cant u say the same about astro train in nbn? imo it’s the same, so your argument about rushing being bad, at least in my eyes, is invalid.
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Well, to Astro train, you have to draw the astros. If you play Titan and score the first Atlas, then on your turn you will use the counter to get the atlas and install it, score it next round, bring a new atlas etc. Behind a “silly” ice like mother goddess or paper wall (that does not break the Mother Goddess power can be really quick and disheartening for the runner, it is not exactly the same like the Astro m8, i hope that you agree on this.
Rushing is different than Fast Advancing. In Rushm, you finish the game quickly, in FA you just score from your hand. You can control the FA more if you can control or check what the corp draws.
so do we agree, that weyland has at least one good deck then? ^^
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Yeah 
But it is a single minded, easy to counter deck (if you expect it)… no fun for me at least.
In addition I think Housekeeping is an good example of a direction Weyland design could go in (though Housekeeping itself is a little cumbersome) - proactive effects that disrupt the runner’s set up to extend the phase of the game where rushing is viable.
Maybe even give them board sweeping effects?
(Example: District Clearance |Operation| The runner shuffles all but 2 of their installed non-cloud, non-virtual cards into their stack.)
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I don’t really understand why the mark keeps getting missed by FFG either. The best example I can think of are the ‘inventor’ ice.
NBN got Gutenberg, Jinteki got Crick, and HB got Turing. These are regularly appearing in decks and are exceptionally good cards on their appropriate server, with some excellent versatility on other servers. They really bumped the power levels of those factions - Turing in particular, but Crick is a nightmare for Criminal, for example. Gutenberg took the longest to shine, but is a really good card in tagging NBN decks at this point.
Weyland got Meru Mati.
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if u want to play fun weyland deck, try to play some rushy argus. it takes a lot of skill to play well imo. it’s a good deck, but took a hit in nbn killing meta, as people slot way too many plascrete/i’ve had worse. u would be suprised tho, how much does it take to win with it and how interactive it is (as a contrary to your previous statement).
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Yeah Rushy Argus is the new Supermodernism, it is very fun to play, very interactive since you make the runner have only wrong decisions to make but still, NBN is better at killing :(. It is a very nice deck, very difficult to pilot and a hell to manage if something goes a little wrong for the crop. I have played a lot of Supermodernism and Argus Rush kill. Still it is as difficult to play and pilot as PE is. Very difficult to pilot and difficult to win against good/prepared opponents.
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Been playing a lot of gagarin lately, and I think weyland’s a lot closer than most people think do being truly good. that said, they’re definitely not (yet).
we could go on all day about what weyland hasn’t gotten. I think the the thing to do is look at what mechanics they have that work, and ask why they don’t add up to wins:
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huge $$ for bad pub: once upon a time weyland was known for being crazy rich, and this mechanic is largely why. and while hostile takeover is probably the only kind-of widely played example of this, I think the core idea holds up: trade your ability to tax the runner effectively for a huge stack of cash. To build on this FFG could put out cards that allows weyland to leverage massive bucks into a win. a defensive upgrade like ash, or powerful damage effects that require repeated traces to succeed.
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sacrifice agendas for powerful control effects: one of their best mechanics right now (imo), card like corp town and archer can be completely game changing. Public support is a big step in the right direction in terms of fueling these effects, but there need to be more serious threats on this front (along with backup control effects like power shutdown, or a bad times that doesn’t require a tag). basically the idea is to convert weyland’a affinity for rushed early points into reliable, high power late game effects.
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tutoring: another one of weyland’s unique mechanics that is almost good enough to be relevant, they currently hold 2 of only 3 universal tutors in the game, and one of the better niche tutors (for assets). sadly, one of them is unplayable, and the other 2 are agendas. I think this mechanic is the key to making weyland a good choice for a scorch deck, and it also allows them to leverage any other effects very quickly and reliably. I’d love to see a card that turns on aggressive negotiations (a 1/0 agenda? a public support style card that is scored rather than “added to the score area?”) or something like it. I think it’s a viable alternative to NBN to be able to say “I may have to import tagging tools, but if you let me I’ll tutor my kill combo by turn 4 and then where will you be?”
Lamenting the failure of advanceable ICE will only get us so far: let’s move on, and get some support cards for weyland ideas that we already know work: we just need them to work better.
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Well Meru Mati isn’t a bad card, just overshadowed by the others in its cycle.
It is an prime example of the Weyland ice strength the designers decided on though - without their +3’s the other Breaker Bay ice either do something unique (Crick, Turing) or are a higher power level than existing cards (Gutenbergs trace 7) for their rez cost, whilst Meru Mati is a lower power level than most 2 rez barriers without its +3.
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The danger in trying to say what Weyland needs to be good is that we are inevitably going to try to turn it into a version of other already powerful decks. I.e. by giving them defensive upgrades so they can play a version of RP or foodcoats. But a different, and imho better, option is for Weyland to get cards that allow it to play a whole different strategy. Pre honor and profit, when people tried to figure out what Jinteki needed to be competitive, no one said “an end the run upgrade and a 5/3 that protects itself”, because there were no viable glacier decks of that kind at the time, so no one would have thought of it (or known what it needed, probably).
