My experience trying to make cutlery work with Eater strongly suggests that it is highly relevant whether the breaking is being done by cards or credits. I was completely unable to get cutlery to work in any Anarch list using Eater, because it’s simply too expensive to pay 1-2 credits, pay to break all subs, and then not access after all is said and done. Nobody’s happy about paying 8 credits to trash a piece of ice. However, paying 1-2 credits, a couple cards or a D4v1d token, and accessing on top of all that? That’s a winning formula. I’m pretty confident that Faust is a big part of why Dumblefork works as smoothly as it does, or I’d expect that we’d have seen it during the O&C/early SanSan era when L4J was popular.
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I mean, to be clear, I should specify: I’m not actually a huge fan of high-variance, gambit style mind games (a turn 1 mushin is a bit boring, honestly). I’m referring more to something like a classic HB v. Shaper match, where the runner is never really locked out but can’t afford to run a remote every turn, either. A lot of other netrunner matches have a similar “feel,” even if the resources being traded are different (e.g Val has a limited number of blackmails, Kate trying to time a legwork against NEH, etc.). In all fairness, popping a 3/2 behind a quandary on turn 1 was a calculated bet in a pre-Faust world - it was just a bet I wasn’t as excited by. This is all getting pretty off topic, though, so I’ll save it for the next time I make it down to KC. 
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Wish I could like this 100 times. People who jumped on the Anarch bandwagon recently don’t know these troubles. I had to play triple SMC in Whizzard just to be able to have early game pressure. Faust is a fair card. It does allow Anarch to threaten every server, but requires investments to be sustainable (Wyldside+Chronotype+Levy). The only fundamental difference between the board state Whizzcakes is building to and that of, say, a Shaper with MOpus and 2 or 3 RDI is the ICE destruction element.
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And one of those is Parasite.
I’ve noted, once, after a double take at the list, that if the MWL list were suddenly replaced with a banlist including the same cards, there’s probably no Faust problem at all. Multisub low strength Ice could be expected to tax Faust out just fine.
If the MWL were a ban list I would have stopped playing the game, most likely. I can’t foresee a ban list ever being necessary or beneficial to the game in any way.
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I wasn’t saying a banlist was the answer. I was noting an irony that I think a lot of people miss. And when you think of it that way, it makes the MWL seem more like a work in progress than a failed venture.
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I can’t disagree there, although I think the math on Faust is still a bit too good. It is the best breaker in the game in my opinion or, if you don’t agree with that, at least the best AI breaker in the game.
How good it is, though, is accentuated by the cards and strategies it enables. Cutlery isn’t too bad if you’re not paying to break, and it turns out it’s super good when paired with Parasite. This would not, as you rightly point out, be as oppressive if Parasite was banned.
Still, I’m not prepared to say we need to ban cards or add more things to MWL. While I do think Faust is overwhelming and stupid at this juncture, this game has proven resilient and has course corrected itself several times… So, lets ride out SCs and see what Mumbad gives us for the fight?
TLDR: Faust is 2gud, but meh on MWL add. No bans, plox. Let’s see what we get in Mumbad because this ain’t our first ZOMG UNBEATABLE card.
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Main issue here being that Shaper with Opus and 2 RDI and a full rig (lady, gordian, Mimc, Atman?) has spent 30+ credits, 7+ clicks and a couple influence, and still has to click for every resource they use.
Anarch who slaps down pancakes, d4, Faust has spent 12 credits, 4 clicks, no influence, and doesn’t have to click for a huge portion of their resource expenditure.
If you don’t see the night and day difference there, I don’t know what to do.
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That’s definitely a fair point. The reason Faust Anarch is so good right now is its efficiency, which is why many posts ago I likened it to PP Kate. I think it’s much closer to PP Kate than any MOpus Shaper, for the record. WyldCakes is a really strong engine when paired with Faust, there’s no doubt. I don’t see it as functionally different than PP Kate’s engine, besides the ICE destruction factor.
The key to slowing down Faust is emptying the Runner’s hand - or threatening to.
I’ve had some moderate success with a Blue Sun deck this week, so I’ll take it to a Store Champs at weekend and see what happens. The combination of a Sea Scorch Scorch threat and/or potentially hitting a Snare! stops the Runner being so aggressive. You’re rarely going to kill them outright, but it causes the Runner to play differently.
Servers the Whizzard would normally go for, he now has to consider if he wants to end the turn on <4 cards to have a look at.
It’s not a silver bullet, but it is a guy with a sniper rifle, playing a red laser dot over the Runner’s chest. Do you feel lucky, punk?
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I took a Titan with 3 Snares! and SEA+Scorch to a few tournaments and it held up OK against Anarch. Totally crumbles to Shaper though.
Also ran Archer and Corporate Town.
I still felt weak af in the mid-late game, especially once the runner had confirmed the kill threat, but as far as decks go, it was the one I felt had been doing the best (read: least bad) against Faust that wasn’t “Let’s just hope they don’t top deck my Astro’s” NEH.
