Destroyer ice is played because:
They’re sentries.
Sentry breakers all suck. (more taxing than an equivalent code gate/barrier)
You can catch sloppy players out with them.
If it takes two archers out of NBN to actually land a program trash, isn’t that a good indication of how hard it is to land one? That, however, doesn’t stop Ichi from being one of the most efficient taxing ice in the game.
The crucial difference is that Nero gets to decide whether it’s ETR or he clicks through it depending on what suits him. The more choices you put in the other player’s hands, the more power they have.
This x10 – this is precisely what I’m saying.
Right, but Nero does stop Ichi from being taxing at all, unless he wants to proceed through it. It’s not about Ichi (or Komainu or anything else) catching scrubs unaware. One of the advantages to sentries is that they generally tax the runner immediately: breaking eats up resources, not breaking leads to other kinds of taxes (straining recursion, drawing back up after damage, etc.). In fact, rather than focusing on catching players by surprise, note that the mere threat of these effects often taxes the runner (stopping to install a Faerie, paying 3 credits for Mimic, collecting sucker tokens, etc.) before the ice is even rezzed.
Most barriers, by contrast, only tax if the runner decides it is worth the cost of getting through (and actually has the resources to do so), and they’re costed accordingly. E.g. If Ichi does work as an ETR against Nero, that’s still lousy value compared to Eli. But – and, again, here’s the crux of the thing – even if Ichi does work as an ETR, it’s only because Nero wanted it that way.
The runner has to break them. Even if it breaks the runner economy. Criminals don’t have this problem, because they just Farie then jack out. So yay, you saved 3 card slots by playing Nero. Whooptie dooo.
Nero still runs Faerie I feel, it’s too good a card not to.
Remember even the threat of hitting something like an Ichi, Komainu, cortex lock or a gutenburg can stop a runner attacking early when they can’t afford to deal with the consequences, even if that is waiting to draw a Faerie. Nero isn’t susceptible to that. On top of all the stuff @strundle mentioned in his post!
EDIT: And then strundle edits his post to say what I just tried to say much more eloquently 
I think this is a more subtle advantage to Nero. He can afford to be even more aggressive than other Criminals without fear of nasty sentries. Early pressure can win games!
Actually, your statement suggests that Criminals (apart from Nero) do have this problem: that they have to find and install a Faerie beforehand is evidence that they are being taxed. (I would argue that criminals, despite the presence of Faerie, actually have to be much more worried about destroyers than the other factions who have more recursion and tend to use more flexible breaker suites, but this is beside the point.)
I don’t think most (good) Nero lists are going to save those deckslots at all – they’re just going to have a lot more discretion over when to use them (which means, for a good player, getting a lot more value out of them). Maybe there someone will come up with a decent Switchblade list or wacky B&E suite or something that skips Faerie, but otherwise it’s still much more efficient than the ‘standard’ sentry breakers in virtually every case. (I’ve a hunch that a “Good Stuff Nero” would settle on a pretty traditional Mimic/Faerie setup, but who knows at this point…)
I’m sneaky like that. 
Sorry, I was trying to avoid making multiple posts in a row, and hhooo’s post popped up just as I was hitting submit.
I’d be curious to see what you would go for in Nero knowing what we know of the cycle so far.
Honestly, I’m probably not the best person to ask since I haven’t put a lot of thought into criminal in quite a while (apart from making sure I know how to play against Leela, of course). But my first inclination would be to work with a shell something like this:
Doing What Criminals Do
Nero Severn: Information Broker (Democracy and Dogma)
Event (11)
3x Account Siphon (Core Set)
3x Career Fair (Breaker Bay)
2x Forged Activation Orders (Core Set)
3x Inside Job (Core Set)
Hardware (7)
3x Desperado (Core Set) [color=#4169E1]☆☆☆[/color]
2x HQ Interface (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x R&D Interface (Future Proof) [color=#32CD32]••••[/color]
Resource (14)
2x Bank Job (Core Set)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
3x Earthrise Hotel (The Source)
2x Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Political Operative (Democracy and Dogma)
2x Symmetrical Visage (The Valley)
Icebreaker (11)
1x Atman (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]•••[/color]
1x Breach (Honor and Profit)
2x Cerberus “Rex” H2 (All That Remains)
1x Corroder (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]••[/color]
3x Faerie (Future Proof)
1x Femme Fatale (Core Set)
1x Mimic (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]•[/color]
1x Passport (Honor and Profit)
Program (2)
2x Datasucker (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]••[/color]
12 influence spent (max 15-3☆=12)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Democracy and Dogma
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
Yeah, there’s a lot to like there. Obviously needs refining!
I’m tempted by Councilman too, that feels like it’s going to be clutch against Batty shenanigans especially in crim. I guess this feels like the decks that are good out of Leela, broadly good criminal stuff.
