Compare Whiz to Ed, though. Why the fuck does Ed have a link and Whiz doesn’t? If anything, it should be the other way around.
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I think part of it is that Whizzard’s ability is active in HQ, R&D, and remotes, but Kim’s only works in HQ and R&D; additionally the Corp can often play Operations immediately, but assets/upgrades remain vulnerable.
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I’m pretty sure FFG flips a coin for whether a runner gets a link or not.
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I think it’s better to compare an ID to the best ID’s of it’s faction, not the tier 2 ID’s. So new anarchs need to compare to Noise / MaxX (or Valencia perhaps), same way that new Weyland ID’s need to compare to Blue Sun and not BABW or BWBI. Other than that, I also think Ed without link would still be better than Whiz
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On the topic of Whizzard - I’m really surprised he’s not done better this last cycle. We’ve seen more assets than ever before, and upgrades abound. Even in Weyland. And yet Whizzard has stubbornly failed to perform, while very quickly Kim has been getting people excited.
In a Weyland dominated metagame, which I feel like we’re in at the moment, Ed is vastly superior to Whizzard. Whizzard is marginally better than Ed vs RP, but other than that I’ll take Ed against any of the corps in the current field. Against NEH, if you can trash the FA tricks you can play on an even playing field.
I don’t think Ed Kim is getting people that excited. He’s the least rated of the three runner IDs in O&C.
My Ed Kim deck started as Whizzard, it’s better since O&C came out. I think Whizzard might encourage slightly dubious play. Trashing assets and upgrades indiscriminately is bad netrunner. He seems harder to justify over Noise too. I think the increased pressure on centrals is more potent than strangling asset econ with than 3 creds a turn to trash stuff. It also makes your Imp pure econ.
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Exactly. To get the most out of Whiz you can easily end up durdling, spending clicks to trash assests instead of winning. There is an argument that a more centrals focused approach might be better, trashing stuff out of R&D to get more access, but at that point why not play Noise?
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Assuming this is referring to pre O&C, I think the reason was because non-noise anarchs were pretty garbage still (and no, good players doing well despite gimped decks does not disprove this). Too bad now that weyland is boss Edward Kim will(or should at least) take over as “Anarch you should play when you have no reason to play anyone else.”
This kind of comparison works better in the other factions. Noise is as different from other anarchs as they are to other factions (sometimes moreso), frankly he plays an entirely different game than the rest of netrunner. MaxX is maybe a better comparison, but again she has irreconcilable differences from all other runners: between 1/3 and 2/3 of her deck will be trashed every single game, determined randomly. While her ability is crazy strong, you must build around it in ways that no other runner needs to.
Comparisons between Whizz/Eddie/Reina and even quetzal are pertinent because by and large they can all play the same decks, so it’s just a question of which ID suits your deck more. Valencia is a bit of both - she can build around her ID for powerful shenanigans other runners can’t use, or she can just add 5 cards to an E. Kim deck and enjoy being slightly richer.
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But if I browse the latest Kim decks, I see two cards from O&C appearing: Knifed, and I’ve Had Worse. Would Whizzard really have been talked about as much as Kim if these cards had come out along with Inject?
meh, not much point comparing post O&C Kim decks to pre-O&C whizzard. different meta, different IDs. His question was “why didn’t whizzard do better back when assets were king” and the reason was “anarch decks were crap.” Now anarchs can be way better, but assets are no longer king, and there are better ID choices besides. Kim + IHW is way more relevant against a legion of scorch weilding weylands than whizz vs. the 1 or two people still playing nearpad.
Kim is better than Whizzard in my opinion. You can do everything that Whizzard can do by having a healthy economy. Whizzard shouldn’t be worth more than 1c per turn in a typical game.
I disagree with the sentiment that non-noise Anarchs were bad before O&C but knifed (and spooned) and IHW are very good cards that help a lot. Kim encourages me to play Nerve Agent, which I didn’t before playing him but probably should have thought harder about. It seemed underwhelming, but doesn’t any more. D4v1d and Inject are more important than anything in O&C.
I still think that MemStrips is a quiet unassuming hit from O&C that makes an overwhelming board of too many viruses much easier to accomplish. Having 2-3 datasuckers online makes you terrifying.
