Post-Worlds and a weak performance by ETF overall, does Foodcoats need major rethinking or is it a competitive contender still?
I am sorry, but after the worlds stream where Lukas said “Oh look, a Foodcoats” meaning a GFI and us cheering so hard, the GFI will from now on always be my “foodcoats”. That’s how memes are made.
It got a lot of hype going into worlds and certainly it has had quite a bit of support over the year, most recently with Fairchild 3.0 but its showing at worlds confines it to Tier 1.5 (whatever that means) in the near term
I would argue that HB (biotic labour, never advance game) is the only faction other than NBN that has outs in the late game these days with Caprice so aggressively targeted by hate, but its still not enough to compete with runners/nbn.
Could you expand on your thinking about that? I’m a fairly new player, so the reasons why that is the case are not obvious to me.
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Most runners have an oppressive late game that you cannot keep them out no matter how taxing your ICE is. NBN has the best means of closing out game (EoI, Psycho, Fast Advance) which the other factions lack. Foodcoats can close out to some extent using a combination of never advance (bait the runner into taxing runs to open scoring windows) or via biotics. Foodcoats generally is a bit too slow though and the necessity to have to defend all servers these days to combat temujin slows them down further. Weyland has no late game at all and is about rushing to victory or forcing the runner to overextend. Jinteki have nothing at the moment except shell games. The worlds results reflect this.
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The key thing that’s changed this is the printing of Rumour Mill, which pretty much hoses most of the defensive upgrades that Glacier decks played to close out games. With an Anarch heavy field, cards like Caprice almost become liabilities.
I have seen Glacier decks switching to cardslike Pri-Sec and packing a kill threat, but that doesn’t seem to be quite there at the moment as good players will play around it.
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I believe ETF was the single most common ID at worlds, but it failed to advance to the top 16. If we look at the runners that did advance, they had strong anti-glacier tech, either using Faust and ICE destruction to be able to make runs cheaply all game, or the Temu Whizz builds with uber-efficient breakers.
Pretty much all of them had Rumor Mill, which is probably the ultimate anti-glacier tech.
I think the field of runners was very well suited to beating glacier decks, particularly Foodcoats; a lot of the tech cards top runners were packing didn’t make a lot of sense for facing off against NBN (e.g. Networking is probably better than e-strike against the NBN field in the top16).
Foodcoats is still relevant, but in very large tournaments, so much so that runners will continue to tech against them. Clot-lock shapers are, in my experience (feel free to disagree), harder for NBN to beat than anarchs. However, anarchs are much better against Foodcoats than those same shapers.
NBN is stronger than Foodcoats right now. The gap isn’t necessarily insurmountable, or even very large, but at large tournaments with many rounds, that any gap will favor the decks that are strongest against the field that came out. Runners are very used to Foodcoats and tech against it almost as instinct. To a certain degree, a strong deck under performing because opponents were well prepared for it is a facet of this game.
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In the lead up to worlds the thoughts were that CTM was the strongest deck/ID and there would be so much hate for it that ETF would sneak in and do well. I think a lot of folk rused themselves with ETF.
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In the current meta I see little benefit to playing HB Glacier, when I can instead play HB fast advance (same agendas, but 3 biotics and a sansan to push agendas out). You still retain the decent economy and can play all the good ice that Foodcoats can, but you’re far less likely to get hosed by blackmail and other remote lock games.
I do hope the pure glacier will rejoin tier 1 at some point though. I found it one of the more satisfying decks to play at it’s peak.
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I know this s a super noob question. I looked at the Worlds decks that I could find on NRDB. A few did not run Rumor Mill and none ran more than one.
Does a single copy of this one card really make this archetype so fragile?
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How many copies of a card you need will also depend on:
- How often you need it.
- When you need it
- How likely you are to draw it
So if we assume the following:
- You only really need Rumor Mill to score the game-winning agenda (or when you do use it, you will trash enough defensive upgrades that they are unlikely to be an issue again)
- You will have drawn most/all of your deck by then (against glacier this is fairly easy, and if Obelus + Hades Shard is in use, then you can draw your entire deck by mid-game if you want to)
If those assumptions are correct, then 1 copy is probably fine. This contrasts with employee strike, which runners probably want to see earlier in a game to turn off IG or CtM ID abilities early in the game to keep the board state in check. Now, I didn’t actually look this up, so I may well be wrong.
Finally, there is the meta-consideration. Before Rumor Mill, many corps relied heavily on Caprice and Ash. Palana Glacier used to be a pretty strong build largely because of 3x Caprice. However, with Rumor Mill making those upgrades blank, they are hard to justify as many deck slots for, since when you really need them to work, they can be shutdown. Thus, many corps are running fewer defensive upgrades, and those that are using them, are dedicating fewer slots to them.
Those are my thoughts on the matter. Someone else may have a different take on it. But I think most players will agree that the very existence of Rumor Mill makes the glacier archetype much weaker than it was.
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Yeah. The Glacier-y ETF only have one Caprice and a few Ash, and that is normally their entire mid to late game scoring plan. You turn those cards off for a score or two and they are more than a little screwed.
As far as why only one, there are two reasons: You only need it to lock out the last score for the win, and recursion of Events is easy as Runner. A Deja Vu or SOT will get it from the Heap, and then you just run in for the juicy points.
EDIT: Ninja’d.
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It’s also the case that a lot of people stopped playing glacier decks competitively because of the existence of Rumor Mill. Therefore, it’s likely that players at Worlds didn’t expect to see it very much, and probably assumed that only one was needed since they were unlikely to run into many decks where it was absolutely necessary.
In Hate Bear we only threw in the Rumor Mill the night before just in case someone decided to bring Palana. In all our testing, we never used it and never felt it was really needed, but against Palana it helps out in landing siphons once they wise up and Caprice HQ. It was never really a consideration vs HB. Ash doesn’t usually end up doing much if you can’t get money.
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I think it’s also worth considering that Smoke is going to be a popular runner, perhaps the most common Shaper during store champs season, and stealth is really good against glacier. HB’s ICE is still fairly taxing because of all the multiple subroutines, but I still do not like their chances. The fact that Smoke will also pack Clot makes HB’s Biotic out substantially worse, though maybe not impossible since CVS is already a card you want in your deck.
Basically every dominant runner has a way of invalidating ICE now, whether it’s through destruction, stealth/recurring credits, Yog+NRE+Ice Carver, or playing a non-interactive game (Dyper, DLR).
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I’ve been playing 1x Foxfire in my HB fast advance list and legit think it’s pretty good as a tech slot at the moment. More anarchs are turning to Yog+NRE+Ice Carver to deal with Fairchild 3.0, and the Ice Carver is a great target. Net Mercur and Turning Wheel are the other important targets, with Hades Shard, DDOS and Adam Directives being fun lesser targets. At trace 7, you usually get what you want.
Best Defence could also be a fair slot to remove the NRE, and act as tag punishment for Tagme Crims and anarchs. But I’m liking the Foxfire atm.
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Yeah, Foxfire is legit.
Also most of my testing had Foodcoats beating Stealth Kate / Smoke. You build up too fast when they can’t interfere with your early remote, and eventually finding foxfire means they can never go huge.
Temujin Whizz (with rumor mill) is still Foodcoat’s worst matchup.
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Does architects of tomorrow help against temujin enough to make it a viable alternative to etf?
At least you net econ off of Adonis trashes with architects, I just cannot seem to find the right ice spread.
This nails it down for me. Don’t play Glacier these days. Rumor Mill and Stealth in Smoke or even AndySwitchblade ruins your day.