Astro is evil and must be banned,yet Parasite recursion made most low strength ice literally unplayable,Prepaid limited the design space on event econ,Clone Chip made destroyer ice a joke in the past,Lady made Eli 1.0 became the only barrier anyone would be playing,Yog laughs at any low strength code gate,all of these,are “part of the game”.Totally make sense.
Personally,maybe we should just sit around,tweak our deck,figure out what the meta would be like after NAPD MWL and Mumbad,rather than debating here…I won’t say I’m very happy about this change,but after a day I really think I can’t find more elegant way to do the nerf than this.Maybe we are stuck in the old meta too long to play around this new meta.
Also,Caprice have counter in Mumbad,see the spoiler.And if you constantly find your self cannot win a game without Clone Chip,maybe that’s why it’s too overpowered?
Yeah, it’s perfectly fine and balanced, and I’d argue creates interesting gameplay at high levels of play, but have you ever seen a new player playing against Valencia? It’s soul crushing.
You need upgrades (Ash/Caprice) or 3/2s to win against Blackmail (or some weird ICE rez strategy?), and that makes me somewhat uneasy. Not because competitive decks don’t have these, they most certainly do, but a newer player won’t, and any attempts to score any agenda that’s a 4/X or 5/X and so on will not result in anything remotely resembling good gameplay.
To be fair, a newish player is probably going to have a bad time playing against ANY of the tier 1 decks if they have experienced pilots. If there’s a lack of experience that dictates deckbuilding against blackmail, then there is the same lack of experience that dictates play against all sorts of decks. SEA-Scorch-Scorch, FA decks, and siphon spam (to name a few) are all soul crushing to new players, but that’s because the new player lacks the experience to play against those decks, not because the answers don’t exist.
I’m glad Minimum Punk Rock got pillow smothered. If you aren’t Siphoning/Papalipsing/Showing Off/Keyholing/Power Napping/other odd bullshite-ing with MaxX, you’re doing it wrong.
This is what I hate about blackmail, and it’s what I like about the card. I’m not a new player, but if I want to make a fun to play deck that doesn’t have ash and caprice in it, I’m going to have a bad time against Valencia simply because it’s a no-brainer that blackmail is going to be in the deck. I actually played against a Val once that didn’t even have blackmail, because the threat was so powerful, and the counter plays so obvious, that there was no point for his particular deck to be playing it. That’s how ridiculous and unfair the card is. However, this is an asymmetrical game, and no where in that description does it say the game needs to be fair, but it can still be balanced somewhat by the inclusion of at least one counter card to blackmail. Whether it’s Elizabeth Mills, Expose, Executive Boot Camp, Eliza’s Toybox, Ash, Caprice, or more never advance agendas including Accelerated Beta Test, a new player is inevitably going to have to learn to play against Valencia the hard way, either tech against her, or lose those games.
The most wanted list in general is going to be like this for new players, except they’ll learn how powerful those cards are, and won’t have to create a deck that can play against all of those cards all the time. More time can be spent learning proper counter play, or learning how to creatively deck build without being punished for having too janky of an idea, unless it’s total shit, then it’s a learning experience.
This is a living card game, no one ever said it was not going to change, and the changes just help us learn how to play it. I’ll constantly pull my hair in anger everytime I play against Valencia, but I’ll be scheming her demise shortly after, with the plan I create once the cards show me the path. Or I lose. It is just a game after all. But not an unreasonable one to win.
Exactly as cmcadvanced said above: use the counters and strategies available once they see what it does. The first time I got SEA-scorch-scorch’d I thought the whole game was broken. All I did was what I was supposed to do, make a run. Of course, we all now know that it can be built/played around, just like blackmail. I mean, you could just change “blackmail” in your reply to “account siphon” and the question and connotation will be the same. The inclusion of AS doesn’t make a tier 1 deck any more than the inclusion of blackmail, so perhaps I was overly emphasizing that point. However, what I was trying to get across is that there are many things that a new player will see and think “Holy crap, how the hell am I supposed to play against THAT?!” And any Tier 1 deck with a decent pilot fits that bill, though it is not restricted to such.
i don’t see blackmail as a problem right now, but it might be once corporate scandal comes out. I don’t think corporate scandal is a well designed card.
I tend to agree, although I love it in Val and this janktastic Leela I saw at my LGS running Frame Job + Fansite to turn it on. Hot damn that Leela deck is going to smoke some fools when Corporate Scandal comes out…
I’d be excited to see a good blackmail deck that wasn’t Val, I’d hate to get wrecked by an exile who thought corporate scandal would be a fun include. But then again, you’d have to be a crafty so and so to pull that off. Bring on the Jank. Remember kids, Jank sometimes works.
I have been switching through threads back and forth, could have sworn I was in Mumbad at the time. But may as well explain myself. The way the card is written, paying the trash cost of political operative makes it a cost to cause the effect of trashing a card.
As such, Whizzard credits are not being used to trash a card, they are being used to pay a cost that happens to also trash a card, which could also be any other effect for the purposes of the argument.
Therefore, I can’t wait to see political operative on this list once people abuse it with the whizz
I believe Political Operative can be used with Whizzard credits. I believe the write-up mentioned that use, specifically. The way you worded your question is confusing, though; and also, wrong thread.
I can’t believe people are complaining about Blackmail. It’s a card that a single ID in the entire game can actually use.
To be honest, this defense of new players is becoming rather ridiculous IMO. This community seems to be moving more and more towards coddling new players, and it’s not a healthy thing for the community. Blackmail is absolutely fine. Cards like Blackmail are what make ANR the great game it is: cards that force you to a) be aware of their existence and b) either prepare for them in deck-building or be prepared to adapt to them in game. ANR isn’t going to last if we whine and restrict every card that gives new players trouble. The thing about new players is that if they stick around, they become veterans, and they probably enjoy the situations presented by cards like Blackmail.
tl;dr Stop coddling the new players and give them some credit.
What about dirty laundry, it’s like easy mark in most decks, but sometimes it’s able to be used more efficiently. This is why ppvp got the hurt, though I am particularly sad that Ken Tenma decks will have to run public terminal. Bribery isn’t good enough without prepaid voicepad FFG, and even then it’s not good enough period. Give us more 2 cost run events for Tenma! Also I just realized, guess who’s stock just went up due to additional influence? Perhaps we’ll see more of Ken in the fight for clones in Mumbad? Damn it, this is still the wrong thread. I feel like an Alzheimer’s patient.
Hey, I like blackmail enough, it enables interesting runner decks. The fact that the decks don’t really run much is another debate, but let’s move on from that. I don’t think blackmail should be on the list, it does basically enforce the fact that you need to have ash or caprice in your deck though, or at least a way to pre rez your ice, which is sometimes useful for vamp and account siphon tactics, but seems pretty silly against any other runner. I think the argument against blackmail is that it restricts the types of viable competitive Corp decks, since if you run into a Val, chances are good you will be forced to wait until much later into the game to try and score, unless you risk losing your agendas to the 9 copies of blackmail that are potentially in every single Valencia deck. The runner has the advantage late game against most Corp decks, so therefore Valencia is still bullshit. Reasonable bullshit if you have the right cards to counter that particular line of strategy, but it is still an unreasonable proposition. Not every Valencia deck relies on blackmail, but you can’t be sure of that unless you’ve played the deck before.
Also, totally wrong thread, I could have bet the life of my close friends and family at the time that I was in the right thread. Good thing it’s not that crazy…
