I wasn’t sure where I should post this, I hope you don’t mind if I create a new thread.
Terminal Directive arrived yesterday and we played it from beginning to end in a mega session, it was a lot of fun, I recommend it to every new/beginner/returning player who is thinking about buying it.
In one of the podcasts Mr. Michael Boggs, the new lead designer of A:NR talked about advancable Weyland Ice and that he might expand on the idea. Terminal Directive gave us a couple of nice advancable Weyland Ice so that made me thinking.
In my meta, we are only playing with Core + Terminal Directive + Genesis + Creation & Control + Spin. The only real option to play Weyland is with a combo deck (Scorched Earth + Midseason), I think it would be fun to play it as a Glacier. The Genesis Weyland ID though is horrible. Because we built it, and I was thinking that the draft Weyland ID might be so much better Fringe Applications: Tomorrow, Today.
My questions are:
1. What is your opinion, is the Weyland draft ID to powerful, if we would use it in this old meta?
2. Would it be to powerful in the new meta (up to Red Sand)?
3. Should it be limited somehow? “At the beginning of your turn you may put an advancement token on an ICE with 2 or less advancement tokens already on it.”
I think that pumping up Ice Walls from turn one might be quite powerful.
4. The support cards for this ID were quite bad as well, Salvage, Tyrant, Woodcutter, how would you tweak those cards to make them more usable, like Ice Wall, Hadrian’s Wall, Hortum and Colossus?
I gave some errata to Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It and Salvage in my Hack. You my find those suit.
Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It with my errata reads like this:
Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It [ 45 / 15 ]
$1 recurring.
Use this credit to advance ice.
When your turn begins, you may pay $X to advance a piece of installed ice that can be advanced. X is equal to the number of advancement tokens on that piece of ice.
Things to note:
- If one uses this ID’s ability to advance a piece of advancable ice that has no advancements on it then the advancement is free.
- If one uses this ID’s ability to advance a piece of advancable ice that has one advancement on it then the advancement is effectively free by using the recurring credit.
- If one uses this ID’s ability to advance a piece of advancable ice that has two or more advancements on it then the advancement costs 1 or more credits but not clicks.
- Simone Diego and, if you start using the Lunar cycle, The Root can maintain the free cost of advancing ice using this ID for advancable ice with up to six advancements on them. Bear in mind that it will take a few turns of doing this to get back the cost of installing and rezzing these cards
- Trick of Light and, if you start using the Order and Chaos deluxe expansion, Constellation Protocol, can allow you to postpone the credit cost of advancing ice using this ID. Constellation Protocol can do this indefinitely.
- If you start using the Red Sands cycle, this ID’s ability advances a card which means that Oberth Protocol’s ability will trigger.
I removed the Code Gate subtype from Salvage, as i did to many Tracer Ice.
Things to note:
- Decoders can no longer break Salvage if it doesn’t have the Code Gate subtype. Most notably this means Yog.0.
- Only AIs will be able to break Salvage if it doesn’t have the Code Gate subtype.
- Parasite will still be able to trash Salvage with this errata.
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Your houserule is really quite elegant. I especially like what you did to Salvage. I guess the original concept of the card was the same, but they didn’t release enough AI breakers so they decided to reduce it’s power, to almost nothing sadly.
Hunter is better in every way imho.
Trying to figure out why advanceable ice is so terrible, especially early in the game’s history, is likely to lead to madness 
Even now, with the release of much more powerful advanceable ice like hortum, mausolus, and colossus, it is almost never worth it to actually advance the ice. Perhaps there is some secret design problem with powerful advanceable ice, but it seems to me that the designers just systematically underestimate how huge a cost spending a click and a credit advancing ice really is. It’s a massive tempo hit to make a single server slightly more secure–which you could have done by just getting money and then rezzing a bigger piece of ice to begin with.
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Hmm, honestly, if I was rebuilding BWBI I would change it to a nice simple:
Weyland Consortium: Because We (re)Built It
45 - 15
Each time you place an advancement token on a piece of ice, gain 1 credit.