Faust and Wyldside/Chronotype is better compared to a complete stealth rig than a normal breaker rig, I find. Making the runner guess what’s behind the Wall of Static is a pretty poor play when they can not only get in with recurring resources every turn, but afford to trash whatever you’ve put there anyway with those other three recurring credits.
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That’s not the right approach IMHO. Both Archer and Corp Town require sacrificing points. My veiw is that you should be scoring early and often and speeding to a conclusion. Shaper is definitely a tougher match up, but destroying your own agendas points is not a path to victory when the runner can almost definitely get into your servers anyway.
No, it never felt great to do, and it would never be anything but a HT that I pitched.
I found losing a single point to never be too detrimental, especially when used to get an Archer to land or force a serious issue with Corp town. I only ran both as one ofs, and the threat of Archer is a lot better than an actual Archer!
Going from 3 to 2 points still meant I had to score 2 agendas after the fact anyway, just one of the had to be a Food, which was always super hard. And going from 5 to 4 was the worst. Anyway, this is exactly why I stopped playing the deck, and never felt it to be anything amazing.
I think a huge part of Faust’s strength is pairing it with ice destruction. If you can maintain 2 ice with like 3-4 str and 2 subroutines each, then Faust pretty much clears your hand to get through, which can be risky. When you can get through for 2-3 cards tops, it’s like the perfect solution to all of Anarch’s problems. Up thread people are talking about whether or not we’re going to see new cards to help out, but we know of at least one card that will help out against Parasite. Granted, the deck could shift to more reliance on cutlery events… but it’s something.
My meta is strange. Very few people are playing Faust. I think I’ve seen it in 2 games in the last 3-4 weeks, one of which was Dumblefork.
When we talk about new cards coming, are we thinking mumbad cycle or beyond that? Don’t we already know most corp cards in the cycle?
Business First
-Palana foods will always trigger with wyldside around
-Advanced assembly lines can give you two creds while making the runner waste some time looking at it
Meanwhile the runner gains corporate scandal which should be pretty influential, though not in dumblefork.
Democracy and Dogma
-Clones are not People could make corp decks faster? I dunno.
-There are unrevealed corp cards which could include an anti-AI ice.
Again a runner pack thanks to Polop and Councilman, but again they won’t help dumblefork.
Salsette Island
-First turn random guess Salem’s Hospitality?!
-Some unrevealed corp cards.
Will the runner use Making an Entrance for those games where they can’t find their Faust?
The Liberated Mind
-Brainstorm is strong but expensive. If Komainu can’t save Jinteki, can this thing save HB?
Runners can use Guru Davinder as Snare! protection.
Fear the Masses
-Magnet fights parasite
-Navi fights datasucker and david, but can still be trashed by Whizzard for free
-Voter intimidation gives jinteki a way to fight the wyldside
So maybe this last pack in the cycle will help? There’s also new directions for the runner with Aghora, Fear the Masses and Rigged results, or these can just be slotted into dumblefork if it’s still around.
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I’m not sure. If the rest of the field are packing the Op, Caprice and Ash get a lot worse. @MasterAir covers what happens:
I can only see Whizzard becoming more powerful as people retreat hearder into FA strategies.
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Sadly, Magnet can’t counter “insta-Parasite”. It still cuts out other use of Parasite (if you have it ready, unrezzed), but even it can’t help the worst case that prevents Faust having to spend cards to break the ICE even once. Cutlery events tend to need to break the ICE once at least before coming back later to destroy it.
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I think this disparity is one of the key points when arguing that Faust is OP due to be being too efficient (much for a universal breaker). Looking at the numbers another way, lets look at the Dumblefork vs. HB Food Coats credit disparity over the course of an average length game. I would say reasonable assumptions are:
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a winning rig for Dumblefork is --Wyldeside, Chronotype, Faust, Medium, Datasucker, 2 d4vds for a total cost of 19 credits. This and ice destruction will allow consistent runs on R&D for 3+ accesses even with purges by corp every turn few turns.
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HB needs 2 R&D ice (and 2 good ice) to tax Dumblefork down to just running R&D once every turn (say 2 cards at start, runner clicks for 2 cards or click through bioroid). Realistically they need at least 1 ice on HQ and 2 ice on a scoring remote.
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Average ice cost in HB Food coats is 3.9 credits per ice
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Dumblefork will kill 8 ice during the course of the game ( they have 10 ice destructions tools for each pass of the deck )
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Total ice needed in the game: 13
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Total ice cost for HB: 51 credits
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Minimum scoring costs: 11
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Total corp cost to win: 62 credits
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Clicks for placement/advance: 27
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DF Rig Cost: 19
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Ice Destruction Cost Total: 17 credits
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Total runner cost to win: 36 credits
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Non running clicks: 15
So we have a 26 credit disparity. Sure, HB is going to win some games, no doubt. But I cannot see with that type of credit disparity how they could the win-rates could come out balanced in a large sample size.
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And that’s why you run the Beta Tests.
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