I did think, like Leela, Nero’s ability is one that needs to be experienced on the table too see how it is. I was unsure about her on paper, then loved her when I finally played! That said… Leela’s ability will fire in a vast majority of games. Unless the corp manages to rez everything, or they kill you in the first few turns, someone will be stealing/scoring agendas.
Nero has one of those abilities which may never fire, but may affect both the corp’s and the runner’s behaviour to give you an advantage. More of a Quetzal than a Kit?
I feel Nero wants to be running very aggressively from the first turn. As such, you want maybe a Gabe-style deck that can now get going without the need for Fairies/Knight/whatever. Either that, or they go full niche with Reflection (his console), Au Revoir, and The Turning Wheel (which will get tokens on a run where you jack out).
With Reflection, Zu.13, and Sunny’s good cloudbreakers (i.e. not Striker), Nero has the ability to support the Au Revoir engine without the memory/cost issue that’s plagued playing it in criminal in the past. The cloud breakers being expensive to use doesn’t matter so much when you can click for 3 credits.
Plus if you’re hyper-charging Turning Wheel, you need fewer successful runs. Hopefully some more stuff that just procs off a ‘run’ will come out (I’m sure I’ve seen some in the spoilers, but I can’t remember which ones… Run Amok maybe?). That said… Between Sunny Breakers, zu.13 and the Turning Wheel, plus SMC or similar to find your Au Revoirs, we’re looking pretty heavy on inf? That’s probably 10+ right there.
It is a tactic at odds with a lot of other crim (or neutral) cards like Desperado, Bank Job, John Masanori, Data Sucker… Interesting to see if it sticks.
That’s always been an issue for crim, though, you could face check with a Faerie and still hit a Galahad/Merlin with net damage subs. I don’t think Nero suffers MORE than other crims, and we’re maybe just a bit lucky that Grail really isn’t played too much!
A criminal spending 10 inf on breakers and multi access sounds pretty run of the mill to me
1x Shrike, Zu, and Sherman = 6 inf
2x Wheel = 2 inf (since you’re probably playing express delivery/draw to dig)
2x SMC = 6 inf
Spend the last inf on some meta thing like Sac Construct/Film Critic/Feedback Filter
Turning Wheel really helps as it can probably largely take care of centrals multiaccess by itself, taking over from multiple RDIs. Mr Li? That said, lack of breaker back-ups seems scary… Maybe some spikes alongside faeries/mongeese, rex and femmes?
Maybe we need to start up a Nero thread with a test deck list It’s pack 3 he’s coming in, right? Everyone is going to be all over PoOp and Councilman at that point!
Is anyone else thinking of running early bird with him? Getting your au revoir credits, wheel counter and hq reveal then getting your click back seems strong.
Probably too many moving parts in that engine to start with and it’ll probably end up cut but thinking it might be worth trying.
This isn’t necessarily true. Turning Wheel will still help on normal successful runs where you don’t steal and agenda as well as Security Testing runs, possibly combined with Sneakdoor.
Well I mean technically his statement is correct the way it’s correct for any multiaccess card right? If you use RDI, you need fewer successful runs to win. If you use HQI, you need fewer successful runs to win. If you use Maker’s eye, you need fewer total succesful runs… to get your average 18 random access… and probably win.
Am I the only one that thinks Au Revoir won’t really be any better in Nero then it would be with any other Criminal ID? To really leverage it with his ability, the Corp has to have a rez’d Sentry as the outermost Ice in a server, which just seems too conditional. And if you’re gonna run Snitch with it, then why not just use Andy so you can find the combo pieces faster?
To me, the point of his ability is that you can more or less run with impunity from the very first turn, Grail Ice aside. Being able to defang Sentries on facecheck is pretty damn strong in my book. You can pressure NEH from the get-go without fear of facechecking an Architect. You can facecheck against Jinteki without a Mimic installed. This ID is all about pressuring the Corp as early as possible. It forces the Corp to decide if they want to spend the credits to rez a Sentry that they know won’t punish you, or just let you in.
he doesn’t need some clunky AI to start running straight away.
Slight issue is that there’s a card that already does that for crim for 0 cost of which there’s 3 in every crim deck. So the question could be expanded to: “is that actually better than Andy with 3x faerie in her deck”
He can get away without spending influence on Mimic while Andy probably can’t. Using Faeries when you need them for an access rather than when corp dictates on probing runs is certainly good value. MWL list is defiantly a nerf to him though because the best reason to run him is to stop Architect from ever firing.
Yeah, I didn’t phrase that very well I’m trying to get at the fact you can build up a load of tokens of Turning Wheel, then take a large burst access. To see ten cards in RnD you need to run successfully ten times (or ten - the number of RDIs you have installed), and that needs to be over ten turns. If you’re using just runs to charge up a Wheel you can be gaining money and rig build, then fire them all at once. One ‘successful’ run needed, but then 20 clicks to build up the counters.
You are possibly right - the big enabler of a Criminal Au Revoir deck in my opinion is Reflection (cheap mem and a jack out trigger!) and the permanent Cloudbreakers (giving you the memory to build AU/Snitch in criminal without dicking about).
It may very well be that said module works better in another 1-link criminal - Andy, Geist, and Iain all have positives (though Iain lacks influence for program tutoring)
Yeah, Nero only gives you one Au Revoir run per turn, so you still need Snitch. It’s not bad (because Nero let’s you get something out of Au Revoir even if you don’t have Snitch yet), but he’s not the only candidate.
Andy should be the top candidate to set up a combo.
It’s pack 3 he’s coming in, right? Everyone is going to be all over PoOp and Councilman at that point!