I like this idea of stealth in Nero. You could play Mongoose, too, to take pressure off the Cloaks on stacked sentry servers. Mongoose is still inefficient, but it saves you influence from Mimic and slots from Faerie, which are both important for stealth decks.
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Mongoose potential has a good niche alongside Switchblade, taking down low strength sentries saving SB for the big stuff.
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itâs just weird though. you donât see anarchs running double breakers in any category. shapers okay maybe cypher with zul/gordian but even thatâs rare.
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Well, more like you HAVE to have corroder, unless you can magically make Sherman work or something. I just feel criminals have to lose tempo getting past barriers of any kind, whereas the other factions can reasonably keep running on the same server more than once, even if they havenât been siphoned to death, or are scared of some crazy Criminal card. Code gates were supposed to be the thing Criminal was bad at, as they didnât get a decoder in the core set, at least thatâs how I feel.
But yeah, this isnât #sadsackcriminal so, as far as Nero goes, itâll be easier to run into ice with breakers, as there will be less dickery involved.
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If you are playing ken then RR over scavenge?
I believe the pie goes something like this:
Faction - good - bad - ugly
Shaper - codegate - barrier - sentry
Criminal - sentry - codegate - barrier
Anarch - barrier - sentry - codegate
The dogs are all tier 2 breakers (at least they would be if lady was lower strength).
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I agree thatâs the pie in theory as well. But as someone eloquently said in another thread â âWhizzard ate the whole pieâ â Anarchs (fixed + ds + ice carver + faust + âŚ) have the best answers to ice. The color pie hasnât been a practical thing in awhile.
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Iâm playing one of each currently. Theyâre different enough in function that they donât overlap really. RR is an econ card, scavenge is a server busting trick.
There is this card called Mimic, I hear itâs pretty good. Also this Yog.0 card that I never saw played for put on the MWL for some reasonâŚ
(Iâm just giving you a hard time, I see your point)
Yes: very, very often it does. A big part of âclassic netrunnerâ is making calculated bets on resource exchanges â in practical terms, figuring out whether or not the cost of rezzing ice (credits) is worth the consequence (allowing access). Part of the reason Data Raven hasnât seen a lot of play in the last few years (prior to the arrival of QPM/Sync) is that the corp had to make that investment while leaving the consequence entirely at the runnerâs discretion. Itâs also part of why Architect is much more popular than, say, Neural Katana and saw play in every faction prior to MWL: a runner can filter their hand down to junk they donât mind losing, but they have a much more difficult time controlling the combined consequences of recycling previously trashed assets, managing the top of R&D, AND accelerating the corpâs install clicks. (Yes, I recognize that Parasite resistance is a much bigger force here, but even in the absence of that Architect would be a much better ice.) Turning every sentry into the crappy part of Data Raven â the fact that you invest the cost first and then leave the consequence up to the runner â is big.
Neroâs ID ability strikes me as huge and Iâm honestly surprised some folks think itâs underwhelming. Paying 5 to rez an Ichi (or 8 to rez an Ichi 2.0) and not even eating clicks would likely to significantly impact my Foodcoats at any portion of the game â not just early aggression. His ability has dramatic impacts against the threat of early sentries used to stave off facechecking â Architect, Komainu, Cortex Lock â and this doesnât just mean when he actually runs into them. It also means every run where he has to consider whether or not they represent a valid threat: e.g. the first several turns of every match against Jinteki and HB (and to a lesser extent Weyland, vis a vis Caduceus, Errand Boy, etc.). His ability also has significant ramifications for any late game strategy that makes use of the bigger boys (Archer, Assassin, Ichi 2, etc.) â outside of Marcus Batty (or Whirlpool!?), you have zero chance of actually landing one of these, even though you will often still have to rez them. Faerie is still a great card for him, and it will go farther as he has a lot more discretion on when to make that exchange, instead of being bullied into it by an unexpected AP/Destroyer. Heâll also have a marked advantage in early game economic warfare (particularly if heâs packing Desperado, Suckers, etc. â anything that rewards running early and often), setting him up well for mid-game Siphons and late-game control (akin to old school Andyâs ability to leverage early game advantage to late game locks).
