Weyland: How Bad Is It Right Now?

Oversight AI is extremely strong. I was the one that SamRC flatteringly remembered at SA regionals playing an Oversight/Caprice/Off the Grid scoring window Weyland. In one turn I could create a scoring server that required about 20 credits + Caprice to get through, at the cost of about 10. PeekaySK is right about having to include the ridic strong flateline options. I used 2x Punitive for the weak early game and it kept Runners honest, along with the inherent fear of Scorch.

It lacked refinement and more consistency to be champion-worthy, but it was a lot of fun and got me 12th place in a 49 player tournament with absolutely no Weylands in the top 20.

neh requires quick access to breakers to compete with, rp requires loads of money, supermodernism is bad against both of those things. It would be a good meta call if noise mill came back into fashion due to cache, and runners in general slowed down (doubtful due to neh being the deck of choice though)

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NEH usually don’t pack Archer and only a single Grim. And setting up fast is the best way to hit either some heavy destroyers or a timed power shutdown. On the same way, running with multi-access is the best way to enable a snare! kill when you play against Supermodernism.

The fact is : most of the current runner decks don’t run 2 plascretes. So running against Weyland early-on become really risky. Seriously, a Turn3/4 overscored Atlas really keep the runner honest on his run and open a really huge scoring window for Supermodernism.

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This doesn’t mean that most todays Plascrete-less runners are able to consistently win a cred war with Weyland. Not so hard to get Scorched.

cache is pretty nuts from what ive seen so far and i fully expect noise to become a real popular choice soon. his interaction with NEH is interesting. they tear through their deck pretty quick and noise is able to mill a lot faster than before plus he has imp for all that garbage in the remotes. breaker suite is still sketchy as hell though.

I’ve been running around with a Weyland Supermodernism-lite deck (No Snares), that spends its influence on Midseasons (I’ve had enough of assholes running decoy!), Data Raven, Rototurret, 3 Jacksons, a SEA Source, a tollbooth, and an accelerated diagnostics.

I take it whenever I want to make the cut in a tournament, but don’t necessarily care about winning (e.g. Chronos Protocol). That’s because it has an incredible track record against scubs and people who don’t really know what they’re doing (I went 4-1 with it at both CP events I attended with it - my only losses with it were against a Whizzard Siphon deck where I drew no ice and an Andy-sucker deck, it’s just that my runner deck crapped out horribly that day). It looks like Supermodernism, it acts like Supermodernism, but it’s not quite that, and the threat of a Snare-> Scorch keeps runners honest.

It’s a 50-50 deck against people who know what they’re doing, but the Midseasons is always a bit of a shock for people - it provides an alternate way of getting through a plascrete (other than cleaners) though the triple-scorch, and it means I don’t need to have an 8 credit advantage over the runner the turn after a run and then scorch them the following turn. The 1x isn’t too much of a problem when I can search it up on demand with Atlas counters. Sure, my NBN and HB decks both have far far better win ratios against people who know what they’re doing (which is why I go for those for tournaments where I’m trying to win, like a regional), but Weyland still works.

I think Blue Sun is going to be huge for Weyland. It’s a soft-counter to parasite, it keeps the threat of a Sea-Scorch alive, even if you’re low on credits. Obviously, the jank-head in me is going to make me run a Lizzie Mills bounce deck that hands out bad pub as if it were candy and then gets rid of it via Lizzie Mills rather than doing anything really competitive with Blue Sun.

So far, Order and Chaos hasn’t realy inspired me. I suspect High Risk Investent will replace Government contracts in my deck, becuase the one click massive burst of cash is probably going to be more important than the slow drip from GC. Wormhole is going to be interesting, though slightly janky - a Sharpshooter/Fairie-proof program trasher (As long as you have another one rezzed on the board) At the very least it will be very very taxing for Yog-osucker and Gordian. Otherwise, they really do seem to be pushing BWBI, which I’m not sure about, and Edward Kim is murderous to Sea-Scorch-Scorch :frowning:

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From a design standpoint, BWBI definitely needs the most help. Advancing ICE is something unique to Weyland, so I hope they support it more like a few spoiled cards seem to suggest. Most of all I hope they don’t give Weyland a bunch of other cards that other Corporations can use. One thing I think Lukas needs to do is be more aggressive with Influence costs, across the board. Just look at Traffic Accident. The card might as well say, “Here, NBN.”

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I dunno. I like the look of the spoiled advance-ice, but I don’t agree that BWBI needs the most help. It doesn’t need any help, writing it off as an underpowered ID and moving on isn’t the best thing, but it’s not the worst, either. Making Stronger Together better when HB is at the top of its game makes sense – ETF isn’t in need of the boost. But BABW and GRNDL both need support right now, and the advance-ice doesn’t really give it to them. I’m hoping they get something useful out of O&C… useful for themselves, I mean. They need the Jinteki treatment, as much as Anarchs need the Shaper one.

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What would we say that Weyland needs beyond what we’ve seen so far from the set?

a 5 influence version of Chicago Branch, perhaps? Something that allows Weyland to increase how quickly it can advance something, at great cost.

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It’s definitely interesting, especially if it’s high influence. As others have mentioned, Weyland is the only faction without a viable fast-advance strategy in faction, plus this leverages the way that Weyland’s only real advantage - outside of the everpresent Scorch threat - is printing money like Jack Weyland invented the DS.

