Fine, I’ll bite.
[quote=“GreedyGuts, post:1688, topic:2197”]
Power only really works when you’re winning, because you need to be hitting an agenda reliably at all costs that turn.[/quote]
I believe this to be a faulty assumption - knowing with a decent amount of probability you’ll be hitting an agenda that turn happens a lot more often than just “when you’re winning”. For starters, it’s not that uncommon for a Corp to bleed accesses intentionally in one place, in order to achieve something more important (to them) in another. There’s also cases like taxing you out with an NAPD in the scoring server, ditching shit into Archives to Punitive your ass, Midseasons bait, never-advance remote shell games, and other things.
[quote=“GreedyGuts, post:1688, topic:2197”]
It helps keep your economy afloat, but won’t help you actually break into anything to get the agenda, just prevent a scoring window from arising if you’re successful.[/quote]
It won’t help you get into the first server that turn, but it sure as hell will help you get into the second one… in a way that’s compatible with run events. This could very well be relevant if you were to Legwork, Escher, Vamp, or do something similar.
Not by itself. With a charged Medium, played Keyhole or possibly an Indexing? That’s a bit of a different story, I’d say.
When the situation is even, it helps you keep it even - consider PttP in the context of this particular post about high-level play (which I consider pretty accurate). What this card does is let you regain footing (or at least not yield more ground) after you had to get aggressive. Could you have played a different card in its slot, which would have prevented you from getting to that place? Maybe, maybe not. But it still doesn’t strike me as useless in the scenario.
It’s a particular, situational card that isn’t a good fit for every deck (in other words: “anarch”), but I wouldn’t be so harsh on it, as far as the quandrant test is concerned:
- If you’re running copious amounts of multi-access, it can speed up your early-game considerably (also depending on matchup)
- If you’ve achieved parity, it lets you be aggressive and keep the parity
- If you’re winning, it’s decent
- It’ll suck to have when losing, I’ll give you that
Overall, it seems to me as a pretty obvious 1-of, but definitely not binder fodder.