I feel like this card is powerful enough to be good somewhere, but not powerful enough to put in any old deck. I don’t know exactly what deck most consistently KNOWS it’s going to get an agenda at the start of the turn, especially in RP world, so I’ll stick to Queens Gambit until someone figures it out.
Hivemind Maxx / Valencia deck.
One of my opponent lost because he didn’t had enough money to steal more than a single NAPD from my R&D and that pretty much lost him the game.
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As often as not, though, you don’t know before your first click. At least, I don’t. There are definitely counter-examples, and you’re right that it makes leaving an NAPD on the table as Midseasons bait riskier, but by the time Power hits Film Critic will have had a month out already, so NAPD-to-bait-Midseasons already ought to be on a downward trend.
Which is one way in which it can help sustain parity. Not saying the card has no use-cases where it isn’t terrible – you can always just lucky topdeck an agenda first turn facecheck, too, I just don’t think that it’s reliable enough to be worth it – case in point, two of your scenarios there require a run event to set up another run elsewhere to try and make a steal, and while Legwork can be excellent I’ve seen it whiff even when it oughtn’t all too often to want to pin my economy to it. If you read a situation wrong, all Power did is waste you a card and a click, and it’s not as easy a situation to read as Dirty Laundry (though it helps more directly against NAPD, sure).
If you have a charged Medium, Keyhole, or Indexing that you can layer appropriately and the corp can’t keep you out? You’re winning, at least in terms of board position, which is what the test is traditionally best at looking at. If you’re winning that early, sure, it helps, yeah.
[quote=“PeekaySK, post:1690, topic:2197”]
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.
[/quote]When it’s even, it’s usable, but rough. I think that’s a fair analysis, it won’t help you gain ground inherently, but it does allow you to take a risk and – if it pays off – not suffer overmuch by leaving a huge window for Corp scoring, yeah.
I think you’re overestimating the length of the “early game” being defined here, perhaps because I wasn’t clear – it’s definitely not the same as the traditional “early-mid-late” in Netrunner and I should’ve clarified that better. In terms of actually getting what you need out on the board, it doesn’t do a tremendous amount, but it does allow you to leverage an early-game board advantage to fund later stuff… you just need to get there without needing it to be something else.
At parity, I think it’s a gamble. Maybe that’s just my local scene, but a lot of the corps here have ways to either “guarantee” a shutout (RP with Nisei stuff), or fake out agenda plays (bluffing out ashes as agendas to bait a run, etc). Now, not all of that will necessarily stick around, but it’s not a straight-up win at parity by any means.
I’ll confess, part of it is that I also tend to look at cards (when I’m being more serious) from what they do when I’m losing. I like the win-more cards that don’t look at that as much, but I’m trying to be more critical, these days.
TL;DR: You’re not totally wrong or anything, but I think that with Film Critic coming before it most of the situations where it’s a known guarantee NOW won’t exist as much, and that you’re overextending the opening to cover a state where you’re pretty clearly winning.
There are decks that might like it (Hivemind, as Calimsha notes), and I can see it as a one-of or even a two-of if for some reason Film Critic changes nothing. But I feel like a lot of the situations being discussed upthread (keyhole, then run NEXT TURN on archives, giving them a turn to set up to Jackson it back if they aren’t ready already; bounce off the same NAPD multiple times without the runner stopping you; assuming midseasons/punitive bait will be as common) were overvaluing the card pretty heavily.
TL;DRtTL;DR: It’s got a lot of potential, and I’d love to see it work, but it’s got so many restrictions I don’t expect to see it in many strong decks.
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deep thought, or legwork after you use bug to watch them draw the agenda duh.
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If the installed face up Agendas end up being good. Then maybe . . . .
. . . Maybe?
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Use this, install-trash Hades shard ? You’d better have tutors 
Will Mushin No Shin work well with the faceup agendas? I’m thinking in particular the 3/1 that trashes 2 cards off the stack per counter, or 4 if it has 3 or more. You could trash 10 cards in one turn for the cost of letting them steal a 1-pointer. I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but it would be hilarious against Noise.
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I feel like you’ll just end up trashing a bunch of Viruses that he’ll Deja Vu back into his hand. There are quite a few runners who would happily trash the top 10 cards of their stack in all but the slowest of games.
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It will not work very well since you need to advance the agenda to trigger its effect. Mushin no shin don’t advance card, it just places advancement tokens on it.
On your example you would trash “only” 4 cards, not 10. 
