Order and Chaos (Now FFG Confirmed w Spoilers)

[benjaminwald05]

I have my doubts about steelskin as a source of card draw. As a replacement for plascrete with an upside- sure. But as pure card draw, its significantly worse than diesel- as much worse as easy mark versus sure gamble.

If there were no other options, then I could see it being useful nonetheless, but between inject and earthrise hotel I suspect anarchs will have enough card draw if they want it, and both of those are much more efficient than steelskin. After all, how often do you run diesel and quality time and still want to devote more deck slots to card draw?

[Feliks]

I think it’s basically for the Anarch that doesn’t want to Inject. You play it as card draw when you don’t need the damage protection.

[Dragar]

@benjaminwald05

I have my doubts about steelskin as a source of card draw. As a replacement for plascrete with an upside- sure. But as pure card draw, its significantly worse than diesel- as much worse as easy mark versus sure gamble.

It’s way better than than Easy Mark vs Sure Gamble because a card is worth way more than a credit. Obviously it’s not Diesel. I’d probably happily run Inject and Steelskin in most Anarch decks.

[MasterAir]

Credits are much easier to come by than clicks. It’s not Diesel, but it’s fine as card draw and you may be able to engineer ways to play it by taking damage from ICE. Inject isn’t really card draw and Earthrise Hotel is no more efficient (4 credits -> 6 cards is equal in terms of click efficiency to 1 credit -> 3 cards). I think Steelskin is a big deal for Anarch decks - it means it takes you less time to see your stuff without spending your precious influence on Diesel, QT or Express Delivery. (It’s surely better than Express Delivery and I’ve played that a number of times in Whizzard)

Edit: Don’t get me wrong, I think Earthrise Hotel is great too.

[Ilza]

Steelskin makes it much easier playing against Jinteki in general since facechecking a Komainu, Tsurugi or the upcoming netdamagedealer that gives damage equal to unused MU is not nearly as problematic as before. Also you likely want to run more carddraw than Inject and Inject+Steelskin will likely be better than current alternatives (Wyldside, Duggars) for many decks.

Also with a likely increase in Weyland and therefor scorch, protection that doesn’t require installation and tempoloss seems pretty good. Against most meatdamage decks you wont run into more than double scorch and if you have a five-card hand with a Steelskin that is in 80% of the cases good enough protection.

[GreedyGuts]

It’s so weird planning a deck for this. I’m so used to needing to import things I’m no longer importing that I keep hitting my deck size without even having spent half my influence. Sooo straaaange.

[MasterAir]

@Ilza

if you have a five-card hand with a Steelskin that is in 80% of the cases good enough protection.

I’m interested to see how this resolves. If you take 4 damage with a 3 card hand that includes steelskin are you flatlined or not?

As I’ve read elsewhere

The Runner randomly trashes one card from
his grip for each point of meat damage done to him.

Suggests you do the damage one at a time, as does

When the Runner trashes multiple cards for damage, the cards
are placed in his heap in the order they were randomly trashed.

However the final sentence in the damage section seems pretty clear that you would be flatlined in that case

If the Runner takes more damage than the number of cards in
his grip, or if he has a maximum hand size of less than zero at
the end of his turn, then he is flatlined and the Corporation
wins the game.

[Ilza]

I assume that the ruling will be that you resolve all damage from a single source at the same time, but if it turns out that you resolve the damage one by one then Steelskin becomes even better.

[Basoon]

@benjaminwald05

I have my doubts about steelskin as a source of card draw. As a replacement for plascrete with an upside- sure. But as pure card draw, its significantly worse than diesel- as much worse as easy mark versus sure gamble.
If there were no other options, then I could see it being useful nonetheless, but between inject and earthrise hotel I suspect anarchs will have enough card draw if they want it, and both of those are much more efficient than steelskin. After all, how often do you run diesel and quality time and still want to devote more deck slots to card draw?

I would point out that the comparison between Sure Gamble and Easy Mark is not exactly accurate since they do entirely different things. The credit is a card is a click thing does not really work out over the course of a game because those are the very worst rates you will receive. I know that while some times I click for credits, it’s only in very specific circumstances. Most of the time I am gaining between 2-4 credits with a single click depending on what I’m doing. The point is that while SG is always better than EM given you have the 5 credit buy in, the 1 credit cost on Steel Skin will often be irrelevant on the turn you played it. The point is to turn 1 click into 3 cards. Yes Diesel is better at that, but the 1 credit downside is often going to be worth an extremely powerful effect that doubles as damage protection (this card murders PE). In my experience, decks like Noise Shop are often credit rich but options poor. These decks couldn’t give a care that their Diesel costs 1 credit. If the downside to a powerful card is that you have to pay one of a resource you already have in abundance, it’s not that big of a downside.

Basically, think of it as trading 1.5 or 1.33 or even 1.25 clicks for 3 clicks most of the time (in shop decks it’s probably even closer to 1 a lot of the time). That’s still a great deal on a card that also just single-handedly wrecks some archetypes and does significant work against others.

[Dragar]

Another point is that even if Steelskin costs one more than Diesel, this is influence free card draw. That’s still huge, even if other factions have superior alternatives.

[benjaminwald05]

Yes, good points all. I wasn’t trying to say there were no circumstances where it would make sense to run steelskin as card draw- there are situations where I’d want easy mark too. It’s just that with inject and earthrise, there are now better in faction options. I suppose there are decks that don’t want to build around inject’s disadvantage, though, and once we add in the bonus draw for damage I’m sure it will see play.

[xerxes]

The Cyberdex Trial Suite will go in most FA decks as the only good counter to Clot. Just advance it up to the scoring amount, and then spring it when they bring out Clot. You can score before they bring it back again, I think, too. It can even go in your scoring remote.