Shame to not use his link or his console, though I think it’s a red herring in this case.
So I threw together a quick Nero deck and gave it a couple of tests online. While the Jack Off version proved… interesting, the Good Stuff Crim version was quite a nice little deck.
Being able to run anywhere was a massive boon, I was entirely safe with a Corroder and a Gordion on the table (I was playing against Grail), and when the Corp finally rezzed a Grim to stop me accessing I was able to Shutdown. I could save the Faeries for when I needed a cheap access too.
As a side note, The Turning Wheel is a great card. I managed to get it early in all my test games and, while it’s pretty awkward to play with on Jinteki, I think that’s going to find its way into a lot of decks, especially Criminal decks and ESPECIALLY Nero decks.
Nero Severn: Information Broker (Democracy and Dogma)
12 influence spent (max 15-3☆=12)
47 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Liberated Mind
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
The irony is that the Nero console is going to be money for Geist, who often wants Link and Memory for cheaper than Dyson, and it’s the same price as the more narrow Forger.
Ah, I think Forger is 1 to Reflection’s 2 install. You’re right, though, 2 for a link and a mu is nice in a Geist or drip economy build!
I also think that’s a great deck for Sports Hopper. You only really care about getting to 2 link, the rest of the hoppers are card draw (or damage prevention!).
Hopper is probably the card for Geist Drip. I imagine Reflection will mostly be used in a dedicated jack out deck, like Andy Au Revoir.
If you’re running a few standard Breakers out of Geist, the extra Memory is useful though. You’d be surprised the amount of times you have a few Faeries on board with a Corroder/etc., the B&E breakers, and want to keep Crescentus around or drop a singleton Sneakdoor. It also opens up cards like Keyhole or Medium over RDI. 4 memory isn’t always enough even with the Cloud, and I can see myself switching Forger to Reflection in any non-Desperado Geist build at least.
Tried him on Jinteki.net. Feels good.
Good old genesis crim feelings :
You run feeling nothing bad can happen, like if you had DeusEx + Sharpshooter at all time.
Also Mongoose is really good with him. Want to stack sentries to stop it ? Go ahead !
I kept Faerie as an econ card, but I wonder if something else could fit instead ?
Glad to see someone else is having fun! I’ve tested more on Jinteki, I’m really having a good time with him.
Notable game against an Argus deck, the corp rezzed 2 Archers a total of 3 times and across the game I had to break either of them exactly once (with a Faerie, let me steal an agenda in the remote, and next turn I hit HQ and used Shutdown on it).
Those rezzes would have burned right through any Faerie protection, and would have been very difficult to protect myself from. I can stockpile the Faeries for the turns I actually need to access! One turn I hit a surprise archer rez on HQ and was worried as I couldn’t afford to break (and I have no recursion). I thought I had used Nero already that turn, but I was wrong! Could bounce off safely costing the corp 4 and an agenda just to keep me out.
Specific cards:
Turning Wheel is great (and I’ve even got a good fudge for using it on j.net). Lovely with Inside Job, and you should be running a lot with Nero anyway to build up counters.
Emergency Shutdown is boss, nothing more disheartening than sucking up the rez cost of a fat sentry which the runner bounces off to have it derezzed.
Faerie is clearly always a good card. Nero doesn’t use them less than other crims, just uses them differently; they give you cheap and immediate access rather than protecting you. They can sit in your grip, then you can install and rerun when the corp rezzes their Janus.
Desperado is clearly a great card, but I feel Nero relies on it less?
Crazy idea from Brainstorming, what about an Atsucker Nero? Neither card is in faction, but Desperado is only one influence and greatly complements the strategy.
For Criminals and Anarchs, using Atman as a primary sentry breaker is usually problematic because you need your sentry breaker before you encounter the sentry, and you don’t know what its strength will be. Nero gets to jack out, then install his Atman at whatever strength is appropriate.
Maybe an influence spread like
3 Desperado
3 Datasucker
1 Turning Wheel
2 RDI
1 Atman
1 Scavenge
I think he’s going to be fantastic. How many times do you probe an ICEd server just to drain corp credits? Or perhaps for secondary targets such as Iced Jacksons? Or Archives?
By turning expensive Sentries into ETRs and allowing you to save your Faeries to breach Archers for scoring runs or landing key Siphons, you get a huge amount of power: nearly no ICE can hurt you anymore in any meaningful way.
That’s a huge amount of power. It also affects Corp decisions: Why rez a Komainu if it’s just an ETR? They may well just let you get the access on HQ or R&D then, when they would have rezzed it previously to either tax you with damage or burn a Faerie.
IMO it’s easily better than Gabe’s ability, as now your early game aggression is nothing short of actually reckless.