Spoiler-Ken's list confirmed!

I think Shaper will be the runner faction that will win this year; purely because of indexing and the lack of shuffling options that the corp can get on the runners turn.

On the Corp side of things... I just hope that Weyland can place in the top 8. I don't think there are any clear cut strong factions on the corp's side.

The NAPD (and other relevant authorities) having an unprecedented haul of seized Clone Chips is a decent enough justification of their sudde rarity.

A data virus or whatnot specifically targeting the code of existing Inversicators is loose! To prevent another Faust-like extinction, current copies are taken off-line or used with extra protection.

Shapers are least affected with C2RB, but it looks like Geist has a chance to take the crown despite all the nerfs to crims. No idea about corp, but jinteki came out of the changes pretty well, so they might win it again.

>purely because of indexing and the lack of shuffling options that the corp can get on the runners turn.
*puts on a jazz record*
*Niseis Mk 2s you softly*

Geist has a good chance I'd say - Anarch Vanadis shenanigans and Investificator Hayley lock got taken off the runner menu, but Geist can pick Levy and get out pretty well - hell, Fall Guy even got made evergreen.

He's the one that goes through the least changes, though we might see some kind of return of Dyper - though the nastier half of that got eliminated, there's still "what can you do with 7+ R&D runs" - I guess there's Equviocation and Indexing... in a pinch Top Hat?

Corp side it's harder to say, as HB asset spam was dominant and takes a huge hit here.

I'm happy with them changing to a ban/restricted list. Get fucked, autoincludes.

Agreed, this change is long overdue. BLESS BOGGS

I believe in Leela and Indexing.

You can check 10 cards with 5 runs using Equivocation and Top Hat. So that's definitely a thing.

>pops that SoT and tries again anyway

Being forced to burn the initial indexing sucks, but it's still way easier for runner to recur that then to have another Nisei token.

Eh, the index still remains.

Also, a quick search says there's only a few ways to shuffle R&D on the runner's turn:
EBC, Shannon Claire, and Atlas, as well as Watchtower and a powered-up Hortum's subs

Don't forget the Foundry. That ID is immune to early indexings.

And then Aginfusion relocation.

If the ID power is active, you don't even need that token to deny the index, which probably makes it a somewhat different situation altogether.

>disillusion
dissolution, fyi

Just gonna throw some names.

Anarch: Alice Merchant, Edward Kim
Criminal: Geist, Leela Patel, Laramy Fisk
Shaper: Ayla "Bios" Rahim

HB: Seidr Laboratories, Architects of Tomorrow
Jinteki: AgInfusion, Potential Unleashed, Palana Foods
NBN: Near-Earth Hub, SYNC
Weyland: Gagarin, Jemison, Titan

What about Smoke? She seems a decent enough candidate.

Kinda hard to see non-Geist crim having a decent chance though.

You'll make use of both the agenda token in case of potential success and of the ID ability as a way to discourage playing (or recurring) the event,was more my point.

It's really amusing how one of the qualities that kept Kim down - being so vanilla - might just be the one that makes it so valuable with current car pool/meta.

The real test will be the next cycle. I'm holding out hope he hits the trifeca in which case: Bless him and may he never burn out on the game.

Smoke I feel is a tad dependant on the match up to perform well, most of the IDs I listed usually have a strong game plan unaffected by match up. If asset spam peters out though, Stealth builds should make a decent comeback.

Corp side, Titan FA should be fairly unaffected, so it might stand a decent chance.

Is Gang Sign Aeneas the new hip econ engine?

In the best case with 3 Aeneas, 3 Gang Sign, and 3 HQ Interface you could make 27 credits from the corp scoring one agenda.

It would be awesome if those new blurbs were referenced in some way when the RPG finally makes an appearance.

So that's why it's restricted

It's restricted because it forms OP combos with MOpus and Clone Chip. MOpus means that you can't try to score out your agendas quickly, because you'll get remote-sniped, and Clone Chip means you can't FA your agendas because of Clot. So they pile up in hand and you lose one way or another.

Although frankly it should be banned. It's debatable whether it's overpowered or not, but the unhealthy part of the card is that it punishes the corp for trying to win. No card should do that, outright punish the corp for scoring an agenda. That's ridiculous. Both GS and Leela are just massively degenerate cards, because they go against the very fundamentals of the game - the corp needs to score agendas to win.

