Agree that its not necessarily that desperado is better than the other criminal consoles (though it is), its that the run-based criminal card plexus is better than any other available criminal strategies.
If there was a stronger payoff to link in criminal, you’d see more criminals running forger and reflection. (See Geist who finally gives a big enough link payoff)
If there was a more consistent way to assemble the jack-out plexus you might see people running Reflection or the 2MU consoles.
If there were more devastating haymakers in criminal you could play from a non-run based economy you’d see criminals running Logos.
If non-run based flooding was powerful enough you see people considering Gauntlet.
Run-economy criminal is like sucker/parasite/fixed breakers anarch, so damn good they need to print something even more broken (like AI Anarch) to get people to shift.
A fine list, but does need an addendum the way FFG (and i think myself) think of using it. Since the reason Despy was on there in the first place is that it restricted console choices within faction you and FFG have different opinions on the matter. As such there should be a fifth point in your list:
5. Card greatly limiting options within a faction. Restricting diversity.
That said, you’re coming from an understandable place to me regarding Desperado. The most healthy way would be a new card, or to errata this one. While i disagree it is the most interesting console currently, it was true for a long time (Gauntlet is really cool and effective) it is certainly among the ones that are very good for the game for the reasons you state.
I would not say that all the other consoles are bad, but that they have designed Criminal economy to synergise well with only desperado, and synergise very well indeed. This then is mostly about lack of alternatives to run-economy, or indeed Desperado synergising too well. A ‘first time succesful run’ or ‘only on centrals’ would go a long way on a card like desperado, making sure it being played in specifically run-economy-oriented Crims and not all Crims.
Maybe we’ll see this in the rumored ‘Core 2.0’. In any case the reason i want to MWL Desperado and you do not as i understand it is that you consider the criminal cardpool to be bad otherwise, and i think stuff like Temujin and others have brought it up a notch so that it can actually manage without Despy in all decks nowadays. Only time (and data) will show whose gut-feeling is correct. I can only say: give it a chance.
Regarding Caprice i think you are wrong however, not in that she is needed but in that she is the required power-level for corps to score out of remotes. Something on the level of Ash or Batty would do fine, Caprice is a notch above those two for sure. She is needed, however, since so few cards exist that fill this role, and this is one thing that FFG probably realizes but are saving their card-designs for her rotating.
The reason is likely that a deck that could use multiple powerful defensive upgrades would become too strong, but as soon as we get multiple lower-powered options glacier will likely be fine. Do you agree with this?
Caprice can be played around, she needs some skill to use, but she is a really weighted die in an otherwise balanced system. She is without a doubt (to me) too powerful. Not by much, but by enough. This is the reason i want to MWL her. She is also strong in a way that bypasses the game economy, and while i like that a lot for low-to-mid stakes, I do not like it for high-stakes. Turning the final agenda into a Yomi (or some would say die-roll) situation is not good design.
Thing is, since stakes are so high on those runs even the Yomi turns into more of a random game since the bet-amount matters very little to the gamestate. We all remember the RP-days, don’t we?[quote=“Dis, post:302, topic:8704”]
Agree that its not necessarily that desperado is better than the other criminal consoles (though it is), its that the run-based criminal card plexus is better than any other available criminal strategies.
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Slightly tangential, but it does seem to be a deliberate design decision that consoles are above the power curve of other cards; compare Astrolabe to Akamatsu Mem Chip, for example. After IDs, they should be the defining card of what a deck is trying to do, and if your deck doesn’t want a console, something has gone wrong (or you’re doing something really weird.)
The design failure isn’t that Desperado is very good, it’s that after six cycles we still don’t have another criminal console that’s really worth including in a deck. If Desperado wasn’t around, the best thing you can say about the other consoles is that they give extra memory (most decks do want 5 MU) and aren’t Dyson Mem Chip. I think we’d be playing Doppelganger solely on the basis that it’s the cheapest one going, with maybe the occasional Logos. Shaper has exactly the same problem with Astrolabe being their only viable console.
Compare that to Anarch, who have six (six!) playable consoles that all do different things and push decks in different directions. That means that MWLing Sifr probably wouldn’t do a great deal to Anarch’s overall playability. MWLing a console for a faction that effectively only has one console is just a tax on every deck in that faction.
You’re talking to people who love the RP days (myself included).
This is only true in the limit that both players have infinite money (i.e. it’s false). In point of fact, rezzing ice and playing psi (both Caprice and TFP) was a huge strain on 2015 RP economies in the games where the runner actually bothered to contest Mental Health Clinic and Sundew. It’s true that Caprice bypassed the runner economy, if the runner completely ignored the corp’s board until the corp tried to score, and it’s also true that this correctly describes the way a lot of people tried to play runner in 2015. Those people just need(ed) to git gud, tho.
I think you’re right to be worried that HB with 2x Caprice and 1-ish Friends will be too strong under the rumored MWL, but I don’t think Jinteki glaciers will be strong enough to justify attacking Caprice, specifically. Breaker Bay Grid seems, to me, like a much smarter starting point for an HB nerf, since a) it’s completely, if quietly, insane, b) has a really frustrating interaction with Friends (much more so than any asset-spam cards, actually), c) doesn’t really crop up in any lower-powered decks out-of-faction, and d) is played in triplicate.
Not to nit-pick, but why would an MWL3 Foodcoats only run 1 Friends? Breaker Bay, Adonis, Eve, Caprice, and Ash are probably the best targets for recursion via AM or FiHP. Here is a list I made (but didn’t play) for King of Subways:
I think I’d cut the 3rd Eve for a 3rd FiHP, or at least test that variation.
