Official Rules Question Thread

But I’m not searching for a card. I’m specifically searching for 0 cards. Paige says:

The first time you install a card each turn (including Paige Piper), you may search your stack for any number of copies of that card and add them to your heap. Shuffle your stack.

I choose 0 for the number. I search for 0, find 0, add all 0 of them to my heap, and then shuffle. What stops me?

This works for me (I’m already sold on the ruling), but the reason I was looking for a more general ruling is because the only official reference on the subject is under Trashing as a Cost. And Snatch and Grab isn’t really a cost, so I feel like it could be viewed as an offshoot.

As we both know, if rules aren’t derivable without ambiguity, it can lead to incorrect decisions made by judges at any level of play. If someone sees that the only reference to preventing costs preventing effects is for trash specifically in the FAQ, they may rule as such. I was hoping to find an example that rectifies that.

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I think so, based on the old Bank Job (‘any number includes 0’) ruling.

(On an editorial note, while this would be a cute combo, I don’t think it’s particularly good. My sense is that if you’ve included Frantic Coding in a deck, you should also want a bunch of stuff to end up in the heap (conspiracy breakers, Retrieval Run, etc.). A 2-card combo just to setup a sidegrade Special Order seems pretty slow.)

You might be right, but I’m also not certain. Turning Frantic into “Search the top 10 cards of your deck, install a program lowering the cost by (-3 to 2; pre-PPVP)” after installing a 0 cost resource is pretty nuts. 3x Paige, axing the other 2 when you put her down, and then just frantic + SoT to get a rig setup fast. Maybe even PPVP if you’re feeling spicy, and get cheap installs every turn you can Frantic.

I’m pretty sure Frantic itself is really bad, so if this can’t make it good, nothing will. Trashing 9 cards for a single install is just way too much collateral, even with heap breakers. You’re going to hit your influence unless it’s all programs (in which case you aren’t running a lot of good cards, like Temujin) It’s 4.5x as much collateral as MaxX, but with having to spend a click and a card, for the sake of getting to install the card clicklessly, and also potentially saving 2 (maybe costing more, depending on program cost).

But yeah, quality of the deck aside, it seems like something that should be doable.

There’s no chance this works like Foundry/Beta Test is there?

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how this works, which is why I want to know if Paige can trash 0.

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It’s bad the same way MaxX is. In my frantic deck, after a Levy I usually want to fire a frantic right away to turn on all of the recursion cards.

I dunno if I subscribe to MaxX being in the same boat as Frantic. MaxX trashes 66% of the cards she finds, and only 2 at a time. Frantic trashes 90%, and 9 at a time. Through draw sources, you can easily get sub-50% of your cards trashed with MaxX (you’re down to 40% already with a Wyldside). You won’t achieve those results with Frantic (inb4 Duggar’s).

MaxX has potential to be top tier, and has proven that. I don’t think the same results will be achieved with Frantic. Maybe not even with the proposed combo (combos are slow, and good corps are fast these days; though DDoS Hyperdriver might be a decent example showing combos can work). But I’m also just a rules lawyer, not a Nationals/World champ or otherwise elite player, so take that with an appropriate number of grains of salt.

You can search and shuffle with Paige, but if you search and there are copies, you have to trash at least one. You can’t “fail to find” in Netrunner.

I’m not failing to find. I’m successfully finding 0.

This isn’t like SMC/Artist/etc., in which you are searching for something (1+ cards). In that case you have to find something if able; I get that. But I’m searching for nothing (0 cards, which seems legal based on Paige’s wording); how can I be forced to find something when looking for nothing?

The FAQ says very clearly that if you can find a card you must find the card.

Search

If a player is searching for a card, he or she must find the card, if able. […]

This? This doesn’t disprove my point. If a player is searching for a card, they must find a card. As mentioned, I get that. But I’m not searching for a card.

If I use SMC to play a Cloak, I’m searching for a card, and the rule applies.
If I use Paige Piper to search for 0 of my Parasites, I’m not searching for a card.

