I think my favorite thing about this ID is that it can reliably play positional ice.
My favorite theoretical play is to have a Komainu in hand and install an Inazuma. They run the Ina server, you MTI Komainu into it. They come back with a Killer, and you rez Inazuma. MaxX would be proud of the rudeness displayed there. (Or any other mean non-code gate ice instead of Komainu. Anansi and Chiyashi work well enough for this.)
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Yeah! I was thinking the stock on Mind Games goes up in this ID for the same reason… they really have to break it or else they are letting you Caprice them.
May not be enough to justify Mind Games making many lists, but I am kinda endeared to that ice.
Mind Game is a great piece of ice. It costs you zero to rez, Black Orchestra breaks it for the same as Enigma, and nobody with a decoder ever lets it fire (possibly to avoid reading the entire card).
Favourable numbers.
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too long;didn’t resolve
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The news posts are sadly not the best source for rulings. It’s pretty common for cards to be misinterpreted in them. I can’t find it now but I remember one post that implied you had to rez Project Junebug in order to trigger the net damage, for instance. I would not trust FFG’s PR team to understand Netrunner nuances.
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I’m not sure I understand how this is any more brutal than simply installing Komainu on an open server (since we’re assuming a killer isn’t installed). That way, if they had a killer in hand, it’s now in the heap.
You could then install Inazuma on top of it if you really wanted to secure the loss of the hand (but then it becomes a dead combo if they run with no cards in hand). I’d gladly spend a credit to have a killer in the heap instead of on the board.
Then again, who isn’t going to install a killer before running any Jinteki server with this new ID?
All that said, I do think your overall point - that this makes positional ice much less cumbersome to get into… erm… position - is a good one and I’d love to see some of the more esoteric plays this ID can pull off.
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The difference is that you always have the I’ve where you need it. I + Ice something + Cash Op means your centrals are open. Now you can Hedge Fund, Rashida, play something else, and you’re still covered. You can I+Ice your remote, or Ice a central, and you’re still able to protect everything.
After playing against this on Jinteki, I have a feeling this is an absurdly broken ID.
Stack your deck full of cheap ETR ice. Put down a vanilla and a 5/3.
Advance twice, runner runs with SMC, rez vanilla, they spend a ton of credits to go get a breaker? no problem, drop an enigma behind it.
It’s cost you 3 whole credits and 1 click to double ice a server on runner turn 1.
This made sense when people were interpreting it as at the beginning of a run. But now that its clear its when approaching the server (after passing all the ice), it basically means that employee strike is now a MUST RUN, making decks even more boring and repetitive.
I’m 99% sure that what you are describing is a game losing play because it leaves you at basically no credits and all centrals open.
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fine, sure gamble, vanilla, agenda
leaving centrals open turn 1 is hardly a losing play.
Unless the runner is running a multi access card turn 1, in which case you can use the ability to block R&D. The runner would need to have enough credits left to run the remote server and fire SMC
It’s going to take time for people to create super-effective strategies using this ID but once they do I think we are going to quickly see how big a mistake it was
I don’t want to swim too hard against the current here, but I don’t think MM will push AgInfusion/Palana out of the glacier slot.
Like, one extra ice is stronk, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it actually makes getting into servers harder than Aginfusion does, and used strictly as click compression I think it is inferior to Palana’s income.
I feel like people are imagining all the times this will go ‘right’, when the runner goes after their naked agenda and they slap down the cheap ETR that the runner doesn’t have a breaker for.
Which, yah, that’s cool, but what about later in the game, when the runner is Sunny with full doom rig in place and you desperately need to draw your silver bullet to score out and you pull…that vanilla/enigma you’d have been so happy to see in the early game.
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I’m not intimidated by the line of play you are describing. I can do similar out of Next Design too.
I do think Mti Mwekundu has the potential to be very good. I’m very excited about the ID and all the potential it has.
But the id has inherent checks on it… if you can deal with the ice they are putting down, you can deal with Mti… And they have to rez the ice for the ID to be effective, so while it does provide a powerful source of click compression and econ, I don’t think it is so inherently busted.
We are all pretty new to the ID and we haven’t had time to learn the ideal ways to play against it… it’s going to seem more powerful now.
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I have a full one game’s worth of experience against MTI, having faced it as 419 in a small gnk last night.
I think it’s certainly a strong/interesting ID, and does a nice job of combining the tricksiness or Aginfusion and the extra efficiency of Palana. I didn’t feel like it was overpowered.
Strike messes with it as much as it does with Aginfusion. You can’t lean too hard on the ID to defend you against a remote bust, Indexing or new Siphon, because of the possibility of the runner playing Strike and hitting you hard. This applies whether or not the Runner is actually playing Strike, unless you know their list.
I think a glacier-esque build with 3 Scarcity is worth testing.
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I’m planning a glacier-esque with 3 scarcity at my local casual night tonight. It ended up looking an awful lot like a certain Euros-winning Palana deck with all the influence going on the ICE. I had previously tried building something like hydra with enforced curfew to clear out strikes but there were too many cards not pulling their weight and R&D was too porous.
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I spent 14 Influence on HB Ice, and 1 on Marilyn Campaign. 
What agenda suite does Mti want?
I guess it depends on what style you are going for. I went with a rush/glacier build. The agenda suite is 2x Obokata, 3x Nisei, 3x Brainstrust and 1x Philotic.
I’m on 3 Nisei, 3 Medical Breakthrough, 1 Philotic, 2 Future Perfect.
I don’t think it’s worth playing Obokata over Fairchild, but you could definitely try cortex and Kakugo and go from there.
I’ve been enjoying 3 GFI, 3 Nisei, 1 Philotic, 2 Braintrust just so I can’t as reliably be cut off from my “score a 5/3 and two 2 pointers to win the game” plan.
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This is something that I have been missing, and I want to go to the third Future Perfect. I’ll probably end up on:
3 TFP
3 Nisei
3 Breakthrough/Braintrust+Philotic
Might even go for Bacterial Programming. Not sure, but I don’t want to be spending my unicorn and 3 influence on GFI when I could be playing Fairchild.