how much does Future Perfect change the math on the odds of stealing an agenda from a random access from HQ or RnD in you run all 3 ?
changing the underlying math on the odds to access seems like a very strong thing for the corp to do to me. maybe it will prove to small to make a difference. i hadnt given the card much thought since it was spoiled - 5/3s baaad - but tonight i watch a proxied future perfect defend it self in RnD and HQ and then be installed into a remote with caprice and scored the next turn if it were any other 3 pointer the runner would have been in great shape to win but instead had to make a tough call on trying to dig it out of the caprice remote or make expensive glory runs into the centrals. suffice it to say the corp won quite handily 7-2 scoring two future perfects and clone retirement.
Apparently, there’s two schools of thought on the subject of Jinteki and 5/3s (there’s a bit of this philosophical divide showing in the Power Shutdown Jinteki thread). My perspective as a member of the 5/3s are essential for turning the scoring windows Jinteki creates into actual wins camp is this:
Haven’t done the math yet, but my gut feeling says this will be a great agenda for those Jinteki builds that primarily rely on gear-checking with cheap, small ICE (and potentially seek to do something about the solutions the runner installs). That way, the agenda is still somewhat protected if the runner gets through on a central, and presumably you’ll have enough spare cash to be able to do the Psi game repeatedly without getting bankrupted by it. (Nisei Division is going to kick ass for this sort of build, I feel)
On the other hand, if you’re going the “taxing ICE” route, PriReq’s free rezzes will presumably be better - I’ve had a lot of positive experiences with PriReqed Tsurugis, Tollbooths, Archers and Walls of Thorns saving my behind, essentially prolonging the existing scoring window (that allowed the PriReq to be scored) long enough to get through one more agenda for the win. Sure, I’ve lost some games by getting my PriReqs cherry-picked out of RnD/Hand, but those were often the situations where a successful Psi game would have cost me more than the runner, so he’d just repeat it.
Definitely warrants in-depth testing, I love the fact that Jinteki finally gets its own 5/3.
I think its by far the best 5/3 in the game. The main drawback of 5/3s is that they cause random R&D/HQ accesses to make you lose the game. This one only does that 1/3 of the time.
It’s particularly good accessed from HQ, as if they don’t score it, they have to find it again to even play the psi game.
Now we can have the Future Perfect, Fetal AI, NAPD contract deck with R&D protected by RSVP’s! Maybe a good IAA trap deck with these and encryption protocols so the traps can’t be filtered from R&D either (assuming unbroken RSVP of course).
if you think of netrunner like poker a 5/3 is like the corp betting half their stack vs the runner who is drawing to a hand that beats them roughly 1 in 5 times. by the end of my time playing online poker the tournament game had evolved to the point where the best players were sizing their bets to control the pot size and leveraging their skill on the flop, turn and river to chip up safely instead of creating massive pots where their skill had less to do with the outcome of a particular hand
in netrunner i can use ice/upgrades etc to change the price for the runner to draw at his speculative hand but the only way to change the size of my bet is to change my agenda composition. if im always betting 1/7th to 2/7th of my stack at a time i give myself more of a chance for my skill edge - whether it be deck building and/or play skill- to take over a game and eliminate a percentage of scenarios where i just lose to the runner sniping my 5/3s.
this is not to say you should never play 5/3s. moving all in an important part of the arsenal of any good poker player but right now i think weyland is the only corp that can play big bet poker because they threaten the runner’s entire “stack” with SEA scorch or double punitive. the supermodernism and the GRNDL decks are in poker terms a throwback to early online tournament poker where people played massive pots for their tournament lives and let the chips fall where they may.
now fast track and future perfect could change the viability of the 5/3. if you only have to run 1 and can find it with fast track you can make the big bet when you are holding a great hand ie you’ve smashed the runner’s rig and have a good remote. future perfect may defend itself enough that it also mitigates the risk making it more likely you will be able to score it in the windows you open.
if you notice the type of agendas FFG has feeding us ie market research, NAPD, Future Perfect, Medical breakthrough…its pretty clear to me they are quite conscious of mitigating the “oops the runner wins” factor from random access making the corp game more of a skill game instead of a "pray i draw the agendas and the runner doesnt game which is what i think it has been.
I think 5/3’s are a good 1-2x play in Jinteki, where you have a lot of “all-in” style IAA action as a matter of course. Jinteki desperately needs to get close to or on to match point to be properly competitive :).
i agree in theory but imagine if in poker a six sided dice was rolled before each hand was dealth and if it came up 5 or 6 you were allowed to bet big in that hand. you would over the course of the tournament encounter situations where moving all in or threatening your opponents stack would be the right play but you could only make that play if the die roll pre-deal was 5 or 6.
thats what 3 pointers in netrunner feel like to me. your create or happen upon a moment when moving the runner all in would be favorable but you have no 3 pointer in hand to do it. you have other games where you score a fetal and two braintrusts which makes the runner desperate and you feel sick because you know you have two pri reqs lurking in your RnD waiting to cost you a game another corp would just win by scoring out of hand.
I’m in agreement with @Alexfrog in that it’s the best 5/3.
In addition to all the reasons listed above (which are all good and valid) it also frees up deckspace. Jinteki have a tonne of things going on - they have expensive ICE and (until recently) agendas, ergo they need more economy than the other Corps. They also need more deckspace devoted to tricks and traps. So packing some 5/3s to buy yourself a few extra card slots is no bad thing at all.