I played against a couple Blue Sun Tag and Bag decks on OCTGN today, and the concept seems pretty powerful: You’ve got Project Atlas that will get you the pieces you need, huge ice to slow down the runner for long enough to set it up, and Blue Sun’s trickery to make sure you’ve got the runner beat in credits to hit the combo.
If it’s done effectively, you either blindside the runner completely after a successful run, or if he sees what you up to, it virtually forces him to shut down running altogether until he can either deal with the combo, or try to score the points he needs to win in a single run. What do you guys think?
I think it’s a much better ID than previous Weylands for SEA SE SE. If you get an early Oversight > Curtain Wall and use that to score an Atlas with counters, the runner will die unless he has meat damage protection or stops running. I think we will finally see a resurgence in Plascrete / other meat damage protection, especially with NEH being a competent SE deck as well. It puts a lot more stress on what to include in runner decks. Cutting Emergency Shutdown and Inside Job has been a thing, and the lack of those cards vs Blue Sun hurts.
Yeah, I’ve been playing a variation that uses Tollbooth, Jackson and Accelerated Diagnostics combo wombo. It’s great because once you rez Tollbooth, there just aren’t very many ways for the runner to get in decently (and Blue Sun can neuter Femme on Tollbooth). Scoring an overadvanced Atlas behind it and an ice wall/quandary (for inside job) can be pretty easy if you find your econ early, and from there you can just fetch for SEA Scorch Scorch or, alternatively, you can fetch for combo wombo pieces and scorch the runner 3-4 times if you have sufficient cash and preparation (namely having Jackson already in play). If you have Jackson in play, you can Click 1 for Shutdown, Click 2 for accelerated diagnostics, with SEA Source, interns and another operation (say restructure if you need that extra cash or SE #1 if the runner thinks 2 plascretes and no cash can save him), and click 3 AD #2 and Scorched Earth 3 times.
Emergency Shutdown is definetly a problem, though. Thankfully it isn’t run everywhere (not even a 3-of in Criminal anymore). And the way Blue Sun just destroys Parasite for the most part is great. Unless they kill your ice the very same turn they install parasite, it’s an almost pointless card. And Power Shutdown, besides being a combo piece, can deal with Datasucker pretty well, so there’s that.
As for this thread, I’m totally trying the accelerated diagnostics super combo. I think the sheer amount of funds that this can generate out of nowhere will make it easier to time and pull off.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Hades Shard also just beats that combo though, they can just immediately access Archives after you hit the Shutdown and they’ll almost certainly win on points. Hades Shard is autoinclude in Noise, and Noise is popular right now, so I think the risks of the combo are much higher than they used to be.
What risk? If they have Hades Shard out… don’t combo.
Unless Blue Sun has significantly less ability to score out than traditional Supermodernism I don’t think that will affect it all that much. Distorting the runner’s behaviour with the fear of Scorch so you can score agendas tends to be the actual gameplan.
Just so, and Blue Sun’s ability to run larger ice in a rush deck style helps a lot, I think. After all, you can go broke on defence and still have enough credits to score your whatever-it-was.
And yeah, if you’re running Blue Sun and not Taurus, Shattered Remains, or something like that… why not? I mean, hell, Shattered Remains might cost a couple clicks/credits every so often, but you can reveal it, return it to your hand, and then IAA something else. (Super mindgamez play: keep doing that with Shattered Remains until out of money.)
Anything that Supermodernism likes, I think Blue Sun likes even more. An ability to keep your servers threatening/fluid, easier access to decent ice than GRNDL with more stability than BABW… what’s not to like?
I think Blue Sun is a huge shot in the arm to Weyland. It’s massively better at normal Weyland play than the other IDs. I’m pretty sure it’ll be the only Weyland ID played for the rest of this cycle. The only prerequisite for Tag’n’bag is access to tagging and bagging and a large stack of cash. Tagging costs 2 inf/card, bagging is in faction, and the ID says huge pile of cash right there on the card.
It won’t be long before we’re happy, not sad, about plascrete carapace.
See, the thing where I’m cautious about being optimistic is that to me, Weyland’s IDs were never the problem. It’s always been (some of) the other parts of their card pool that were the weak spot. Blue Sun helps with getting money, same as virtually every other Weyland ID we’ve had to date. Sure, it can burst you up more, but it also makes you jump through bigger hoops to get there. There’s other functionality to the ID’s ability, but that just means that the answer to “Will Weyland get kicked up into beast mode by this?” is largely contingent on the following two questions:
Was the ability to suddenly surge up in cash (at the cost of existing board position) the main component holding Weyland back?
Is the ability to strip Femme and Parasite of longterm utility (i.e. outside the scope of one-turn shenanigans) enough to turn on all the other tricks that Weyland has had until now that haven’t really worked?
If the answer to both of these is yes, then it’s a clear-cut case. Personally, I’m not convinced of that, however.
I think the answer to both of these questions is yes, however for glacier, not tag and bag.
Blue Sun removes the problems that Femme and Parasite present against big ICE. It also allows you to better react to the runner’s attack. You can rez a big piece of ICE to stop them, and bounce and reinstall when they change to another server.
The only problem is being able to get out of the early game - a problem I haven’t managed to solve just yet.
I think that Weyland has some pretty intimidating pieces of ICE. The walls Hadrian and Curtain are enormous. Blue Sun can play giant ICE much more easily than other IDs because they’re only vulnerability is derezzing. Also, if you need that money for something, you can have it.
Many people are playing around scorched earth with a money shield. I don’t think you can do that against Blue Sun.
The early game concern is a valid one. But the runner is on a really short clock before the game becomes pretty inevitable. I’m looking forward to giving this a go!
huh? GRNDL has always been a powerful ID; it’s no less powerful in the current meta. Blue Sun is a fun ID, but I don’t know that it’s better than GRNDL. It is obviously better than BWBI (what isn’t) and more playable than BABW due to Blue Sun’s utility.
Here’s my thinking–Blue Sun and Weyland agendas do a considerable amount of work when it comes to lowering your dependency on raw economy cards, where many traditional decks run 9-12 dedicated econ slots. That is a lot of deckbuilding freedom surged back into Weyland. I would agree with you that its power is largely contingent on other factors, but I think its ability to largely circumvent traditional economy at least is an opening for some powerful builds to emerge from the woodwork.
Hardest Accelerated Shutdown Scorch counter known to man, really.