It does let them score a 4/2 (or an Atlas with one counter) out of hand, assuming this hypothetical New Chicago Branch is installed somewhere, but it’s got such an absurdly low trash cost. Heck, maybe you make scoring a Glenn Station a priority then slap another copy of this onto it to keep it safe.

It sort of works against The Root (you could use the credits to rez this, but not use it), which I’m guessing is intended to be an important thing for Weyland in the near future, but that’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world.

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Ice that supports a rush-deck well, ie. something to make up for not having influence to spend on Rototurret necessarily. Well, that’s a bit narrow – but good early-game Ice in general would be nice to have more of.

Another transaction might be nice. It might not be the most necessary, but their economy is no longer particularly dominant, with HB and Jinteki (and even NBN on occasion) starting to catch up.

An in-faction way of tagging the runner that isn’t entirely useless. I know it’s a good thing for them to have to spend their influence on, but at the same time, it’d be a thing that’d provide them a real big boost, especially with Traffic Accident requiring two tags (making it virtually unplayable in-faction as things stand).

EDIT: Chicago Branch looks waaay too good, but something like that would be nice. That said, Weyland not having an FA plan doesn’t matter if they have the ability to dosomething else well, which is the big issue they’ve got right now, I think. Rush is their best, but they have no ability to sustain it with FA or turn it into Glacier as time passes.

EDIT: Yeaaah, no. Chicago Branch is unprintable for Weyland because of Project Atlas. Get one in play safely, rez it, IAA Atlas. Use counter to find and IAA Atlas. Use counter to find and IAA Atlas. Use counter to find and IAA Hostile Takeover. GG.

That’s like Astro-train II: Lunar Boogaloo. It’s just too good. Sure, the runner can just trash CB, but depending on the econ you’ve got in play (22 to score out completely + whatever Ice you need to rez) a traditional 3-layer Supermodernism server might keep someone out long enough to stand more or less no chance. And you could have 3 Snares still to discourage the hell out of digging to score an Atlas first. Maybe Space Camp to help advance Ice, too?

I mean, that all might be doable, yes, and it’d make Weyland really good, but that might be too much…

It trashes itself, so you’d need to have 3 chicago branches safely in play, which would be hard enough to do.

Of course, that’s why it would need to be modified. probably at least 6 for 2 advancements. Or give it tokens on rez for 3 uses only. The biggest barrier I see with advancing anything other than agendas in weyland is that it’s too time intensive. The money hardly matters,but they’re just spinning wheels when they advance ice.

Of course, to dissuade silly atlas shenanegins, a chicago branch as a repeating kaguya could help.

I think you’re misreading Chicago Branch: it’s a [click] and 3c to place two tokens, not [trash] and 3c, so you could only IA + CB. It does let you score 3/2s from hand, though.

I wasn’t misreading, sorry. Was using the “A” there as “A via CB” which perhaps wasn’t the most straightforward thing.

If it did trash itself (as well as take a click) then it’d still be decent, but at that point probably on the weak side.

Scoring an overadvanced Atlas from hand is just a scary, scary thing. @Sedj has some good ideas on how to tone it down a bit. I’m sure it could be made to work without being overly broken, while still being good enough.

Heh. Maybe an asset that has a high trash cost with an optional trash cost would be good for Weyland? Like, something that costs 6 to trash normally… or you can take a tag to trash it.

I think with some new (good) ICE and agendas that doesn’t cripple any taxing strategy with bad pub Weyland could be fine. Government Contracts and The Cleaners are both playable but not close to Future Perfect. While project Atlas will remain very strong, Goethermal Fracking doesn’t cut it anymore, especially since Weyland has a very hard time using NAPD Contact. Glenn Station will be interesting even if it might not make the cut.

I think that Weyland needs two things to become a real thing, though either could plausibly be enough in the right meta if the cards were strong enough.

(1) Better ICE. Weyland has some good ICE, but it’s big piece is Archer, which is really hard to hit people with. You can power shutdown Faeries, but that’s only a speedbump. You almost never can get people to run through it repeatedly and the cost is steep to rez it. Same with Grim. Another card like Caduceus could help a lot.

(2) Some way of scoring in the late game. Sorry, but forcing yourself to win quickly isn’t ever going to be optimal. Weyland needs an Ash or something.

I think that in the current meta with people cutting Plascrete and Emergency Shutdown, Scorch might get better, but I don’t think it will be tier one ever, because there exists such a perfect counter to it and people will just play more of them if it becomes an issue.

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Thing is that everyone seems to cut Plascrete outside of tournament season, then stick them back in whenever prizes are on the line. I think Taurus is pretty OK at dealing with Plascrete if you’re a Scorch deck.

I’ve been experimenting with the Uncorrodable archetype with the new goodies of Will-o’-the-Wisp and Targeted Marketing. It’s undoubtedly too early to say, but I think there’s promise - with or without meat damage win conditions.

I am really excited about Glenn Station, regardless of whether it turns out to be ‘playable.’ The theme and flavor is on-point (Have something to hide? Send it to space), and its function is something we haven’t seen before. The ability to remove agendas from my hand when I’m vulnerable and tutor them back for a scoring window is powerful. Obviously, it requires an even deeper understanding of scoring windows, and some degree of anticipation, but I am nonetheless keen to play with it.

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