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I am wondering if Underway renos might end up being decentish in a glacier deck that doesn’t want the Bad Pub/does want to bait Midseasons. IAA in a taxing server, AAA it the next turn, then AAA it again and either score it or leave it there to advance further at your leisure. Milling may not be the worst, but if you can pitch a third to half their deck you’re probably going to hit something, and if you can protect a Blacklist at the same time you solve most of the recursion worries – though then you’ve got to have two servers they can’t get into easily.
Don’t know that it’ll be worth it, but I’ll probably give it a shot just to see. Has a looot of potential to hurt Criminal, which I like the sound of, but Shaper and Anarch are bigger local concerns anyway and Blacklist does a lot to them in the first place.
I imagine Underway Renovation is why Student Loans got nerfed so hard, but I couldn’t say for sure and even then they went overboard (I get why they want to be safer than sorry and agree overall, just sad that it happened to two otherwise amazing Weyland cards when they still feel like they need the help).
Still not as good as Oaktown or Hollywood, but those are high bars to clear. Aside from maybe the Sensies or Ancestral Imager I can’t think of an agenda we know about this cycle coming close, and I’d compare them favorably against most agendas from Lunar or O&C, even shit like High-Risk, Domestic Sleepers, or the Fragments.
The face-up drawback is the only vague issue, because you can’t run a full suite of the renos and ever bluff something else as an agenda, but since that still wouldn’t be everything you’ll be running a set of Atlases anyway I imagine and that gives you some options. But when you can effectively be advancing by clicking for credits or can simultaneously either drop the cost of the space ice in play or potentially pump things like Fire Wall, Swarm, or even Ice Wall to crazy heights in the process, secrecy might well be overrated, and you can bluff punitive or midseasons threats pretty hard just by using them in the first place (or have them, that’d work too).
Looking at other cards, as I do:
Becoming more and more enamored with Product Placement. Going to be so sad when it turns out to not be super effective. Kinda hoping I’ll be proven wrong on that one.
Hoping Criminal gets another Vitrual Resource. We were told that the “trash all virtual resources” sub on “Thor” would be useful, and right now I’m not quite seeing it. Fan Site maaaybe has some spots, but Spoilers seems really marginal unless you get a few of them out early, and Rolodex isn’t good enough in the first place to get run, I don’t think. Maybe in some janky Shaper Aesop’s thing, but jank doesn’t count, dangit. Relatedly, am curious if Shaper will get a connection in Underway or not, they get Film Critic in Old Hollywood, but I’ve really liked the micro-cycles.
Keep forgetting Laramy’s ability triggers off of any centrals run. Awkward for the first turn (though the corp is likely to have played low (down to 3-4 cards, with intent of playing another 1-2 next turn unless they’re in a bad way and needing the draw), so unless you FIS and facecheck/Dirty Laundry I don’t see it being worth triggering right away anyhow. His ability does let him rock Indexing-Wait a Turn-Go In stuff, though, because if they don’t draw as much as predicted he can clear a useless card out of the way. So once he gets an R&D lock, it’s locked in more than anyone not running Medium will have it.
Team Sponsorship continues to excite me in dreadful ways, I keep forgetting and then re-working out that it keeps ABT relatively safe to trigger because you can pull one agenda into your scoring server after it hits the bin, or a bit of asset economy if you lose one of those instead. All on top of the whole Research Grant (which does require all TSs to be out and rezzed before the first thing is scored) combo, or just using them to build bigger servers. Either way, break even on the rez of the first in ETF, what with the gain a credit on install thing. That ID doesn’t stop being crazy good.
Hoping we see more Currents, leaving Jinteki, Shaper, and Criminal out in the cold with just one seems rough. Dunno what they’d be, but some actually useful things would be nice in general. A Criminal version of Paywall Implementation is probably too good since they already have Desperado, but a Current that gives credits for failed runs (and is free to play) might be useful for the facecheck game, or something to make Corp end-of-turn discards random or reduce corp hand size so as to make Leela and Laramy more terrifying (that costs like 3 I guess, given the balance on currents so far?). A Current that does something long-term like up Link or MU could also be super cool, but seems less likely. I dunno what sort of thing Jinteki ought to see, something that makes their ice less killable might be well received by them as a whole, but might be too good for RP.
Occurs to me now that Film Critic won’t turn off currents. So that’ll be a thing to watch for.
