Part of why Weyland isn’t doing as well as it used to is that nearly everyone is carrying around really good meat damage hard counters.
I wonder where Weyland would be at now if Deus X had been anti meat damage, and Plascrete Carapace anti net damage.
Does any other Corp have a neutral hard counter that is as good against one of its primary win conditions as Plascrete Carapace is against Weyland’s?
Deus X for meat damage would in many respects be better than Plascrete against Weyland, because you could tutor it out with SMC or pull it back via Clone Chip after getting hit by the first Scorched Earth. Further, it wouldn’t be “pierced” by The Cleaners in the way Plascrete Carapace currently is.
I’m not talking so much about Deus X for meat damage being strictly worse than Plascrete, so much as the influence cost and the MU sink making it less universally played, and less meta-defining for Weyland.
Actually - I took The Prof to one of the Regionals I attended this year. Placed 5th, thus narrowly missing the cut to double-elim (which was just top 4 for some weird reason) on tie-breakers. Lost a couple games by 1 click or 1 credit, which I blame mostly on my lack of practice with him - I only started actively playing The Prof about a week before the regional, so I considered myself less than fully proficient with him, at the time of the tournament.
Truth is, he has a really good matchup against rushy NBNs, simply because he can tutor his RnD dig tools (if you’re playing Medium and Keyhole, that is), and is also packing tutorable HQ punishment (Sneakdoor, Nerve Agent, Imp).
In the tournament, quite a few of my opponents were happy about my obvious lack of Siphon, only to find out that a tutored and recurred Imp can be just as destructive.
Challenge accepted!
I’ve been on a week or two break from OCTGN while I catch up on other stuff, but I definitely want some better quality Weyland videos to post on my YouTube channel when I get back into the flow of things. Supermodernism remains my second favorite style of Corp play besides my usual Cerebral antics. As you pointed out, the one Supermodernism video I currently have up was won on poor play by the runner more than anything I did on my end. Sadly, I had a recording error on my most competitive win w/Weyland in the OCTGN 3 tournament (which involved some ice decisions that non-Supermodernism players would have found very sketchy), so that one won’t make my channel when I start posting all my tournament games. But, I’ll see what I can dig up.
Details or GTFO!
(please don’t gtfo)
I am glad to see others feel Weyland is underpowered. I caught some flak for expressing that opinion recently. In my opinion, Weyland won’t be good until it can win without relying on the threat of Scorched. BWBI is my favorite Weyland identity, but FFG botched it from the beginning. The biggest problem I think is that many of the advance-able ICE has to be rezzed before it can be advanced. For one, that eliminates any surprise factor. Some argue that this is thematic; Weyland doesn’t try to hide anything. I argue that Weyland could still be advancing their ICE before the Runner encounters it, and still stay on theme. Let’s drop that point.
The ICE geared towards BWBI is laughably expensive for rezzing without sub-routines. Let’s compare some ICE. Tyrant, which should have been the cornerstone of BWBI along with Ice Wall and Hadrian’s (currently the only good advance-able ICE), costs 7 to rez at 4 Str, with no subroutines. Let’s compare that to the only other 7-cost ICE – Shinobi, which rezzes at 5 with 3 subroutines for a potential FLATLINE. Tyrant is absolute garbage ICE outside of Tennin (pathetic that another Corp can better use something that was clearly intended for BWBI). Let’s next consider Woodcutter, another terribly under-balanced card. It rezzes for 4 at a pathetic 2 Str. Compare that to Neural Katana, Data Raven, Fenris – anything. Woodcutter is one of the worst pieces of ICE in the game, IMO.
Does anyone else feel that BWBI is basically un-playable in a competitive format? It is unfortunate cause I find the strategy and idea of advancing ICE really cool. Unfortunately I doubt FFG will ever do anything to fix BWBI and will instead just try to give Weyland some new IDs. Even still, I think Weyland is definitely the weakest Corp currently, by a longshot. It will be an outrage if NBN gets a deluxe xpac before Weyland.
Sorry for the BWBI rant, it just bothers me that people worship ANR for being so balanced when there are clearly underpowered IDs, among Runner and Corp alike.
Maybe I am alone in my feelings about BWBI and the poor design of most advance-able ICE. I just think they should have been 1 or 2 credits cheaper to rez. You are losing any surprise factor, and each subroutine costs 2 credits (1 credit + 1 click/potential credit) to build. 7 credits for a 4 Str ICE with no subroutines is poor design, IMO.
tl;dr version: swarm, not tyrant
Expanded version:
Actually, I suspect Witness Tampering is a piece of the puzzle that makes BWBI less horrible.
