In all honesty, with sucker, noise, Imp and a ton of virus still relevant, I think Cyberdex Virus Suite isn’t a dead card per se. And forcing shaper to burn their SMC/Clone Chip on Clot also means that they won’t use it to fetch their breaker, which is good as well.
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Ahhhhh Clot. Thank you for making me include Cerebral Overwriter in my FA decks…
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While Cerebral Overwriter might not be most common, I expect to see Reversed Accounts in every NBN deck.
Tbh I still expect Astrobiotics ot be a strong deck post-Clot, but it will take more skill to play baiting the Clots.
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What make me sad about clot is the fact that the deck clot was designed to hose is probably the one who got the best tool to play around. Between SfSS, Cyberdex Suite and eventually make a 3pts beale if properly protected, NBN got a lot of stuff to play around. HBFA, Tennin, CI, TitanFA ? Not so much 
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This is the main reason why Astroscript was a recklessly designed card. It’s power level is difficult to control because it reigns in few important design areas, mostly being “fast advance” and “agendas with agenda counters” Nerfing it by targeting why it’s good would nerf those entire areas even more, removing a lot of otherwise fun and mostly balanced gameplay options because of one card.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to do, but clot is not a quality solution to this problem.
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I love that DBS was printed. However, it should have been purple or green (or maybe, maybe red) though. It’s a great utility card that almost all decks benefit from. It makes NEH gross though. NBN already have +3 influence because they don’t have to play Jackson out of faction and the most potent combo deck in NEH astrobiotics.
I think HBFA is better than people give it credit for. It’s tough to build a worthwhile server with standard NBN ICE. While HB gets biotics, eli 1.0 and architect in faction, Ash gives you either a bigger tax for your SanSan server or an alternate scoring method. You lose the HAHAHAHAHAHA I win riding the Astrotrain potential, but I think you win about as often. Also, you don’t feel filthy while doing so. My HBFA list is 14-4 in tournaments, 2 of those losses were outrageous agenda flood.
You know what’s better than making the runner pay 5 to trash SSCG. Making them pay 13 to run through 2 Next ICE and trash a SSCG - then playing Archived Memories and asking them to do it all over again.
I agree about the skill ceiling of Astrobiotics. I just wish that the deck’s floor was a little lower. A good runner player can get beaten by an average corp player playing Astrobiotics more often than is reasonable.
I think Clot will slow the game down enough to make building runner decks more interesting. I don’t think it kills Fast Advance. I’m going to reserve judgement on whether or not it’s good game design until I’ve played with and against it. There have been too many instances of cards that are THE END OF NETRUNNER or THE END OF (SOME FRACTION OF NETRUNNER) that have been and gone and have been more or less cool for me to get over excited about a card I haven’t played with or against yet.
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Definitely red. DBS totally feels like a Precognizant Clone kind of thing, rather than a goddamn news show about stock prices. Jinteki may have the most scrying effects out of all factions, but the number of actually good scrying effects seems to be 1 per faction currently, with Weyland being the exception.
6 Likes
Just play Chronos Project instead of Breaking News. U mad Clot players?
I actually think chronos project is becoming a better and better choice, and this will probably become even more true once clot is out. but.
the whole point about clot is that it means agendas will need to spend at least one turn installed, i.e., no scoring from hand. Chronos project does nothing to change that: just like any other agenda, it’ll have to spend a vulnerable turn on the board. yes, you could use it to snipe clot out of the trash; the point is you’ll actually have to work for it.
In the end, I don’t think clot will be game breaking; NBN is just as capable of playing actual netrunner as any other corp, they’ve just never needed to.
4 Likes
Clot is also a dead card against most decks…
Bringing it in the most potent runner faction (green), mean that you will have 2-3 less influence on, say Parasite, or Parasite - Sucker.
Bringing it in the most natural runner faction (red) mean a loss of inf in clone chips too (sorry, no more 3x siphon for you guys).
Bringing it in the most dangerous runner faction (blue) mean less danger against a lot of potent deck out there (-2/-7 inf to make it work).