Zero is an intangible amount, and any ruling regarding “If a/an X occurs then Y” doesn’t impose Y if X occurs 0 times.

Bringing that back, this ruling doesn’t say that you can’t search for nothing. It says that if you’re searching for something, you have to find it, if able.

I think the confusion here might stem from Paige Piper. If she said to search for all copies of the card or a copy of the card, I don’t there would be any question that you were right, jako. But she says “any number,” meaning that even if there are 2 parasites left in the deck, you can certainly search for and trash only one of them.

From the Bank Job ruling, we know that “any number” can also be 0. What @ironcache is suggesting is that “any number of copies,” as the entity searched for, can thus be set to 0, even if there are remaining copies in the deck.

I think what you’re saying is that you are searching for “copies of the card,” so by that entry in the FAQ, if you can find copies, you must do so. However, this seems, to me, a peculiar reading of Paige, as she clearly allows you to set the number you are searching for. I guess I’m not seeing why finding 1/5 copies of Spy Camera would satisfy the section of the FAQ you’re referencing, but finding 0/5 wouldn’t. You aren’t voluntarily failing a search that could have succeeded - you are searching for 0 to begin with.

(As another editorial: I think this is a pretty marginal concern from a power level perspective in this particular scenario. If you’re using Frantic successfully, you probably want the full discount, and you probably want lots of recursion in your deck so you don’t always have to wait to see Paige before firing it. And in almost every circumstance, you would want to trash any duplicate copies of any 5+ cost program in your deck. Having said that, I am legitimately interested in this from a rules perspective - can “any number of copies” on a search be set to 0, akin to other “any number” effects? The only other semi-relevant case I can think of is Localized Product Lines, but of course if you really wanted to just force a shuffle with that for some bizarre reason, you could always just name a card that wasn’t in the deck, rather than searching for 0 copies of something that was.)

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Ah fair enough. I suppose it is allowed then! Sorry for the stubbornness, I should have been reading more carefully in the first place.

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I think I conveyed my initial message poorly, which led to the confusion. I’m glad we see eye to eye on it.

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Hmm! Interesting. Nice find!

A minor point and definitely off-topic in a rules thread, but several people have had success with it: SimonMoon won a SC with Frantic Whizzard, Ve has found success as well, a Val deck came in 3rd, kiv played a bunch of Frantic Whizzard. That’s some really strong players that feel it’s worth playing, even without a weird rules interaction.

The card is good.

The decks that run it aren’t always as consistent as one may need to win a large tournament, but it enables some powerful strategies. Frantic synergizes well with a lot of Anarch cards that are no shy about putting cards in the heapand recurring them.

@ironcache is entitled to his opinion, but I – and as you pointed out some other much better players – disagree with his assessment.

I would be cautious about the use of smaller tournaments like SCs (and even most regionals) as a metric to determine what’s good (case and point). Going up into last year’s world’s, there was a fairly wide spread of “good” decks that were having success on NetrunnerDB (regionals and even nationals winning decks). And we know how world’s turned out.

But anyway, I don’t want to derail this thread too much. I acknowledge it’s possible I’m wrong about the card, but I don’t think this is the place for continued debate on it. And I’m not saying that to try and get the last word in and shutdown conversation; if you want to make points about it, I’ll read them, but I’m going to bow out on contributing further.

Two questions, one old, one newish

  1. Sports hopper – yesterday I made a misplay and didn’t pop my sports hopper until after a trace had started. Am I right that I cannot pop it during the trace?
    Is it possible to pop it in the payment window after the end of the runner turn and before the corp turn (during the window at the beginning of the corp turn?)

  2. Sensor Net Activation
    It seems to me that you should be able to use the exchange of information trick (assuming you’d landed tags) or forfeit the agenda between when you use the hosted counter and when the turn ends to keep the bioroid rezzed at the end of the turn, but someone was saying this isn’t true because Sensor Net works differently than Breaking News (“has a different trigger” were the words they used). But to me the cards read the same. Can you help me understand why Sensor Net doesn’t work the way I think it does?

Also, does Watchdog stack? If you have two, do you double the reduction?