(@mediohxcore, stop laughing at me behind that monitor of yours and hear me out)
BWBI is obviously the best fit for a Weyland deck that doesn’t want to be rushy, and instead wants to go for the long game. The long game, however, is where BP hurts you the most. This means that your best BWBI piece of ICE actually becomes really horrible for you, due to its drawback. Couple this with the facts that:
And you’ll see how the BP just starts piling up. I tried remedying this with Veteran’s Programs, but they ended up being not super convincing. Witness Tampering is expensive as all hell, but Commercialization sorta covers you on that front, so it ends up being decent. My biggest problem ended up being what to cut for the second copy, because one wasn’t enough.
I will say this about my experiments though. Swarm with 5 counters is a lot like Mordor… one does not simply walk through it, Atman or no Atman.
edit: I’d also seriously consider Tenma Line in the deck, to fix positioning issues. Either that or go the lirion_Claus route of adding Markers (:P)
Yes, BWBI is even worse off than BABW/GRNDL at the moment. But I think we can safely, based on the spoilers of the Morph-type ICE, envision a brighter day with more interesting advance-able ICE that will make BWBI more interesting again :).
Swarm is the most interesting advance-able ICE that isn’t Ice Wall at the moment, and that kinda sucks.
edit: LOL @PeekaySK and I both talking up Swarm.
Yes, Swarm is one of my favorite pieces of ICE ever, and definitely a great card for BWBI. My point was that every advance-able ICE should have been like Ice Wall and Swarm. The mandatory rez should never have been a design.
I have splashed Tenma Line and it is pretty fun. My current BWBI build, while not a ‘good’ deck, uses Trick of Light, despite eating up 9 Influence for all 3 copies. It’s fun but still frustratingly underpowered. The deck is very low on BP; I don’t even run Hostile Takeover. Veterans Program are just terrible IMO; Agendas should gain you something, not remove something negative. As said, lots of Weyland’s problems come from many of their best cards incurring BP, which become backbreaking in the long games that we want to play.
you are better off using things that don’t give bad pub than playing witness tampering. I think geothermal and hostile takeover are the only cards with justifiable BP costs.
No direct non-BP alternative available to Swarm, though. And just Ice Walls and Shadows aren’t enough to justify BWBI.
The other problem with BWBI is that there are two things you can do with a giant pile of counters:
Since FFG appear to have learned their lesson about printing 3/2 agendas, the only 3/2 Weyland’s likely to get is the one you least want to fast-advance. Trick of Light is heavy on influence, anyway, and it’s going to hurt Commercialization if you try to run them in the same deck.
Let’s look at Commercialization. If you click to advance an ICE and eventually commercialize it, you’ve basically clicked for a delayed credit given that your giant ICE Wall is going to get Femme’d eventually. And you get a bit of Siphon resistance. It’s only after the second Commercialization that you turn a profit (though it’s a pretty good profit).
So it seems like you want:
I really think Taurus will be of great help to Weyland. If unbroken, it can turn Scorched Earth back on real easily. If broken with pretty much any non-Atman… well, that’s a pretty taxing run. Any flatline deck wants 'em, and having something else to slow the runner down with’ll help Supermodernism to no end.
[quote=“endgame, post:50, topic:1455”]
Oversight AI to tide you over until you’re rich
[/quote]Seems risky, depending on where you put it. After advancing Hadrian’s or Swarm enough, maybe, but has a big potential for losing you all those precious advances.
FAO seems to be dropping in use some, and Swarm’s still worth it with the econ. I’d rather run through a Tollbooth most of the time.
What do people think of the Root in BWBI? Hard-ish to protect, but the extra credits for rezzing/advancing things seem like they might come in real handy – let you triple advance a face-down Ice and still save 1 when you rez it that turn. Better still, no loss from moving to a partial asset economy (from BABW).
EDIT: I think that even with the BP, Swarm is probably worth it. So they can pay through/break it more easily? Sure, great, but you get to keep advancing it and that’s going to come back to bite 'em eventually. You can pretty easily offset some portion of the BP cost – though yeah it’s better if you don’t have to, especially with Weyland’s agendas.
I was thinking about Tollbooth or Curtain Wall, where you need a lot of money to hard-rez them, or possibly Archer. Not on one of the advanceables.
I specifically record my games so I don’t have to remember details. =P Eh, it was three months ago in the first round of Swiss, but I recall that I eschewed ice on HQ against Andromeda to secure a remote and rush out an over-advanced Atlas. Your typical gameplan with Supermodernism, but quite sketchy for most folks who are used to overly securing centrals (particularly HQ against Criminals) before icing remotes.
I think this is a big chunk of why I like GRNDL so much for Smod. If you get so much as a hedge fund off for econ, then you’re set. You can rez any Ice in your deck even after an Account Siphon, and if they double-siphon you’re in scorch range. (Not quiiite double Scorch range, alas, but those tags’ll be around for another turn, probably.)
EDIT: And if it was a restructure, a double-siphon does leave you in range of a double-scorch, which, uh. Is something, I guess? (Triple Siphon or GTFO, I guess?)