Y’all should make an Armand “Geist” Walker thread :).
The best threads are like cells - they are created by division!
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Changing the subject to a different set of spoilers, what do people think of the Renovation cycle? I was lukewarm on it before, but I’m starting to come around. I wasn’t sure if they’d be worth it due to the lack of on-score ability, but I think they’re actually very strong – though you can’t bluff them as being anything else, you don’t have to score them to see a benefit.
Hollywood (5/3, when you advance it put an advancement token on another card, or 2 tokens if there are already 5 on HR) seems like it could be useful in a couple of decks, letting you use the ability to advance the ice protecting it so you can manage the second turn score (and, if scored, leaving your server with 5 free advancements) or to advance other agendas/traps in an Argus build that has the cash to threaten punitives. I doubt you’ll want to overadvance this often, 3 points is a pretty big swing unless it lets you win to have it stolen, and keeping the runner out an extra turn is unlikely. Doubled advancement speed elsewhere could be neat, lets you potentially FA out a 2-pointer, but the risk seems too big to be worth it. Still, an option if you’ve managed to trash their rig or something. Either way, combos nicely with advance traps – even (or especially?) strictly economic ones like GRNDL Refinery, Thomas Haas, or Expose.
Oaktown (4/2, when you advance it gain 2 credits, or 3 if overadvancing) is the one that seems most likely to get over-advanced. There’s little reason to not IAA it, and if you do you might as well go for the one extra overadvance for (effectively) a two-credit click. Weird interactions with FA stuff (scoring on a SanSan subsidizes rezzing said SanSan), but mostly those require it sitting in play for a turn to score, so not worth it. Still, in strict “money gained” terms it’s better than a Hostile Takeover if you can score it, and you can start scoring it from 1 credit. IAA leaves you at 3, not ideal, but enough to rez something, perhaps, and you can click for a credit and score the following turn if you do go broke in the process.
Underway (3/1, trash the top 2 cards of the runner’s stack, or top 4 when overadvanced) seems the least useful. Not that it’s not potentially dangerous, but the kind of deck that cares about that seems to be unlikely to appreciate scoring a 3/1 that’s face-up from the get-go. Argus might like the grinding down of Runner options, but False Lead is better, as is Chronos Project (and while that might combo with UR, agenda-scoring-order-dependent combos are a baaad idea). Overadvancing is less of a risk with it, but running it in the first place is unlikely. 4 cards milled if you IAA, 6 if you just score it, 14 if you score it like it was a three-pointer. Potentially nice, I guess, if you can keep it from getting stolen, maybe rushing it out would let you bypass runner necessities and let the gear-check Weyland ice stay relevant longer, I suppose 14 cards is about a third of the runner’s deck.
Ultimately, they seem like some interesting support to the Weyland rush archetypes, to me – not quite Supermodernism style stuff, but with some solid potential for bullying the runner whether they get scored or not, so long as you can make sure they hit the table in the first place. Which is the problem, really, but hey, at least these provide some potential solutions, and each can benefit a particular kind of Weyland deck – or maybe work together to try and do some kind of all-in Rush build, I dunno.
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Part of me wonders if there is more text to the Public Renovation agendas. The whole idea of an agenda being face-up runs very counter to the hidden information aspect of Netrunner. Maybe they have some sort of steal condition attached to them?
The advancement ability only could work design-wise if the agenda’s text is active, which it isn’t if facedown.
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I doubt it. They’re face-up so that the “when advanced” abilities can function – they wouldn’t if face-down. That’s all there is to it, probably.
I don’t think they need much more, either, to be honest. Maybe I’m too tied up in the days of Supermodernism, but “It doesn’t matter if you know what I’m doing, just try and stop me” has been a longstanding Weyland strategy. It also means that the clicks sunk into advancing them aren’t lost if it’s stolen or bounced – or at least, not entirely. Still might suck, but you’ve gotten something out of them that might mean it’s easier to score the next one.
