- Leviathan
- Sadyojata
0 voters
- Aurora
- Wyrm
0 voters
- Alpha
- Nfr
0 voters
- Force of Nature
- Creeper
0 voters
Clearly it’s polling season. But where are the other Devas? Sadyojata is probably the best.
Of all these breakers, I’ve only actually used Wyrm (not to break ICE though), Creeper, and Aurora (to try out the default Gabe deck from the core set).
All of them were awful. Aurora is the reason why I learned the rules for deck building. I used Creeper to build a Sageasaurus deck that was a lot of fun, but really bad at breaking sentries.
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As an Icebreaker, Wyrm is in a league of its own.
For any Ice with X strength and Y subroutines it costs 3Y+2X-1 to break if str>0 or 3Y if str=0.
Its completely and utterly terrible. At least leviathan has some use vs very large code gates (Orion/DNA)
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There’s a lot that is always curious to me about the core box, but none so much as why Wyrm costs 3 to break a sub.
Also, throw 'em up if you tried to make an alpha/omega deck.
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I voted for Wyrm as well but I guess it sort of depends whether you’re just thinking about it as an icebreaker or as a card in general, bet Wyrm’s been included in more decks than Leviathan over the history of the game (adjusting for the extra cycle worth of time it’s had) because for some reason someone wanted a non-virus (and super expensive, 2X-1-#of parasite tokens) sucker to trash stuff
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tried and failed with Nasir
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While I haven’t really used Wyrm much myself, I guess I can see the value in a deck that uses fixed strength breakers and generates a lot of money, but fears purges. It can also use recurring credits that are reserved for icebreakers, if you have Cyberfeeders and Cloaks sitting around.
As for Leviathan… I guess if your meta is big into Fairchildren, Mausolus, and… Aiki?.. but doesn’t like stacking them, it saves criminals 3 influence on Gordian.
The problem with Wyrm, even there, is that to bring - say - an Assassin down into Mimic range with Wyrm you have to pay 4 to match it, then 2 to lower it’s strength, then 2 to break with Mimic, so you’re paying 8 whereas you can do it for 5 with Mongoose or even hard break it for 8 with Femme then bypass something else. If you’re not breaking mid strength ICE for relatively cheap why even both playing fixed strength breakers? (I know you’re just searching for a silver lining, not strongly advocating for Wyrm as breaker support 
, it’s just genuinely mind blowingly bad.
It’s also relatively efficient vs. Tracker.
Ooh, good point. And it looks like DNA Tracker’s may be popular. Maybe I should include a single Leviathan for surprise value.
As for the Wyrm support thing, yeah, not really comparable to Datasucker, but I know there have been times when I’ve burned through my virus tokens or had them purged and wished that, just once or twice, I could just pay down the strength of one ice that’s locking me out of a server so I can Parasite it out of the way. And I guess that’s the point where someone puts it in the deck, tries it, and remembers just how pricey it is.
Why are people so down on Leviathan? Even though expensive, at least it can break a lot of commonly played ICE without support. Fairchild 2.0 for instance, DNA Tracker is another “good” target. Sadyojata is a) harder to write properly and b) can not break a lot of ICE on its own.
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I don’t consider Wyrm an icebreaker, but a Parasite support card. It saw play in that manner, unlike Aurora which has never, ever seen play because it’s so positively awful it doesn’t work.
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I use aurora. It’s not great, but it allows me to only run one corroder/paper clip in my Leela deck, plus I often have enough money that it works well even into late game. I’ve never used Wyrm, even for parasite support because there is already a better parasite support card out there and it’s called Datasucker.
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Just Omega. The idea was Kit + Decoder + Omega means I can get into any 2-ice server once per turn. The deck was doomed at the deck building stage.
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Played against this deck. Can confirm; was doomed to failure.
Seriously though, I feel like Alpha is better than Nfr. You could at least try to make Alpha work (likely failing). Nfr will almost certainly be in clips shadow perpetually.
You played Wyrm alongside 3 Datasuckers, obviously.
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Wyrm is not an icebreaker. If you ever used the 3cr: Break subroutine, then you’ve probably lost the game. It’s an emergency Datasucker, and that’s it. At some point the Corp gets a CVS in Archives and locks out R&D and HQ from your fixed breakers, and suddenly you need just one access to get the Suckers going again… That’s where Wyrm comes in. You can probably do this better with Injection Attack nowadays though.
I played a Kit deck with Omega, yeah. Omega’s sooooo expensive though.
I have an inkling of a Nfr deck in the back of my head using Null and other strength shenanigans, and Paintbrush…
Force of Nature is quite possibly the worst in the game. Leviathan is probably just ahead of its time (with Maus and DNA, it starts to look palatable) but there’s no earthly reason to run Force of Nature.
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I originally voted for Leviathan, but for reasons stated by @Labbes, it’s probably not the worst. In fact, with Multithreaders, you could do a lot worse in criminal for breaking code gates frequently, in a deck with lots of drip economy.
Sayonara can break a lot of stuff, but not a lot of commonly played stuff, not as much as Leviathan, and not at the great values of efficient either. But it’s easily better at rush.
@ErikTwice, I’ve totally put Aurora in a deck. Oops. That being said, it’s still a better icebreaker than Wyrm, but not a better card altogether.
Alpha requires a lot of work to get working, and it was unfortunately costed. If you’re Kate and you mod it out early game and you are running Inside Job, congratulations, you’re playing with old cards.
NFR is nuts, it completely invalidates barriers, and it’s really not that hard get going with Datasucker support. Add in some The Turning Wheel so breaking barriers that you have no intention of getting much further past is still a good thing. It sucks to get it trashed, or bounced, but undoubtedly, so does Alpha.
Force of Nature is the worst breaker in the game, easily.
Creeper is not.
I love these polls, and I love judging cards thusly.
I think DNA Tracker is a reason to find a slot for Emergency Shutdown, not Leviathan.
3 Likes