Discuss Alex’s latest article here:
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I thought this was great. Jackson really does have an insane amount of utility. It is amusing that Noise gets hit super hard right as he got the good 1 influence virus he always wanted.
while i agree jackson is awesome ive found archives is less important in sahasrara noise. i find myself running all the servers more and am less reliant on the glory run. honestly though i wish jackson was more a slap in the face to criminal rather than noise.
jackson is more notable to me as the first time i can say netrunner has power creep.
It only resembles power creep because Corps haven’t gotten any good cards before, and that’s why Runners win so much. If Jackson had been in Core and Account Siphon in Spin Cycle, what do you think you would be saying?
Great article Alex!
@Remorhaz: If you’re less reliant on the glory run, then the same deck out of Whizzard or Reina Roja should work just as well if not better?
I think this card is great and I think we’ll see him in most decks for the forseeable future. It’s a shame he does utterly counter an ID (even more annoying it’s the one I have the glossy 3D relief for), but I guess we’ll eventually reach a point where there are so many good cards competing for deck space that we won’t all be able to field 2 or 3 of him. We’re a long way off that state of affairs, but he’s one step in that direction.
This is the point I made about Custom Biotics, it didn’t look great at the time because there wasn’t much to go out of faction for. But as more cards like Jackson enter the environment, the more people are going to wish they had a few extra points of influence.
This article is incredibly awesome, and I especially enjoyed the Nietzsche reference
Thanks for sharing your insightful analysis Alex
@Remorhaz yeah, I agree, corps now just need an anti-criminal card. Poor Noise was still only second to Andy, and now Andy is in clear first. Maybe they should make like a 1-2 influence Jinteki asset that lets you trash it and react to an event being played to negate the event (as a preventative measure against Account Siphon/Emergency Shutdown and other event disruption). Invasion of Privacy is on the right track, but too much influence.
Pretty great article, as usual. This caliber of card is just what the doctor ordered for the corps. I got a few uses out of there that weren’t immediately apparent to me. I love the index stuff.
This is a great card no one can deny that but that article fails to realize that card utility dose NOT counter entire decks. The R&D shuffle removes him from the game, and you only get three and have to draw them.Noise will love long after this card is in circulation dose it affect him, sure but it doesn’t counter his entire archetype… not even close.
In fact your entire post is like this. You talk like it has these long lasting massive changes to how a deck will function but it doesn’t while a runner deck can easily do many of the “jedi powers” multiple times in a game, if your using the discard ability you can only counter 3… at best this slows down the runner.
Really good card, this is true and it is a good step in the right direction for corp, as in utility counter cards… but it is not as good as you make out, not even close. I understand your excitement, but you need to address cons as well as pros when you write something.
Really good card, this is true and it is a good step in the right direction for corp, as in utility counter cards… but it is not as good as you make out, not even close. I understand your excitement, but you need to address cons as well as pros when you write something.
The whole point is that he has massive utility, always does something good, and doesnt really have drawbacks. Whats the drawback? They ran R&D and trashed him for $3? Thye ran him in play and you got to choose to let them pay $3 to kill him, or shuffle things into your deck?
personally i just like the chaos noise’s ability causes and i like that precious ice that should be on HQ or a remote is diverted to archives. ive tried whizzard and ive found id rather just play criminal if i really want to siphon vamp the corp. im excited to try reina roja though.
the design of jackson is interesting in that to me its completely off the rails in comparison to other corp cards.
netrunner player base : “waaaaah noise.”
ffg design team : " here have jackson howard, whats that ? you cannot hard tutor silver bullets? oh ok we will make him 1 influence and have universal utility that invalidates anon tip and rework and as a side note also is silver bullet to noise…now will you shut up about noise?"
is that good design ? does it even address the root of the problem which is runner econ is better and they run powerful 1-ofs and tutor for them and corp is stuck praying they dont draw into a loss when they need answer?
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Great article. I think the only thing you perhaps missed is that he also weakens tag-me style criminal play, as Plascrete becomes weaker when the corp can recur their Scorched Earths. At the moment as soon as you have 2 Plascretes down you know you’re basically immune to flatlining from Scorched Earth. Now however, the Corp can double scorched you to clear a Plascrete, and then recur them and fetch with Altas to finish you off the following turn.
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It also might weaken criminals simply because he lets you pitch agendas and shuffle them, so that they arent under pressure anymore.
