A discussion of the changes that the Lunar Cycle have made to the role and value of ice. As well as the new archetypes made possible by Nasir, Quetzal and Blue Sun.
VIVA LA STEALTH!
http://self-modifyingcode.com/2014/10/18/i-sense-a-disturbance-in-the-meta/
It’s as though a million players cried out at once and then said “Eff it, I’ll just play anarch mill”.
While the article is interesting, I really don’t think the big changes are coming yet.
In the current meta I will pretty much always be happy to be facing a Nasir across the board.
Quetzal might change the ICE ratio further away from barriers to code gates as go-to ICE but that has been going on for some time now since very few good barriers have been released in lunar / spin cycle but several very good code gates.
Blue Sun is quite similar to the already existing HB big ice decks, it will be one of the options for corp-players that don’t want to focus on the speed of NBN but really doesn’t demand much if any adaptation to current decks.
Stealth is still up in the air, but it seems likely that it will be a viable way to break some ICE. I am having some good results with Switchblade but I can see some of the other breakers work as well. We are still some way off from a full stealth rig in competitive decks though.
I haven’t tested against Blue Sun very much, but I can see it being a hard counter against AI heavy Anarch decks. How are you going to get through a huge barrier when Knight, Crypsis, and Parasite are all basically useless?
AI anarchs are probably focused on one of two paths, Noise virus mill or Account siphon spam. The first deck will probably just focus on milling instead of getting into servers with the occasional forced rez especially if there is a good stack of Datasucker counters) but the other decktype might have some trouble if they get locked out early since Parasites don’t work nearly as well against Blue Sun (this is probably the biggest change in the meta). Blue Sun, Project Chronos, Lotus Field and Architect might together have forced enough pressure on the runners mostly focusing on Parasite recursion to make them a smaller part of the meta.
D4v1d. Bonus, it’s Archer insurance.
The Parasite hate is a major reason I’m getting used to Supplier Andy now. I’ve been shifting the influence to basically two ProCos and backup Breakers, because Clone Chip doesn’t look that appealing anymore. While in general it is usually not worth it later into the game, the threshold for playing ProCo onto the Supplier is kind of low even in a later stage. And if you get it early it’s even worth the 5 credits and helps out with the only drawback the Criminals really have imo: no draw acceleration. Though of course ProCo doesn’t help cycle faster, it just makes drawing more worthwhile.
I’ve seen a lot of Andy decks already starting to transist from the Anarch rig to non-static Breakers, and due to the lack of Datasuckers the Parasite loses some value. The addition of Architect and Blue Sun after Lotus Field actuated me to free up significant influence and play without Parasite and it sure does work.