At the end of it all, I think these points deserve repeating yet again. I’d much rather, with a Zu or Gordian (or, in some cases, even Torch) run into a Lotus Field than a Little Engine, because it means I can’t go broke.
It is slightly positional, though. Not as much as some ice, but… if it’s the first thing in a deep server they have the money to keep going after, but if it’s the end of a taxing server they’re in relative trouble. (Tollbooth >> Little Enginge is superior to Little Engine >> Tollbooth, for instance.) Starting a new run more easily, running more sustainably, sure… but there’s a higher up front cost to reach LE that way, which is important.
Good point about having it at the bottom of a taxing server, thus forcing a very high initial amount of money to get in, even if the runner ends up not having to spend it all. You could play it early as a high strength gear check that the runner can’t get through, then later pile taxing ice above it to create your server.
I think if anything this ice is weakest to Knight out of the breakers covered, having it broken for a net profit of 1 credit and than trashing it seems very unappealing to me from the corp side - you did still pay 5 to rez the thing. David beating it for a profit of 5 still worries me, even if he can only do it once, I just don’t like the idea of giving the runner that kind of money and having something I invested significant money into being a potential liability.
Setting an Atman at 7 is probably too impractical most of the time, but could punish bad positioning. If the runner can just run through it a few times he’ll have made back most of his money.
Overall compared to Lotus Field, I’d say Little Engine is marginally better against shapers, similar / a bit worse against Criminals (Rex) and significantly worse / borderline liability against anarchs. I could potentially see it as one of those cards that performs differently in practice to in theory because of the initial high cost of breaking it.
Wow great points, I hadn’t considered the positional factor but you’re totally right. The fact that this ICE wants to come down early works well with that point, too, since it is most likely going to be on the inside late-game. It should be noted that it still taxes CyCy 5, for a total wash, which isn’t horrible I think. After all Lotus only taxes 1 but doesn’t require an up front investment of 5 just to get your money back. Glad this card stimulated some conversation, I really think it is one of the most interesting pieces of ICE to-date and one that can’t simply be analyzed by straight mathematics.
The one thing to remember when analyzing versus Gordian is that Goridan keeps it’s strength - so you can’t put a Little Engine on the same server with a Tollbooth without neutering the server.
Strongest use for I see it is out of a taxing tagstorm NBN deck which wants their opponent to be low all the time. Closed account (if they’re tagged) -> Install Market research behind Little Engine seems like a pretty strong scoring play.
It’s kind of hard to evaluate because we don’t have any comparable ice (Not taxing but gears checks on having relevant breakers + decent amount of cash). My guess is it probably won’t be very good in most decks, but will decent in some.
Being free for Cyber Cypher is probably the nail in its coffin though.
It seems pretty cool but it’d require a pretty wild shift in the meta to be good. I simply wouldn’t warrant a card deckslots if it cost me 5 and didn’t cost them any money to break, yes, yes, even if it required they have 5 to begin with.
It’s interesting design space and the idea behind it is solid but they were a bit too careful I think.
I just looked over the preliminary Valley spoilers and I have to say I am not impressed. Anybody wanna try to convince me that any card at all, apart from clot of course, will be competitive with the current tier 1?
The only other card I would consider is brain-taping, but these days I’m not playing a high enough density of bioroids in my HBs to make it good.
I plan on trying out Superior Synapses in my Noise build. It already functions well enough while losing the click to Wyldside that getting it right back would be monstrous. Proco also has shown up in top decks before, and getting it for free influence and cheaper (at little functional difference) is great.
Aside from that, I think more often than not, LLDS wants to release cards that open up playable decks, rather than reinforce currently top tier ones. To this end, I could see the new asset tutor making some sort of toolbox style corp deck better, or maybe even make the executives slightly playable.
Anarchs have Knight and D4V1D, but if you’re NBN you’ve got Tollbooth as well to eat D4V1D counters – the cash is an unfortunate loss, though.
Knight is… well, it sucks to lose, but recently I haven’t seen it around much, with Blue Sun. I haven’t had many chances to play posrt-O&C so I don’t want to say it isn’t a threat, just that I haven’t seen much of it.
Even with Rex, though, I feel like it does pretty well against every other probably Criminal option. Zu gets wrecked, Gordian has misgivings, and things like Passport and Peacock aren’t suuuper happy either. Rex still comes down at a 1 credit overall tax, too, and is limited use, so… there’s potential there.
[quote=“moistloaf, post:526, topic:2197, full:true”]Glad this card stimulated some conversation, I really think it is one of the most interesting pieces of ICE to-date and one that can’t simply be analyzed by straight mathematics.
[/quote]This is a big part of why I like it, I’ll admit. It’s a cool card that does neat things, and I hope there’s more like it coming because it’s much more interesting than a lot of other Ice.
I’ll admit it might be a bit cautious, but at the same time I think NBN Rush decks will be glad to have it, and I don’t know that a significantly stronger card would be as solid a design choice for NBN – could well be wrong, but this fills more of a niche for them than anyone else, strong enough to help the rush but weak enough to not be another NBN Gets the Best Stuff card. I dunno.
Brain taping is perhaps what might finally hit the ‘worth it’ switch on Stronger Together (Then again, we’ve said that before).
On the runner side, Quanju + Synapses makes for a recurring decoy - useful for either mitigating self tagging, or as a shut-off for the SEA-Scorch combo. Also does work versus Nearpad.
Capital Investors seems really solid in any number of decks. Only slightly less efficient than Melange, but being able to do so on any spare click is pretty nuts. And hey, need that secure server for scoring? Blue Sun it back to hand.
Genetic Sequencing seems great with Nisei, and decent with Braintrust. (and decidedly mediocre with house of knives)
Paige should help Val a ton. Interesting deck thinning card.
Enhanced vision seems so good to me. The shear amount of little bits and pieces of information you get with that card, and it doesn’t cost much, credit wise.
I think that’s sort of the point - to incentivise bioroids again. And the ability to churn out cheap to free ice is pretty powerful to say the least when combined with ID abilities like Next and Foundry which have traditionally struggled to pay for all the ICE they can pull up early game (yes it’s probably going to be better in ETF, everything is). Add in that unlike most HB asset economy it pays for itself plus some on rez (and therefore a rich runner does you less damage by trashing it) and I think it’s going to be a big card.
NEXT Gold fills a big hole in the Foundry decks I’ve been working on (though I admit they aren’t uber competative and won’t be until non ETF HB gets better economy options). It screams corporate troubleshooter and wormhole because one counter - even with only a couple of other NEXT - can be game ending. And at 4 str it’s not trivial to break - espec with cyberdex becoming more of a thing due to clot. It’s let down by a bit NEXT silver being rubbish to parasite and its rez cost which feels one too high.
I retired mine when I’ve Had Worse came out. I would like to proved wrong, but I feel that with IHW out there the flatline threat just becomes too conditional to be worth the influence and slots.
I’m surprised you get diagnosed quickly enough for anarchs not to play the IHW for draw. Bioroids aren’t fun for most anarchs. I’d have thought you’re ok in an Anarch heavy metagame with deadcoats.
Is that still the case though? My worry would be aggresive ice destruction combined with Imp/Kim wrecking my economy. I guess if I’d tested it I’d know .
Knifed loves them. As does Forked and Spooned (although they are played less).
That’s true. But Bioroids are pretty cheap to Rez and you have a bunch or recursion effects. I don’t think I’m excited to see any HB across the table if I’m anarching. I guess next ice is pretty weak vs anarch, but you have architect in faction to shore up that weakness.
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