I played like 8 games with him today, and basically every turn I wanted to draw him really bad. Like, I spend the whole game going: OMG where is Jackson! And then I’d get him, draw some cards, throw away the agendas that were screwing me, force the runner to waste a click and shuffle them. He also saved me from multiple losses vs Noise, where he shuffled what wouldve been game winning agendas back in, and then I won the game later.
Genuine question: is Noise totally dead vs. Jackson? 3 copies means a maximum of 9 agendas recycled, but how often can the corp actually execute that play? Even with 3 copies in a corp deck you still have to draw and play him. The runner will be trashing him from R&D/HQ if he sees him (admittedly if you have a Jackson in play you can at least recycle a dead copy). But vs. Anarch it’s quite conceivable that he’ll see every copy before you do, so you may never get to use him.
Also, can all corps find the influence for 3 of him?
I find it quite funny that in the early days of Netrunner the wisdom was that the corp should almost never draw cards and I was dissed for using 2 x Anonymous Tip in the launch day tournament. Now people can’t draw them quickly enough!
the line of thinking with anon tip was not that you shouldnt draw but that drawing 3 cards in 1 click was dangerous because you couldnt control what you drew. if you needed one agenda you could suddenly find yourself with 2 or 3 and if you needed ice or econ you could find yourself with agendas.
if you click draw you have a chance to choose whether to draw again. the problem now with anon tip is jackson takes its deck slots 
i dont think noise is dead. i think noise is going to have to play a slightly different game where he actually has to steal agendas from the centrals and remotes like a normal person lol. in my testing with sahasrara noise HQ seems to be the weakest point. i like to show the medium, get the corp to commit the ice then go right into HQ with nerve agent. its seems to work especially when nerve agent isnt ticking down on the workshop to remind the corp that it exists
i think noise players will need to think outside the box a bit and that is good for the game even if i think jackson howard is stupid good and is completely imba in comparison to the rest of the corporate card pool.
I find it quite funny that in the early days of Netrunner the wisdom was that the corp should almost never draw cards and I was dissed for using 2 x Anonymous Tip in the launch day tournament. Now people can’t draw them quickly enough!
That idea was sortof-correct for Core Set, because you could win the game if you got to a gamestate where you had like two 8-cost ice on each server, and more stuff. You simply had to survive.
That hasnt been true for a long time though. Runner dominates lategame, and so the corp must achieve its plans.
The worst part about drawing was always drawing excess agendas when you already had some, and getting flooded and losing. The best part about drawing with Jackson is that this cant happen, he lets you discard the flood of agendas and shuffle them.
Genuine question: is Noise totally dead vs. Jackson?
In playing him several time, generally each Jackson was worth one agenda shuffle-in of a milled agenda. And then a couple other good cards like Ice, Hedge Fund, or SanSan.
Noise did score agendas from milling against me, in each of three games. It was generally 2-4 points a game from this. However, without Jackson it wouldve been 7 points in two games, and 5 in the other.
The net result was that I felt like I was losing about as many points to noise milling as I did back in core set. And like half as much as I was previously losing to a Noise with Wyldside and Sahasrara in play, milling me like crazy, because I managed to save about half of them.
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Is jedi power 10 official? Jackson being immune to desperado, bank job and dirty laundry sounds a little strange… And the situation when a run is neither successful nor unsuccessful seems bizzare.
So how does this work, the paid ability window for runs is during approach of first ice, so you still get this step even if there is no ice to approach?
There’s a paid ability window right before accessing.
4.2 The Runner decides whether to continue the run. …Either the Runner JACKS OUT: go to [6]
…OrtheRunner continuesthe run: go to [4.3].
4.3 Paid Ability Window
4.4 The run is considered to be SUCCESSFUL. (‘When successful’ conditionals meet their trigger conditions)
This is from the FAQ:
If there are no cards installed in or protecting a remote server,
then the server immediately ceases to exist. If a server ceases to
exist during a run, the run immediately ends. Unless the run has
passed step 4.4 of the timing structure of a run, it is not
considered to be successful or unsuccessful.
So at step 4.3, you may activate Jackson so that the server ceases to exist, and the run is neither successful nor unsuccessful.
Edit: if you’re curious, a lot of interesting info can be found in the updated FAQ.
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Very clear rulings, thanks for that