Might be true because of the asymmetry of the game (I'm more thinking, per previous comparison between GS And Spoilers, it's an issue born of multiplier effects), but then the runner also needs to steal agenda and cards that trigger off an agenda steal tend to be considered powerful but fair.

Calm down, the Corp needs to score agendas to win, but the Runner needs to disrupt the Corp to prevent it. It's a two way street, same reason why the Runner needs to steal agendas, and the Corp needs to disrupt him.
Punishing for scoring/stealing (Gang Sign, Punitive Counterstrike) is natural and part of the game.

...

There are still issues with agenda-stealing triggers, but they're not nearly as harsh as Gang Sign. You have to have the operations in hand to begin with, and you also have to be pretty far behind in terms of gamestate to actually lose to Punitive or Midseason or Hunter Seeker. Midseason was the strongest, but it also rotated out. Hunter Seeker can be pretty harsh but you need to really be on the ball to win with it, and Punitive needs a big combo setup and a bunch of cash to pull off the kill. And, again, they all need to actually be in-hand and ready to use the turn after the agenda is stolen.

Meanwhile, Gang Sign (and Leela) always work, forever, no matter what, unless the corp uses like Best Defense or tagstorm or something, and those are pretty specific counters for a very cheap and very powerful card.

Yes, so AFTER the corp has scored they should be off scott-free, because if the corp scores it indicates that the Runner failed. The runner shouldn't just get fucking free HQ accesses for losing the damn game, that doesn't make sense.

Punitive isn't ideal, I'll admit, but it needs a lot more setup and a pretty substantial lead in terms of game state. It also has far superior counterplay options. If there's going to be corp-trigger meat damage in the game at all, Punitive is the best way to do it - you get 2-3 shots at it per game and you need to be absolutely ready when you get the chance.

Compare that to Gang Sign, which basically is the worst way to do agenda-punishes in the entire game. Imagine if Midseasons-Psychographics were a 1-cost piece of ICE. That's what Gang Sign does. Compare that to Iain or Fan Site, far healthier takes on the situation.

Especially since Gang Sign doesn't even require the Runner to run in order to win the game, which is inherently a degenerate mechanic.

You are overstating the efectiveness of gang sign as a way to score agendas. It only works like that if the Corp is withholding the agendas, being passive, and in general not being the proactive one. Punishing a Corp for scoring only when he's ready, and pressuring him when he is not, is one of the Criminals color pie. Gang Sign is an example of it.

>Punishing a Corp for scoring ... is one of the Criminals color pie
First of all, no it isn't. There's Leela, Gang Sign, and Iain. Two of those punish the corp, one of them doesn't. Two cards isn't "part of the colour pie".

Second of all, if it IS part of the colour pie, it shouldn't be. That's why I'm anti Gang Sign and anti Leela. You can see my reasons above. It's less about raw strength (although I maintain that they are both very strong) and more about basic game mechanics. The corp shouldn't be punished for scoring agendas. It's fine if the runner benefits - Fan Site's okay, Iain's okay - but the corp should never be directly punished.

Third of all

> It only works like that if the Corp is withholding the agendas, being passive, and in general not being the proactive one
Gang Sign doesn't punish the corp for being "passive", it punishes them for being successful. Gang Sign doesn't read "if the corp has 5 agendas in their hand, steal one". It reads "if the corp scores an agenda, access HQ". That is not a punishment for passivity, it is a punishment for success. Now, you can argue "well, they won't have agendas in hand if they're not being passive", but the fact is that the trigger was the corp successfully scoring an agenda, not being passive. The punishment is at its worst when the corp has been passive, but the punishment only triggers when the corp is successful.

I will give you an example of a card which punishes passivity:

>Place 1 power counter on this card per turn. 7 power counters: access 1 card from HQ. Trash if agenda is scored or stolen.

also
>Punishing a Corp for scoring only when he's ready
AKA: The only time the corp can score. You seem to think that the corp can just magically score agendas with no regard to the runner's board state. No. There's something called a "scoring window". The corp HAS to be ready in order to score an agenda. Otherwise, they cannot score it. That is the entire idea of agendas.

And that is the entire idea of Criminals. They form a snipe lock on the scoring server, forcing the Corp to either bluff it or wait it. If they bluff it, they play expose to call it. And if they choose to wait, they access HQ to fish agendas there.
That is their whole game.
That is how they pressure the Corp to risk scoring agendas earlier. Scoring windows are a trick Criminals play on the Corp.