I still wonder if Gravedigger can be a thing. Whizzard seems a natural fit for that card, but I’m not sure how good it is.
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Okay, I don’t buy that:
a) Assets are no longer king (RP and NEH have gone nowhere, and Weyland is making more use of assets and upgrades than before O&C).
b) IHW and Knifed (okay, maybe Spooned) are enough to explain why Whizzard was (is) ignored at a time when he should be better than ever before.
I think Kim is better than Whizzard too, and I think part of it is (as Master Air says) assets fall into ‘must trash’ (which you can afford with economy) or ‘maybe, maybe not’ where Whizzard would help but Kim probably has a far better impact taking out critical operations.
It’s on the Influence Spinner, y’all :).
the key is that there needs to be massive (or even decent) amounts of high-trash-cost must-trash assets getting installed. While whizz is almost worth it just for his matchup against NEH’s sansans, his ability doesn’t help much against sundews or Caprice in RP (they’re not hard to kill b/c of the 1 or 2 credits - it’s the three clicks and breaking a bunch of punishing ICE).
Weyland is using more assets and upgrades, but few (if any?) are “must trash.” compare that with an innate ability to kill scorch/sea/punitive/biotic/ToL/ELP/mushin which are all win condition cards and it’s hard to see why Whizz would get any play over Eddie right now.
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IHW is very good. Suddenly anarchs don’t have to be afraid of the flatline matchups any more.
But Whizzard is highly playable right now. He rewards you for checking remotes, which is good netrunner play. I think he’s better than Kim if you expect less Weyland and more HB/NBN/Jinteki.
I dunno, man - EBC, Adonis, Jackson, Yale and even Constellation Protocol are definitely worth trashing.
Certainly there are plenty of things worth trashing (esp if you’re whizzard) but imho as an ID he doesn’t really shine unless you need that money to trash win-condition cards: Sansans, Ash, Caprice, DRT in nearpad, etc. and of these, often the main cost is not the trash cost, but the click/credit cost of getting access.
All that said, I still have a lot of love for whizz - while he is “just” economy, it can add up versus certain opponents, especially if you’re digging into RnD and trashing stuff before it even sees the light of day. Even E. Kim requires a bit of playing around - you need to get accesses on a pretty regular basis to use him. Whizzard might not be the most competetive, but his ability always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling at least once a game - even if it’s just forcing Jackson to pop early b/c killing him won’t even be a tax.
I wanted to address the Link matter. It seems to me FFG assign Link based mostly on theme, which is poor game design. Maybe some of my impressions are wrong here; I haven’t read all the inserts, although I do have them all somewhere.
Ed Kim is a part of Human First, so obviously he would have connections; IHW implies he is a public figure. Andy is a socialite; no explanation needed. The 0 link Runners tend to be outcasts: Kit, with her controversial stance on cyber-entities; Whizzard, a chubby gamer; Ken, a Clone who can’t afford the risk of having friends. The Professor always struck me as odd; even if he was ejected from his institution, you’d think he would still have some Professional Contacts. I don’t think FFG necessarily designs Link with the game in mind. Kate is a great example; thematically she needs to have a Link, but it makes her that much better than Kit, who already has 5 less influence.
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IMO, the entire Link mechanic is poorly understood by FFG.
One root issue is that Corp credits are more valuable than Runner credits, and therefore going 1 to 1 with the Runner on a trace for anything short of winning the game is generally wrong for Corp.
So a card like Gemini is totally dead on arrival - Runner gets to not need a breaker to beat it, and Corp never wants to pay money into it because it’s equivalent to Vamping yourself. Really tragic.
It’s also impossible to balance an ICE that’s intended to trace repeatedly because if it’s balanced against a 0 link field, it’s far too weak against a 1 link field.
I think every Runner should have had 0 link unless it’s specifically your identity ability to have link (like Chaos has an extra MU). You want knobs to turn to balance an ID, but link is just too coarse of a knob to tune with.
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Go read the insert from What Lies Ahead. You’ll find out that Whiz is, more or less, the Michael Jordan of a weird-ass e-sport.
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