Mediohxcore’s Upstalk Set Review

Originally published at: Mediohxcore’s Upstalk Set Review - StimHack

Discuss the latest StimHack article here.

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I’ve been trying midway station in CI to pretty good effect, but I agree it’s pretty bad in faction (unless you decide it’s time to bust out the muckrakers for some reason)

There are only three breakers in the game that will have an easy time with this: Atman, Knight, and Torch.

Cyber-Cypher. :smile:

Other than that, still reading, interesting analysis so far!

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The counter from Femme Fatale works quite well, too. :smiley:

The big question for me is: Will the meta change in a way to favor different Code Gates just because of the existence of Lotus Field? For example Datapike and Enigma as lower strength code gates could gain a lot of popularity because Yog might not be played that often anymore and the Atman at strength 4 won’t help.

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I’d kind of been pondering this as well. I don’t really have the influence to play Lotus Fields in my current HB deck, but I wondered if it was worth looking at the other 3-or-less strength code gates that aren’t named Quandary to see if they would be worth using if Yog gets scared out of the metagame. Enigma/Datapike probably have the most to gain, and maybe Viktor 1.0 could show up again without being so sad.

from what i’ve seen, the most common answer to lotus field is “run yog with an AI for lotus”

I think you’re selling The Root short. It is an Adonis Campaign that doesn’t run out, but also doesn’t let you bank the credits. It costs 3 to rez rather than 1, but if you can keep it alive you’re laughing. I’m certainly going to give it a go once I’ve got my mits on the cards.

Mutate is the card I’ll try hardest to make work that isn’t good enough. It’ll sometimes win games, so that’s fun.

I am intrigued by Nasir. My experience trying to get Exile to work is (1) I’m not a natural shaper player and (2) he’s very hard to make in a way that isn’t just slightly worse than Kate. Nasir’s ability is bonkers enough that I want to experience it first hand. I like IDs with bizarre abilities.

I think you’re right that Lotus Field changes everything.

Are we certain that Midway Station Grid actually triggers twice on a 2-sub piece of ICE? It does say “…breaks at least one subroutine on a piece of ICE”, which would seem to indicate that if (for instance) you pay 2 to pump a Femme to 3, then pay 2 to break Caduceus completely, you only get charged one extra credit, not two.

(in which case, it would mean that Midway is good with multiple cheap pieces and not with multi-sub pieces)

Lotus Field is indeed amazing. For crims, Knight counters it very well, but if they replace it with a new one, you’re talking Femme or nothing. I’m currently trying Atman in Andromeda and it works quite well. Definitely not looking forward to Lag Time though, what a nightmare that’s going to be.

My reading of Midway is that for each paid ability that breaks subroutines, the credit cost is increased by 1. So most icebreakers it’s increased by 1 cred per sub. But in the case of Morning Star, it costs 2 to break any number of subs. Force of Nature/The RAM cost 3 creds to break 2 subs etc. Is that how everyone else reads it?

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That can take a lot of MU.

each instance of using an icebreaker to break a routine is separate, so you’d have to use femme twice to break both caduceus’s subroutines, which triggers midway twice

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Lag Time will be Anarch’s best hope - will bring Lotus up to D4V1D range :smile:.

Love the review which I think benefited from everything having been on OCTGN for a few weeks beforehand. My only disagreement was on NEXT Silver. In theory I love it. In practice you need three NEXT ice before it taxes Corroder more than Wall of Static and Static doesn’t fall over to parasite nearly as easily.

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I’m really wondering if some of the people initially rating cards actually plays anarch. Cyber threat is an amazing card and it has done great work for me in my reina deck. This faction has the easiest time getting multi access and because of that this card does what it is designed to do. I normally run without breakers for the first several runs and when they play ice I want to know if I will need a breaker because it could be a pop up window. This card either gives me info (as well as makes them spend money) or a free run. Sure the corp gets to choose which one but in the end I don’t usually care which card they pick. Also want to raise again with asset Econ becoming so prominent again how powerful queens gambit is starting to be.

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I tested the NEXT ice package a bit (3 bronze, 3 silver, 1 mother), you need to many of those out before they are better than their counterparts, and when finally they get better (about halfway through your deck), a simple parasite sets them back again. We will need at least NEXT gold to make it work.