Would be better if Weyland had some better taxing ice, sure, but all three Renovations help promote the Rush strategy Weyland is built for in ways that don’t require you to score them to see. Hollywood makes Advance Ice set up faster, Oaktown lets you score it after spending to protect it, Underway gets rid of their tools (though it’s the least appealing by far).
But I think Hollywood and Oaktown are decent enough to be usable elsewhere, too, which is always nice.
If you want a steal condition, run them out of Argus or something, or just hold Midseasons-Scorch/Punitives at the ready, or whatever. They protect themselves decently enough already, albeit in a very different way from Fetal, NAPD, FP, or the on-access NBN agendas.
Playing as steal one agenda a turn NBN ID:
Turn 1:
- Shipment from mirrormorph (2 Hollywoods+beale/astro)
- Advance hollywoods bringing them both to 1
- Advance hollywoods bringing them both to 2
(runner steals something)
Turn 2:
Triple advance hollywood, scoring hollywood+hollywood or hollywood+beale
Bonus points for double biotic to score beale for 4.
I should’ve phrased that differently. I don’t have a problem with them being installed face-up. It just seems that given that the Corp is 100% telegraphing the scoring of an agenda, there might be some extra protections built into scoring the agenda other than just the advancement bonuses?
Aren’t all 3 Agendas supposed to be in Weyland?
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Really? I just assumed a hollywood agenda would be NBN. Never mind on my awesome plan.
They’re all Weyland agendas. So that won’t really work outside of draft, and in draft there’s no IDs. Still vaguely doable in-faction if you run Punitives and Scorch in Argus, I guess, but it’s not really the same.
EDIT: Yeah, Hollywood being NBN was a thought, but we’ve seen the name and color in the FFG Spoiler Fan, along with the spoilers from 4chan. Still, NBN’s getting some nifty Agendas too, at least? And that much FA potential in NBN would be just too, too much, I’d say, even if it might give them a 3-pointer they wanted to play (though I’m hopeful there’s an on-access 3-pointer for Haarpsichord with something good, I’m not holding my breath).
[quote=“Danwarr, post:916, topic:2197, full:true”]
I should’ve phrased that differently. I don’t have a problem with them being installed face-up. It just seems that given that the Corp is 100% telegraphing the scoring of an agenda, there might be some extra protections built into scoring the agenda other than just the advancement bonuses?
[/quote]I don’t think so. Partly because of card space, but also because I think that you’re not appreciating how powerful these abilities have the potential to be.
Lemme go to Magical Christmas Land for a moment here.
Score an Atlas with one counter on it.
Now, IAA Hollywood Renovations. Next turn, AAA it, but don’t score. Next turn, use the Atlas counter to grab any 2-pointer from your deck, install it, double-advance Hollywood, score them both.
If you can do this, you win with the runner only having two or three turns with agendas on the table. Now, is this super likely? No – it’s 10 credits not including the ice or FA tricks, though you do get 5 advancements over time to put on things that aren’t agendas. Clot’d break it, too, so that’s another obvious risk.
But it turns any Weyland deck that can keep the runner out of a midgame scoring server for two turns into an FA-Win threat, ignoring the Trick of Lights or whatever else that might be playable to make it work.
Even outside of Magical Christmasland… the abilities are already protection enough, I think. Free advancement cannot be overstated, again. It makes IAA behind Space Ice a viable option even if you haven’t had the time to advance the Space Ice. The free credits mean you don’t need much to score it and can also make risky choices less painful. (I’ve got an Ice Wall and a Quandary for a scoring server, can they get in? Let me IAA this two-pointer, if they can I’ll know and will have broken even after rezzing, if they can’t I’ll be another 2-4 credits up next turn on top of two more points.) The milling is the least useful because until you get deep or lucky then there’s no difference between milling something and it being on the bottom of the deck, but it still has some potential to help, I guess.
The other big thing there is that if they also had on-theft conditions… well, what are you supposed to do, as runner? Right now, getting them out of R&D is the best bet – there’s little reason to leave them in HQ overlong most of the time, but that or Archives is probably second-best. Once they hit the table, you’re potentially a very unhappy runner.
