Finally shifting this series into existence. Has been a hilariously long time coming. Was tempted to actually just include a link within the ‘How do we make Weyland good?’ thread, but I thought that it might merit its own. It’s evolved from an article into a full-blown series at this point, after all.
Anyhow, this is just the introductory post - I will be putting up Part I tomorrow, and the remaining four parts once a week, over the course of the month. There probably won’t be overly much in the introduction that surprises anyone here, but it serves as an important starting point for the series, and outlines the general approach I will be taking in the upcoming articles.
Also, it’s about Weyland problems, if you didn’t gather from the name of the article and thread title.
Enjoy.
Will be adding the separate parts of the series to this post, as they come out:
Part I is here! This one’s a review of the trainwreck that is Weyland’s advanceable ice. Considering how sad many of these poor ice are, this article’s probably the longest of the bunch.
I often binge bad publicity because their episodes are so long, that I need a rainy weekend day to watch (aside, I actually enjoy the length of the videos.)
Anyway, I hadn’t seen the Damon interview yet. I feel that Damon missed a sentence in the banter, going off his context clues. Italic points are reading between the lines:
The trio of ICE were RIDICULOUS in testing
So Lukas said to make them not advanceable when rezzeed
That’s all that was done to them 4) But that was not enough so we did something else[I suspect they also increased in strength in addition to subs]
But they were still really strong. Getting advancements on this ICE was a biiig problem (because they were still strong)
So in the end, more changes were made and here we are today.
I also remember reading somewhere (don’t have a citation unfortunately) that BWBI had 3 credits per turn in playtesting instead of 1, which could explain some of the dissonance between the playtesters and what we received.
I like Specialized Reinforcement and actually was thinking of a Weyland “Surge” for advanceable ice as part of a solution way back when this discussion hit the Weyland thread.
Cool article I really like Specialized Reinforcement; kinda like a Weyland Mu Shin No Shin, only with less bluffing. I feel like it’s still a little too expensive money-wise as is, even with more appropriately priced advancable ICE. You could consider making it a double and reducing the both the cost of the event to 0 and drop the install cost of the ICE to make it directly comparable to Interns. It’s still way less flexible than interns is (ICE only), but with the upside that you can spend the credits to get the advancement tokens. A lot of Glacier decks already run several interns and I know that I’ve used it many of times to get a 4th or 5th piece of ICE onto R&D. If there was enough reasonable advanceable ICE for a Weyland deck to use, I think this would see a healthy amount of play that wouldn’t be too overpowering at all. Hell, there are a lot of ways you could balance this thing to be pushed and still make it an intriguing choice: you could just make it a Mushin No Shin for ICE (free advancement tokens), but only have it come from hand.
Either way, great card idea, and I really like how well any of these iterations work with the O&C Advancables. I hope Damon Stone sees this and takes note.
The more I think about it the more I think that the best thing to happen to weyland is that ffg keeps shipping packs as fast as possible. In comparison to the other 3 corps weyland got practically nothing for its first 2 packs, besides project atlas. Rotation makes everyone lose something, but in reality it makes Weyland all the more powerful.
While I acknowledge that your interpretation could be correct, I feel that it might be a bit of a reach - I was just trying to take Damon at face value, after all. Furthermore, his following statement seems to suggest otherwise. “But no other changes were made [to the cards]. So, they kind of fell into a place where yeah, if you can get advancement tokens on these ice, they are brutal. Getting advancement tokens onto that ice is a problem. You have to be dedicated to make that happen.” The fact that he still suggests that the post-AOWR AOWR suite could be brutal, if you manage to rez them, suggests (to me) that he does not realize how bad the actual numbers on the card are, and that, likely, that is because those were not what changed. Again though, you may be right.
Yeeeeap. Looking at Swarm’s 8 rez cost still makes me involuntarily shudder.
I had heard the same; I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to including that detail in a published article though, considering it is still hearsay.
Thanks, I like it too, heh. Earlier iterations of Specialized Reinforcement toyed with the idea of ignoring the install cost of ice, but that definitely shot its power level up a whole lot. As you note, being able to install a new ice as the outermost piece of a stacked server late game, for free, and then being able to clicklessly place advancements on said ice is very useful - it’s both a significant economic effect as well as a major tempo boost. Definitely hear you though - I was happier with the idea than the exact execution, which is very hard to properly balance without any degree of testing.
I largely agree with this point, mostly because I think the design team won’t want to make any new, stronger advanceable ice that fulfill a similar role to the AOWR trio until the trio cycles out (which grieves me). Same goes for BWBI.
His complaints about the credit=click equivalence seem really like they miss the point. I mean, the 1:1 ratio is generally considered an extremely conservative conversion; anything more appropriate would have made your versions even MORE affordable and the originals even more over-costed. Yes, it ignores the “complicated nature of how and when to spend clicks,” but it does so falling on the side of clicks being undervalued. A click-less 16 credits seems like a bargain next to 8 credits and 8 clicks. If BWBI’s ability had been 3-4 credits to advance a piece of a ICE clicklessly, once/turn, it would be much more playable because of how much more valuable a click is. His comment of “a better argument is play and adv ice or play ice and do X, Y or Z. That will reveal problems with the ice more fairly” shows this he understands this. I get that it’s an off-the cuff twitter response and the the man often doesn’t come across well in public discussion, but it still feels like he’s just saying things to avoid admitting mistakes.
Add in the fact that permanently strengthening these ICE that he says is extremely powerful is undermined by the fact that Parasite has been a key player in any meta since day 1, and his comments frustrate me. It’d be so much easier to give him the benefit of the doubt on these topics if he occasionally admitted mistakes, instead of being defensive. I know this is a PR complaint about a man who’s job that is not, nor is it something he seems overly concerned with. It would just be nice if he didn’t insist on being so aloof.
I think the fundamental problem with unlimited advancable ice is that it has a really, really scary best-case scenario and a totally useless most-likely scenario.
Also, anyone who thinks their best-case scenario is out of line has never played the Polish Tennin FA decks. I could regularly get a piece of ICE with 10-15 advancements on it in that deck, sometimes it was Tyrant. A 15 advancement Tyrant costs 17 to break with Corroder, only 6 more than Curtain Wall. (Breach, Atman and Morning Star occasionally popped up, faring even better.) That is a huge cost, yes. It is also a huge investment, and vulnerable to ICE destruction. That’s the best-case for the best of the AOWR ICE.
I certainly don’t agree with all of his comments, particularly his credit=click equivalence, but I’m impressed he responded all the same. Truthfully, it is also very hard to effectively convey complex ideas/arguments in 160 character segments.
Nod nod. A number of peeps have commented that the advanceable ice could have some semi-arbitrary ‘limitation clause’/cap, wherein they stop gaining subroutines after a certain number of advancements. Seems a reasonable way to keep them in check, whilst also allowing them to not be terrible.
Part II has arrived! We’re looking at Weyland’s rush ice this time around, so it’s not all gloom and sadness. I decided to get a bit creative with my ‘solution’ cards for this one - hope y’all enjoy!
Thank you - I am pretty happy where I ended up with Sentinel. Unsurprisingly, even though these are just ideas, my solution cards all went through several iterations.
Initially, the second sub was a straight-up ‘end the run’, but I think a direct ETR would necessitate a bump in rez cost. I still am not sure whether 5 or 6 is the correct rez cost, but hey, that’s a playtesting matter; I’m just theorizing here!
It probably needs to be 6 to rez since it doubles as a destroyer, yeah. It’s basically Weyland Ichi with conditions to make up for not being clickable, and that’s amazing.
