Seems a week earlier than previous packs.
I am not surprised by this. At our Vancouver regionals on June 18, it was announced a few days ago that Fear the Masses will be legal. Printed proxies will be legal if the store does not get their shipment in time, which leads me to believe that the release date is probably June 16 (if they keep in line with the rest of the Friday releases).
Negotiator was 5 rez with an ETR in playtesting 
3 Likes
And 23 Seconds is ‘On the Boat’ meaning no gap between cycles this time and no deluxe 
4 Likes
did it have 3 subs then? man, i’d totally play the hell out of that, who cares about Mimic at that point when it’s still a 3c tax (or 2c tax and 2c gain)
1 Like
Stop talking about the real Negotiator. It makes me sad every time. It would have been a bad-ass, faction-defining ICE, and playable to boot.
11 Likes
haha sorry. i had heard it was str 4 in testing and this is the first i’m hearing of it being even better
at least we’ll have Mausolus soon? (better late than never or something?)
1 Like
I think the play testers just really like mimic
2 Likes
Everyone really likes Mimic.
7 Likes
I don’t really like Mimic.
2 Likes
At first I liked the card but Info sifting is never better than Legwork.
It’s badly designed:
- cost more inf to splash
- cost more credits to play
- the corp can make 2 random group of cards, the runner would have to choose between 2 random cards or 3 random cards (-> aka a Legwork). Or 2 & 2, aka less than a legwork.
- In Fisk it may be 3 vs 3 random cards, like a legwork, for 1c more.
The only combo with Fisk I know is Fisk seminar + pre run + Info sifting = 5 vs 4 random card at once but that cost 2 cards, 3c, 3 click & 2 runs. Better play 2 Legworks and clic credit.
So, Legwork > Info sifting like 95% of the time.
It should have cost 2 inf like Legwork and 1c less than Legwork, unless there’s a HUGE combo with a non criminal ID I don’t know about. Like something in Anarch, I don’t know, that make the corp draw a lot.
It was supposed to be a sort of Criminal Indexing but gosh, QA again…
1 Like
Here’s what IS should have been:
Sifts Ungiven - 1
Criminal Event - Run
Make a run on HQ. If successful, instead of accessing cards, the corp chooses one card in HQ. You access all other cards in HQ.
Probably too strong at 1, but w/e, it’s after midnight here.
It does cost 1c less. I think you are correct that Legwork is straight-up better at the moment though.
2 Likes
I would have make it 0c, cost 2 inf, can play only after a HQ run in this turn and called it HQ Indexing 
Oh. 
Also, you don’t need a pre run with fisk to trigger his ability, it triggers the first time you make a run on a central server, which info sifting would in fact trigger. Then you know, it’s 2 clicks for 4 or 5 cards. I don’t think info sifting should be less influence, it seems more like a criminal thing, sitting at that weird 3 influence, where if it was better it would be splashed, but is more clearly a criminal thing. My question is if you guys had 3 agendas in hand, how would you sort them if you were hit with an info sifting? If you were the runner, how would you decide where the agendas were if you didn’t get any with an info sifting run? What would make the card better than legwork? What cards would the corp have to play to make legwork undesirable to play over this?
5 Likes
Cerebral Imaging
7 Likes
Or anything else that increases max hand size. Which is to say Research Station or Cybernetics Court. Hilariously TWIY* puts you at 6 maximum hand size, so even then you’re getting 4 accesses. They’d need to score a Remote Data Farm. That could happen, right? 
I think you look at the card from the wrong angle, it is about mind games, it is like a psi-game really. Sure, the math says you have 1/3 chance to pick the right number, but we all know there are more parameters than this. And it is the same thing with info sifting. If the corp has 2 agendas, which pile will it place them in? Both in one of the piles? One in each? Will the single agenda be put in the 3 card pile or the 2-card pile?
And with fisk investment seminar, you can give the corp a really shitty time choosing.
Not saying it is good, but it is interesting.
2 Likes
i was mostly joking about my reply, but i completely agree with you
so much of the core concept of Netrunner is about bluffing, mindgames, psychological manipulation, etc. that doesn’t exactly equate into the competitive scene as much because it’s really hard to quantify. look at things like Project Junebug, Thomas Haas, Toshiyuki Sakai, Plan B, etc.
