without having tested this guy, I’m pretty sure he’ll be pretty reasonable, esp v the plethora of decks playing expensive sentries to tax the crap out of people otherwise a la ichi 1 and 2, assassin, komainu, and yeah, I can imagine throwing down a desperado and just going at it, forcing ice rezzes left and right, or getting accesses and money instead until they decide it’s time to waste their credits on stuff that won’t fire. Def keen to try him out
1 Like
it’s 16 inf I think?
Keeping the corp honest is good. They might play an ice they can’t afford to rez over r&d hoping that you’ll think it’s a cortex lock - this doesn’t scare Nero. But his real time to shine will be after faerie rotates out. If you have friends who are new or casual players that don’t own faeries, give them your spare neros and force them to play them in their crim decks so they can learn about how often they were wrong to be afraid of unrezzed ice.
I wonder if Nero could bring back Crypsis as sentry breaker
Thought Scavenge was 1 influence. Swap scavenge for anything else and just yell at batty players for playing a cheesy deck I guess.
This isn’t strictly a Nero Severn thought, but it’s easiest to pull off with him. If Mongoose+Mimic (or Mongoose+Switchblade, I guess) proves good enough to skip Faeries, that removes the biggest obstacle in playing Q-Coherence Mem Chips, and finally lets you experiment with building a high MU Criminal deck. Medium over R&D Interfaces is one immediate thought. Mopus is another.
Yeah, Keegan Land and Batty are cards, so maybe this is doomed to fail. But it could be an interesting direction to go for Crims.
1 Like
Dorm computer and council man are cards too
Mongoose + Mongoose could work
Been pondering on Nero for a while, and I’m wondering what you guys think…
Face checking early with Nero is easy since sentries are turned off. Probably 2/3rds of the remaining ice in the game (every barrier and half the code gates) have an ETR sub.
What does Nero look like with an EndlessHunger/E3+B&E+Zul? You don’t need to bother importing a fracter, and MU concerns are mitigated with cloud. You’ve got lots of installed cards around to trash. Reflection+SportsHoppers give you the link to get past traces (or draw). There’s some Tenma decks using this setup out there right now, isn’t there?
What are the popular ice out there hosing Apex currently? And can Nero avoid most of them?
Influence of:
2x Endless Hunger
1x Zul
2x Turning Wheel
2x Hunting Grounds
1x Levy (enough draw to justify this?)
2x Security Chip(?)
(I guess MU concerns are still there since you need to get those Mongoose down somewhere. Bleh… Dysons.)
The installs make this a lot slower than Faust (Autoscripter?), but you’re not losing cards out of hand or dealing with AI hate… Similar to B&E Geist, you’re still saving all your econ trashing assets.
Am I onto something here, or just reaching?..
The way I feel about Nero is the same way I felt about Jesminder. I’m going to play him, just cause he’s a new ID, and experimenting with new abilities are cool, but I have very low expectations for him. If you look at all the best ID’s they ethier help you win (ETF, Kate, MaxX) or help prevent your opponent from winning(RP, Whizzard, Noise). Nero does nethier of these things, he helps you not lose. You can make the argument he ethier makes the Corp waste money, but it’s not like you are bypassing the ice. As a Corp, I’m sometimes glad my Sentry’s say End the Run, because they can be more effective as the outermost ice on remotes.
tl;dr: I will play Neeo when he comes out, but his ability is lackluster in many ways.
I wouldn’t say that Nero’s ability is as narrow as ‘helping you not lose.’ I think if Nero is to see success, we must figure out how to leverage his ability to help us win. I personally will be trying him in an aggressive denial build first. Jinteki and HB in particular rely on (the threat of) sentries to stave off early aggression. CBI Raid could shine in Nero (I suspect 3c is too steep, though). A denial build spamming CBI in the mid-game with Crescentus/Shutdown abuse seems reasonable. Maybe even Lamprey! Why does Nero enable this more than other Criminals? Maybe he doesn’t; or maybe his ability to face check with impunity will allow him to more quickly assemble the breaker(s) he needs to make the most impactful runs. Can’t wait to find out! In any case he’s much less narrow than Jesminder and I don’t think it’s fair to consider him a reactive ID, despite how counter intuitive that seems
3 Likes
@moistloaf i like the idea of lamprey, nero give really good early pressure and with all the crim denial tools it can drag out the early game. Going to be testing this at some point.
Since I won my first store champ running the ever-reliable (for the last 9 months or so, anyway) orange cards, I have since been running a lot of blue trying to get them to work. I will say that one of their biggest problems is the riskiness of early central aggression in the current environment. This is precisely where blue used to shine, but in a post-Architect world, naked face checking can give up substantial tempo. If you are sitting on 2 Siphons, say, on turn 1 or 2, it used to be worth seriously considering blowing one of them just to force a rez - that is a much dicier proposition now. Nero answers a lot of those early aggression problems quite neatly, and potentially turns back on some very old school style criminal play (e.g. suddenly special order becomes a much more viable tutor again).
I said this way up thread, but I’ll say it again here: Nero’s ability should not be underestimated. It is a significant economic advantage. Consider that sentries are costed as if they have a significant effect on the runner’s resources, either through forcing a break or having the subs fire. Every sentry outside of Pup is wildly over costed as a straight ETR (compare Ichi vs. Eli, Assassin v. Firewall, etc.). Moreover, the mere threat of sentries imposes costs on the runner anytime there is a piece of unknown ice on the board (via requiring the pre-installation of an answer, like Faerie or SMC, or factoring in the risk of running).
Nero’s ability is probably close to on par with Andy/Gabe/Leela in terms of raw power. Unfortunately, of course, criminal has bigger problems at the moment than Nero will likely answer on his own - it’s not like those three IDs are dominating the meta, despite their very powerful abilities.
(Edited to fix assorted typos – that will teach me to use my mobile for anything longer than a sentence or so.)
9 Likes
Nero would have been way more exciting when Architect was 2-3x in every deck, because every single ice in the game could be a 4 to rez etr in the sense that it’s too scary to run a card that might be an Architect. But now with Architect at 0-1 in nonpurple decks, it’s correct play to just run unrezzed ICE as other crim IDs. The worst outcome is usually removing a Gutenberg tag. If they can rez any of the Destoyers and you’re worried about a destorying subroutine, well, that means you have a rig now, so why isn’t Faerie in it, right?
Nero is an age too late, sadly. Maybe Andy can turn 1 rebirth into him rather than Leela after she’s confirmed that her opponent’s ID is purple, though.
2 Likes
And parasite being on the MWL also hurts him, cause after you make someone flip up their komainu you’re no better off than before.
Btw I think this guy is slightly better at using Bank job than other criminals.
I mean those things hurt him, but architect is still a card, komainu is more popular now than it has been in a while, and assassin, ichi 1, ichi 2, vikram are all popular atm. So the ability isn’t bad, and I could see it as an early pressure type of runner, but yeah, as with many crim IDs, right now it’s more interesting to think about how good he will be as a rebirth target for Andy 
1 Like