Sneaky. That only demands one extra card from Faust, but it’s the card that flatlines him.
2 Likes
I think Faust needs to be limit 1 per deck. Every AI has a drawback:
Eater-No access
Atman-Fixed Strength breaking
Alpha/Omega- Limited ice
Darwin- Can be purged
Knight- Only one ice.
Faust- Oh right.
Crypsis-Pricy
Wyrm- Just subpar.
AI programs are supposed to be supportive, not a primary breaker.
2 Likes
Faust’s drawback is that it’s supposed to be leaving you more open to damage to play and brain damage makes Faust much harder to use. I guess the question is how many people are moving to damage to deal with Faust?
4 Likes
Damage is not really a drawback when you’re drawing 3 cards a turn in a faction with influence free I’ve had worse. Faust itself is certainly a problem, but the real issues is that the anarch pool is so broad and strong that faust is functionally without drawbacks.
I would pose this question for thought:
Would faust be balanced as a 3 influence criminal card?
4 Likes
It would certainly be less absurd than it is in anarch but then the problem would switch to “how do corps defend against turn 1 siphon when very few early game ICE stop faust?” Granted, that’s still a problem against Maxx, but Maxx can’t run 3 copies of siphon and still have a deck to play past turn 14.
Criminals also have drug dealer for 3-card per turn draw but does get held back by needing all 3 copies making it a bit more balanced in addiction to drug deals having a recurring cost to it.
Also, my point on damage was that using Faust leaves runner more exposed at the end of turns after they’ve made a run for kill. It’s hard to stay above 4 cards if you need to spend them to get into servers. Also, brain damage makes it harder to have the cards in hand for the run.
But you’re right, the biggest problem with Faust is that he was printed in the faction that has so much dense card draw effects and many other ways of dealing with ICE so it’s hard to overtax faust with either high strength ICE (D4) or multi-sub ICE (Parasite).
3 Likes
The solution is multisub though, among others.
1 Like
Heartily agree! Multisub is the best way to stuff faust. Parasite then becomes a strong counter. An upgrade that either adds temporary subs similar to corp troubleshooter would solve this. This idea is very well articulated here:
http://www.anrnz.com/2016/01/the-woes-of-weyland-part-iii-subpar.html
Another solution would be to have an upgrade that prevented ice in the server from having its strength lowered or being trashed. This would be awesome in Weyland, as advancing ice would not be automatically terrible. The current card pool offers very few answers to the faust package out of anarch.
Brain damage is probably the strongest route, as I’ve had worse will not save you. The problem being that brain damage is significantly harder to come by than meat or net.
5 Likes
I like the idea of an upgrade to prevent ICE from being trashed; preventing the strength of ICE from being lower seems a bit too much of a counter to the fixed strength breakers. Maybe if prevented ICE strength from being lowered below 1?
NMCG will already prevent Datasucker from being used during a run, which will likely do a lot to limit Parasite ICE destruction (but will Wyrm make an appearance? no, no it will not).
I think there will be some cards coming later in this cycle that will shift power in against the mass-anarch meta and in favor of more shapers. Maybe even some criminals!
Brain damage is a solid answer to faust, handsize limiting things like valley grid and self-destruct chips, etc are great. No one plays damage. No one is doing the math on damage.
4 Likes
Shh, I’m working on some decks to do these things!
Don’t tell anyone about it though, just keep saying Faust is OP and no one can win without Faust and maybe I can win some tournaments!
Although having played Valley Grid extensively, I’m not sure it does much more against Faust. The runner will draw up before they run, and the hand size limit only hits at the end of the turn. I’d say some extra net damage from HoK and Hokusai Grid at the end of the run, preferably into a Snare or Fetal AI could be much more damaging.
But seriously, don’t talk about it. Trees Against Faust is a very secret project.
3 Likes
I’m thinking of trying a CI deck with cerebral overwriters and mandatory upgrades. It’s been done before but in a meta where your hand size is what dictates part of your breaking power, why not try it again?
Also, the mandatory upgrade-score out of hand with impunity is too much of a dream to not try.
In that deck, IQ is the ultimate parasite hate. Though I guess it still gets Davi-spooned.
Edit to avoid double posting. If Hive has no subroutines, does passing it count as breaking all subroutines for the purposes of Valley Grid? I think so (see Troll), but I want to confirm.
I think it works for knifed and stuff, so yes.
Except Multisub ice naturally has low str so it just gets parasited away.
So the Faust D4vid Parasite trio means we want strength as high as possible without being strength 5, and as many subs as possible, we want it cost effective, and we don’t care too much what the subtype is.
Hm… a cheap str 4 multisub ice… hm… can I think of a cheap STR 4 multisub ice? Such an effective counter to faust might end up so widely played that it drew attention to itself…
2 Likes
The Whizzard deck also runs Atman, and 4 is a popular number.
EDIT: Hmm, perhaps I was thinking of a different deck, nevermind.
Little Engine is awesome against Faust, and pretty taxing against everything but Torch and CyCy. If you want to parasite that, then more power to you.
2 Likes
Some of the whiz decks run atman, but most of the faust ones don’t.
2 Likes
D4 not only gets you through Little Engine (ok, once) but also gets you 5 credits as you go through - more than enough to pay for another D4.
It’s not easy to deal damage. If it was, people would have been doing it more before Faust became big. There are four drawbacks of Faust, damage is not the only aisle of attack:
- Maximum hand size
- Credits are easier to get than cards
- Damage
- Running out of deck
1 would be more of an issue if people built deeper servers, but the problem is that the install costs add up and then parasite just wastes you.
2 is becoming less true all the time - obviously Wyldcakes is the issue here.
3 is hard to do, especially if you can’t rely on ice to help you with it; not even ice that’s meant to be unbreakable like Kitsune.
4 is solved by Levy, but it’s a minor drawback anyway.