Having said all of that⌠Criminals already have a lot of IDs with great abilities. I donât think thatâs exactly what their card pool is lacking at the moment. Andy, Leela, and even poor, overlooked Gabe have incredibly powerful abilities. I think Neroâs ability is at least close to a similar caliber, if not on par with them, but that doesnât solve the rest of the problems criminals have been facing for the last year or so.
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I would like this post twice if I could. All great points.
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Wow, what a well articulated and cogent argument for Nero.
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I think the âonlyâ thing Nero has a problem with is opportunity cost- yes itâs really really great to force the Corp to waste money on useless rezzes, but would you rather be Gabe, Andy, Leela instead? I donât think we can really tell until we see what else Criminal has in store for Mumbad.
Indeed, much like lady breaks the pie because the faction has the tools to negate the drawback, likewise anarchs fixed strength breakers have datasucker in faction to mitigate theirs.
Personally I think most corp are ok with paying 5 for an ICE that ends the run, and costs upwards of four credits to break. In fact, I know Iâve looked at an Ichi in my hand, wishing it said âEnd the Runâ.
Thatâs ultimately why Nero is striking people as underwhelming. Itâs the same reason Iain has a hard time. When all your ability does is make it so itâs harder to lose the game, it doesnât help you win the game. Andy, Leela, Gabe, Kate, Noise, and Val all have proactive abilities that work towards winning them the game. (You can argue some others should also be here, but these are the standout examples.)
It IS very difficult to shred Neroâs rig, so the way to make him work is to leverage that into a way that actually wins him the game.
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To me, it sounds like the question is âIf I didnât have to worry about recursion/extra copies of my programs, where would I spend that influence?â I donât play criminal much (Iâm still rather new), but seeing how much people say criminal is weak due to needing to import both breakers and recursion, it seems like Nero can save influence on that front and spend it on neat toys other criminals canât afford.
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The thing is, Criminals today donât spend influance on recursion, they just say âscrew itâ and if they lose programs, they have been the ways to win. What they do spend influance on is R&D multi access. Nero doesnât solve that problem, and he is kind of solving a problem that doesnât really exist in this sense.
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All very excellent points, but compare rezzing a sentry against Nero to rezzing a barrier against Quetzal or having only 1 layer of ice against Kit. Both of those IDs force the Corp to play their ice in different ways in order to prevent cheap runs. Economically, most good Corp decks tend to have plenty money and are already pretty much eating âdeadâ sentry rezzes against Criminal with Faerie out anyway. Like I mentioned further up, Nero will get to save his Faeries which is fantastic, but that really seems to be the only benefit he provides, unless we see more good jack-out effects.
Like others have said as well, what reason to you have play Nero over Andy, Leela, or Gabe? One can obviously plug in a generic Criminal build into Nero and it will still be ok, because those shells are ok. But doesnât mean using Nero as the ID makes the deck work any better over using any one of the Big 3.
Nero still has the Criminal Code gate problem as well.
There are 13 or 14 Criminal cards in Mumbad, 9 of which have already been released or spoiled. That leaves 4 or 5 cards that could potentially synergize with Nero which is certainly possible
I donât think itâs particularly difficult to trash breakers against Nero, no more so than any other runner. When was the last time you had a program trashed as a result of a surprise sentry rez? The only thing that trashes breakers is Batty, and Nero doesnât affect that at all.
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The difference is that you CAN potentially trash breakers with a Rototurret or Archer rez on other runners.
You literally canât do that to Nero though. Batty and Keegan and Power Shutdown are your only options. (Or Grail, I suppose.)
Alternatively: If program trashing never hits programs, why are the program trashing ICE still used so much? Sure, theyâre taxing, but lots of ICE types are taxing.
(And the last time I had programs trashed was when the corp rezzed two Archers in a row on the same remote as the only ICE on that remote. From NBN. Damn you, @Calimsha, your methods are spreading.)