I dont know, since the discard is random, I dont think any crop is ever gonna see this card and be overly happy about it.
No of course not. But in a thread about the card its downsides are worth mentioning.
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I had a greatly entertaining game as Reina vs. that IG kill build. I was extraordinarily poor, hadnāt found any of my Katiās and was trying to trash his Jacksons and Capital Investors. He was running a more Timmy build that had Encryption Protocol and I had the current up most of the game. Granted, he lost a lot of ICE he needed to actually score, and I did win, but he was rezzing the Protocols to raise the trash cost by 2 just as I clicked up to the right credit amount. Pretty funny stuff. Good things they werenāt Hokusais!
Is Hacktivist supposed to be something you play instead of Scrubber/Imp? I havenāt tried that yetā¦
In your example it is a Leela counter play. I donāt see Hacktivist really being run much outside of Anarch, and definitely not in builds that use Legwork. Wanton has much better synergy with it.
Seems a gamut more than a for sure downside most of the time.
I get the purpose of it in Leela for him, if you can run and force a rez of some number of upgrades in the 4 click window you get when the corp goes to score, you can use that as a 4th click window to score something from discard as a hail mary to bounce the remote score. Also, it just sucks in general (having only played against itā¦like 7 times now), so that must mean its good. Itās rare that Iām staring at a runner current going āman fuck that thingā
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An early Hacktivist to an asset-based corp feels oppressive in the same way an early Housekeeping feels to a runner that needs to get shit installed to make runs. Or an ELP in RP when theyāre already a bit ahead. You just feel bad about life.
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At least with Housekeeping the runner gets to choose what to discardā¦
Is the number of cards accessed (i.e., 2 rather than 3) not ālocked inā the same way it is when you hit a CVS in the middle of a medium dig but still get to keep going? Question for lukas I guess.
Anyway, the corp here could just rez caprice and jackson before legwork connects in the first place to ditch the utopia fragment and have an empty HQ and their ABT still on board.
Iām not sure how itās relevant with the interaction heās talking about. Leela would access 3 cards either way, right? Itās just that the agenda stealing mid-legwork triggers the bounce which alters HQās contents, which makes the corp want to shuffle the hand between access (not shuffling in already accessed cards, of course).
HQ only has 2 cards in this example, pre-bounce.
But legwork says access 3. Or are you suggesting that you canāt attempt to access more cards than are available to be accessed? I figure youād just be attempting at access three and then have it stop mid way if you run out of cards.
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Hacktivist punishes the same decks that Scrubber does, but they work very differently: Hacktivist is geared toward generating a tempo advantage and keeping up pressure before the corp has stabilized, whereas Scrubber is trying to gain a long-term economic advantage. Whenever either/both cards are playable, theyāre going to work best in different styles of deck.
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As Iāve played more with Hactivist, Iāve seen a few corps say āfuck it, Iām gonna rez this asset anyway,ā and if it doesnāt end up hitting any agendas after a bit, it REALLY sucks to trash all that asset econ without a scrubber.
I feel like this should be your expected outcome with Hacktivist, honestly. If someoneās deck is leaning on assets and upgrades to generate money and scoring windows, theyāre not going to let a random discard or three stop them from rezzing their shit, as the alternative is pretty bad for their chances of winning. What Hacktivist is doing is constraining the Corpās play: they have to either slow down their gameplan so that their discards are timed to have a low chance of hitting important cards, or they have to redraw to find copies of important cards that they lose (or Jacksons to save agendas). Although these effects are potentially valuable, they donāt really remove the need to trash Adonis Campaign and DBS (although they may reduce it). Basically, running Hacktivist doesnāt remove that inherent cost of playing against an asset deckāits role is fundamentally different and you need to keep that in mind while deckbuilding.
This happened in a Kim game vs Blue Sun at our store tournament over the weekend, and I trashed Takeover out of HQ and then checked archives to win 
Pretty much the only time it really doesnāt matter to rez is when you are rezzing a Jackson, and even then if flooded the Corp is trading more overall to get that Jackson reset. Each ice trashed is one less to Parasite later.
awesome! hactivist did a TON of work at the same tournament. i either knocked out agendas in the first 1-2 asset rezzes, discouraged corps from rezzing assets immediately, or discouraged corps from rezzing anymore assets after the first 1-2 agenda discards.
despite that, iām leaning toward going back to scrubbers, cuz getting rid of asset econ once theyāre rezzed when hactivist is cleared is dreadful. not sure what i can cut to still keep hactivists. 