The biggest problem of advancing ice is time commitment (clicks) but I think this is an important sacrifice to make and I actually like the game mechanic. Consolidating defenses is risky but thematically interesting.
The ID edit here (effectively) removes the credit cost but keeps the click cost of advancing ice.
It also turns less played advancement cards like Shipment from Kaguya into econ.
The only thing I’d worry about becoming completely overwhelming is an early game Anson Rose that the runner can’t trash
As for fixing the Advance while rezzed ice, easy fixes would be just removing the “While rezzed” clause. This makes woodcutter scary but still manageable (in mimic range)
All of this being said, if you are concerned about access to limited IDs because of not wanting to purchase further up why not consider allowing Proxy IDs from further ahead? its not like your ID is being shuffled into your deck so no worries with it sticking out or being noticeable - just print out a copy of Blue Sun or Titan and go to town!
Unfortunately i think that even with this errata Salvage won’t be a strong card because of the 0 strength and also thereby it’s susceptibility to Parasite. In my Hack i was generally avoiding increasing the power level of cards. I would consider perhaps combining both the Salvage errata i suggested and the removal of the “can be advanced only while rezzed” clause that @Industrial_Memetics suggested.
Incidentally, i think it was generally a mistake in the game design not to make Tracer ice without the other main three subtypes ( Barrier, Code Gate, and Sentry ), given their inbuilt alternative to breaking. I would have liked Runners to need to use a variety of AI solutions and or link in a deck. ( Note that most posters here have disagreed with that. )
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What about simply making it a 1 Credit to…
…advance cards (not just ice).
OR
…install/rez and advance ice (pick one of the two for final version).
OR
The first time you advance ice this turn, gain [Click]. (If you’d rather spend the money instead of the time.)
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If @anon91331400 were trying to make advancable ice ‘playable’ then i think your first two suggestions would be counterproductive because the optimum option would likely be to simply use the ID’s recurring credit for something other than advancable ice and ignore it a way of paying for advancing ice.
True. Although I wouldn’t say counterproductive, I would agree that it didn’t boost the playability of advanceable ice (i.e. the first two options neither help nor hurt the playability of advanceable ice). The alternate option is better, but because it may not always be available, it gives you options. You don’t always have agendas to advance/you might not always have ice to install, so you want to make some ice better. I was more focused on making the ID more playable with those suggestions.
An idea to make adv ice more playable, I’d go with a twist on Tennin:
“At the start of your turn, you may place an advancement token on a piece of ice that can be advanced. If you do, you cannot advance ice (cards?) for the remainder of your turn.”
How about, “if you do, you cannot install ice for the remainder of your turn”?
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With @Absotively’s ‘cannot install’ caveat, rather than the ‘cannot advance’ caveat, which i think would discourage advancing ice except when using the ID’s ability, i think this is probably the best route to go down. However, i think it might tend to lead to a style of play in which only 2 or 3 advancable ice are advanced to extremely high strength levels relatively quickly, which i personally think i would not prefer, and which might also make it nigh on impossible for the Runner to get through. This is why i went for something that i think would encourage using a multitude of advancable ice. Still, in my Hack i seriously curtailed Datasucker’s power against high strength ice, so it might not be so much of a problem without that curtailment, and of course it might be preferred in any case.
I agree. My original idea was: “At the beginning of your turn you may put an advancement token on an ICE with 2 or less advancement tokens already on it.” And I still like this version a lot.
I just realised that i made something of a rookie error in my Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It errata above. My errata read ’ … place 1 advancement token … ', when it should have read ’ … advance … ', for reasons that should be apparent. I’ve corrected it in the post above. ( The errata error is in my Hack too. I’ll be correcting it when i get home tonight. )
Even now, with the release of much more powerful advanceable ice like hortum, mausolus, and colossus, it is almost never worth it to actually advance the ice. Perhaps there is some secret design problem with powerful advanceable ice, but it seems to me that the designers just systematically underestimate how huge a cost spending a click and a credit advancing ice really is. It’s a massive tempo hit to make a single server slightly more secure–which you could have done by just getting money and then rezzing a bigger piece of ice to begin with.