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I am surprised by the indifference towards Underway. To me that sounds like the best advanceable trap in the game, especially in Weyland, because the runner must run it.
If you have sort of a scoring window, you IAA this to trash 4 cards. If they steal it, you probably have a scoring window now. If they didn’t, pay 3 to trash 10 cards. That is 1/3rd of a deck you have trashed by now, fair chance you are either absurdly taxing recursion or maybe stopping them from breaking one type of ice entirely. I don’t think you score it here, you just trash 12 more if they don’t steal it. I wouldn’t think of this as an agenda at all, you just happen to get a point at the end as a consolation prize for the corp not winning immediately when they mill the runner.
Even before giant server scoring windows, what do you do when Blue Sun starts advancing this behind a Hive on turn 3-4? Pay 6 credits to steal 1 point, after 2-4 cards were already trashed? Looking over at NAPD, I think that sounds like a pretty good exchange for the corp.
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I agree with sighence, its just a way to bring back uncorrodable. Getting the runner to the point of 0 cards in deck pretty much tells u 2 things:
1-They dont have resources: Doesnt matter if its recursion of 1 shot stuff, multi-acess events or the most blatant-money. Most runners cant get reasonable qtties of money without their deck(most econ nowadays isnt infinite).
2- You are Weyland and they have no hand, scorch away?
Seems to be useful especially if you are argus: they must take the tag since they dont have a hand. Even if u arent clicking for money wont win u the game.
Trashing 4 cards per click when the runner have less than 30 cards(45-5-normal draws) seems a good thing(runner mill on steroids).
Its like magic RDW its useless until reaches 0 but when it does, u kinda won the match.
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Why stop at 5 advancements? It’s only a one pointer, just keep advancing it until the runner steals it, or they have no stack left.
You’re probably right. I’m just being too conservative in my thinking about scoring agendas. My thought is along the lines of Weyland already has a harder time scoring agendas right now anyway, so why broadcast the fact that I actually put an agenda in this server and not Reversed Accounts or GRNDL Refinery?
You’re right that it basically forces the Runner into making a hard decision to either run that server, or let the Corp keep advancing for their own benefit. That’s what I wasn’t really seeing before. It will be really interesting to see them in action. Maybe they give Weyland a bit of a power boost?
One secondary benefit I just realized with the Renovation agendas is that Leela can’t bounce them back to HQ after either an R&D or Legwork steal, which as an avid Leela fan makes me a bit sad. 
Data Raven + Twins + Underway Renovation + Argus = Profit?
I’ll try this one out in blue sun instead of the 1x corporate war. The rate is better and you get the money sooner. The only question is how much the info matters – the only real problem I see is that it can’t fool the runner into being terrified of a 5/3 score. This would matter a lot more the other way around, since the real key point of agendas being face down is the runner can’t tell the difference between a 5/3 and an NAPD.
On the other hand, Hollywood is total rubbish. I think FFG still doesn’t understand the role that 5/3s play in the game. Being face up is anti-protecting itself, because of NAPD. The ability is not quite completely blank, since it can pay for the ice in front of it, but it has a “the runner is totally locked out of my server (or defenseless to flatline)” mentality, which is of course very win-more.
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As I said in the Leela thread, the spoiled wording on the Renovation agendas is “face up” which is presumably not the same thing as “rezzed”, so Leela would probably be able to bounce them.
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Yeah that’s probably going to need a Lukas ruling. I can see both sides of that.
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Geckogex is a playtester, and it was him who spoiled the Renovation agendas. “Face-up” is not the same thing as rezzed, but given that he has previously been wrong on some wordings/numbers, it is safe to assume that his playtesting file is outdated and thus not the final product. I think it is likely that they have been reworded so Leela cannot bounce them, but who knows. Rezzing agendas might provide a deeper rules issue (not that Lukas would care), but I think it would be positive to have them reworded.