Porous Ice

What is your favorite ICE that doesn’t end the run and why. How does it further your strategy. For me, I really love to splash Komaino out of faction to punish face checking and trash key cards before the runner can use them. Hopefully that will create an early scoring window behind a small ETR ice.

If it’s not tiny taxing ice like Pup or Pop-up Window, then definitely Komainu. I have the devil’s own luck when it comes to hitting key cards with Komainu (last night my opponent face-checked one and lost two Mimics and a Parasite from his hand).

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pop-up and pup have a ETR subroutine;)

If playing weyland, I love shadow. Sure it’s expensive parasite fodder, but it has two reasonable subs and doesn’t cost any influence

Maybe I’m crazy, but I really like Hourglass. If you’re unprepared for it, whoops, there goes the rest of your turn! I love to throw it in front of a Heimdall 2.0 for brain damage fun. Either that or slap it down before a Tollbooth to drain the Runner’s code-gate breaking resources and then laugh as they bounce off the 'Booth.

Needless to say, I think that Heinlen Grid compliments it really well. Also, it helps vs. Rachel Beckman.

EDIT: Hadn’t thought about Komainu out-of-faction, really. I might have to try that!

Pup doesn’t ETR.

My answer for this is Pup. It’s so taxing for how cheap it is.

A close second (only because it’s more situational) is Swordsman. I’ve killed so many Darwins and Atmans. Sure, most people have the ability to recur their AI breaker, but it gives me tempo and that’s one less parasite that they’re able to recur.

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Pop-up only has an ETR if you’re Nasir without an Order of Sol. :laughing: Pup has no such thing.

Yeah, Hourglass is a great porous ice that is maybe a bit under appreciated. Komaino to me works better out of faction than in because people are reluctant to face check Jinteki ice without their killer installed.

Eli 1.0 … Sort of bending the rules here, but it’s the best piece of ICE in the game and it is notably porous.

Ichi 1.0 is great. At it’s worst it cost 3 to break and in the right deck, even the last sub can really matter. It also goes really well with the previously mentioned Eli 1.0, either to shore up the Eli, (Ichi on top of Eli) or to surprise the runner (Eli on top of Ichi). Basically, he’s relatively cheap, very taxing, has subs that you can’t ignore, and has fantastic synergy with the best ICE in the game. I like to put at least one in any deck that can afford the influence.

Honestly, Ichi is my runner up best non ETR ice. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Eli and Ichi are both excellent, though Eli is the only one I splash regularly. Komainu is great in-house but I have trouble wanting to splash it at 4 influence. To add to the tiny pieces of ice, I like Yagura in-house over R&D. The net damage can be a surprise to a runner who has their sentry breaker out, and the R&D sub halves their chance of getting an agenda off the top. If the runner wants to throw a parasite at it instead of my Komainus/Tsurugis, I’m more than happy.

I haven’t actually tried out Yagura but I have seen it played lots so that usually means it’s good. I’ll have to give it a try. A code gate that does net damage is pretty good imo.

Well, favorites have been covered. But I give an honorable mention to Janus, chum, and Howler.

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Splashing Komainu can be tough, and while its certainly not a great taxing piece, Neural Katana is still quite good. At 2 influence, and because most of the other factions don’t have many teeth in the first couple turns, 3 damage can be brutal to face check early, especially if you mulligan’d for that hand. Not as vicious of an alpha strike as Komainu, but, its harder to game around. I’m pretty sure I have had the fate of my games decided simply by losing my starting hand to first turn net damage, so if you can’t afford Komainu, NK is a completely valid alternative.

That’s a valid point and similarly to NK, Tsurugi is also only two influence and is significantly more taxing.