Imaginary Cards

Very cool card, but I feel it could do with another use case, so as not to be dead vs conventional rigs. Not sure what that might be atm though.

ā€œDiscarding cardsā€ isnā€™t particularly Weyland, is my main problem with it - that fits more into Jinteki theme. I can tell the initial reasoning was probably to try and give Weyland more good cards, so in that sense I would try retooling it a little bit to make it more in-line with Weyland. Maybe like ā€œThe Runner may take 1 Meat Damage to break any Subroutine on Mephistopheles."

Yeah I can see where you are coming from with the flavor. Making it meat damage does make it stronger (Making its one base sub better against non AI decks as Whirrun mentioned above,) but then adds interactivity with IHW or Plascrete (which might balance it back some)

I think the flavor I was going for as Weyland was Business transactions / Contracts. ā€œIā€™ll let you into the server, for a priceā€ (maybe add the Transaction subtype? to ice? Whaaa?)

Ice named after a demon that makes shady deals felt pretty Weyland due to Questionable Business Practices like Hostile Takeover already being a thing.

I think if you replaced the ETRs with ā€˜Deal one meat damageā€™ and removed the optional-break text, itā€™d be more interestingā€¦?

Technically Mephistopheles would deal unpreventable Net damage; stealing your soulā€¦

The problem, then, is youā€™d need to pump up the cost a whole bunch and probably lower the strength too. Otherwise you have a 4c code gate thatā€™s 7 strength, and holy dang thatā€™s strong.

Lowering the strength / raising the rez cost isnā€™t NECESSARILY a bad thing for the card, but it changes it from being a targeted Faust hate card to a generally strong code gate (which,again, isnā€™t necessarily a bad thing)

Eli 2.0
HB
Eli 2.0 cannot be trashed while installed.
ICE: Barrier - Bioroid ā€¢ Rez: 2 ā€¢ Strength: 3 ā€¢ Influence: 2
The Runner may spend to 2 clicks break up to 2 subroutines on Eli 2.0.
-> End the run.

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I donā€™t think ā€˜Deal 1 Meat Damageā€™ is a particularly strong effect. Note that I said replace the ETRs, including the one it has. So all it does is mildly annoy runners, unless theyā€™re running an AI.

4c 7str deal 1 meat is probably right anywayā€¦ Would likely need to be a Sentry though.

Checkpoint has those exact stats, and itā€™s almost never played. Sure, itā€™s illicit and a tracer, but it also does 3 meat damage.

It just means if you have Faust and hit this, youā€™re guaranteed dead unless you have a Plascrete, Iā€™ve Had Worse, or e3 Feedback Implants out (or a code gate breaker with the decently large expense of credits needed to break it). If you replace ALL the ETRs with 1 Meat Damage, then it means if you hit it with an AI breaker you better pray to god you can break it or you ARE dead, since it does meat damage equal to the number of cards you have in hand+1. If you remove the base Meat Damage and just make it a ā€œ1 Meat Damage Subā€ per card in hand, then the card does nothing against anyone who doesnā€™t have an AI breaker so it would have a decent chance of being a dead draw.

Compare to Komainu, which CANā€™T kill you, is 1c more and SIX strength less. Or the upcoming Brainstorm, which ALSO canā€™t kill you, has FIVE less strength, and costs FIVE more credits.

3 Likes

Komainu is also useful all the time, not only if thereā€™s an AI installed. Same for Brainstorm. (And amusingly, Brainstorm actually can kill you if you have over your hand size when you encounter itā€¦)

The proposed card is only legitimately dangerous if thereā€™s an AI installed, and nigh-worthless when there isnā€™t. The correct comparison is more likely Neural Katana. Trade net damage for strength at a 2 for 1 ratio and you end up with 4rez 7str ICE. (Itā€™s also specifically to counter Faust. Other AI donā€™t care as much about it, except Darwin/Knight just for the break cost. Crypsis would have the less problems with it as any other anti-AI ICE, as would Atman.)

All that said, I can see lowering the strength to 5. Iā€™d not want to go lower due to Yog.

Hydra
ICE: Code Gate - Mythic
Weyland
4c 3str

Whenever a runner card is discarded or a :trash: ability is used during a run, Hydra gains ā€œ-> End the Runā€ after all of its subroutines for the remainder of the run.