Actually becoming excited for Little Engine as part of the NBN Rush/FA Ice family. Takes more to break than Tollbooth even if it doesn’t have the same punishment (and refunds them if they get through). But a stacked Tollbooth > Little Engine server costs 10 to break with Cy-Cy and 11 with Gordian, even if the costs drop to 5 and 6 once you’re through. That’s kinda rough for 14 credits between installing and rezzing. Separately, both remain pretty decent – though stacking Little Engines is a baaad idea. It wants to be in the base of each server whenever possible, I feel like, but barring an inside job it’s about as safe to try scoring behind as any ice its price is, though it can’t protect assets or NAPDs. Surprisingly, is taxing enough even with the payout to make a bad Security Testing server. And, of course, you’re not going to complain if they Femme it, especially if that’s instead of a Tollbooth.
I fear Ryon Knight will not be worth it even in the Brain Damage deck. Even with Bioroids, getting them down to last click on a run will be tricky, and if they get in earlier he’s not exactly hard to trash. That said, can bluff him as an Ash, can stack multiple copies in one server, and can combine him with Ash to make a truly terrifying scoring server. I just don’t think he’ll be worth the slots in the end, even if the deck turns out to be a thing that’s good.
Still curious abut Paparazzi. It’s easy to trash, since you’re tagged, and you can get slammed by Closed Accounts or Freelancer or Targeted Marketing… but at the same time, outright immunity to meat damage. Shame they’re not a Connection, too, but combined with Street Peddler and/or Fall Guy I suppose you could use them to protect yourself from meat damage deaths if Plascrete becomes insufficient and being tagged for a turn or so WITHOUT that consideration isn’t enough to give you the screaming heebie-jeebies.
Keep vacillating between “Contract Killer seems useful!” and “when will I ever get this to work? maaaye in Argus or Gagarin? I dunno about that…” Is a slightly shittier Ronin (given the meat damage prevention out there, and the less of it being dealt) but is also a slightly better Ronin (requires half the advancements, costs more to trash, can nail a connection like Kati Jones if that’s more important in the moment/they have Plascrete and a full grip and you just have the killer).
Quicksand is the last card I’m hyped up for at the moment. 3 cost ETR gear-check barriers are nice, and it draws a parasite faster than anything other than maybe NEXT Silver. Quetzal will never not be able to break it, but on an oft-run server like R&D it’ll eventually grow to start taxing out things like Corroder or even recurred Lady – though that requires them to run in a lot and not hit anything or Parasite it early while it’s still weak. Glad the boost is on-encounter and not on-break like I first though, means that an insta-parasite still needs the one counter, at least.
EDIT: Dear god I am a loquacious bastard, my apologies to all of you that read all of my ramblings.
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Which one is the other card?
Student Loans was spoiled as having “a surprising rez-to-trash ratio” and “the runner cannot play events with the same name as events in their heap”. Pretty obviously broken, but got overfixed. The current text on a 0/3 like Blacklist might actually be decent, but the 2/3 requires rezzing before they play the copy of a card, which is hard to predict, and then protection until they suck it up and do so anyway. If it was a 1-2/3 that prevented an event from being played if it’s got a copy in the heap in exchange for trashing, that might even be decent. No such luck.
The other is Negotiator. Is current 4 to rez, 3 strength sentry you can pay 2c to break subs on with the subs “corp gains 2c” and “trash 1 program”. Originally, was 5 to rez, and those subs were followed by “end the run”. If they upped the rez cost to 6 or 7, or made the strength 2, or yanked the “gain 2c” sub (even if it’s a Weyland staple), Negotiator would’ve been great but not as broken originally. Buuut that takes time and I get why Lukas doesn’t have enough to check. If it’d had another credit knocked off the rez cost to go with losing the sub, even at the cost of 1 strength, I think it’d be pretty playable. But 4 to rez a Mimicable sentry that only ever threatens if the runner has no money and takes two runs to break even on the tax generally… waaay too much to be worth it. Was clearly meant as a taxing ice for Weyland, which they really, really need in the current meta outside of Blue Sun, but no such luck. Then again, I guess the bouncability WITH BS is probably why they did it like they did, because balancing cards for EVERY ID in a faction is very hard when some of them are Blue Sun, NEH, or (especially) EtF.
But apparently there’s a pretty exciting Weyland Ice in the Underway, according to spoiler-ken, and a transaction in Old Hollywood, so maybe Weyland non-Blue Sun decks/players will be getting happier in the not-super-distant future. Universe of Tomorrow’s 5-influence Weyland asset is supposed to be pretty cool as well.
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If I remember correctly, spoiler-ken only said that the trash cost was surprising - and it was. Surprisingly low 
.
Fairly sure he likes teasing us a damn lot.
Didn’t notice the original Negotiator spoil, but yeah, that sounds heaps better.
