Well, let’s see how batty stacks up on my New Card Design Rate-o-Meter™…
[X] The new playable card should be appropriately costed in credits and influence so people want to play 1 or 2 copies but will think hard before auto-including 3
[ ] The new playable card’s mechanics should prefer to add decision-intensive tactics instead of random chance
[ ] Psi games, if involved, should be low-stakes and not too difficult for the runner to repeatedly try winning
[ ] The new playable card should prefer to synergize with other cards/strategies that aren’t popular, rather than with the existing best deck, to create interesting shifts in the metagame
[ ] The new playable (corp/runner) card, if it affects the (runner/corp) metagame, should prefer to be most devastating against the dominant (runner/corp) deck rather than weak ones who already need help
Let’s suppose the runner continues passes an unbroken Chum, you could use Batty to activate that sub again after the runner commits to continuing the run to encounter that second piece of ICE. Now that next ICE has +4 strength and will deal 6 net damage if you fail to break it all. Who needs NEXT Gold when you have Chum?
No one passes through an unbroken chum anymore… unless they absolutely can break it. That said, activating a chum people thought wouldn’t be active is kinda cool.
I think that shutdown PE wants a word about how it’s suddenly worth thinking about again.
You don’t need to play the psi game more than once against Batty he either works, or doesn’t, then slopes off.
I think in practise many low stakes psi games are just annoying. Having to faff around spending hidden credits often for something that isn’t important wouldn’t be fun.
Placing Batty in the right server is important. He isn’t tactics free. Also, if you’ve got Gift and you show him off, there’s some decisions to be made.
I still think he might be more acceptable if he just worked (no psi) and had an appropriate rez cost. Not necessarily better designed, but easier to accept by the player base. I don’t know what an appropriate rez cost would be.
I can envisage a situation where Batty and Next Gold become restricted. Though Gold might be bad enough to make that unnecessary.
I think criminal need some in faction recovery mechanisms. Some sort of recursion or defence from rig death. Faerie doesn’t solve all the problems any more.
I trust the Netrunner design team to eventually provide us a mechanism to one-shot win or mitigate (reducing Corp betting options) Psi games. I actually enjoy them and don’t throw a fit yet when I see Caprice, but it only seems fair to provide runners with a silver bullet. I mean, despite Psi being in only one faction - so is Meat Damage, the majority of Brain, and the majority of Net.
The fifth one is the one that really annoys me. Unavoidable trash is devastating against anyone without chips. Which really narrows the runner deck space.
Gang sign is still worse though. Worst designed card in netrunner.
I already have a Leela 3x Spoilers, 3x Gang Sign 2x HQI deck down the pipe. Fisk, Earthrise-Career-Fair, and Quality Times to power draw. And 1x Faust to break into crap.
Yep, all virtual! Gang Sign & Spoilers are 3 influence each, so it’d be rough but a very awesome build. Omnious archvirus spoiling Game of Thrones season 32 while throwing up graffiti in the Corps HQ offices.
In all seriousness the Leela deck I have ready is quite lean. 9x Draw, Career Fair to dump hand, Logos to hold 6, and econ w/ 2x Sneakdoor to use the HQIs. I’m super hyped to play it. Might even make an RNGesus effigy.
It makes NEXT Gold a solid include and makes NEXT ICE suite decks more playable again so I think that Batty has helped some more untraditional decks, not only the beast that RP is.
I think this the crux of the matter. While I dislike how in encourages the current “clone chip all day erry day” standard, he’s not that bad outside of Gold, which is only scary in HB, with some number of Ice rezzed.
It’s not necessarily good, just that it only dOes anything if the corp is flooded (got a bad draw). Plus there is no way to get around it, as the traditional protect hq doesn’t work, and the other option which is scorinh out aggressively doesn’t work either. So your only options are to hope for Jackson or ditching to archives and hoping your opponent doesn’t check.
Cards that are only good when your opponent is in a bad spot are extremely dangerous and have no upside from a design standpoint (best case scenario it’s useless, worst case there actually playable and make the game more snowbally due to bad luck in drawing).
