I think there’s reason to play it over Plastcrete in Anarch as long as you know what you’re getting into. It’s a card that has use in every match-up, either as draw or damage protection, and it can be your meat damage protection when you really really need it, you just need to play differently. It’s definitely worse than Plastcrete, and in a Weyland heavy meta (which O&C might bring) you shouldn’t rely on it exclusively, but in the normal meta where Weyland isn’t omni-present I expect you’ll be able to get by. You trade your silver bullet in for a steel bullet. It’s way worse against Werewolves, but better in other situations.
We’ll see if I eat those words in said fiery, explosive death in the coming weeks. It’s definitely possible.
Frankly my greed is going to get the best of me and I’ll probably play IHW as draw at least once against the murderiest of decks. Keeping a 1c Diesel in hand is going to be torture.
Hitting HQ repeatedly is just as dangerous as a deep dig on R&D; it’s maybe more so against proficient players as that’s where they collect snares and fetals. If you get a good window where HQ has nothing dangerous in it and can repeatedly hit and the opponent has no gila hands scored then it’ll make you feel good I guess. Not sure it’s the panacea you’re claiming though.
Fetal is usually the thing you want to hit vs PE. There’s only 1 Philotic and TFP doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. As painful as it is, you want to be sniffing out those fetals.
The danger of a Medium dig is that you could see a bunch of new cards AT ONCE, potentially killing you or softening you up significantly. IHW should help a lot. You still probably don’t want to do it if you’re in a winning position, but it makes Parasite->Medium a lot safer of a hail mary play.
Medium lets you choose the number of cards you access. The correct way to handle the situation is to run, accumulating virus counters but only choosing to see a safe number of cards (usually 2 you haven’t seen yet, assuming 6 cards), then when you think you’ve got enough to win, go all-out. That way, you can survive even the statistically unlikely case of two 3-damage cards while usually staying far enough ahead of a flatline threat.
If they purge somewhere in between, no particularly huge deal - you were only accessing 2 cards most of the time anyway.
Snare and fetal are the only two really nasty things in hq against pe, and usually they get played out. Setting them low on credits removes snare from the equation, and fetal still gives you points. Hitting HQ is usually the best solution to the PE kill deck, it lets you disarm traps that they’ve drawn and there’s usually agendas in there anyway.
Having played a lamprey recursion deck for about two month, PE was a fairly free win.
from my limited experience if you’re attempting to kill via meat damage against someone who’s sole protection is IHW the most you have to fear is a tempo loss. It just becomes that much more important to overscore your atlas so you can recur what you lose.
IHW (which is a really lousy name) will not be enough IMO. however I don’t think you need plascrete per se’. It may be acceptable to fill those “plascrete slots” with some combination of utopia, imp, and/or wanton destruction.
what is nice about the plascrete option however is that once you have one or two down you are able to actually use your IHWs to draw instead of having them congesting your grip.
also as a guy who has played anarch a bit just want to back up peekay on the PE thing. It’s just about always appropriate to not care about their silly games and just pound RnD as hard as you can.
I love the name I’ve Had Worse! It means I can go “Come on ya pansy!” whenever it triggers off damage.
As for usefulness, I’d cut Plascrete for it in any Anarch deck that doesn’t go tag-me and has Imps. Downsides are the loss of the gripslot and the 80% survival rate if you’re holding just one in a 5-card grip.
Also, Utopia Shard! It’s like a double-layered random scorch defense of anarchy goodness. “I take damage? How about YOU take some damage?”
IHW will be fantastic against PE, I’d say better than recurring Deus even.
And I don’t think anyone will be able to justify running Plascrete either with it. Against meat damage decks, I can see 2 IHW accumulating in your hand by the time they threaten death, so having 4 cards in hand will be safe.
Also, if you build an Anarch deck, you should include either Wanton or Imp, if not both. Or maybe you’re just E. Kim. IHW is one of the most important upgrades Anarchs will get in this expansion.
