At 3 inf, and it goes away if the runner scores an agenda? No way.
OK fair point, I may need to work on the specific example, but I maintain my point about Valencia being far better once sheās not flavour of the month.
2 Likes
Definitely. Sheās a Spanish Inquisition runner and right now plenty of people expect her; but far fewer than youād think in local metas. If no one is teching for her sheās way too good, but if everyone is teching for her the corp decks are worse in general for every other match-up.
I think bootcamp, toybox, & Oversight AI are the only cards worth running regardless of Valenciaās existence; so I think weāll see more decks taking those cards into their builds and less movement on the BP front.
Letās be real: what follows is a complete list of BP removal occurences you need to worry about in a tournament setting:
- BootCamped Liz in BS
Thatās it, literally. The end of the list. The only other option I can see being even remotely relevant is Clone Retirement, and by definition if they have that, thereās more than one copy, so you could conceivably steal it and re-enable your Blackmail shenanigans.
Guess what Iām saying is āRun Val, run Blackmail, tech for the BS matchup assuming you wonāt be able to Blackmail there, and youāre totally fineā. Hell, itās not like that one tidbit even changes the BS matchup, as you need to assume theyāll be Oversighting hard ETRs left and right anyway.
3 Likes
Iād add:
- FA-> Veteranās Program.
I think thatās a decent neutral splash into HB/NBN and a not so horrible never advance in PE.
And then caprice in RP can hurt quite a bit. @Spags may have wiped a medium with 1 counter 7 times, but I failed playing the psi game at least as much. I think it went like this:
- Me 1, @spags 2
- Me 0, @spags 1
- Me 2, @spags 1
- Me 1, @spags 0
- Me 1, @spags 0
- Me 1, @spags 0
- Me 2, @spags 2
And those are the ones I remember. Luckily they werenāt all blackmails. Eater + Mimic let me play the game over and over against RP.
If HB and NBN starts playing Veteranās Program just because Valencia exists, Iām a happy camper. Iāll trade them not having Gila/Bifrost and Breaking News for me not having Blackmail any day of the week, twice on sunday.
Veteranās Program only really makes sense in PE if youāre going down the Profiteering route. Otherwise, once again - if youāre running VP in your House of Knives/Gila Hands/Chronos Project slot, Iāll take the trade.
7 Likes
I g ave this shell a play. Used 2x Day Job, Laundries, Gambles, and 2x Protestors/2xCutlery. Some SoTs too. Holy cow, I was running ALL OVER THEM!
8x econ cards was well enough. Half the games, even against glacier builds, I was discarding Day Job. Granted, I was running Journalism and not Frame Job, but I saw the value of Notoriety + Frame Job. Plus, when I plopped protestor and the game durdled to a halt while I dug for my Keyhole/Cutlery, Notoriety provided me a way to put slight pressure on the Corp.
Inject was dubious without Deja Vu, which I found no room for in lieu of SoT. But it was never a problem and I never ran into Eater remote problems or exorbitant scoring windows.
Very nice framework for a Valencia deck dude, Iāll try 1x Frame Job 2x Journalism to get my feet wet with the probable better option. The 4 clicks can be nasty sometimes.
Edit: Iāll probably try swapping Masanori for Inject in my builds. I am not running Deja Vu and I can already imagine its not consistent enough.
One Chronos can fit in RP.
Also, thereās something called Executive Boot Camp which works fine.
Sure, but Boot Camp will only remove BP with Elizabethā¦ and thatās another 2 inf. And if all RP start playing an Elizabeth, thatās two influence that could have been a card good for all matchups, like a Tollbooth or two Elis or something.
Not gonna argue against EBC, 'cause at least you can pull DBS with it, even though thatās, like, Hostage-level inefficient.
tl;dr: I think the key to Val is to build her so that you can abuse Blackmail if they havenāt teched, but arenāt completely hosed if they have. Hence, all-in on Blackmail strikes me as a bad idea.
He is saying just rezzing things with ebc is good against blackmail, you donāt need the mills.
4 Likes
Thatās only if the bootcamp lives for a turn. Which is the same as letting them have a 3/2.
ā¦which presents a convincing argument for why Valencia should probably run Parasites 
1 Like
You are going to use two Blackmails in one turn v. RP to go after a face down unadvanced?!? Even in NEH, Iāll just put it behind a single ICE. If you spend a Blackmail on that, cool.
EBC is super-versatile, and is 1INF. F Mills outside of Weyland. Valencia is far enough from a problem for that kind of desperate splash.
2 Likes
Have to agree here. A single rezzed ice on remotes made me give up in our match on sniping an agenda with blackmail. Letting you get that markus was totally a play mistake on my end of the table. But you only need 1 blackmail if you can keyhole around that one current. And with eater you can bounce off of anything leaving you once again at a single blackmail. All that said, EBC is the good card here.
But this thing is only 1 influence, too. So it just depends on your deck. RP can go bootcamp. HB, maybe not.
You could still Blackmail through a Markus. That wasnāt the problem that game.
On my side of the table I was pretty close to out of ways to do that within the span of a turn. If I had to install a same old thing (3 clicks + a run) not enough for markus. If I had a sameold thing (2clicks + a run) not enough for markus unscathed. In this case I could have trashed some installed thing, vigil was a prime target. But the best case was having blackmail in hand, and that meant deja the turn before towards the end of the game. It may not have been clear from your side of the table but I felt pretty pressured to manage all of that while also figuring out how to keep the R&D threat alive. Iām not sure that I have/had the skill to manage if you had tried to rush. Hind sight, it would have been possible for me to get in if Iād played smarter and really considered my options.
RP already have Caprice. She means you need approx 3x as many Blackmails as all the other corps anyway. I agree that Bootcamp is probably the best Anti-Valencia tech in RP. But if you arenāt thinking about Valencia you almost certainly donāt run it.
Anarch have a moderately good time against RP. If you get set up in time youāre happy because you have Parasite, DĆ©jĆ Vu and Medium in faction. Anarch recently have much better getting set up in time tools. Either Eater or good Draw events + Earthrise. IHW is easier to play for 0 clicks and 0 credits against Jinteki too. Thereās still the Caprice on remote problem. Quest Completed might be an outrageous 1 of that does work occasionally.
Iāve been playing with good housekeeping a lot. Love the card. But suddenly, Tallie becomes useful.
1 Like
Well between Adonis, Eve, Jackson Howard, DBS, IT Dept, Elizaās Toolbox, and Melange I think thereās a reasonable case for EBC in HB Glacier (HBFA could probably get away with ignoring blackmail Val and just score out, also those last 3 are a bit more iffy but Iām can make very good plays especially in glacier).
And itās also some interesting plays outside of the Val matchup as it can break indexing or R&D lock, shuffle DBS hidden agendas once youāve solidified or be used to guarantee the most useful asset install with architectās 2nd sub (which as it is most likely to fire early means you might not have yet found something to install from hand/archives).
2 Likes
And then PE destroys you. 