Man, adding this to Haemorrhage - and Haemorrhage is maybe even playable with bad publicity enabling all the runs - would be really scary for the corp.
Hunter sure as hell loves it, though Same with Raven.
Edit: OH WAIT. I was thinking you were talking about Patch at first.
Yeah, still not sure if you are serious or not. LOL.
Think about it. Have you ever played a tagstorm NBN? If so, how many times have you lost after you successfully forced the runner to accept being tagged as a fact of life, which voided your best ICE?
With Sub Boost, you can have Hunters and Ravens, sitting there, luring people into going tagme with their porosity, and once they do (and have too many tags to conveniently shake), you can turn them into Bastions without costing you any money. Sure, deck slots are a consideration, but seeing how you actually need both tagging ICE and stopping ICE, having a card that turns one into the other isnât a bad thing. You can also salvage an out-of-position Chum with it (and in such decks, you usually want to run Chum, because itâs awesome with porous ICE).
Yes, itâs worse against ICE destruction. Thatâs about the only downside I see. Sure, itâs not for every deck, but itâs far from Salvage-level wallpaper.
Never played tagstorm NBN. Iâve pretty much disliked NBN since the Core Set.
Fair point though.
Totally. Valencia with Itinerent Protestors, Haemorrhage, Security Testing and Desperado/Doppelganger is the deck Iâve had in mind ever since I first heard about Valencia.
Iâd say that Patch might be decent as a one-of in decks that run Lotus Field, especially against Shaper. Just wait for them to commit their 4tman, then BAM. All of a sudden theyâre forced to get a Scavenge (and pay $6 into the bargain), or use a Femme (but youâre Weyland, surely you have other ice that needs Femmeing⌠right?).
Other applications:
Patching a Swordsman out of Mimic range. This might be a big deal if the Eater suite starts becoming popular.
A patched Grim suddenly becomes a Thing. Not many people are gonna want to tangle with a S7 Destroyer on R&D.
And for honorable mention: a Patched Janus 1.0 out of Stronger Together canât be Deus Xâed!
The thing I forgot to say earlier, was that I think the cutlery set could have an impact on the playability of the 1.0 bioroids and Viktor 2.0. Being able to click through once and trash them is a pretty big deal. On the plus side itâs the first real check on Eli that weâve seen, which is badly needed. On the down side I think weâll see HB slipping to the bottom of the corp league table (I think that would be the case anyway, but prehape more so).
Actually, Constellation Protocol is much better than I though and fairly competitive for spots. For whatever reason, I hadnât considered moving advancement counters from rezzed ice to unrezzed ice (only rez to rez or unrez to unrez). Sort of gets you, 3 credits a turn.
You have to have an Eli to bodyguard your Heimdalls. HB get influence free Architect, Eli, Biotic Labour. Theyâll be just fine.
Might as well do a preliminary review for myself as well.
Corp IDs
All three corps look pretty interesting - I donât think any of them is able to be better than BWBI or BS. Titan Transnational looks the closest, with HRI and Atlas becoming amazing. None seems horrible, either, though. Iâm going to be trying some meat damage decks for the first time in my Netrunner history.
Agendas
Firmware Updates is really unexciting - I had hoped thereâd be an ICE advancing agenda, but, being a 3/1, this really doesnât cut it. Glenn Station doesnât compete well with either Fracking or NADP, but might be included in a deck with Government Takeover, which is likewise horrible besides cutting down on agenda density. What Iâm really excited for is High-Risk Investment, which lets you win any trace on your turn (like SEA-source) and opens agenda-scoring windows because the runner tries to stay poor. Iâm also happy it basically does nothing against Nasir. This goes in basically every Weyland deck except for Gagarin or BWBI. It helps with flatlines and Program destruction, and is super good with Titan.
Assets
Constellation Protocol, as befits its name, works horribly with the constellation ICE and instead combos with the other Space ICE. If everything works out correctly, it can be 3 credits a turn, but it needs so much preparation that it really wonât be that good, I think. Space Camp is just bad - 1 advancement counter isnât enough punishment, especially when you could have no ICE to put the counters on. The Board is also bad, except maybe against Nasir - if you have a super-secure remote, score agendas in it so you can win, donât put this in. The moment you want to use your remote, you lose. Mark Yale looks fun in Titan, not sure how consistently good it is, but itâs probably useful.
Upgrades
Satellite Grid works with the Genesis Cycle ICE, maybe being enough to make tyrant or woodcutter playable. Parasite is still too big a deal for now, but if it declines in usage, maybe⌠The Twins is great against Faerie, almost for sure to be useful in The Foundry, very good in program trashing decks, but then again itâs competing for the non-ICE, non-money, non-agenda slots, which all have useful cards already in that archetype. Dedicated Technician Team would be good if it cost 0 and had a higher trash cost, but doesnât. Cyberdex Virus Suite is going into NEHFA immediately, and will probably keep it alive. It also stops runs on archives to gain data sucker counters.
