MOD EDIT: This thread is for experiments with Wyrm.
This Anarch discussion has kind of made me wonder if Wyrm might be almost playable out of either a Caissa build or out of Noise.
Wait, wait hear me out!
So yes, Wyrm sucks as an icebreaker, but what if you use it more as a Parasite enabler? Its a tactic that hasn’t been looked at really since the core set and I think it might be near time to reevaluate it.
Cards like Clone Chip and Self Modifying allow you to forward or backwards tutor out either Parasites or Bishops which makes your Wyrm much more cost efficient to use. Again, you would only ever use it to break ice if the ice was already at 0 strength or could be put to 0 strength through other effects. You would mainly want to use these mid run install effects either after most ice has been rezzed, or as an emergency lever to avoid most of the painful effects of cards like Komainu, Rototurret, Ichi’s or Tsurugi.
Furthermore, two cards from spin cycle actually support this mode of play. Inject would be really useful in a build like this as it would allow you to put bishops and parasites in your garbage. Scrubbed allows you to target and burn down specific ice. Scrubbed + Bishop sounds even better to me than the usual datasucker play, its immune to virus purging and it doesn’t require constant central only runs.
Edit- I bring this up because it works surprisingly well to enable fixed breakers, to allow parasite play to grow in faction a bit more and because its a great compliment to the rest of the Caissa suite. Knight loves to break ice that Wyrm cannot dream of touching (everything greater than str 1-3), Bishop allows either Wyrm to eat ice faster or function as a ghetto breaker against up to str 4 ice at a decent enough price, and Rook works great with ice destruction by making your opponent pay extra for keeping their defenses in place.
Too late. Thought I would throw something together and see if anything sticks. My approach is different than most of the links provided below. Testing it out later today (probably).
One Night In Bangkok - Watch the World Burn
Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter (Mala Tempora)
Event (15)
2x Diesel (Core Set) ••••
3x Déjà Vu (Core Set)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) ••••
1x Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow) •
2x Queen’s Gambit (Double Time)
2x Stimhack (Core Set)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
Hardware (6)
3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) ••••• •
3x Deep Red (Mala Tempora)
Resource (7)
2x Ice Carver (Core Set)
3x Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Liberated Account (Trace Amount)
Last year the spain nationals champion took a Kate wyrm deck to the worlds and ended top16. I’ve myself experimented a lot with wyrm and won (or placing top2/3) my share of GNK tournaments and store champs with it. In the end I really don’t think wyrm is a bad card per-se but it really works way better in shaper (either with Kate or Kit) than in Anarch. In fact, parasite recursor deck in general work better in shaper than in Anarch, courtesy of the better draw/tutor and stronger econ/recursion engine.
I played against a newish player running Wyrm and it put up a surprising amount of early game fight in combination with a single Datasucker. I was running GRNDL so he had a BP to work with as well but only one.
Not having played against Wyrm in a long time, I was surprised at how well it was hurting me, backed up by mostly Liberated Account and Cyberfeeder money alongside the Datasucker but then I rezzed some larger Ice, drew Power Shutdown and poof! game over.
Wyrm isn’t a bad card. It’s scary when employed in the right circumstance. It’s an Early Game card that’s good sharpshooting low strength Gear Check ICE while unlike Darwin retains the ability to bail out the Runner against larger AP and Destroyer type stuff - albeit extremely inefficiently. It also works well as a late game silver bullet if you’ve got a big bank but no time left and need to make that one last run to win the game.
Unfortunately Wyrm falls apart in the mid-game where most of Netrunner is played, and Power Shutdown hasn’t helped the situation any. Still, it should probably see more use than it currently does.
Hmm… well, at 1 cost, there might be some cheeky ideas around LLDS Processor as well, the way it’s been done with Darwin. Speaking of which, it’s probably worth it to think carefully about that comparison and try to imagine how it’ll be better than Darwin in the big plan… particularly when imagining how Darwin-Parasite-Datasucker-Grimoire all work together. What would Wyrm’s equivalent be? Wyrm-Parasite-Bishop-Spinal Modem?
I think probably its best use would be to able pay for ICE destruction (via Parasite) with credits instead of Datasucker tokens. I’d imagine this would be best for setting up one big glory run and leaving the server as naked as possible afterwards. This could be a Medium setup, though I think Noise would love to strip Archives bare while going after ten face-down cards as well. Heck, if you can make it work without too much orange, Gabe might start listening as well.
The critical card that has been left out of the equation to date is Scrubbed.
Scrubbed essentially is twice as valuable to wyrm as compared to any other breaker, as it cuts the amount needed to boost wyrm and the amount needed to reduce the ice.
Along the same vein, ice carver / the helpful ai.
There are other interesting tricks to do: Running helpful ai, and then a multi click turn via ldds/autoscripter/joshua/
But the bottom line is that it is completely hosed by architect and lotus fields. Although I could retry the expirement with passport and mimic. But its a lot of moving parts…
The best success I ever had with Wyrm was out of Nasir, where you use Wyrm, sucker tokens and instant parasites off of SMC, PW, and CC to kill any ICE they rez with the credits they spend to rez it. Janky as all hell, but it absolutely can wreck certain decks that play ICE with high rez to strength ratios.
