X = Astroscript
Y = Astroscript
Problem solved!
tounge > cheek
1 Like
It is definitely the weakest part of the game when they draw the strong one of signature card and you donāt draw yours. (or other way around). They should have just let you build your sig squad as you want out of the signature cards from your Hero. Like maybe give you 4-5 signature cards(3 copies of each) and then you can play 9 total cards from those in any which way in your deck.
I would hate to see this arrive in NR.
We already have a healthy amount of variance in NR with the way that random accesses work.
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Weāre talking about the deck that was winning tournaments left and right. I honestly think itās as strong now as it ever has been, perhaps more so since everyone is teched for NBN-RP. Ichi does some serious work against mimic. The next ice get very taxing when parasite isnāt involved. And thereās always the IT-audible while youāre waiting to drain resources of your opponent. Which does the whole architect->sansan nonsense. A scored efficiency committee is usually stronger than a scored astro if you have shipment from ss in the deck. Since it on its own can score all sorts of nonsense. Then youāve got jackson->abt nonsense.
I know everyone and their mom was playing the deck for 2 years, but the thing still puts up results. It may be that its not as good as the teched out NBN that El-Ad plays (which can win on turns 5-7), but I think its more solid than other NEH variants and has a better early-mid-and long game thatās less prone to losing like NEH can from itās fairly piddly non-taxing binary ice.
Anyways, the point is mostly that if Astroscript was removed from the game, HB-FA is waiting in the wings, and its still a strong enough deckā¦
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between Eli, Tollbooth, Architect and sometime Raven, a lot of NEH list can tax really hard 
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Fair enough, but typically not hard in the early game.
(Aside) I always hate rezzing tollbooth in NEH in pure astro-biotics. 8 credits thatās not going towards FA (unless its protecting an early app) thatās going to get femmed, shutdown, or parasited out of relevance. Architect and Eli are out of which faction again?
Well its arguably easier to score an Astroscript than a EC and any other agendas scored by HB are arguably worse than APP ;). And if you play 3 EC it also means you probably donāt play NAPD which make scoring easier :).
Apple and orange in the end but saying that NEH astrobiotic canāt tax or even score in a remote is silly. Heck I just won a game today by scoring all my 7 points in a remote (Two NAPD protected by a popup when the runner was broke, a Beale and an Astroscript as my last agenda)
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I donāt disagree with you; I just think NBN and NEH in general can be pretty weak to strong early game pressure. Thatās where I always had my greatest successes. 3x legwork, 3x makerās money and cheap breakers as fast as you can. But thatās harder to do against HBā¦ imo. First because you canāt rely on mimic as your sentry breaker of choice, second because taxing is stronger in HB, and because by the time you get into the mid game HB generally has stronger economic and defense options; without necessarily giving up on the ability to score out of hand.
Youāre right though, APP is the best agenda in the game. But itās the thing that carries NBN. Without it thereās very little reason to play the faction competitively unless youāre going for the scorch angle.
I also believe that HBFA can be more taxing than NEH, on average. Besides Elis and Architects, the NEXT ICE is a perfect early game ICE that can become quite taxing later on. Economy, IMHO, seems more stable too because of all the naked boys, girls and green/blue levels available. NEH seems however faster.
NBN craze started way before NEH. So many of second cycle championships have been won by Midseason decks. Even at worlds 2013 you could see just how strong NBN was going to be.
edit: meant to say worlds 2013*
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Coach, let the boys play. SEAScorch is a cheaper win condition than FA is, IMO.
Sea/Scorch is way less solitaire, though. Itās got a hell of a lot of strings attached (now more than ever, with IHW), and you actually have ways of interacting with the play beyond both teching against that shit and actually getting lucky in-game.
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This doesnāt answer Johnnyās question but I want to throw in my perspective of this āproblemā with op cards. I am still a noob so this might be a very noobish opinion.
The way I see it, how well I do in a netrunner game consists of 3 main factors:
-
How well do I play? This is all about the decisions in this game. Do I play the right cards at the right time? Do I make any avoidable mistakes? Do I calculate the creds i will need correctly? ā¦ and other stuff like this.
In my games this is always the most important factor and thats probably because Iām still a noob. To be better I try to learn the cards to for example know what cards I could run into.
This factor also includes that I will usually play better against an opponent I know already because know how he sets up traps for example. -
How much luck do I and my opponent have? This is all about the luck in the game. No matter what deck you are playing with and no matter how perfect your decisions are, in netrunner Luck will always play a role. Starting hand with good cards or not, trap or not, agenda on top of R&D or not, are just some examples of luck in this game. Sure you can minimize the influence of luck but you canāt get rid of it.