So, ok, clot, will ask a flush before actually FA something. That’s not curing, that’s announcing “hey you can’t do anything next turn since your clot just made it to the toilets, I’ll FA”.
FA phase I is still ok, FA phase II will be flushing before then the game is allready done. There’s still rush solutions on top of this so we will have double astro train soon. A lot of problems to solve for the runner.
I really think today’s NEH decks will still win above 50% of their games, Clot, or no Clot, after the shi(f)t aka “this card does every… err… Maybe not so much in fact… Hey, that’s a new 2-3inf plascrete slot to find ?”.
Does people really play 2-inf The Source actually ? No, because they don’t have 2 inf to spend on this. So why would they have 2inf to spend on Clot ?
The Source is clunky as all hell. You turn every agenda into NAPD, then you have to have some mechanism to keep it in play when you want to score or the Corp makes a window to play around it. (Aesops Source, Steal Agenda deja vu The Source, play The Source is not sustainable). Also, scoring a 3 point Beale to turn off The Source feels really good. Sure, you can make it work for you, I’ve certainly tried with limited success, but it’s not in Clot territory. I think FF have done a pretty good line in making FA harder quite slowly (printing some garbage tier counters). Chakana is more interesting too, now Hive Mind and Virus Breeding Ground exist. Until very recently it was approximately garbage tier.
I think Clot is going to put a hefty dent in FA. This is great, the game changes, FA drop down a little until someone figures out a way to play around Clot.
It’s not like there aren’t already counters to Clot in the card pool either. Fitting them in decks at the moment isn’t worth a slot, but I’m pretty sure it will be (at least for a short while) once Clot comes out.
My only concern is that building a runner deck if you’re very unlikely to see Fast Advance (even with 2-3 dead card slots for clot) is a lot easier, the pendulum might swing back to >60% runner wins like it was at the end of Genesis. I don’t think this will be the case, but it may be worth worrying about.
Traffic Jam is also sort of interesting. Makes stealing Breaking News really important. Being unable to train Astros while having a counterspell to Enhanced Login Protocol in your decks for the RP game seems like it’ll be worth a look.
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I think this is really true. A couple deck slots and an influence or two are a small price to pay deckbuilding-wise for the meta change it is likely to induce: corps pumping the brakes on the all-out score from hand strategies.
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Chronos is insanely good right now. Maxx and Kate are very popular at the moment.
Are you 2x’ing or 1x’ing the card? I’ve always felt like there’s space for 2 3/1 “utility” agendas in most decks. Since Valencia isn’t taking off, I’ve been thinking about Chronos instead of the Veterans Program I’d been running; but there are other cards that are more synergistic for a given deck. License Acquisition, House of Knifes, and False Lead are all potentially better for your own game plan. But, the opportunity to disrupt your opponents is probably stronger. 
I’m almost certain not to play Clot in tournaments, expecting others to play it at my place thus making FA unsafe enough to rely on : would get 2 more inf than most runners, you know.
I think this is the easiest solution 
Lokta-Volterra, rabbits and stuff 
I was running 1x Chronos in replace of an NAPD in my RP tax deck. I think it could be thrown in a lot of different decks though (especially glacier). I’d still rather play traditional agendas in an NEH FA deck though (2x Breaking News).
Yeah, for the moment FA is fast enough that the only utility agenda you need is Astro anyways. When the meta slows, if it slows, it’ll be interesting to see if that changes.
Sure, that’s an option. If you’re running Shaper, the FA player probably has to respect that it’s in your deck too (so long as you play as if you have it - keep SMC on the table longer than you might otherwise etc.). If too many people do the same, FA suddenly looks like a neat option again (especially if runner decks are slower assuming less NEH astrotrains). It’s why I think clot is good for the metagame, not a sky falling end of days proposition.
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(Shameless necro)
Hmm. Apparently it did kill fast advance.
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Did it? Seen plenty of FA lately, just from HB instead of NBN. I’m pretty sure I also saw Jeeves in NEH or CtM and it was good. I do think NBNFA got dropped from tier 1 into tier 2 though. The traditional NEH Fastrobiotics, that is.