I think that this will be a major development, particularly for anarch siphon decks. Since parasite is on MWL, DDoS + En Passant can give you flexible and cheap (though somewhat click-intensive) ice destruction without spending any influence.
Anarch will have 3 non-mutually-exclusive avenues for ice destruction with DDoS + En Passant, Parasite + Datasucker, and cutlery, so you can feasibly go all-in on ice destruction and run a very light breaker rig (like, a couple of the conspiracy breakers in the bin to be installed/used as a last resort).
As an unrepentant Run Amok fanboy, I just want to say this: I have never used Run Amok as a means of trashing ICE. I use Run Amok like a Blackmail. Typically I use Run Amok to access the remote in games where I primarily pressure central servers.
But to be clear, Run Amok is not about trashing ICE, it is about getting into servers without having to break or encounter ICE. As such, I donât really see En Passant as combo card for Run Amok, but more a combo card for criminal decks that use a lot of derez/expose effects (Crescentus).
Criminals struggle more to deal with certain ICE, and can benefit from either an expensive rez or trashing a key piece of ICE that they donât want to deal with. Please note that En Passant trashes an unrezzed piece of ICE, not a piece of ICE that the corp did not rez, if the runner encounters a Tollbooth, breaks it and derezzes with Crescentus, then they can trash the Tollbooth with En Passant.
In summary, Anarchs have lots of means of trashing ICE, many of which lean more towards their faction strengths than En Passant. Anarchs do not have great ways to prevent corp rezzes other than Run Amok, but they have lots of ways to trash ICE. Criminals have few means of trashing ICE, but lots of ways to make corps too poor to be able to rez ICE, or ways to actively derez ICE that can combo with En Passant.
The weakness of en passant is that the ice is unrezzed - the obvious bit is that you have to derez it or prevent a Rez, but more significantly it means that the economic impact is minimized. Trashing a rezzed booth takes away 8 corp credits (and a great card). Trashing an unrezzed one only takes away the card.
Then again, if the problem the Corp is currently having is how to get ice rezzed over HQ to prevent Siphon lock, it feels like it might still be a pretty strong cardâŚ
you donât really have to force situations to use it. just keep it in hand for when they decide to not rez. it should come up often enough and at 0 cost it doesnât matter what you trash, youâre still coming out ahead. I donât see many games where corps are rezzing everything no matter what.
I pretty much agree here. Hoping this card makes its way into siphon spam decks, as those are so near and dear to my heart. But they are much more fragile in a post Ark world.
Yes, this is another reason why en passant is a much weaker ICE-trashing options than what Anarchs aleady have access to (and use frequently). I see it as (potentially) useful in criminals as a means of eliminating a potentially troubling piece of ICE permanently, but frankly Femme is probably a similar total cost for a lot less influence.
I feel that the best use case situation for en passant is as an additional pressure tool for aggressive early running in a reg-ass deck.
There are plenty of times against mid-range and control decks that installed ice are not rezzed to stop low chance, or probing runs, single access runs on HQ or RnD most notably. This is a way to punish corps for behaving how they should and setting up bad/worse choices. This all from a card that doesnât have to be shown to threaten, and opportunities for use occur in the course of natural play for a traditional anarch deck. That said the card is worse against rush decks, but a card for card, click for click trade against a non rush deck is a win for the runner.
But En Passant A) doesnât take memory, B) doesnât take money per run, and C) can be used to remove multiple ICE via Same Old Thing. (Which most Crims run anyway because Account Siphon.)
The Influence hit is the biggest problem for it out of Crim. As stated, Anarchs have better Ice Destruction available alreadyâŚ
I think we are probably on the same page. En Passant offers some interesting possibilities for criminals to leverage derez effects into potential program-trashing effects, but the greater concern is the 2-influence cost.
If EP were 1 influence, I would be much more excited about it.
Also, if Gauntlet offered any synergy with the birds/derez effects I would also be more excited about EP as a potential combo card.
In other words, itâs sometimes really difficult to actually keep the Corp down at a lower number of credits than it takes to rez the ICE. (Iâm playing FAO in my BIRDS! deck at the moment.)
Donât you have to run through the unrezzed Vanilla first? How do you get it back to its derezzed state? You could use a derez effect but that seems⌠weak.
A lot of times when I inside job a server with one ice the corp wonât rez. Why show what it is if it isnât going to fire or cost anything to break?