While I do agree to a point regarding Parasite and Caissa being stomped by Blue Sun’s ability, I very much doubt Anarch is any worse off compared to other factions.
Noise simply doesn’t care, and there is D4VID in faction. Let’s not even mention Quetzal with E3.
What? How does Noise not care? Milling only gets so far. It’s pretty tough for Anarchs to get a full breaker suite installed. D4v1d helps, but Quetzal + E3 isn’t that great. Can’t get you thru cheap code gates.
Parasite gets you past cheap code gates.
D4VID helps immensely. Against Hadrian/Curtain Wall, in Crim you’d have to Inside Job Shutdown or Femme and in Shaper you’d have to Femme. Femme only lasts a turn, so it’s really not much of a solution.
With Noise, you can mill, with D4VID to get you in when you need to. You’re a lot better off with Noise against Blue Sun than any other ID.
Quetzal E3 isn’t that great against most decks, but it’s amazing against Blue Sun in particular.
Blue Sun nerfs Parasite. How are you going to break Lotus Field? Crypsis for five and a click each turn? Yikes.
I don’t consider Lotus Field a cheap code gate. Let’s face it, Lotus Field is available to all corps so it’s not really Blue Sun doing the work in that case. There really isn’t a good solution to Lotus Field apart from Atman.
I don’t see a point in running cheap code gates in Blue Sun. Your ability makes the cost of Lotus Field nearly irrelevant. It’s basically the ultimate gear check.
Anarchs most efficient solution was Knight.
Even blue sun needs early-game ice. This list has 3 ice walls and 3 enigma as ice vulnerable to parasite, and I play 3 ice walls, 2 datapikes, 2 hives, and 3 caduceus in my glacier build.
Blue sun’s strength in rushing agendas comes from its ability to put “shields down” on rnd or HQ for just the one turn it takes to score; but doing that against noise allows him to build his datasuckers enough to snipe something with parasite all at once. And once one ice falls to parasite, it becomes a lot easier for noise to keep suckers loaded.
Blue sun also can’t afford to try to lock up its centrals before pushing any agendas through, because noise’s late game is extremely strong, winning the economy war with aesop’s+cache+deja (and daviding late-game oversights), and killing the goodies (ash or scorch) with imp.
Lotus field can only protect one server at a time…
Not with that attitude. Run more Lotus Fields. I get that tollbooth is resistant to Femme in BS, but it makes you even softer to David, which is already one of the best cards vs the blues.
One assumption that I think is skewing your opinion is that OAI and Blue Sun go hand-in-hand. I think time will show Blue Sun builds without OAI are the better builds.
Second point: how is Noise ever going to get a significant amount of Sucker tokens against BS? Datapike, Enigma, Eli… all reliably and cheaply keep Noise out of centrals (Eli is technically porous but be my guest if you want to spend 3 clicks to 1 sucker token and an access to a hand that probably has no agenda). The only ICE you’re probably going to lose to Noise are 0 (or 1-costed ICE with Grimoire) that gets rezzed on Noise’s run and trashed with a later click (you shouldn’t run those ICE in BS anyway). Anything else can be bounced if you don’t want to lose it.
not sure I understand. BS can reliably and consistently lock down HQ/RND turn 1, and then proceed to make a scoring remote as early as turn 2 if they want (to rush that aggressively). or simply wait a turn or 2 more to get Archives covered. Hive stomps Noise and Quetzal. In reality, a Hive is the only ICE you need to defend an early scoring remote versus Anarch, with BS.
anyway I absolutely don’t think Parasite is very useful against Blue Sun. Shapers and Criminals are much more difficult to reliably keep out of centrals; it is pretty easy to keep Anarchs out of centrals early with BS, at least that’s my opinion. more and more Noise are running Crypsis only and I think BS can exploit that. D4v1D is a problem if you are relying on OAI but as I said before, I don’t think OAI is the optimal choice for BS.
I’m not sure I follow. How is BS locking down HQ/RnD turn 1 without OAI?
How do you even build BS without OAI? Curtain Wall and Hadrians are what make BS a force, and without OAI they’re not that great.
They’re not that great normally, because 10 or 14 credits is a huge sunk cost for “just an ETR”. With BS, they become an investment, one that can be recovered very easily… if you need to punitive someone, for instance. A BS deck without OAI would actually be packing some economy, making it more consistent. I’m not done with testing to see which version is better, but I can tell you that both are playable and strong just fine.