ICE
Asteroid Belt, Nebula, and Wormhole are going into ice-advancing decks and I think will give them the economy to work. Fire Wall is basically Ice Wall v.2, and the rest are pretty meh. Checkpoint could be good, but itâs too reliant on the trace, and gives bad pub.
Operations
Accounting is one of the best currents printed, maybe even better than ELP, triple Traffic Accident is a way to get rid of plascrete counters in preparation for scorch (it also works around steelskin by doing less damage), and Sub Boost is awesome on Draco, and will probably go into Jinteki Code Gate decks. The operations are pretty good here.
Folks keep mentioning how few tokens Hivemind gets and it canât be increased and allâŚ
Progenitor + Virus Breeding Program. Boom, extra counters every turn for it.
Or, my personal favorite, Incubator. Make all your Parasites come into play at 5 Strengh (HeLLO Clone Chip), make your Medium run land at 6. Seems good to me.
I agree on this being the best expansion. Runners get most of what they need to catch up: the simple, earthy tones of better econ and card draw, and Anarchs are getting more tools to enable their slower, control/disruption gameplay. Weyland is getting the pieces to an advance-able glacier archetype and maybe a horizontal archetype, which are underwhelming but show potential.
With all the looming Anarch/virus madness, Cyberdex Suite may rise to near-plascrete status for the corp, and if it does, that means any dedicated virus deck will want Archives Interface to get rid of it.
ELP has buddies in the âvery efficient and disruptive currentâ category now.
Re: incoming bad pub combo.
Jinteki decks can do Checkpoint+Grim if theyâre really crazy with Restoring Face, the most efficient (but least reliable outside of HBâs weird option) form of BP removal.
Also PE decks running Clone Retirement might be slightly better off?
Reading these comments, Iâm surprised there isnât more Eddie love. Maybe because disruptive effects look more dangerous from the other side of the table and donât make the user feel powerful (Oh NO not Cerebral Static! etc. difficulty of evaluation). I donât think Eddieâs a sleeping giant per se, but his Legworks, for example (or multiaccess in general) could trash burst econ, Biotic, SEA Scorched pieces etc.
Twins is obvious in Foundry, but might be nice in CI, too, because itâs less expected and can make use of big ice duplicates. Patch is actually really nice as a one or two-of, I think.
Shellgame Jinteki can Mushin something, use last click to place Builder over it. Free advance to 5(!!!) if they run on it, can reposition ice easily afterwards.
Yeah, for all that Valencia and MaxX look to have some serious power behind them, of all the decks Iâve seen talked about around the place, itâs a Kim deck that looks to be most solid. Between his ability and Steelskin, operations economy and flatlines are more or less unconcerning.
Sadly that Mushin play doesnât work. Builder can only advance ICE.
Looking at this expansion I really really hope that we get more expansion than only 4. The IDs on this one are very spot on. None of them are being dismissed right away and they open up a lot of playstyles. Hopefully we get more big boxes for each faction, cause right now I think they are being very spot on with the design of IDs and I really like to see some more shaper and criminal ones
I donât think future big boxes will be structured like these ones, which were sorely needed to cement and round out factions (shaper, jinteki and anarch certainly, weyland a little less so). As sets rotate out, I think weâll get boxes that contain a sampling of the best cards from retired cycles, plus some new cards to keep things fresh. It makes sense for FFG: they save design effort by recycling things and they get to sell classic cards 3+ times over (one or more times in draft packs, once in data packs and once more in a revival big box if itâs a card that goes eternal).
Yeah. Either they keep rotating the faction pairings until theyâve done all 12, or they stop with the pure new content.
If theyâre not going forever on totally-fresh big boxes, I do hope itâs NBN vs. All for the next one. Get one new ID for each runner faction and some various useful splash cards while NBN gets a chance to expand its horizons somehow.
I suppose weâll just have to wait and see.
Well, thatâs a huge opportunity cost (Hivemind, Progenitus, Virus Breeding Ground) for something that ultimately does nothing on its own.
I would probably only play 1 virus support card in a deck. They each have their merits, and honestly I like Hivemind the least. Incubator is a good burst, but ultimately is a one-shot. Virus Breeding Ground is a steady stream, but a click for counter isnât super efficient. Progenitus helps memory issues and defends against a purge, but doesnât get you anything.
Hivemind. I donât know, itâs one âfreeâ counter. Datasucker and Imp donât care. Parasite almost didnât care. And Medium/Nerve Agent, imo like any of the above support cards better.
If Hivemind mindâs token couldnât be purged (say for example, it was considered to have a virus counter on it in addition to any other virus counters on it), then Iâd like it more. But as it stands I feel like itâs a card meant for a completely different set of viruses.