-> End the run

4 Likes

Uhh, maybe implement a power counter system to track the subs. Otherwise, I would forget how many subs it had all the time. I also donā€™t understand why it has the mythic subtype, it really limits design space for mythic icebreakers.

Edited to reflect initial intention of only keeping them during the run.

1 Like

I like this a lot better. Flavorful, clear counter, (complete with counter-counter in the form of E3 or Yog) and interacts in a interesting but not frustrating way with other parts of the game.

Is it intended that you can trash EBC to add a sub?

not an emptyquote

Nope, not intended - also Jackson, and a bunch of other cards. I donā€™t think itā€™s broken by allowing corp cards to trigger it (and itā€™s a pretend card that is pretend), so Iā€™ll leave it.

been trying to come up with the most rules-elegant way to represent the runner taking control of a piece of ice:

Hijacker
ā—ā—ā—ā—ā—‹ (Criminal) 2c 1MU
Program: Icebreaker
Install Hijacker only on a rezzed sentry, and only if you made a successful run on a central server this turn.
Hijackerā€™s strength is equal to the strength of the host ice.
1c; Break ice subroutine.
Strength: *

Itā€™s cheapness is offset by the corps ability to install over the ice, Iā€™d see it being used as one-turn get into a remote thing + economy denial rather than a permanent part of a rig. Obviously pretty troll with architect :3.

2 Likes

Iā€™m trying to think of ways to contend with Faust that arenā€™t so targeted as to be useless elsewhere. I might not know enough about the situation to be a good judge, but from a skim through the ā€œCommunity Temperatureā€ thread and limited personal experience, it seems some of the problems that could be addressed by ICE are:

  • Runner economy is largely irrelevant
  • Lots of regular card draw with no drawback from Wyldcakes combo
  • The combined in-faction power of Faust, d4v1d, and Datasucker
It seems to be that the least targeted, most widely-applicable means of dealing with that might be to make economy important or address combo pieces (Swordsman already exists to trash AIs themselves). And Weyland already has precedent for charging the runner money, right? So what about something like this?:
Quarantine Weyland ā€¢ā€¢ā—‹ā—‹ā—‹ 9c - Ice - Barrier - Tracer 5 Str As an additional cost to break a subroutine on Quarantine, the runner must pay 1c (1c for each card in the Runner's grip if a non-Fracter Program ability is used to break the subroutine). ā””ā–ŗTrace2: Trash one installed resource. ā””ā–ŗEnd the run. "Cut them off. Block contacts, cancel memberships, deny access. Leave them nowhere to turn."

Bigger cost for big hands; can be brought in around Tollbooth range (a bit larger, maybe, but no forced payment) with hand management. Cost and strength are probably all off, but I think itā€™s interesting to keep it in d4 range. There are workarounds, though. Itā€™s e3- and ABR-friendly to take some of the sting out of it. Quetzal wouldnā€™t mind seeing it too much, either. And you can always just deal with the trace to cut the cost with AI icebreaking.

Alternatively, maybe something more accessible that gives everyone (Weyland included) some tagging potential with a Komainu-like effect:

Profiler Neutral ā—‹ā—‹ā—‹ā—‹ā—‹ 1c - Ice - Sentry 3 Str When the Runner encounters Profiler, it gains "ā””ā–ŗGive the Runner 1 tag unless the Runner pays 2c" for every two cards in the Runner's grip (round down). Privacy isn't dead. It just carries a premium.

As usual, the tagging doesnā€™t come without giving the Runner an out, and itā€™s in easy range for most sentry breakers to justify a low rez cost (to make it accessible for even a poor Corp). Iā€™d worry that, even at 1c/sub, a tag per card in grip would be a bit overkill, which is why I aimed for 1 sub per 2 cards. On the other hand, combined with a higher cost and lower strength, maybe that would be just the heavy tagging Weyland and NBN can use, at risk of being Parasited like Komainu.

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I think ICE destruction (via Parasite and cutlery) is a bigger factor than the card draw in Anarch. Shapers have much better card draw, and free access to mass recursion.

I was playing a shaper Faust deck that could power mass draws (10+ cards in a turn) and ran 3 levyā€™s. It was great to break into servers through a lot of ICE, but it used a lot more cards breaking ICE than the anarchs did.

Removing ICE is a very powerful effect that Faust decks are depending on, because they are trying to break in using only 2-4 cards to feed Faust.