Taking advantage of the corp's vulnerability after scoring an agenda is kind of a basic runner strat, even if Crims capitalize on it in a more direct manner. Same thing with running on a central to rez ice before swinging over to the remote.

What you described is definitely Criminal. But none of what you described is "punish scoring". You described "punish passivity", "punish bluffs", "punish poorly-defended servers", "punish not having FA", but not "punish scoring".

>Taking advantage of the corp's vulnerability after scoring an agenda is kind of a basic runner strat
Yes, and that's fine, because scoring an agenda is an economic drain. That's the point. A 5/3 costs 5 credits and 6 clicks (equivalent to at least 11 credits) to install and advance to completion. If scoring an agenda WEREN'T an economic drain, then the numbers of the game would have to be completely rebalanced, because the entire game's economy is based on the idea that the corp is going to be spending the equivalent of 20-30 credits per game advancing agendas.

That is a good and healthy thing. It creates that "ebb and flow" gameplay.

Taking advantage of a low credit pool is just capitalizing on the corp's poor economy. Gang Sign isn't doing that. If Gang Sign read something like "force the corp to trace 5 - the runner accesses 1 card from HQ if unsuccessful", then maybe there'd be a comparison. But there is not such condition. It is simply a 1-credit resource that gives you HQ accesses for failing to prevent the corp from scoring. It doesn't capitalize on the corp's economic condition, because that would imply that you are interacting with the corp in an economic way - running R&D when they can't rez any more ice gives a discount, but it costs clicks and decreases your economic position. Gang Sign is entirely free and there is no interaction. Leela is the same.

Not to mention, both would activate even if the corp spent 0 clicks and 0 credits scoring, not becoming poorer.

>Same with running on a central to rez ice before swinging over to the remote.
They aren't remotely the same thing. You can choose whether or not to rez central ICE. You can't choose whether or not to score agendas. You have to score agendas.

>They aren't remotely the same thing
I meant in the sense of a basic runner strat that Criminals lean on harder than other factions. Either rez central ice and possibly be too poor to score or protect the remote, or let them access and potentially pick an agenda from centrals.

Also, you don't HAVE to score agendas. You can just kill them. Hence why the FA Kill fork in past NBN can be so strong.

I don't know, I don't disagree that Gang Sign is both constant and high powered (when coupled with HQI, a combo which could probably be addressed), but when you factor in the maximum of firing maybe 3 - 4 times a game, the inherent randomness of HQ accesses in addition to the ability to somewhat control HQ agenda density, and the double edged sword of not being able to refuse the access, I think degenerate might be an overreaction.

Strange, for all this talk about Gang Sign, it hardly made any appearance in the top performing crim decks pre-C2RB for some reason.

Jackson single handedly killing HQ focus might help explain that.

Remember that time not so removed when Fisk was a joke?

Thanks, I knew something wasn't quite right.

I think it's a good call when combined with HQI very pointedly not rotating - multiples of both make any agenda score pull a Legwork on you.

If crim mill gets any more tools, or if their denial game gets anywhere near Siphon or Blackguard-Snitch levels again then by the very design of the game agendas are going to build up in HQ - not being able to score because you'll give the runner 2 agendas via Gang Sign-HQI is a bad way to be.

I think there was always a Leela deck floating around, but it was never quite top table - it has a number of weaknesses, and can be played around if you know how.

What's notable here is that, like Geist, it's one of the decks that needs the least changes post-rotation.

It's also worth noting that Gang Sign is (almost) never bad though, being an on-score effect it doesn't get in the way of any runner strats - the only reason not to use it is that you need the deck space and clicks for something else.

Fair points there.

Still, I wonder if going GS is worth the loss of E-strike et al for 'standard' crims? Might be worth a try for once.

Wonder what would be the next power tap?

So what would a hypothetical (presumably crim) deck be like with that combination? It sounds disturbingly intriguing.

Leela Goodstuff with derez tech maybe? Some scrubbers to beat asset spam.

Gonna try porting it into the Daredevil Nero deck an user posted a while back, looks funky.

I hope Sunny's DDM win Worlds.

>DDM
?
Data Dealer Mother?

Data Dealer is rotating, so it can't be that.

Deep Data mining

How is she supposed to be better compared to actual Shapers and/or Geist?

Wasn't there a card that let you swap around assets or upgrades? Might be fun with Jinja City Grid.

Natural cloud breakers. Nexus. Doesn't depend on drawing daemons to host stuff.

