I played with a first draft using NEXT ice and Grail. It surely wasn’t a great version, but gave me generally ideas. Noise destroyed it with parasite recursion and David recursion. David does huge work versus IT Department. Will you really play a card that might just be destroyed if they have a particular counter?
I also played against Criminal, in which is worked much better. I was able to get the “IT lock”, but they still managed to win with two R&DI on a Femme / Inside Job into R&D. Those two cards in general work well to help. Also, if you’re putzing around with ITD for 10 turns, agendas are getting concentrated.
I’m on the fence. On the one hand there’s the sheer brutality of it if it sits for more than a single turn, the fun murdering nature of the win it enables and the way it protects itself and locks the game out completely. On the other hand, there’s a lot of set up involved. You need ICE that hurts and that ends the run. You need the money. You need to be in a strong enough position that they can’t force you to spend your counters every turn just to stay alive. And there’s a little bit of me that wonders if it’s really so different in effect to Nisei MKII or SanSan City Grid in terms of losing you the game if you leave it alone.
Basicly, I need to play with/against it more. I agree that if D4V1D is the only solution, it’s a serious problem.
The reason I said I found it far worse than Nisei above in this thread was because Nisei doesn’t stop you winning from HQ/R&D accesses. Unless the win’s in hand and it’s about to end (which it does in a turn), you can still win, even if it’s extremely hard (and when they see an agenda they probably win if they’ve two Nisei scored). Nisei stops you getting into their remote, but people will rarely use it for random R&D/HQ runs.
SanSan is trashable, and doesn’t lock the runner out of the game. They can still Legwork HQ and Maker’s Eye R&D to their heart’s content!
That’s the very point I’m undecided on. IT Department doesn’t lock you out everywhere the moment it comes down (unless you have something crazy like Archer on both centrals and the remote). Can the runner pressure the corp into spending its precious +3 counter elsewhere (to stop an indexing or a legwork for example)? If so there’s a reasonable chance they can get rid of the thing before it becomes insurmountable.
Honestly, I’m not saying it isn’t a problem. I’m saying I (possibly we - I don’t know how many games you and others have played it) don’t have the experience yet. I totally accept that once it’s up and running it’s as about as fun as The Unfair Platformer and that in itself is not a good thing.
In the games I’ve played I haven’t worried about this. Whenever ITD is in single digits I just used it to protect itself. If the runner wants to get in on centrals, let them have their random accesses - I’m playing 59 cards. If they score 6 points on centrals while I set up the lock, I still win; the runner can’t finish me off with a late game glory run the way they could against any other corp in the game.
I had a close game against @mendax (playing pax kate) yesterday where he kept threatening the ITD while it was setting up, making me spend 2 counters each run, which in turn meant I could either grow it slowly or defend centrals but not both. That’s the only way I see this deck losing; the runner prolongs this phase of the game long enough that agendas pile up and they can win with a legwork.
Do you have any pointers as to how to play your ITD 59? Gave it a few plays yesterday. One game I got agenda flooded; probability be damned, I saw 18 of my AP within the first third of the deck (and no Jackson). The others my general plan was to build up econ early game, enough to defend centrals with ICE, and then ideally have a protected ITD by mid-game and start building counters. Scoring a Domestic early is also good to threaten an Archer.
Basically what you said. I try to get an adonis or eve behind some cheap ETR early, then after it runs out start ITDing behind the same ice. You need to be able to rez 2 ice in front of ITD and one on each central. Then after you start making counters, spend 0 or 1 clicks each turn working to get a 2nd ice on centrals and building a 2nd remote for adonis/eve.
Just doubling your credits isn’t good enough to keep up with O(n^2) ITD growth. But suppose you played 3 push your luck and recurred it with SOT and deja vu… O(2^n), now we’re talking.
I had the same thing in one game on OCTGN with ITD. I just let him build counters because I figured it was a “one for one” sort of thing. Honestly, ITD doesn’t seem like a big deal. I let him build counters intentionally but next time I just won’t.
Although, I’m thinking to play my Grail deck again with ITD. Sounds super fun and trolly.
If more than 1 cannot be spent per turn, it’s as unplayable as everyone assumed IMO.
I still think Caprice and TFP are more ridiculous, regardless of ITD wording.
On the plus side, the matchup against Noise is really interesting, and interactive until the last. Played it for the first time, really close game, ended up losing to a clone chipped 2nd d4v1d.
The only reason I was able to manage to get through ITD is due to recurring Davids. If there was a single Archer on the Archives, that would only allow for 1 access with 1 David (unless it’s the last access of the game where you can ditch your rig.
Putting multiple ETR subroutine Ice and ITDing that one nullifies David quite efficiently.
I was not trying too hard to get into the ITD server, thinking that my Davids could carry me home, and in the end I just tried to deck bblum. Executive retreat made that quite hard to do, but then ELI and 4 David tokens carried me home to Archives to access for the win.
