I use him! Akitaro is great. He is never a dead card to me. Three ice on a server is very reasonable and likely in non-NBN, especially Tennin. Three ice nets you five credits in economy. But there are several hidden bonuses:
You can trick people into thinking he is a Caprice/Crisium/Ash
You can trick people into thinking he is an agenda, without having to then trash him to put a real agenda down
You can trick people into thinking you can’t rez ice, because your credit pool is low, when in fact you can rez multiple ice.
I don’t particularly mind if the runner trashes him, because if they’ve gotten that far into the server, Akitaro has likely already proven his use.
Comparing Akitaro Watanabe with his old CCG counterpart make watanabe pretty bad.
Chester Mix was 0 rez cost and wasn’t unique. It change a lot of thing because the card was frequently played in the ccg
I think he’s great but he’s also the kind of card that you tend to cut out and there are not that many decks that have servers big enough to make him powerful but not so ludicruosly big that he starts to compete with GRNDL Refinery.
I like him, I think he’ll be played sooner or later
What a coincidence, I just tried throwing a couple Akitaro’s back into an RP deck I am trying.
It’s a rush deck and plays 3 Chimera, so right away you know Akitaro will do some work for you.
The main reason I tossed him in is the emphasis lately on denial decks. If you’re gonna get siphoned down to zero you can rez Akitaro, and still be able to rez ICE on his server that turn. One game with it last night I had him in a server behind unrezzed Chimera, Quandary, Excalibur, which was a nice feeling.
Echo the sentiments about bluffing a Caprice. I think the unrezzed Aki sitting down there (in Jinteki) dissuades people who are expecting Caprice.
And as for, “why aren’t people playing him?”, I think your answer is referenced the above sentence. Caprice took his deckslots.
edit: and though it is a dreaded three-card combo, an Akitaro, Chimera, Sundew server can be serious joy, until Parasite rears its ugly head
And with Parasite being a mainstay in 2/3rds of competitive decks ever since the game was released/especially O&C, chimera is totally, deeply unplayable unless you play at that store in france where there was one noise player and almost everyone else there was playing andy after O&C dropped.
Ehh. In my time playing this game, It’s almost always a one-click gear check. You pay 2, they pay 2, they get whatever is behind it. It was decent in ancient days Weyland before Faerie came out, and has been godawful ever since.
Presumably, taxing a copy of Parasite, 2 credits and 2 clicks (failed run, install) for the cost of 1 click and 2 credits isn’t all that horrible of a deal, though. If they burn an insta-Parasite on the thing, so much better, especially if you’re running ICE that’s vulnerable to Parasite and reasonably punishing (Errand Boy qualifies here, for instance).
I’d rather get Chimeras Parasited than Archers and Tollbooths
Absolutely, I don’t mind having chimera parasited because that means that they’re less likely to parasite one of my better pieces of ice. Also, despite it seeming this way to some, not all decks play parasite either. The very concept of the card lends itself to being good early game and creating a scoring window early and it does that very well in my experience. Akitaro increases their lifespan, because rezzing it for free at least drains the runner for one.
I think Akitaro has his uses. You can use him to bluff a different sysop, and it is not so difficult to get your money’s worth out of him. All in all I only seem to find myself playing him if I run the chimeras, because in other cases I prefer to run a card that generates either more money for less set-up cost or a card that is good with more things than just ice.
I don’t know that Chester Mix would get played in many decks. Dedicated Technician Team just seems really bad. Haven’t FFG figured that conditional econ needs to be ridiculously strong to warrant inclusion. Even The Root doesn’t see much play.
