It’s well agreed that Weyland has the worst ICE. I always wondered why Making News players didn’t use Burke Bugs. Seems like a good early game ICE, cheap way to punish face-checks, especially against Anarchs. Did NBN players ever toy with Burke Bugs? I have a soft spot for that card, but as you said, there’s no real reason to play it in Weyland.
I’ve heard of some NBN decks playing the bugs actually
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With NEH you don’t need to use in faction ice other than wraparound, popup and tollbooth, though, and those are amazing pieces of ice. The tax to rez cost ratio in current NEH builds is really good. Sure you can get through pop-up and Eli every turn, but you’re going to lose if you’re accessing one card each time. Also, NEH doesn’t need to build a scoring remote, so they can focus all their defences on centrals which is another big strength.
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I’m sure Scorcho isn’t being serious. NBN doesn’t have the weakest anything.
Here’s the problem with NBN as it stands…
With every other corp, as long as you keep them low on creds, kill their SanSan City Grids, have enough money to run any remote, R&D lock them, you win.
You can do ALL of that to NBN, and they can still Biotic+Fast Track the game away with 6 creds. In other words, they have an out to being locked out of the game that no other corp does. You can’t stop pressuring NBN… ever. Because they can operate at such low credit totals, they can score out the fastest of any corp, they are resilient and taxing… they do everything. The one weakness that kept them in line was they suffered if they didn’t draw Astroscript in the early-mid game when they had their scoring windows. Fast Track solves that problem. It IS the problem. #banfasttrack
But then of course the Gencon winner and his testing group didn’t run Fast Track at all. The current NEH is just an accumulation of very good cards that keep pushing the corp win % up a bit more with each addition. El-ad was calling TWIY Astrobiotics too good months ago. None of the cards are independently game breaking.
But all of that ice is focused on HQ and R&D. Small efficient ice like Eli 1.0 and Pop-up Window three deep is actually some of the strongest defence in the meta.
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I agree, NBN was probably already too good before they printed NEH. At the start of this league, I had a 13-2 tear with TWiY.
I think NEH probably only pushed NBN up a little bit, but moreover, I think it called everyone’s attention to just how good the faction is. It’s got a forgiving skill level, it’s very resilient against almost every runner, it’s probably the fastest corp deck, and it can get out of seemingly impossible situations. It has the makings of a pervasive deck and no one seems to be able to punish it very well for its popularity.
Fast Track is not the one thing that makes it TOO good, but banning it would bring it back closer to other corps, and wouldn’t really kill any other archetype. I think Fast Track is at its best in Astrobiotics, and really isn’t necessary in any other corp deck, and therefore is far less aggregious than killing something ubiquitous like Biotic Labor or SanSan City Grid. I don’t think banning Astro is warranted, that would just obliterate NBN fast advance all together.
Whether anything should be banned at all, or whether they should just print hate cards, or strong general runner cards, is another debate. Personally I think nuking Fast Track would allow them a lot more freedom in design spaces, rather than having to find the right level to bring runners up to to challenge NEH more successfully. I do think that the situation Fast Track creates are very non-interactive, and that in general is bad design and not something to move towards. If I’ve scoured HQ and dug deep in R&D, killed every remote, pressured your econ, you should not be able to just reach in and grab what you need from the deck, but conversely imagine a card that would stop NBN… it’s probably not very interactive either. It could escalate to a place no one likes.
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CXXXXR - 6c
Neutral
Hardware - Console
+2 MU, +2 Link
4c recurring
Use these credits only versus NBN.
Kidding
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Viral Cat Video - 2c
Anarch 2 inf
Program - Icebreaker - AI - Virus
2 strength
1c: Break NBN Ice subroutine
1c: +1 Strength
I can haz cheezburger?
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Who accesses one card at a time anymore?
*Leveson Inquiry
Resource
2 Credit
May only be played if the Corp is using an NBN identity.
+2 link.
NBN Agendas are considered to be blank whilst this is in play.
Trash: The Corp takes two bad publicity.
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It’s not a lone card that makes NEH/Astrobullshit so strong. It’s the amalgamation of very good cards with consistently strong situational synergy.
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I use bugs and I quite like them.
They used to be useful parts of an nbn deck I played.
However the runners make so much income that more and more they do not justify a spot in the deck.
In other words the standard for how good Ice had to be too be in a deck had been raised quite a lot.
I’ve been playing with mutate to no avail…
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Reading comprehension much?
Fast Track is not the one thing that makes it TOO good, but banning it
would bring it back closer to other corps, and wouldn’t really kill any
other archetype. I think Fast Track is at its best in Astrobiotics, and
really isn’t necessary in any other corp deck, and therefore is far less
aggregious than killing something ubiquitous like Biotic Labor or
SanSan City Grid.
It’s posts with attitude like this that make me want to not contribute and continue lurking. Thanks.
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Apologies, I was rude. Don’t want to discourage contributions, but you misunderstood my post as being contrary to your statement, when it was in fact saying the same thing you did. I will be more polite in the future.
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This is probably to most elegant counter to Astro that I’ve seen proposed. It has other minor uses as Shango listed, so there’s justification for using it outside of the games against NBN, it explores new design spaces (i.e. runner effects on Corp’s scored agendas), and it gives runner currents a bit more bite. I think it should be neutral (0 or 1 influence) and cost 0.
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One disadvantage of such a current, though, would be to disincentivise agendas with post-scored abilities, and further incentivise difficult-to-steal agendas such as NAPD and TFP, which do all their work before being scored or stolen, and which are already very strong.
Except a current that blanks text boxes would make NAPD free to steal, no damage from Fetal AI and no Psi game for TFP right?
Get printing FFG!
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I’d find that rather boring overall. Not to mention rather annoying, just imagine a corp current that blanks text on all programs. Sure that would break the game but for me, it would be on the same level. 