You can’t wait for the psychographics to be played, but you can still say: Nope! You install something, I tutor out the Clot
The biggest thing keeping tagstorm down is a lack of real power and any reason to try it when it can’t possibly match up to NEH FA. Now they’ve got the latter, and for ages there’ve been cards and spoilers that seem to pump an MN tag-focused archetype that were almost impossible to justify trying seriously. I think there might be something there, though, by the time Clot rolls around.
Psychographics might not be the same powerhouse it has been, even, but needing to pop out the Clot in response to everything they install? Not ideal – and if you can’t go steal it they can still score/overscore it next turn. Psychographic Never Advance could be a thing, depending on the ice support and ID.
I just wish they had found a way to let HBFA supplant astrobiotics instead of taking them both down. With architect and sleepers they were tier-1.5-ish already.
Well now we have a winter/spring of noise vs glacier on our hands, unless Chris Hinke’s deck becomes big (which it definitely could)
Clot/Deus X/Plasacrete are terrible aweful designs, they make unfun uninteresting games that are decided by drawing my answer and Winning the game for free. With such cards one player is always miserable, either you have the card and it is relevant, making them miserable, or you have it and it is irrelevant, now you are miserable.
I disagree. The existence of clot/Deus x/plascrete means you have to build for their inclusion. Thus the I’m only ever going to score from hand build needs an answer to clot. Which makes it slightly less focussed, therefore slightly weaker even if the opponent doesn’t have the clot. If FA falls out of favour, so will clot, which opens a window for FA again. The metagame’s equilibrium is disturbed.
Having to purge every time a clot is (re)installed is going to put any Psychographics deck massively behind in tempo. Given you’ll have to spend a turn to install a card in a remote in order to draw out the Clot and another turn to purge it, I can’t see NBN being able to keep up unless you can force the runner to encounter an Information Overload (which is quite hard).
Buuut all of them have counters. Wiping viruses slows NEH down, but it doesn’t stop it completely, and they’re not so porous as to be unable to pull of a score in one go, ever. That shuts down Clot some. Changing ice a bit to be ABLE to have a scoring server will do the rest.
Traffic Jam’s many flaws have been enumerated already, but it’s not like NEH never scores one of each agenda they have.
And Noise is far from the only (or even best, I’d say) ID that works well against Glacier. He just does well elsewhere, too. Once NEH is no longer top dog there’ll be a bit more variety in viable runners because you don’t need to be spread quite so thinly all the dang time.
Clot’s a lot better than Plascrete, and I’m confused as to Deus X’s inclusion on that list. Seems to me like it’s got a lot of utility, and while helpful it doesn’t do it all. Many decks will have enough net damage or AP ice to make at least a one-of Deus X a viable choice. Clot works against Weyland a bit to prevent easy Hostile Takeovers.
But unlike Plascrete (until we got all this hardware trashing), Clot’s painful but manageable. Either you change your strategy or you kill it. It doesn’t shut out the corp completely, and at least right now NEH is so predominant that running it as a two-of wouldn’t be all that terrible. Once NEH/FA has died down some it’ll get taken out, FA will remain viable but you’ll have a couple of cards that not everyone runs but everyone needs to build around in some capacity or another because the meta has shifted.
I’ll take a Glacier Winter over another few years of NBN FA being all-important.
EDIT: As a reminder, if they play out clot, you don’t have to do anything except protect that agenda to score it next turn. Then you can kill it. Still a speedbump, but that’s kind of the point. You can’t counter something and still make the thing being countered remain just as good, and there’s no way to buff everything else enough right now to equal with FA without breaking the game entirely. It means your FA deck has to be able to NA, oh no, metagame shifts.
I meant that you have to, as runner, put it out immediately all the time, spending resources even if it wasn’t an agenda, and opening it up to destroyers, shutdowns, and virus wipes. It’ll hurt, but good players’ll still be able to pull off wins with FA, I’m sure. It just won’t be Not Even Hard anymore.
Tell me how do I kill a Clone chip? All the hardware trashers are Out of faction and all my influence is spent on Biotic. Unlike plasacrete which I can Kill via spamming Scorched over and over, fast advance is Stone dead to clot out of Noise/Kate, Clone Chip sits there forcing NEH to never play biotic labor/advance any remotes.
You kill Clone Chip by forcing the opponent to use it for something else in most situations.
How does the timing window for Psychographics work with Clot/Clone Chip? Advancing an agenda to the amount of advancements needed is not the same thing as scoring it (which doesn’t have to be done immediately). Is there a paid ability window in between advancing and scoring?
You have 17 influence. If a new card means you have to think hard about 3 Biotics, it’s working. Power Shutdown costs 2, you could have 2 biotic, 2 shutdown. Or even 3 biotic 2 shutdown but then you weaken your ICE.
There’s a Rez-non-ice/paid-ability/score-agenda window after each corp action. Because the corp has priority, the runner will have to pop clot after you install something. If they wait until the Psycho, they’re too late.
Neither Power Shutdown nor Destroyers are very reliable, which leaves virus purges. Having a 1 (or 0 in Kate) cost card that exchanges a click for an entire Corp turn is extremely powerful in terms of tempo.
Winter Is Coming
Glacier 2014
cyberdex trial…oh yes it will your time to shine
Cyberdex Trial finally makes it into decks
FA finds a way
been wanting to sleeve it up for awhile. I’ve come close these past few months!
Ha. Would be awesome if it were viable and could lead to interesting tension. Unfortunately, I would think that Clone Chip puts an end to such shenanigans.
But if you save playing it until after you Psychographics they have no chance to use Clone Chip where you can’t score. Not much, but it’s something, at least.
And I was never saying Clot wasn’t powerful, just that it’s going to force people to play around it and change. I think NBN’ll still be able to sort out things to do that’ll let them hang in there as a faction even if it’ll be a rocky transition – and if not, well, Weyland’s had at least one cycle down in the dumps, Jinteki was for a long, long time. Their big box at the end of the SanSan Cycle’ll no doubt see them back on their feet, whether as FA or something else.
i’ve never been unhappy to draw it whenever ive had it in my deck. i used to run 2-of cyberdex in a making news taxing deck in place of freelancer mainly because it acted like closed accounts for runners who got datasucker rich early. it might not be possible now especially if currents start taking up the 1-3 “flavor” deck slots i allow myself.
I knew there would be something new spoiled when I got back from work today, but even this is unexpected. Loving it.