I know, it was just the first thing that came to mind, and I thought it was funny even though I knew it was wrong

>The corp shouldn't be punished for scoring agendas. It's fine if the runner benefits - Fan Site's okay, Iain's okay - but the corp should never be directly punished.
Letting the runner access the Snares, Shi Kyu, News Team and so forth in my hand seems like it's not a punishment :^)

fug, clipboard was slow... how low-tech unshway

bump

Odds on Weyland hitting the top 8 at Worlds?

They seem to be in a much better place than they've ever been since the core 1.0-only tournament

I can see that being an obnoxious archetype; run and draw, and just keep getting economy whenever the corp scores to keep the shennanigans going.

I think they have a decent chance. They have a diverse amount of win-conditions with kill, asset-spam, and even fast advance with RPC and Success for Jemison. And they have been affected the least with post-rotation in my opinion.

>tfw when you include a stupid card and pull it off

Anson's my waifu but he never ends up working properly. When he does work, he wins the entire game, but the timing is just too strict.

>have a remote to stick him in
>don't be remote-starved - that is to say, don't want to use that remote for an agenda or anything
>have unrezzed ice
>have unrezzed ice that you want to stick advancement counters on
>the runner has to not trash him before you can use him on anything good

Plus ideally he's in a server with something he can pump, because otherwise the runner just runs the remote and destroys him with 14 counters on him before you can use him for anything. Admittedly, that's already worth something, but still.

I'd say he does serious work in about 1/4 games. It's honestly almost at the point where I prefer Mumbad Construction Co to him - they kind of do similar things. Anson generates free advancement counters while MCC requires you to pay for them, but MCC can move counters to rezzed ICE mid-run and fuck up the runner by turning your 7-strength Colossus into an 11-strength monstrosity without giving them a chance to jack out, and you have complete control over where your counters go. The timing constraints on MCC are just better.

Too bad everyone runs conspiracy breakers and it's actually cheaper to just reinstall Paperclip and remove tags than to break Colossus with MKUltra.

>and it's actually cheaper to just reinstall Paperclip
I actually found that with my stupid card Swarm

Anson is good, but what he's mainly good for is generating counters for free and being cheap - which is why he's so much harder to "aim" than MCC. In Gov Decks, that's fine

Was there a bit of an oversight not Restricting D4vid and Lady? Their recursion didn't really get hit. I guess it hurts losing Deja Vu and Clone Chip + Levy is out, but they're still astronomically cheap breakers that are fairly easy to recur, especially in Shaper - you get TWO potential installs per Test Run.

Or did losing Deus X and Sharpshooter hurt that type of deck too much?

Honestly it's a bit early to say, but losing Faust does take a bit out of D4 as well.

D4V1D atleast has more ice to tangle with since the recent influx of decent 5+ strength ice, but yeah leaving those two out might be a mistake.

An Anson deck with all the FA options (Shipment from Tennin, Trick of Light, RPC, Audacity) could be fun.

I could see Brahman David being usable. Heck of an influence cost, though.

Two Aumakua questions.

1. Do you get a counter if you make an empty run on Archives?

2. Can you expose rezzed cards? Like say using GPI Net Tap against a server with rezzed ice?

No to both questions.

Yes to the first.

If archives has at least 1 card, you get the counter.

Cool, thanks. Hopefully Aumakua doesn't get hit by the MWL, it's so good at rounding out Crim's tools, without being overly oppressive due to being non-pumpable.

Personally I find Boggs is leaning a bit too much on pleasing gamers. So if the community gets vocal on aumakua being op, it will be mwled.

Yeah, it does feel a bit like that, though atleast it's only been the highly hated cards dealt with so far. If Aumakua does go then hopefully it'll be like mid-Kitara and we get something else to play with.

So how are the odds of the mini-factions in this new format?

Better than ever. UC survives for Sunny. Apex lost Siphon. Adam lost Public Sympathy and E3. BUT HE ENDURES.

Apex is apparently going to get a pretty neat tool next cycle too. Hope the rest get something nice as well.

Each minifaction gets a card once every 2 cycles.

I'm guessing the question becomes how much of an issue become Lady for faction balance in a world where Paperclip exists, Shapers still have their recursion shenanigans and criminals have access to more and better program tutoring...

Is that confirmed new policy?

>criminals have access to more and better program tutoring...
That's arguable I think. Ignoring recursion and draw for a moment, if a comparison is to be made, I think Shapers have the more stronger tutors, eg. paid ability window SMC, free install on Test Run. Meanwhile Criminals have cheaper tutors; Special Order is only 1 credit, Rosetta discounts the program.

