Whatever impact clot has on the meta game in the long term, I think it will at least make for a really interesting metagame for a couple months as we try to find a new equilibrium. The stimhack tournament happening now should make for a really interesting tournament.
I’m pretty excited both as a spectator and a participant, as radical meta shake ups are my favorite time to play/read about a game.
Good article! That was an enjoyable read.
I think the author was a bit too absolute about some things (NEH is now unplayable!), but otherwise I agree with the major points. I also think decks that can easily put in some FA without being completely reliant on it (HB is obvious) will benefit the most. Biotic out some agendas early if you get the chance against faster decks while you set up the glacier, or biotic them out late once shaper gets the rig up and going.
I’ve been a fan of siphon vs all of the following glacier decks
Executive boot camp glacier (fights ASH)
Red coats (fights ASH)
RP glacier (allows for a run on a centrall that makes money)
Siphon also has the benefit of making a run on HQ to activate emergency shutdown
SOT>shutdown AND SOT>siphon AND SOT>stimhack makes 2 SOT a good call. Each one individually is probably not very good.
Hyperbole generates discussion/clickbait.
Are you suggesting that criminal players don’t run 3 Account Siphon this weekend?
Even when that card is at its worst it is still far too powerful not to play in faction.
I’ve seen a couple of really good french players who cut the third siphon of their Andy List because siphon is the first card they discard on their opening hand if they have to make a first turn run.
But then, they also play their HB deck with 54 cards …
It’s a question of how many players think they have a NBN deck that has enough of a backup plan to beat clot, and are confident enough to actually play it in the fresh meta. I’m expecting no more than 5-10 players to do that… There may exist a playable build, but it’s a far cry from “fine” imo.
Also RP has the best agenda suite in the game, not NEH. By miles.
Yeah, but a lot of these people are long gone, as well.
Referring to the 3-6 Single Siphon Andy at Worlds?
LOL. Still 50/50 if Caprice / Ash is unrezzed.
100% if IA/IAA’d though!
I’m not sure there’s anything particularly new in this article is there? And I don’t think the problem is quite as simplistic as the penalty kick pay-off matrix suggests because you have to factor in that match-ups in LCGs are not random after the first couple of rounds as they depend on prior results (plus the results of your other deck). I don’t deny that FA gets crucified by Clot, but in the Swiss rounds the decks will filter into tiers. All of the Runners playing Clot are at a disadvantage against every non-FA Corp because they have wasted card slots and influence that are not working for them in those match-ups; likewise, the FA players will brutalise all of the Runners who have prepped for glacier Corporations. So the Clots will filter down the Swiss (unless paired against an FA Corp) and similarly the FA decks will filter up if they manage to dodge Clot. Criminals are still popular and they almost certainly can’t spare the deck space for Clot, so we’re probably only looking at Anarchs and some flavours of Shaper anyway.
I think the ICE and breaker analysis is flawed as well. You can’t really compare the costs to enter two servers using a Gordian/Mimic/Corroder rig because that’s not the rig people will play if glacier becomes dominant. The reason the Runner struggled for much of 2014 was because Astrobiotics and RP were polar opposites and you couldn’t easily cater for both. If, as this article suggests, we should abandon FA in favour of glaciers then the meta becomes a lot less polarised. This means that the Runner can afford to play a bit slower and pack the more efficient breakers.
In other words, glacier decks need FA to be viable in order to force the Runner out of being able to make optimal deck-building decisions. Glaciers need some runners to be “wasting” deck slots on Clot, and being worried enough by FA strategies that they have to resort to cheap rigs in order to get running early. If FA doesn’t exist everyone can afford to pack Torch and Garrote.
I think you’re creating a false dichotomy saying that decks with clot not vs FA will drop, as if having clot makes you lose. If you have a deck that has an otherwise amazing match up against everything else, but adding 1 clot fixes your issues with FA, you raise your overall win % without substantially having an impact on your other match ups. I believe this is possible. There are quite a few decks that this is likely true for. The current popular PPVP Kate being an example.
I mean, calimsha Kate with 1 clot instead of 1 legwork drops maybe 1-2% against the field in exchange for winning 90+% and NEH. It’s not like they’ll lose to non fa decks, where as NEH will just get smoked by clot shaper decks.
As for your second point about glacier, that’s true in the long term, but we already have meta tested glacier decks, but we don’t have meta tested big rig decks. So the glacier decks still have an edge because they’ve been tried and tested.
Eventually, yes runner decks will figure out how to tech against glacier, but this opens the door for rush/fa-light decks that aren’t as strong as NEH to move in to the meta. It works both ways, rush opens the door for glacier and glacier can open the door for rush.
Safest decks for the tournament are probably boot camp on the corp side. Runner side kate/regass/stealth Andy/noise are all reasonable.
Don’t forget a fully assembled runner is tough to keep out, sometimes glacier decks have to rely on Biotic labor to close out the game. Not true of all glaciers, but definitely removes 1 weapon from the portfolio.
Some don’t even rely on it, but it’s super nice to have as an option.
I’ve always hated the 1 Biotic people play in Glacier. If you can’t sneaky a 3/2 agenda past a runner in a 10 credit tax server and you have Ash in your deck, wtf are you doing playing this game?
In Red Coats, I liked how it made closing out games easier by enabling scoring unadvanced NAPDs and single advanced 5/3s.
That’s exactly it. Faking a 5/3 as an NAPD is massive if you need three points to win. As is being able to install ASH, install, advance a 5/3 knowing that you can biotic to score it next turn.
Had a GNK last week. Some guy thought he was going to meta the meta by bringing Astrobiotics. I was playing Stealth Clot Kit.
He scored 1 Astro in a remote. I stuffed his next Astro with SMC Clot and it went downhill from there. He didn’t even give me the pause to Clot, so I knew it was an agenda. He even tried to get cute and put a DBS over the Astro with a Virus Suite in the trash. I played a Clone Chip and ran Archives. He never got off the ground and eventually had 2 NAPDs in his hand that I easily took. He had maximum salt, I recall he said something like “I didn’t think anyone would actually bring it” and said he would just get the Gordian on Ebay.
The rest of the GNK was a bunch of awesome games against Foundry and RP. I have nothing against Fastro, but man, nothing is better than stuffing “Those guys” playing it.