Note: 2x Macrophage + CVS is overkill, but I did all of my testing against AndySucker and TemuWhizz, where they did quite a bit of work.
I’d say Jinteki glacier is quite competitive in a world without RM. I have been playing it a while now, and will continue into Regionals-season. Only time will tell i guess.
That said, i think we’re debating in quite a narrow window of opinion here. I don’t think 2 or 3 influence would hurt most jinteki-glacier decks. Maybe the ones of us that refuse to give up the Grail-ICE… I think the game will be mostly fine without Caprice on the MWL as well, as counters exist and, like you say, she has mid/high-level counterplay.
I think she would be a fine target though due to FiHP and general power-level compared to alternatives (reason ‘5’ if looking at motivations above). So i guess the difference here is somewhat philosophical, or what you prefer the MWL to do, really.
I don’t think it makes sense to play three Friends.
It isn’t good until a) the runner has trashed two things and b) you’ve installed enough ice that the runner can’t just trivially trash the things again. You definitely don’t want to be cutting Eve or Ash for copies of Friends, since drawing Friends when you want to draw (Eve or Ash) blows, but a lot of the times you’d want to draw Friends, drawing (Eve or Ash) is pretty good.
I usually look at any card that’s a 3x as ‘I expect to see this early in the game.’ FiHP really doesn’t fit that bill. It can get recurred just fine with Jackson in the mid-game if I think I need more.
But my point is I will definitely run more than 1 copy of Friends, which will like keep Caprice around a lot more than a 1x card should.
I couldn’t disagree more that caprice is objectively better than Batty. Caprice can’t trash programs and leave the runner crippled for the rest of the game. Facing a build with both caprice and Batty, Batty is the card I fear, not caprice.
If you’re playing as (non-Geist) criminal, Batty can decide the outcome of the game with one psi game while losing to caprice just costs you some money. If you’re not playing criminal, Batty can still inflict a horrific tempo loss by sniping your killer before you faceplant into a sentry. The new TD Weyland identity coupled with Batty will treat anarchs and shapers like criminals as far as rig-shooting goes. Caprice is also more expensive to use than Batty and costs a whopping 4 influence out of faction.
I also strongly disagree that a 3-influence hit for SAU and 1 influence hit for bio-ethics means criminals won’t need desperado against horizontal decks anymore. Against NEH without desperado, most criminals basically can’t even develop their board because they’re stuck checking remotes with most of their clicks, looking for SSCG’s and making sure the corp isn’t installing naked agendas.
Doesn’t this mean Criminals need to splash recursion and cut back on spending influence on breakers or other tech? Faced with the Batty problem, I figured Crims would splash Deja Vu or Scavenge but noticed that most do not. I gather that is because they want other tools, but if rig shooting really is an auto loss, don’t Crims have to take cards to deal with it even if it makes them less efficient elsewhere?
The best strategy for crim is usually to avoid having your rig blown up in the first place. Councilman helps a lot with this. Tracker should work too, but I haven’t tested it.
Criminals manage without breakers more easily than other factions. This is less of a problem with things like inside-job, femme and sneakdoor. It’s not a non-issue but is much harder if trying to play criminal like a shaper.
A breaker and a back-up breaker and Batty shouldn’t be a problem if you play well. But Crim can be very unforgiving if you make mistakes, and this differs from shaper (with regard to losing programs anyway). This is why i consider Caprice better, even against criminals.
I run a single corroder, and i’ve lost games to that carelessness, but not frequently enough to be a problem. It can actually create a false sense of security when they snipe your breaker, and that can let you surprise them in other ways. Leela is especially good at this.
You can jump through hoops in order to shore up this weakness, but in fairness if your meta is full of Batty Jinteki, it makes much more sense to switch to Anarch or Shaper (sadly).
Playing two copies of Tracker makes Batty irrelevant and it’s a good, versatile cards on its own that reduces the need to install a full rig before running.
When shoring up a faction’s weakness, you want cards that are low influence and good even if you don’t face that weakness. Deja vu is 2 influence and not great in most matchups, so it’s not a great card for Crim. A better move? Paying 1 more inf for Paperclip instead of Corroder, which isn’t a bad move even against non-rigshooters because Clip is a great breaker. Paying 1 inf for sac con also isn’t bad, because you can use it to protect tapwrm if you’re not up against a rigshooter.
Even when my clip gets ark lockdowned, I probably win at least half my games as Crim (I refuse to pre-install my Clip out of fear of lockdown unless I’ve seen it in their hand). They have a lot of ways to get around ice, as Elusive pointed out.
True, but you still don’t see any Crims splash deja vu. They can get 6 siphons influence free (with 3 Same Old Thing), and 6 is enough when you aren’t going tag me.
Sure, the point was that it has utility in any matchup, similarly to Saccon or Tracker, which also help vs Batty and have additional utility if Batty isn’t a problem. 2inf is quite a lot though.
Sneakdoor, Shutdown, and Siphons give you a pretty good game plan against Batty rig-shooters on their own, to be honest.
Batty decks tend to telegraph what they’re doing (cards like Cobra or Grail ice are big tells), and you have various ways of getting rid of Batty (you Sneakdoor him when he’s on HQ, you Siphon / Shutdown the Destroyer on the remote, etc, etc.). Worst comes to worst, just install two sentry breakers and find your back-up Decoder. In principle, it seems like it’s really scary, but I’ve never had a problem just playing denial, snagging four points out of HQ, and then hitting Indexing / Freedom for the win.
