I guess Jinja maybe pushes it over the top even without CIs other wincons.
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Rumor Mill off the banned list??!?!
Out of the 48 cards it blanks, the ones that are commonly played are:
- Ash
- Bryan Stinson
- Estelle Moon
- Jeeves
- Marcus Batty
- MCA Austerity Policy
- Sandburg
I don’t think you would include Rumor Mill to counter any one of these particular cards. All the above cards are pretty high impact to the game and I think you are more likely to come across a Corp that is playing one than one that isn’t playing one. For this reason, you can just include Rumor Mill in your deck which will have a big impact on most games you are likely to be playing.
This is the reason why Rumor Mill should, IMHO, not have come off the banned list.
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Yep, and great list. It predicts the next meta well. Time to play mostly Anarch again (and NBN too). It was cool they were using Hacktivist as a cheap counter current.
Now Rumor Mill will be their #1 unicorn, and taggy NBN will reign supreme. How much influence is Misdirection?
why would I play Rumor Mill vs CtM?
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I’d just say that several of these cards (i.e. Stinson, MCAAP, Batty?) might otherwise be contenders for restriction. So bringing one card back into the game may be preferable to putting several cards on restriction.
Not sure this is what happened, but I could see that it might have played out that way.
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You probably won’t, will just have to discard it then. 
I don’t quite understand what you are getting at. Anarch was the best faction before MWL, and they don’t get hit by it at all. The only corp deck that doesn’t get hit by MWL is CtM. Why would I as Anarch include a restricted card that doesn’t do anything vs. CtM? Film Critic is here to stay as #1 unicorn, like it or not.
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Critic may be the correct, hardcore call, but it does so little against CTM compared to how much Rumor Mill devastates almost any HB or Jinteki glacier.
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Moving Tapwrm there really means they don’t care people to ice archives against anyone but Anarchs.
In itself, the card is card advantage 0.
A two card combo costing at the very least 1-3 inf (or 2-6 or 3-9) moves it to card advantage 1 + corp’s credit / 5, along with the risk of being rezed stuff like Chiyashi when running : Peace in our time is better there.
This meant card-advantage meh when you used to go against Siphon for years and years.
I still think that combo was bad in a runner deck : forcing it out is a boost to Shaper with 2-6 inf back : it was a bad inclusion because of sloting (stuff like recursion cards etc), and a nerf to Criminals that absolutly need money in the deck at the cost of their own risk, allready needing Saccon anyway.
And it’s a boost to horizondecks, which condemn Anarch to play Maw forever.
Make people ice archives again, god damn it : Archives needs a Shaper / Crim predation ! 
Film Critic gets you QPM vs CtM. It gets you Ikawahs vs the nonexistent good HB glacier decks. It gets you Obokata vs Jinteki. It also lets you ignore a gajillion effects on newer cards, cards that trigger on steal (HS), comboes with Turning Wheel, and is comparatively hard to get rid of.
RM blanks Ash, a card that hasn’t been relevant in ages because Anarchs can just stimhack into a remote, and batty, a card that will end the run once. It also blanks other cards that are more situational, and I’d argue those situations are usually not as high impact as, you know, stealing 3 agenda points.
The cards do vastly different things, but FC is a better choice in so many situations it’s hard to argue for RM over it.
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To be fair, RM also blanks MCAAP, Bryan, Sandburg, Jeeves and Moon, ans those cards were huge in various CI decks. I’m not sure how those decks are affected by the MWL (they all lose VLC, at least), but they might still be around.
That being said, I still agree with you: FC or Strike are still better than RM in Val, I think.
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I mean, technically that’s true. It does blank those cards. However, unlike Ash and Batty, these cards can give benefit during the corp turn, meaning the runner might not be able to react properly to it. I can install and fire Stinson while you’re below 6 credits, and there’s not a lot you can do. If RM is out, I’ll just not install and rez him. You give up so much for it and I don’t see the great use cases for it. Even if you can blank Moon, you can’t steal agendas that were Lakshmi’d, for instance.
That said, I don’t think anyone wanted this badly designed card back, and I’d rather it get banned again. Fuck RM.
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Mumbad City Hall is unbanned, interesting. I mean, you can’t use it with Mumba Temple or Museum or History or Whampoa Reclamation or a bunch of other cards, but still.
I remember before the rules change it was nuts with Heritage Committee. It might be still good, but you’d have to cast two heritages in a row to shuffle away an agenda. Or maybe it can bring back Mutate decks. You could also use it to find PAD Factory in advancable-ice decks - we are still waiting for the rest of the wonders of the ancient world cycle.
I never noticed Worlds Plaza was unique. What happens if Rumor Mill is played while it’s hosting assets? Do they get trashed?
Yeah, it does sound from the article as well that they unbanned rumour mill so that they wouldn’t have to restrict half of HB’s best cards (by which I mean 9 HB cards and Stinson). So basically half the cards in Wilfy’s worlds deck. Thing is though, those decks were hurt pretty bad by Hacktivist already, so I’m not sure RM will get picked when you can have Hacktivist AND another restricted card.
It’s more likely that the potential of its existence will just put a dampener on glacier decks.
Hacktivist vs RM is a cool decision. Hacktivist punishes, not counters as RM does, so the real question is do you want the corp to discard 5 cards or get an agenda/prevent a score?
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Against Reversed Stinson CI RM is undeniably better, partly because it doesn’t have THAT many assets, and partly because the large hand size means Hacktivist is less punishing. But against pure asset spam (like Gagarin), hacktivist is definitely superior. Which gets picked depends on how strong CI without UVC turns out to be. I’m sure the world’s best CI players are already testing furiously against both variants.
I don’t see Rumor mill seeing play for the following reasons
- Hacktivist covers your counter current and asset spam match ups (CtM & Moon’s CI) pretty handidly
- FC covers your Skorp, Jinteki, and HB Glacier match ups pretty well also shutting of Hunter Seeker, Obokata, TFP, Ikawah, Lakshmi, QPM, and Punitive Counterstrike
That’s a 5 card, 2inf package that techs against a lot of the current meta decks. This allows you to essentially fill the remaining 40-45 cards with just good stuff. If you played rumor mill over hacktivist you’d get back 2 slots and 2 inf (FCs), but would be hard pressed to find such potent answers to the meta at large that fit in such a small package. The one deck RM is better against than Hacktivist and FC is Wilfy’s CI, but that also took a hit with losing VLC so we’ll have to see how well it does after the new B&R goes into effect.
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Agree 100% with this reasoning. Good Stuff Anarchs tend to be well equipt to deal with most of the RM targets just by stimhacking into the remote. The only consideration that would change this is if we get some kind of Caprice-level defensive upgrade in Kitara that would justify slotting a hard counter.
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