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I don’t think he’s teasing. It’s more likely that FFG are changing cards at different points in the design and printing cycle to flush out leaks.
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That or he has access to earlier playtesting files and they get altered when people report back in for final printing. Given that most (not all, but most) of the “nerfed” cards we know of, or the seriously changed ones, were looking to be dominant…
Well, take Study Guide. With the 1 strength snow-jax though it had it becomes much better early on at handling things like Enigma, etc, and overall has better efficiency than Torch. Some of the same weaknesses to removal and lack of the test run/scavenge help, but it’d be a pretty amazing decoder at that point. A number gets changed, and suddenly nooope.
No need for them to be fishing for leaks (though I imagine they are), regular changing as cards are tested when spoiler-ken isn’t a playtester himself would be more than enough to render some info outdated.
Anarch Cybernetic has been spoiled!
Costs 1, influence unknown. Does 1 brain damage on install. Reduce the trash cost of assets/upgrades by 1.
If it was only “installed” or even “rezzed” assets/upgrades and hit for 2, I’d run it to just kill asset spam stuff for super cheap. If it was 0 to install and 2 meat damage, I might consider running it to supplement either Bad Pub/Desperado or a Scrubber.
1 reduction doesn’t matter. Unless you can guarantee having Chrome Parlor out (which isn’t worth it for NRE alone, though maaaybe with Brain Cage it would be since it boosts to “double scorch safe” max hand if you get the Parlor down and still leaves you at 7 otherwise) the brain damage alone is too much, when I can spend 1 credit more for a Scrubber and just kill one thing a turn, because to be as useful as Scrubber you need to make three trashes in a turn right now. I guess it can’t be trashed if you’re tagged, so Siphon decks might want it, but no, they have Siphon, they’re fine for money.
Real shame that Shaper got screwed on Synthetic Blood (which miiight have been playable for 1 or 2 credits) while they had Gene Conditioning Shoppe and Anarch gets hosed on their thing (with braaain damage of all things, which doesn’t let you Have Worse and which they already have to deal with more than enough of) while having Chrome Parlor. Like, I get why the in-faction one could be a bit more painful because of it, but draw still isn’t consistent enough, dangit. If Brain Cage was the only one doing Brain Damage, we’d be so good. If Synthetic Blood was worth playing even one of, we might see more Gene Conditioning Shoppes (which combine sooo nicely with Adjusted Chronotype but isn’t worth running for that alone, or even necessarily for Chronotype and Visage together).
I just want a genetics deck that can run Qianju PT with Joshua B to get 5 clicks/turn with Chronotype. 6 credits, 3 cards, way too many things to go wrong for that alone. But I really like the idea of Qianju, and getting safe extra clicks (that the corp actually has to trash after tagging you and that won’t do you brain damage instead every third turn) just seems sooo nice. Hell, if Conditioning Shoppe was worth it, could maybe add in Wyldside, get 2 free draws, 5 clicks, and up to 2 more draws that each net you a credit.
But alas. Too many cards, too unwieldy (not enough finding tools in-faction, too much influence for out-of-faction), too little benefit after all the setting up it requires. Pancakes with Wyldside alone is easier to find and the same price as the extra-click-per turn.
I weep that the dream of a solid multi-cybernetics deck dies the same way.
Here’s hoping both those cycles continue through the deluxe box and the next cycle, and maybe hit something solidly playable in the process. (Still hoping for that for currents, unfortunately, especially on the Runner Side. The only reason most Corp currents aren’t worth including is that the runner will never play their own that you really need to deal with by any means other than scoring.)
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More stuff from spoiler-ken, going over things from yesterday and laying out one new hint for the future:
I’m thinking about letting #48 go unspoiled 'till Chrome City is at least shipping, because MAN - I don’t even know where to begin with that card.
You already know that #61 is Faust, that #67 interacts with Corp scoring an Agenda, that #71 is pure shite, and that #79 is Ice - and that #76 is a Barrier, actually. That doesn’t really give me much room, except for like 3 cards. With ANR26 being quite some time away, since Chrome City isn’t out yet, that doesn’t leave me with much room.
I guess I can re-hint something that snow-jax hinted at though:
#70
Three MU program.
3 MU… glad Shaper gets it, but never thought I’d see it for real.
What’s Faust? Is that Noise’s Headphones?
Nope, that’s… 42, I think. Faust is a breaker of some kind that apparently snow-jax referenced back before O&C as being similar in power to Eater, possibly involving discarding cards or something.
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I thought Faust was the new criminal Runner that draws a card whenever you use a trash ability