Junebug is probably not terrible (i mean it did help with worlds 2012 iirc), but the others i would say most people would consider completely unplayable. because the runner has to ‘fall’ for your trap (among other problems)
but they fill that part of the design space where one player has to bluff against another player. any installed and advanced card could be an agenda or a trap. for the old NEH never advance decks, any installed card could be a Snare!, an Astro, or a SanSan City Grid
on the runner side: Push Your Luck, the upcoming Rigged Results, now Information Sifting all fit a similar design space
mathematically, Push Your Luck will average out over time at a net loss of credits. but you don’t just play it in a vacuum. you play it when you need more credits to get somewhere. a lot of analyses of the card say that you play this if you’re losing, and it’s a good way to surge up to scrape away from a losing scenario. that may or may not be true, but either way, you’re playing a mind game with your opponent where they ask if you’re going to bid all of your credits (knowing whether your total credit pool is odd or even), some, or maybe even almost all… what will the runner guess?
for Rigged Results, the corp has to ask: is the runner really going to risk spending 2c? they’ve already wasted a click to play the card, possibly another to draw it in the first place, but maybe they’re playing safe by only bidding 0 in case the corp guesses correctly. or are they hedging their bets and bidding 1?
a similar thing happens for every psi game. at base value of math and probability, it’s easy to qualify and say that there’s a 1/3 chance for the corp to lose and runner to win any given psi game. i won a regional tournament where one of the most important plays was a psi game against a Tennin Institute with a lot of money and a Caprice protecting what i could only assume was a Future Perfect (since i kept seeing it in HQ and not able to steal it due to lost psi games)
i was almost completely broke, but i had a Stimhack and was able to make it into the server. they didn’t bother rezzing much of their ice, knowing that i could just use my stimhack to get through it (and it wasn’t game point anyway), but it came down to me having most of my Stimhack credits in a psi game against Caprice. my first thought was ‘great, i can bid whatever, and it’s not like i’ll actually have to pay it,’ but then i came to the realisation that my opponent probably had the same thought. so with like 7 Stimhack credits to bid with, i bid 0. and won. trash the Caprice and scored the agenda, took the brain, and it was all worth it.
in that same tournament, i was playing a GRNDL that had a mountain of credits, a lot of bad publicity, but i had a Plascrete out, so i wasn’t as scared, but my had size was low, only at 2 cards.
he Fast Tracked for a Hades Shard and installed a card into his 3-ICE remote, and my plan was to run in, for him to rez everything, and jack out, just to try to drain money and not die in the process, knowing that he likely kept the Shard in HQ.
first he rezzes a Wendigo that i had just see on the top of R&D. i had installed my Gordian Blade just before the run, and lamented that it would have helped him to stop my Corroder from getting past the barriers protecting the remote. lots of sighing and frustration on his part led me to believe that it wasn’t a bluff at all, that he had just hoped to rush out a 3 point agenda, so i decided that when i had gotten to the end of the remote, i’d access: Snare! and remember that i only had 2 cards in hand
i’m not saying these cards are good (certainly i’m not saying they are competitive), but i am saying that they fit into a very much intended part of the gameplay/design space that includes bluffing and trying to get a read on your opponents. if you play Information Sifting (or Legwork or really any other run on HQ with accesses) and don’t score an agenda, how did the corp player react? smug? relieved? did they cringe when you first declared the run?
last story, but in another game (same tournament), i had a Fast Track, SanSan City Grid, and an Astro token, ready to score out my last agenda, runner and i are both on 6 points, and on the runner’s last turn, he ran HQ. i winced and acted relieved whenever he didn’t score an agenda. he Parasited everything over HQ and hit it hard with every click he had. never saw an agenda because there wasn’t one in fact, but i helped him believe that there was. meanwhile, there was an agenda in archives, but next turn i scored out and won, that time giving a genuine sigh of relief
reiterating my point: cards like this are great for the game. maybe not competitively unless the math checks out (ie: having a large enough pool of cards in HQ), but it’s a great opportunity for mind games, not only from the runner, but also the corp.
3 Likes