What made the addition of caprice and future perfect to RP so crucial is that they allowed Jinteki to leverage their already strong cards that didn’t previously see play, such as sundew and nesei mark II. So, a different way of approaching the weyland question would be to ask what high power-level cards they have that aren’t seeing much play, and ask what kind of a shell they would need to shine.
Edit: Partially ninja’d by voltrocks
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Alright, what about a piece of ICE with an on-encounter ability that allowed the corp to play an operation from HQ, ignoring all ‘play only if’ conditions?
A mid run Scorch, Power Grid Shutdown, or even Hedge Fund could be pretty wild.
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I think that’s exactly the point. Meru Mati is the weakest of the four, and Meru Mati happens to be the Weyland ICE. Weyland would have killed for an ICE like Turing.
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I spend a good amount of time trying to make Weyland decks work. Mostly, I like the underdog, but also I just enjoy the theme of this particular faction. I agree with the bulk of what has been said here, Weyland is behind the curve. It’s not sky is falling levels, but it is certainly strong. My theory on what makes Weyland difficult to play has always been this, if you show the complete corp deck to an opponent before a game, every other faction has common deck types that would still win, except Weyland. Other than a Bootcamp deck, it’s almost always going to be a quick loss, and even in that build your odds go down when the opponent knows for a fact that you either do or don’t have tag punishment.
How to fix it? Well, the question becomes how to give Weyland a niche worth having. Their current niche of Meat Damage works better in NBN due to the difficulty and high influence of moving Tag cards over. Advanceable Ice is not and may never be tier 1. Punishment Ice is a bit weak as well. A missing opportunity was taxing ice (i.e. Ice that charges a runner credits on encounter, like Tollbooth and Turnpike), for some reason that Ice is NBN built instead, sadly. NAPD should have been a Weyland Agenda, as well as Blacklist in assets. It’s interesting that NBN keeps getting these power cards that seem more appropriate for Weyland. I’m not of the mind that an extra 3/2 is the answer, I kind of like that we are done with 3/2 agendas. It would help, no doubt, but speeding up the game seems wrong. I’d rather see a 4/2 agenda that is a trap of some sort. The face up agendas are interesting, but I find it funny that the worst corp has the arrogance of showing the agenda to the runner. My off the cuff thought for helping Weyland significantly would be Ice, they need an auto 3 include level power ice with high influence (3-4). Something that can be burned down by maybe does something very powerful to push their game. Like, 4 strength, maybe purge virus tokens on encounter, cost the runner 2 credits, and an etr.
Love the topic.
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I’m Okay with Weyland getting a defense up grade as long as it plays into one of their central mechanics. Something like, the runner must pay 2 credits to access cards in this server for each bad publicity the corp has. Or when the runner accesses an agenda in this server, the corp can sacrifice an agenda to prevent them from stealing it etc.
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Something like:
Shock and Awe
Operation: Black Ops • Double • Cost: 6 • Influence: 5
As an additional cost to play this operation, spend [click]
Play only if the runner is tagged. This card gains “Trace^3 - If successful, do 3 Meat Damage” for each Bad Publicity the corporation has.
The numbers probably need adjusting, but it’s very Weyland. You’d need 5 BP to kill through a double plascrete, which might be overkill, but I’m crap at balancing imaginary cards so who knows.
Edit - made it a double so you can’t play 2 in a turn.
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That’s a very good point so lets look at some the things weyland has that could be strong
They have some really great assets with what are too low trash costs (compounded by being the bad pub faction) & asset tutoring. There is an ID that supports these already (Gagarin). A way to “get there” would be ways to make multiple remotes more taxing that’s better than the existing options.
They have the best ways to generate agenda tokens with an ID that supports it (Titan). They only have 1 great way and 1 good way to spend those agenda tokens. “Get there”: defensive or control cards that consumes agenda counters (the dark lovechild of Mark Yale and Marcus Batty) or ways to move agenda counters to turbo-atlas.
They have several ways to rez ice on their turn and an ID that removes the opportunity cost of rezzed ice. “Get there”: Ice that does something good when rezzed, Spark has hinted at a more proactive corp styles, and disruption will help with rushing
They can generate lots of BP. “Get there”:: something good that keys off bad pub
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Yeah I agree with this. Oaktown and NAPD have shown us that 4/2s can be worth having if the effects are strong enough, but it’s very easy to think 3/2s are innately disproportionately stronger than 4/2s because Oaktown and NAPD have been the exception rather than the rule. Traditionally, 3/2s have had better effects than 4/2s and also are 3/2s, and this should obviously not be the case.
Thankfully, there seem to be some some pretty appealing 4/2s coming in Mumbad. Whether or not they’re good enough for competitive play is yet to be seen, but you can make good 4/2s if you put good effects on them.
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Which ones are you thinking of?
Meanwhile NBN gets fifteen more minutes for every deck!
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