BS’s strength in this regard lies in the fact that their resource budget for defense is insanely flexible between servers. If I make someone else rez a Tollbooth on RnD, that’s 8 credits that are stuck on RnD defense and cannot be recovered. With BS, those credits are only bound there for the rest of my turn, so I have maybe two clicks to capitalize on it.
edit:
oh, and forgot:
Hive. Worst part? Making them rez it turn one doesn’t stop them from Hedging/Restructuring on turn 2.
I really like Atman in Anarch. All the go to support cards from the Katman lists are red, and now we’ve got Duggars it’s much harder for the bloody thing to hide - you don’t need to spend more inf on special orders. You can’t easily reset it’s strength with Scavenge, but it’s really good at 0 and 4. Especially if it means you can use recurring creds (from cyberfeeder or spinal) to go through dinky ICE.
One thing that wasn’t mentioned earlier is that BS’s best big ICE are barriers, and the best Fracters are red (alright everyone has a corroder, but you take my point). I’m less pessimistic than I was a few posts ago. In other news, knight was no good vs Hadrians, Curtain Wall or Hive anyway.
I like that Wayland has a terrifying ID. Green is a good corp colour and they’ve been sad for a while now. Also it makes Whizzard even better. Whizzard will join the elite runners by the end of this cycle in my opinion.
But each of those pieces of ice are going to cost 4 to 8 (to 10 to 14) to rez, and it’s rare to have such a strong draw to be able to rez them all at once before midgame economy comes online. Maybe your starting draw is oversight, curtain, double hive, double enigma, agenda, and even then you can’t rez on all 3 centrals and the agenda before turn 3. But just as often I start with restructure, tollbooth, ice wall, or whatever, and I can’t stop datasucker tokens, losing my hand to imp, medium, AND rush the agenda. Maybe it’s just my playstyle, but I always make the remote 2 ice deep before rushing.
What I’m saying is, yes parasite is a lot worse against blue sun. But only against the luckiest draws does it actually get locked out entirely until crypsis shows up. A skilled noise player will find the openings to kill the first datapike/enigma.
Just because no one is playing hemorrhage doesnt mean that blue sun screws anarch. Blackmail would be hard on them too since they often plan on rezzing big ice to protect an agenda with the intention of pulling back the money to score. Perhaps when/if a good way to create bad pub when you’re facing non-weyland
Id go so far to say that you dont really need parasite if there wasnt komainu backed up by tsurgi
Yeah, but Komainu/Tsurugi aren’t going anywhere fast.
To back up bblum, skilled players WILL find a way to parasite your ice in Blue Sun. It depends on game state and might require patience, but there is usually a way to get sucker tokens and there are still low str ice in Blue Sun that are prime parasite targets (I’m looking at you, Hive).
Grimoire and Clone Chip, for example, takes care of Hive nicely without an opportunity for the Corp to do anything about it.
Which isn’t to say that Blue Sun won’t be a big kick in the teeth for Anarch at least until Order and Chaos.
Would you mind clarifying this? OAI was a great card even before you had the ability to liquefy the ICE it rezzed. Having a two-click, one turn delayed 13 credit gain has struck me as quite incredible. What makes OAI-less Blue Sun decks better in your opinion?
I can understand the argument for no OAI, but my deck is a modified GRNDL rush deck, so it tries to get as big of a lead as possible in the early to mid game. OAI is fantastic for that, dropping it turn 2 or 3 on something big makes the runner do one of three things: drop a breaker/run it/trash the ice, run somewhere else, or build rig/dig/click Kati. Running elsewhere is risky without scorch protection, so I want you to break it (burning yourself out) to deny me a BIGGER lead, or let me have the money while IIA next turn with a boatload of credits.
OAI is a higher variance strat, while going traditional econ operation (playing green HB basically) is lower variance, more reliable, but more predictable. Both have their strengths.
I will say that OAI does have its downsides. Curtain wall is a pretty bad piece of ice when you’re not getting it for free (it may only be 1 cred less taxing than wotan, but dying to d4v1d is a huge liability). After gaining the $14, I always try to use a hadrian’s or TB instead of reinstalling the curtain, if I have the option.
Blue sun could instead use more of the root, AIZ, and/or adonis (I think eliza’s is bad) for more resilient & more long-term economy, without compromising on quality of ice.
Orion and wormhole will change all this, of course, come O&C.