I feel like Merger is in there with an eye to the post rotation future, where all the 3/2s in the Genesis cycle have left us and Fast Advance strategies are starting to look a little sad. With Merger, you can still have 6 potential 2 point FA targets, it’s just that one of them sucks.
Even so, an NBN fast advance deck that’s looking to score 7 points before the runner’s even got their shoes on is maybe going to be less worried about giving up the odd chunkier score, especially in a world where 3/2 are less of a thing so runners maybe teching against FA less.
It’s obviously going to look pretty weak in the current card pool, but I think it’s probably more of a longterm tactical nerf to FA. Given FA has been a dominant strategy for years, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be unplayable just because they have to give up a few more agenda points to the runner.
I think that you are right about Merger looking much better post-rotation than it does in today’s card pool. Rotation is still a very long time away, but from my experience with NEH FA, a good runner is often on 6 points when the corp scores out, so giving away an extra point would decide many games against the current NEH builds.
But I think you are right, this is a card for post-rotation, and isn’t particularly relevant to the current card pool.
If HBFA is a thing again it makes a little more sense because they can protect their servers better but NEHFA’s biggest threat is a runner going hog on RnD with a Medium, and making it more likely they win that way seems like a bad idea.
In general its just a deck building choice. Most if not all NEH decks would rather spend their credits going horizontal instead of protecting their centrals. In FA decks they need the credits that would otherwise go to tollboths and other midrange ice to fund sansans, in shop they need them for the kill.
There are glacier and midrange strategies in NBN just almost exclusivly in other IDs, notably New Sol. There a you see a lot less porous ice, and a much less of a weakness to medium.
I would also say that so far the sky has consistently failed to fall over stuff like this. I’m not all that bothered, and there are enough new cards coming out to create interesting options.
expect a little more crisium (to prevent polop install) and a little more snatch and grab / resource hate. also nothing stops people playing multiple ash/caprice in the same server and then rezzing the other one.
im quite looking forward to the polop/Jackson yomi games
Yeah, but once upon a time, fast advance was way better than glacier. Then Clot came out, and glacier caught up a bit. Now if glacier gets a clot too, we’re back to fast advance being way better.
I imagine that Fast Advance gets worse the more prevalent shapers are though as they have the best tools for keeping fast advance down (SMC, Clone Chip, Sac Con, Artist Colony).
Anarchs are on top with some shaper around. If shaper econ gets a boost to be able to match the efficiency of Wyldcakes +Faust then I expect fast advance gets less prevalent
I was thinking more on the lines of a card that you can rez and trash to prevent an installed corp card from being trashed. If designed like this it would also work vs Faust Cutlery.
‘Cards in and protecting this server cannot be trashed while upgrade is rezzed’ type of deal?
Seems like that takes the game almost straight back to one super remote the runner can’t deal with once it’s setup and I imagine the developers are trying to move the game away from that form (at for least a little while) with Political Operative.
