meta overlords, but fortunately it only triggers when the runner exposes it, so it can be designed around.

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I think the other problem is that if expose gets too prevalent, it just encourages players to pick corps that care less about hidden information and many of these decks are considered NPE. For example, Gagarin Asset Spam or PU grinder.

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Yeah…but I think between 419 and the Anarch ID that trashes based on rez cost, spam will have a hard time.

The Anarch ID I could see being a problem, but 419? I’ll just show him all my assets, I was going to show him those anyways. In the case of Freedom, maybe Gagarin just starts playing a few CVS.

Sure. I’m just saying that building a spam deck for both expose and anarch trashing may not be tenable. (That is IF the premise occurs—expose actually becomes good.)

I think that any negative impact of a more prominent expose mechanic on the core design principle of “hidden information” has been overstated.

Most Netrunner players can read the game well enough that a double-advanced card in a remote is either 1) an agenda, or 2) not an agenda. The likelihood of case 2 is much, much lower in most match-ups (as low as 0%), and possibly as high as 50% against PE or other trap-laden Jinteki builds. Even in the 50/50 PE matchup, there is information which can be used to deduce the likelihood of a trap: Is the corp on game point? Have you seen their restricted card? Is there a Data Loop? Is there anything else in the server? How much money does the corp have? Have you poked around in HQ recently? Are there Neurals in there? How many copies of Junebug have you seen?

Netrunner is not a plane of infinite outcomes.

A more prominent expose mechanic, based in the criminal faction, does do three things which may have an impact on social and competitive play:

  1. Allow newer or infrequent players a feeling of satisfaction by giving them a method of defusing the sad trumpet game endings which advanceable traps can create.
  2. Limit the abjectly lame bullshittery of some cup-and-ball game Jinteki decks and stupid Mushin No Shin decks. Some people like these, but it’s only natural that each animal in the Netrunner ecosystem has its own predator, and expose can function in this role. Why wouldn’t criminals be sneaky enough to smell a trap? Criminals, in a historical context, are the ones who invented the fucking things. :sunglasses:
  3. Give the faction with poor recursion, poor breakers, limited card draw and—what am I forgetting?—an opportunity to more efficiently manage which ice they facecheck and which they don’t. This is overall a totally fine design goal, in my opinion, even if I don’t think it will represent an overall improvement in the general playability of the criminal faction. When it comes to ice, I have to say it again: Netrunner is not a plane of infinite outcomes. There are two types of ice: 1) ice that can’t hurt you, and 2) ice that can hurt you. We all have mental strategies for evaluating the likelihood of case 1 versus case 2.

TLDR: is expose “bad for the game”? No. Is it kind of unnecessary? Yes. Is it a boost to criminals? Not really. Is the prominence of expose mechanics likely to result in some dumb infinite money deck? Unfortunately yes.

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A well-thought counterargument! Thank you for taking the time to lay out your thoughts. You’re probably right :slight_smile:

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Yeah now that all three ice types can hurt you, there’s an even greater difference between Special Order and Self-Modifying Code

I guess even in core if your plan was run, special order, install breaker, run again, you could be foiled by Enigma. But you had Forged Activation Orders, Infiltration, and of course Inside Job, while shapers had nothing except Tinkering back then.

Wari?! Fuck off. What’s the point of going on?

GPI Net Tap is a thing I guess?

It sucks that you have to pay a two card tax for something that Shaper get in one card-slot. But it is arguably “more fair”.

Plus, you know expose effects? Maybe that is entirely Criminals new jammy jam.

Ok. Breathe. Wipe grin off face. Get serious.

I think Diversion of Funds and Pad Tap from the spoiled Kampala Ascendent datapack are good. The question is: Are they good enough to revive crim? I’ll leave Pad Tap for another time and focus on Diversion.

Diversion is the “more fair” Siphon. It has the same mechanic, but different numbers.

Account Siphon Diversion of Funds
event cost 0cr 1cr
clicks single double
Succ. Run Effect
(Corp)
Lose up to 5cr Lose up to 5cr
Succ. Run Effect
(Runner)
Gain 2cr for each
cr lost
Gain 1cr for each
cr lost
tags taken 2 0

This is good y’all. In fact it might be almost as good as Siphon was in decks that didn’t have tag support. Let’s compare it to the Siphon-ditch-two-tags play when Corp is above 5cr.

Siphon: Corp loses 5cr, Runner loses 3 clicks, Runner gains 6cr.
Diversion: Corp loses 5cr, Runner loses 2 clicks, Runner gains 4 cr.

Of course you may need to factor in the probability of it not landing, in which case Diversion gets a probability-adjusted 0.5 credit loss. Valuing a click at 1.5 credits, Siphon wins by a mere 1 credit.

Diversion gets relatively better when the Corp is under 5cr because it loses 1cr while Siphon loses 2cr. So even when the corp goes down to 1cr by rezzing ICE during the run, there are more situations you may still want to trigger the effect than abandon it for accesses.

Finally, Siphon had the added benefit that its tag costs could be mitigated by tag avoidance/removal cards. Siphon had another benefit of giving the runner the option to go tag-me as a situational economy boost or as part of all out tag-me deck builds. As far as I can tell, the only significant distinction that makes Diversion “more fair” is its lack of tag options and interactions. Plus it’s 5 influence instead of 4! (So bug off Anarchs!!)

So, yeah…Diversion of Funds is what I hoped it would be!

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Diversion is pretty good. Not taking tags makes it less cool thematically, and this card won’t really work in anarch, which is a bummer for me (siphon anarch is my second favorite deck after Crim). I hope they print a new anarch card that’s somewhere between vamp and siphon.

i’ve been playing a similar deck. it’s fun.

i highly suggest Deuces Wild and Drive-By

my breaker suite is basically 3x Aumakua, 3x Spear Phishing, and 3x Inside Job
GPI Net Tap, Dean Lister, and the above cards help after the corp purges.

it’s fun. nowhere near t1, and things like IP Block and Turing give it problems, but it’s actually more resilient than it looks. you can easily get a decent amount of str on turtle after a purge before encountering any ice, even if every server is iced up.

Diversion Of Funds is more fair because it is a double. With Siphon you could Siphon, Deja, Siphon and run last click to make sure they are down at least 10 credits. Even though Deja is not around anymore, it is still more of a tempo hit. You can’t play two in the same turn and then run to siege the remote.

On the other hand, if you don’t want tags, you are only losing 2 clicks rather than 3 clicks that you would need to spend with Siphon. So less click intensive that way.

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