[bayushi_david]

Ok, so let’s be first up to put my head over the parapit and give a selection of completely ill-informed snap judgements about the set as a whole (runner and corp cards split to keep the post length down a bit).

Weyland Identities.

Having intially dismissed them as a little underwhelming, they are starting to grow on me. I think that Gagarin is an ID that has potential with the right support, but that support isn’t really there yet. Argus is an ID that can either be played fast and aggresive - pressuring the runner into a flatline through rapid scoring - or more attritional with Dedicate Response Team. But I think Titan is actually the best, turning un-advanced Weyland servers into genunine threats by threatening Atlas chains. That an the 17 influence.

Agendas.

High-risk investment looks pretty strong - especially out of Titan. Firmware Updates also has potential, giving you the ability to mess around with ICE types and strength mid-run. Is it better than the other 1 point options for Weyland? I think in some decks, yes it will be. The others don’t excite me. Government Takeover is massive variance that is more likely to lose you the game than win it. Glenn Station feels overcosted, both in terms of agenda points and clicks to use it.

Assets/Upgrades

Space Camp is fun and gives some R&D and HQ protection. I don’t think it is wonderful - spending the influence on Snare is probably going to be a better choice in the majority of decks. The Board looks very strong, but I’m not entirely convinced. Unlike say Director Haas, the runner has no incentive to go after it until the point it will win them the game. So it will sit there blocking up a scoring remote until then. And then there’s Imp. The Twins screams “The Foundary” but also programme destruction builds. It might find itself replacing Wisp in some of the the later. And Cyberdex Suite is something I think everyone will be seeing a lot of, especially out of Fast Advance when Clot hits - certianly an upgrade (ahem) on the trial version. The rest feel unspectacular. They have nice abilities, but are they worth the deck slot?

ICE.

The ICE looks a lot stronger, and boy did Weyland need a boost in this area. The Constellation ICE is a bit variable: Orion and Nebula are both pretty terrifying - providing taxing programme destruction without BP, Asteriod Belt feels a bit “so what” and Wormhole just looks weak. Checkpoint is very cheap for its strength, although the ability amounts to a conditional end the run (strongest out of Argus). Fire Wall is just straight up efficent. I think it will see a good amount of play. Builder is neat, it won’t feel like much the first time you hit it, but it will add up pretty quickly. Searchlight feels a little weak considering it is in Mimic range.

Operations.

Oh good grief. Accounting is mean. It makes board development for the runner very difficult indeed. It also makes recursion effects weaker and sets up potential damage kills. In short, I expect to see it out of pretty much every Weyland build. I’m not sure whether Trafic Accident will find a home anywhere. At the moment I don’t obviously see a deck that wouldn’t be better running Scorch and the two tag requirement makes it a poor choice for SEA-based decks. Sub Boost might rescure your stranded Chum or Inazuma but I think it and Patch just lack the power to justify a slot.

Overall - Stars of the show: Titan, The Twins, Cyberdex Suite, Nebula, Checkpoint, Accounting.

[Andremodt]

Why don’t you like Wormhole? I think its the strongest out of the three. Its had the higher strenght of the three and can do any sub. If they have a Plascrete, do Taurus. If you want to give them a tag whenever you want, do a Data Raven. If you want to thrash a program, do Lycan or even Nebula. Or even a simple end the run if you want to stop them.

[bayushi_david]

@Andremodt

Why don’t you like Wormhole? I think its the strongest out of the three. Its had the higher strenght of the three and can do any sub.

Because it’s useless early game. I’d rather use the “useless early game ICE” slots for Archer. I also don’t particularly like ICE that can be effectively be blanked by dealing with other ICE - giving the runner a “trash one, get one free” deal.

Too tired to do runner cards now. Will do them tomorrow…

[Matuszczak]

I also think it’s by far the best one of the three. It’s only bad if it is the only ice on the board, which shouldn’t happen to str 7, 9 cost ice. Usually u’ll have at least one etr on the board and possibly some cool effects like trash a program to choose from.

[bblum]

@benjaminwald05

As a replacement for plascrete with an upside- sure. But as pure card draw, its significantly worse than diesel- as much worse as easy mark versus sure gamble.

I realize I’m a little late to the party in replying to this post, but IMO steelskin is the best card in O&C and I feel the need to defend it.

By accepting that I’ll be $1 poorer each time I want to diesel, I get 2 or 3 extra deck slots that used to be plascretes that could now be daily casts or more multiaccess (depending whether I was worried about that $1 or not). Against NBN it’s bad diesel but you never get the dead plascrete draw; against weyland you click to draw normally and save the $3 that would otherwise install plascrete (not to mention the additional benefit vs jinteki),

In magic, each side of fire//ice is bad (costs 1 too much mana) but since it’s a split card it’s even good in eternal formats. In netrunner there isn’t card advantage like in magic, but getting free extra slots during deckbuilding is good just the same.

[xerxes]

Another Use for the Cyberdex Trial Version: put it in archives to prevent data sucker runs.

I’m very glad this card exists.

[PeekaySK]

@xerxes

Another Use for the Cyberdex Trial Version: put it in archives to prevent data sucker runs.

What makes me really happy though is that this will mostly shut down Andysucker bullshit - meanwhile, proper Anarchs will be unaffected thanks to Archives interface!

[Calimsha]

@PeekaySK

What makes me really happy though is that this will mostly shut down Andysucker bullshit - meanwhile, proper Anarchs will be unaffected thanks to Archives interface!

Katesucker you mean ? Because Andysucker already have Security Testing.