I definitely agree; there are a lot of decks where harbinger is (exactly as you say) like demo run; undeniably a powerful card that there really isn’t room for in the deck. I was really more just speaking to the comment that cards couldn’t be made that help whizz more than other anarchs; I think harbinger is a clear counter-example to that.
One thing I’m imagining for it is in a heavy ice-destruction deck, a la silverware/parasite recursion, where even beyond asset trashing you’ll still get an extra access every time you break down their defenses. It’s also hard to say, I think, just how good cards like incubator and breeding ground will be at powering up individual viruses; at the very least it may be a way to “force” a virus purge turn.
I don’t have the O&C stuff memorized. Harbinger does seem a bit nicer in whizzard although noise will undoubtedly be running imp so who really knows until it’s out .
I was about to say that imp doesn’t combo with Harbinger, which is of course wrong. However, Imp only combos with Harbinger if you’re trashing installed cards. I hate using Imp counters to trash installed cards. Harbinger also combos with Cutlery and Parasite. Which I hadn’t thought of, so at least it’s never a dead card. (Corps have to play either ICE or Assets/Upgrades I think) It might see some play. With breeding ground, (I actually think Virus Breeding Ground might just be a bad card.) It’s tough to want to spend 2 clicks for 1 random mill, though as a desperation strategy it has some merit I suppose. It’s less of a mostly Whizzard card than I thought though. Almost all Anarchs want to tear up ICE.
Off-topic, but I don’t think it’s bad per se, more like… narrow in its application. But if I really wanted to make it work, here’s what I’d do:
Pumping Hivemind (which is hosted on Progenitor to make sure it’s always possible) by 1 each turn really pressures the corp into purging regularly. Add Fester to this and you can get a nice little cycle of regular timewalks with a side of mini-vamps going.
Biggest problem is obviously deck space, but I think it can be done with the New Anarchs, as the more circumstantial pieces can be just packed as one-ofs and tutored for.
(if the spoilers are accurate) You can think of Progenitor as an MU card, and not having your Imps turned off is nice. Eventually, when you draw it, you want to put your Hivemind on there, Incubate it and really go to town.
So yeah, I’d play Progenitor. If the spoilers are accurate and he’s not unique, just play several copies and it pulls double duty as Power Shutdown protection, both for itself and either your Suckers or a loaded Sherry. Seems fine to me.
Someone post an O&C Whizzard list with one of these above Progenitor, Fester, Virus Breeding combos. I’ve got to see what you’re giving up to fit all of this.
There’s actually several ways of going about this. Here’s one with SMCs and virus tutoring.
It’s a super-rough draft, mind you (I literally punched it up 45 seconds ago). It’s built on a lot of assumptions at this point (haven’t done actual O&C testing outside of MaxX yet), but I’d start with something like this and see what works and what doesn’t.
My rationale is that with Hivemind and Breeders, you don’t need repeated runs to make deep digs and/or complete HQ checks, so you should be able to go a tad lighter on econ. Also, Parasites that come into play with 3+ effective tokens sound pretty brutal. Amusingly, I’m not sure Datasucker is even needed - if this turns out to be the case, going down to 1 could be reasonable.
Another possible approach would be to go with Siphons, using a Hivemind(ed) Crypsis as your pretty much only breaker (using Incubator to pump either it or Hivemind). That would save up a lot of card slots and enable some pretty sweet runs. In that version, I’d definitely want 3 Festers though, possibly spinning off into the whole DLR angle.
So heres my take on wizard out of O&C, once you get your rig set up.
idealy
2 progenitor , 1 with hivemind, 1 with darwin. and virus breeding ground(this might end up needing to be a 3 of)
darwin will always have 4 str for 1 click and 1 credit, start of turn. (which sorta makes me think i left D4v1d out…)
totally untested, see how it pans out.
In regards to harbinger, think it might actually be quite good out of a cassia deck. where the corp is trashing ice to get rid of your cassia
Harbinger and Virus Breeding Ground is interesting. Two clicks to trash a card from R&D no matter what the corp does. If you host it on a Progenitor, they can’t even purge to stop you.
My issue with Whizzard post-O&C is that I can see Valencia’s ability just being better. If you add it up over tournement I think you will get more value from one credit per run compared to three a turn but for a specific purpose. To get max value from Whiz it’s very tempting to just trash everything the corp throws down, which is rarely correct. Then there’s Kim. Kim plus Imp plus possibly Scrubbers is a much more complete lock down.
There is interesting metagaming here though. If Valencia is both common and good - which I guess she will be. It’s possible to make her ability a short term issue. All corps have access to a few cards that remove bad pub. Then you’re much worse off than you were if you were Whizzard.
Eddy Kim looks a lot of fun. I think he’s going to be devastating. Lots of people have written him off since Valencia and MaxX have been spoiled, but I think he’s going to be a force.
@Talism That’s quite a cool list. Though if Djinn doesn’t fit there, it doesn’t fit anywhere. I think the biggest problem Progenitor has is Power Shutdown. Maybe Origami for Shutdown protection with minor benefits? Progenifying a Darwin seems pretty good. I still think you want D4v1d for big ICE.
If you run three Progenitors, you can leave one empty. Scheherazade works (and is nice in Pawnshop decks). Origami takes up memory so is harder to justify (though if you’re hosting everything on Progenitors, maybe it’s okay?).
At what point in this Progenitor/Hivemind/breeding ground experiment do you say “maybe I should switch to Noise?” It’s turning into quite the virus orgy.
You inevitably sacrifice the econ for constant pressure to make deckspace for all these viruses, and Whizzard has to run frequently for his ability to pay off.