Does my opponents deck work especially well against my deck? This is also part of the luck of a netrunner game. A tier 3 deck might not have a better win-loss-percentage than a tier 1 deck, but if it is a perfect counter to the tier 1 deck it will still win more often this particular lineup. - Does my deck work? Netrunner can be won by any deck. Sure you can win with a runner deck without breakers but your opponent has to have either very bad luck or/and is playing very bad. The deck alone canāt win or loose a game. A tier 1 deck will loose sometimes and a bad deck will win sometimes. The choice of a deck changes the amount of influence the first 2 factors have in the game. A deck can reduce the luck factor and can reduce the amount of decisions one will face during a game. Decks have/give different potential.
As long as I will always find these 3 factors in any game with any cards of Netrunner, I would not consider any card as op.
In my noob-opinion the potential of decks is the key to this discussion.
I will explain what I mean with this:
Here you can see 4 different curves that represent 4 different decks. The x-axis represents the skill of the player and thus his ability to make the right decisions in the game. A pro will make no mistakes and always the right decision. A noob will make a lot of bad decisions. The y-axis represents the avg. win-loss-percentage of the Deck. Notice that because of the luck-factor in Netrunner no deck reaches 100% and no deck starts at 0%.
What I mean with potential is the win-loss-percentage at pro Skill. The potential is the max. win-loss-percentage one can reach with a certain deck.
Now letās compare the red deck and the green deck. The red deck is better throughout most of the skill levels. Its a very straightforward deck and thus easier to win with at lower skill levels. But it doesnāt have the potential the green deck has. To reach that potential with the green deck one needs to play a lot of games with it and know exactly how to play it in a certain situation. A pro would be better of choosing this deck and practice with it a lot. A noob and even an intermediate player should choose the red deck. Fast advance decks with Astro enable decks like the red one and get very popular. But there are decks like the green one that are harder to play but have more potential if you master them.
What no one wants to see are decks like the blue and magenta one. The magenta has a higher potential and a higher learning-curve. The blue is just boring because no matter how well you play it just depends on luck.
If there would be decks like these, i would consider cards that enable these decks op/broken but not otherwise.
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Iām not alone in my belief that NEH astrobiotics is extremely hard to play to its fullest potential. Itās one of the least mechanical decks when compared to decks like RP etc. RPās harder to pick up but more mechanical once you know its intricacies.
Itās easier to pick up, but itās very hard to always make the correct call, and the correct call is not always intuitive (for example, putting down an NAPD, building a server, going for an early score behind ICE, protecting SanSan or centralsā¦). A lot of these are things new players to NEH donāt consider. You can still win games with NEH knowing very little about how to make those calls, but thereās a stark difference between a bad NEH player and a good one, and for that Iām extremely glad.
I love skilltesting decks/cards, though, and thatās one of the reasons Iām glad DBS was printed.
This discussion is largely moot, though: Clot is coming out soon and that will kill fast advance.
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Iāve seen many players harp about Clot bringing about the end of all Fast Advance forevermore, and obviously yes, it will harm those decks considerably, especially those that work without any kind of remote.
However, its counter card already exists in Cyberdex Virus Suite. As a small bonus, Virus Suite also obliterates Incubator-Hivemind combo decks, and potentially wrecks sucker-based breaker suites.
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I think this will be a strong card once clot comes out, but it is hardly a cure-all. You still need a card installed on the table to last a whole turn in order to reliably score from hand against clot or hivemind/chakana. One more combo card to draw, and you need to protect it for a full turn - hardly a comprehensive answer for decks that want to score 4 times from hand.
On top of that, itās a dead card against most decks, and itās easily trashed out of R&D.
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Not saying itās a cure-all or anything, but you do realize how the card works, right? If you install Cyberdex Virus Suite the turn before you want to score out, you donāt have to protect it or need it to last a whole turnā¦ In fact, assuming Clot is already on the table, you want the Runner to waste a click running it, because it purges virus counters for free (and trashes Clot) without the Corp having to spend three credits to rez it. Yes, itās easily trashed out of R&Dā¦ but it also will also purge virus counters upon access in R&D (and trash Clot).
The assumption people are making is that Clot wonāt be on the table until midway through scoring out.
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Ah, via Clone Chip shenanigans mid-Corp-turn. Gotcha, thatās what I was missing. =)
nope, not assuming that 
two of the already-most-popular shaper cards make even a single clot in the deck a persistent threat.
Cyberdex still does work on that front (in that it can wipe virus counters as a paid ability, thus opening a scoring window exactly when you need it) however you either need 1) an extra click to install it or 2) to protect it for at least a turn before using it to force a scoring window next turn. All that, and you have to pay 2 and trash it each time you want to score out of hand, as long as they have at least one more instant-speed clot on tap.
As a side note, in addition to slowing down FA deck, I think clot is going to give advance-able traps even more play; youāll be able to use them to trick a runner into blowing a charge of clot at the very least, and then they might even run on it when you ācanātā score it. Make sure to pout a lot when they SMC their clot! 
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I wasnāt claiming itās a cure all; I was just indicating that Clot does have a counter, and FA decks can play it if they donāt want to get hosed, and it has a bunch of neat little side-effects too.
And to be honest, I think that forcing FA decks to play a few potentially-dead cards in order to function is not a bad thing.
3 Likes