The problem with Cyber Threat (and most Anarch things, it feels like), is that it’s a punishment card. Unless you’ve set up a situation very carefully (Reina and possibly Rook and/or Xanadu, say) then the Corp can choose what hurts it least. If I could choose to run after they rezzed a Quandary with my Yog in play, without letting them rez one of the other Ice in the server, I’d love it.

Overall, this was a really good Set Review, I think, mediohxcore!

You mentioned not seeing how the NBN Scorch worked, but mostly it works to slow the runner down and let them stumble into losing. They have to take the time to install a Plascrete or two, letting the AstroTrain get rolling – and it’s easy to set them up to lose on Midseasons with an NAPD Contract. It might lose out on other cards it wants, but the ability to pick up incidental wins off of the Scorch (and/or Fast Track/Psychographics(/Beale) out once they’re all tagged up anyway) helps the deck pretty substantially.

Taurus takes out other good ice, most likely, but provides the chance to pay 6 to kill all the dang Plascretes, which is incredibly useful. It’s much better for these purposes than Flare, I’d say, even if it’s not doing meat damage itself, because the 'Crete can be killed even if I lose the trace, so long as they can’t break the subroutine entirely. A lot of people don’t bother clearing the tags once they have 'Crete out, (to be fair, doing so can be a major slowdown,) so Taurus opens up a lot of potential to surprise and ruin their day.

All that said, as much as I like Taurus I’d never run more than one (or maaaybe two, in-faction). You want to see one of them, seeing two of them is going to be far worse than seeing a second Grim.

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Really? Next silver is an ice wall/wraparound equivalent. Next bronze is very similar to quandary. They’re fine early game ICE. If enough survive, they get ugly. Sure, parasite is good, but like @mediohxcore said, there’s only one ICE that doesn’t mind parasite (he actually missed Himitsu-Bako that doesn’t really mind parasite either).

One of the Next ICE deck’s worst match ups is heavy parasite recursion. Probably quite good vs Siphon/Datasucker criminal though.

[quote=“PeekaySK, post:8, topic:1632, full:true”]
Are we certain that Midway Station Grid actually triggers twice on a 2-sub piece of ICE? It does say “…breaks at least one subroutine on a piece of ICE”, which would seem to indicate that if (for instance) you pay 2 to pump a Femme to 3, then pay 2 to break Caduceus completely, you only get charged one extra credit, not two.[/quote]

Right, except you don’t pay 2 to break Caduceus. I mean, yeah, we all think of it that way, but mechanically – you pay 1 to break a subroutine, then you pay 1 to break the other subroutine. Two separate paid ability activations, two triggers for Midway.

The “at least” is basically there to cover multi-break cards like Morning Star. Morning Star breaks all the subroutines on a barrier for 1c, then Midway Station Grid only makes it pay an additional 1c because you only activated the paid ability once.

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Regarding you comment of anarch cards It all depends if you like the risk vs reward play style. A lot of people are not which is why they play criminal.

Regarding cyber threat yeah the corp can choose which hurts the least, (they always will). If that is the case then expect they will do that and plan around it. I rarely play cyber threat on a remote unless they are virtually broke and rezing ice is less likely (depending on the deck build there are cards that let you advance things for free). Most corp does not play agendas in remotes anyway.

This card lets you have a much stronger early game (tapers off in late game). It lets you have either EASY accesses to centrals or makes them spend money they don’t want. Seems like the perfect attack card to me even if they get to choose.

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Overall a good review, I like it. Of course, this is because it mostly validated my own opinions. :laughing:

I’ve been trying Nasir decks, and while the Persohal Workshop “build a rig on the corporation’s dime” thing is fun, there are several big downsides to him that I’ve experienced (your mileage may vary):

  • You basically don’t get to win a trace, ever. You could stack link but that takes away from other valuable deckspace, and the biggest monetary benefit of using link - Underworld Contacts - falls flat as soon as you hit a piece of unrezzed ice.
  • NAPD is largely un-stealable unless you’re getting into a server for super-cheap already.
  • Trashing cards is also difficult, outside of splashing Scrubber or installing Paricia (and the latter doesn’t stop SanSan City Grid, probably the biggest offender in terms of cost to trash).

One of the best ways to stop a Shaper is to waste their time and resources on runs that don’t score, and Nasir just seems even more vulnerable to this than the others. On the other hand, playing against Weyland with him is a goldmine. At least until they hit you with a SEA Source you can’t match, then it’s good game.