Power Shutdown experiences?

Recently I’ve been playing with Power Shutdown, and in my initial tests in Weyland and Jinteki (Personal Evolution) it’s seemed totally amazing, especially against Criminals-- it’s to the point where I’m now running 3 in my Jinteki deck. I’m interested to hear what others’ experiences have been, especially if you’ve been testing it in HB. My gut instinct is that it doesn’t fit well with NBN, but if you have other thoughts (or preferably experiences) I’d be happy to hear them.

I’d somewhat prefer to discuss “standard” uses of the card rather than combos, but if anyone’s found a way to fit combos into a deck that can also be a normal threat, that’d be awesome too!

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I haven’t played Netrunner in a few months, but have kept up looking at the new cards. I find this one pretty insane. Discarding 2 just to trash their Corroder, for example, really sets them back. Discarding 0 to trash their SMC, or 3 to trash their Atman. A lot of really awesome possibilities to set the runner back and give you more space to score some agendas.

Added to the fact that you can run it in some nasty combo decks, I’m really excited to put some decks together. I was actually leaning toward using it in NBN and HB, because they both have fast advance which could really take advantage of setting the runner back early on with Power Shutdown. Also seems good in these corp factions to take advantage of crazy combos with Accelerated Diagnostics/Jackson Howard and either SanSan City Grid/Shipment from SanSan or Biotic Labor.

Be aware though, that the runner chooses the target.

I was taking that into consideration and specifically thinking about early game situations, where the board is relatively empty and the runner is just getting their first breaker to deal with the initial ice you’ve laid down. Then you can breathe life back into that ice and extend your early game by shutting down their first icebreaker. Seems fairly common that among the first programs/hardware you’ll see hit the board in a game is either some icebreaker to respond to your early ice or a console. The only things I could see getting in the way of using Power Shutdown on the icebreaker you want is either Clone Chip, SMC, or a console like Desperado (which may not be bad things to trash). But I don’t think it will be uncommon to rely on this card to trash their first breaker that hits the table.

This is why I was a bit surprised that the op discusses the use of this card in Jinteki and Weyland, as my instinctive reaction is to take advantage of Power Shutdown in NBN and HBFA for extending their early game (which for NBN would mean using Power Shutdown on some icebreaker for a chance to score an Astroscript and for HB would mean also shutting down an icebreaker for a chance to also score an agenda behind a remote and save that Biotic Labor for later). I’m curious why the op thought Power Shutdown fit especially well with Jinteki/Weyland, and why their “gut instinct is that it doesn’t fit well with NBN”, so I was offering my counter thoughts (especially in NBN who doesn’t care to make some sacrifices to be able to keep tempo going in the early game).

Well for Jinteki it fits in well with work compression and forces the runner to become a bit more reckless. Net damage plus discarding typically trashes program duplicates, so trashing that Ninja is that much better.

Plus think about the synergy of that potential new Jinteki ID. Use Shutdown then Neural EMP to seriously sabotage the runner’s early game.

I haven’t found Power Shutdown that reliable in the early game. Having to mill cards is certainly a disadvantage, and one that you’d ideally like to have Archived Memories, Jackson Howard, etc. to mitigate. Trashing an early Faerie or SMC for free is certainly nice, and if the runner hasn’t scored much of anything risking two mills for a Corroder is great if you can get it-- but frequently I’ve found myself in situations where either:

a) The runner has random low-cost cards that mitigate Shutdown’s effectiveness (Akamatsu, Clone Chip/Faerie/SMC when I’d prefer to take a Corroder, various Virus or Caissa programs with low install costs)

b) The card I want to trash has too high an install cost for me to safely use Power Shutdown without Jackson, Archived Memories, etc. (Yog)

For this reason, I’ve been using Power Shutdown primarily to supplement other program trashing elements rather than in decks that go for fast advance.

On the other hand, my recent Jinteki: Personal Evolution deck uses program trashing ICE (Archer, Grim), net damage (various Jinteki things) and Power Shutdown to destroy a runner’s breaker suite. In that context, I’ve found Power Shutdown incredibly effective, especially against Criminals, who typically run limited recursion. For instance, in one game at a local tournament today, my Power Shutdowns took out two Datasuckers and net damage took out the third, making it impossible for my (Andromeda) opponent’s Yog.0 to break through Chum.

At this point “standard play” from NBN doesn’t really incorporate other program trash cards, so I find Power Shutdown suboptimal there-- bad mills also REALLY hurt NBN. It’s definitely conceivable that this will prove good there, but right now I’ve been liking it more as a component of a larger strategy.

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I have played with and against Power Shutdown in a dozen or so games. My impressions from my Weyland deck where I’m using it as a part of a greater “trash every program” strategy is that it’s decent without being spectacular. Often, it’s just what I need to create a scoring window.

Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the card because of all of this other combo business going on with it. I’ve played against at least 3 HB decks who have managed these Efficiency Committee/Power Shutdown/Biotic Labour/Accelerated Diagnostics/Shipment from Sansan combos that I’ve learned to hate. And no, it’s not because they’re effective combos and I’m a bad loser. It’s because they lack any sort of interactivity or counter. Once the corp player starts it up, the runner might as well go have a snack and maybe put on some tea for all they will be involved with the rest of the game.

It’s worse on OCTGN where you either need to ask the opponent to slow down so you can keep track of what it is they’re doing, or just let it all go down and assume they’re doing it right and wait for the “gg”.

Again - I’m all for strong combos and love watching clever players do interesting things with their cards. But not at the expense of the enjoyment of other players.

As an aside, just before Mala Tempora hit, I had faced a bunch of well designed, combo-heavy Cerebral Imaging decks who were banking on the lack of HQ dig in the general meta to pull off these wicked combos out of hand. It made C.I. viable and interesting. But now that AD/Power Shutdown is a thing, people have migrated back to Engineering the Future - at least in my limited experience.

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I’ve yet to see a reliable version of this combo, though I agree it can be unfun. The old Cerebral Imaging combo decks were similar IMO-- while annoying, they were not actually as competitive as you might think once you figure out what to do against them.

When you smash their early Corroder with Power Shutdown, and as a result your Ice Wall remains useful for a long time, thats pretty amazing.

I was trying Power Shutdown + Acceleraed Diagnostics decks, and found that I always wanted 3 Power Shutdown in the deck, because it was just so useful to be able to blow up parts of their rig early on.

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I moved 22 posts to a new topic: Power Shutdown Jinteki: No Programs For You

Wouldn’t parts of this thread be a good fit for the new “Deck Archetypes” sub-forum? In particular, the Shutdown Jinteki discussion is definitely interesting enough - either from this post onward, or alternatively, from Alex’s decklist onward.

Thoughts?

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