Looking forward to play egret in my deck, because it makes the stealth rig even more efficient. I would probably switch refractor for houdini when egret comes out (or maybe play both) to get maximum value out of egret on a sentry or a barrier (like seidr) and a code gate breaker that gets +4 str for the remainder of a run.
With egret out, i think most people will turn to blackstone for barrier breaker. It holds strenght until the end of the run. That will mean you will need less stealth credits, so you can draw up with net mercur, which ups the consistency.
Btw, Egret will be the Shapers form of parasite. (Think about Gblade in Kit…)
Blackstone is still too expensive (4 to 6 install cost, 3 credit to pump). Houdini with egret seems much better than Blackstone + Egret. The only reason to play Blackstone is to save 2 influence and let Egret + Houdini or Switchblade take care of eli and other problematic barriers
Wouldn’t simply egret+inti be a better breaker then? What str 3 barrier is even played these days? (Inti can handle str 2 twice before Blackstone even breaks even)
(Seidr, Spiderweb and Himitsu-Bako are str 2. Snowflake, Wall of Static, Hive and Markus 1.0 are str 3.)
Egret will be the Shaper form of Femme Fatale to me.
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I think Egret would work well with Lady to help you save more of those power counters for more runs before you need to Scavenge, and also to increase efficiency.
I like the idea of Houdini + Egret. I think Switchblade + Egret is a neat combo, too. Add in System Seizure for spice.
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Eli 1.0 is only one influence again. I expect to see that almost everywhere.
In the not too distant future Bloodletter will likely see play out of Skorpios and that’s another annoying one to break for Inti and Blackstone.
I also think Tithonium will be a royal pain and will see almost universal play out of Weyland.
Finally, Chiyashi and Curtain Wall are also pretty relevant now. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to also see Bulwark get some play if AI remain super popular.
Inti is great right now for barriers, but I think it will be changing pretty soon. This might be manageable with Egret… Or it might be a wash. Hard to say.
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I hate to be pedantic, but I don’t see much similarity. Femme is useful by herself, while Egret is a pure support piece. Also Egret likes Clone Chips either to reset or to install midrun via SMC.
Egret also has some fascinating combos it enables out of stealth. I for one am excited to try Inversificator + Surfer out of Kit.
Most ice that make inti cry will also invalidate Blackstone, I think…Eli certainly will.
If Eli is back with a vengeance we should slot clip until it goes away.
Egret doesn’t like Clone Chip like Crescentus or Parasite does. Egret likes Scavenge, like FF, where Parasite or Crescentus doesn’t. It’s a matter of synergies & deckbuilding classicisms.
This was a reply to someone seeing in Egret the Shaper Parasite, I just indicated that I saw more FF in it than a Parasite 
Pretty sure Egret likes CC a whole lot when the corp trashes the ICE it’s installed on…
Then the mission is complete even if it stayed : pass it for less money 
The corp doing that, prefering the runner pass for 0 than pass for 1 is totally stupid and/or desesperate and/or ignore money problems btw.
This is only showing to the runner that his plan is working and the server is the right target.
I would probably play inti and 1 lady with egret, since corps are going to exploit shaper relative weaknesses to barriers by trashing the ice or stacking barriers.But if we are taking deck slots into account, then Corroder. Houdini, Dagger and Egret is probably the best solution available
Yeah, absolutely, but you are likely going to want your Egret back later. CC is great for that. I think you want to run both CC and Scavenge in a deck that’s leaning hard on Egret for efficient repeat accesses.
Well, I don’t know. It really depends if you’re planning a classic breakers, trick and money deck, or a combo-ish Kate with mid-run egrets installs, trashing previous egrets with Tech Writers or stuff like that.
I was talking about FF in the breakers, tricks and money perspective as a x1 lone trick that supposedly wins agendas.
It’s better in RDI or Indexing Shaper than in Maker’s Eye Shaper btw.
Also, combos with Yog are quite scarrying.
I haven’t been including this in my deck for a while, but it’s worth noting that Blackstone becomes considerably better with Net-Ready Eyes in play. Base strength 4, and +4 for the remainder of the run for 3 credits, is great against a lot of popular barriers.
For example:
Tithonium
Blackstone + NRE: 6 credits
Paperclip: 4 credits
Corroder: 6 credits
Inti: 11 credits
Bloodletter
N/A, isn’t this a sentry?
Chiyashi
Blackstone + NRE: 9 credits
Paperclip: 7 credits
Corroder: 9 credits
Inti: 17 credits
Curtain Wall (outermost position)
Blackstone + NRE: 9 credits
Paperclip: 9 credits
Corroder: 11 credits
Inti: 21 credits
Eli 1.0
Blackstone + NRE: 2 credits
Paperclip: 3 credits
Corroder: 4 credits
Inti: 8 credits
Eli 2.0
Blackstone + NRE: 3 credits
Paperclip: 3 credits
Corroder: 5 credits
Inti: 9 credits
Obviously, Paperclip is the most efficient across most matchups here. But Blackstone is great for saving 2-3 influence, as long as you have some support, if that’s a more strained resource in your deck.
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Good call. I misread Bloodletter. I could have sworn there was a barrier for Weyland in that big box.
Speaking of Egret: I am testing it on competitive JNET. Seems really strong: a permanent tinkering on a key piece of ice is something that should not be underestimated. Houdini is amazing with Egret, and breaking a Chiyashi for cheap is fantastic
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How many are you slotting? Just the one?
I cannot wait to get my set of them next week!
just 1, with 2 clone chips, corroder-houdini-dagger as icebreakers and no scavenge, for the moment, even though I suspect it;s gonna be very useful.