As for Lady vs Paperclip, I did some quick calculations using a test case of a server with one of all 3 or less strength ice protecting it (and assuming they aren't modified, eg. Seidr Adaptive Barrier is only has 3 strength, Next Silver only has 1 sub), you need 22 Lady counters to get through everything, so roughly 6 Lady installs, amounting to 24 credits. Meanwhile Paperclip needs a total of 32 credits for install and breaking.

If you add in the 4 strength ice though, you need an additional 8 credits (1 per ice), and roughly 9 - 11 more Lady counters, which is around 12 more credits, totaling to 41 - 44 credits. Paperclip however needs an additional 24 - 26 credits to get through the 4 strength ice, totaling to 56 - 58 credits.

So even when you take the install cost of Lady into account, it's still cheaper than Paperclip, with the only thing possibly bringing the cost together being whatever method the runner is using to bring Lady back. That's pretty insane.

Looks like Barriers are going to stay as the least taxing ice type for a good while longer. I wonder if they'd be willing to pump up Barrier strength while keeping rez costs reasonable to fight this.

Don't discard the needed card draw not to mention opportunity cost of recursion options for Lady. Even discounting credit paid. You need those cards, you need to spend the clicks to use them, they take up slots and you need to draw them in time - not like shapers aren't the best at draw option, but it's still a non-credit associated cost that matters.

>Looks like Barriers are going to stay as the least taxing ice type for a good while longer

Why shouldn't they be? Their base function is one of the less powerful yet most *vital* to break effect if you ever want to win: end the run. It would stand to reason that porous ICE which come with other associated costs that still leave the choice to the runner to access ("I can take that three net damage as long as it won't kill me and it lands me the agenda") ends up more taxing to break.
If anything, the dispersion of ETR to other ICE types might more be an issue.

>SMC

While I'm at it, was glad to hear Mr Stone also thinks SMC is a problem card. It was made at a time when they were too liberal with paid-ability window.
Not like it matters much since he doesn't work on the game anymore, but still.

Naturally this is just pure numbers, in fact once you take into account the other factors that you mentioned I feel like there's some sort of twisted balance here. Paperclip with it's "cheats" and raw power for breaking through Barriers, Lady which is overall cheaper but more transient and practically needs Shaper bullshit for continuous use, and Crim Fracters which leverage their (supposedly) strong econ with an average of 4 - 5 credits per ice. Might not be a bad thing.

>If anything, the dispersion of ETR to other ICE types might more be an issue.
True, plus it's not like the 5+ barriers aren't taxing eventually. Maybe I'm just unsatisfied with the lack of good Weyland Barriers despite being supposedly the best at them. Especially when you look at Chiyashi and Data Loop.

The day SMC goes on the Restricted list will be hilarious.

Damon Stone said something interesting in the Theophilius Bagpiper podcast. He mentioned that Raptors breakers weren't designed to be main breakers, but to complement other breakers and use them as a way to derez targeted ICE. This suddenly makes more sense with Khan ability. Raptors are still horribly expensive just to derez a card, but saving the click and 1c helps.
It's kind of like Savoir Faire and Crescentus combo, but repeatable, and still expensive.

>He mentioned that Raptors breakers weren't designed to be main breakers, but to complement other breakers and use them as a way to derez targeted ICE.

I'd understand this for Flashbang. That's how I've been using it, and it can definitely be worth the investment that way.

Thing is: the raptor are not *shitty* breakers when only used as such. Especially when compared to other in-faction options.

Yeah, I concur they are not fuckawful, but I've seen people complaining even for a single credit difference and calling icebreakers terrible because of it.
Still, it's entirely possible their usefulness on breaking might be a nice addition, but still being its purpose to occasionally derez ice.

Balancing breakers - making sure there is no breaker that is the absolute best at everything while also being better enough that factions have break-type advantages - has been one of the single most difficult things in the game, I think.

How come DaVinci never got more love in Shaper?
Pretty decent econ card - especially against asset spam, one credit per successful run in value, allows you to install hardware and programs mid-run...

Played it a lot in Nasir, but hardly ever see it around. You have all those talks about new Shaper econ package, and I don't see any more love for it.

That actually makes sense somewhat, Saker + Demara are a pretty decent fracter combo together. Might be they're trying the multiple breakers thing for Crims, though if they are then they'll have to explain those install costs a bit beyond "Crim is the money faction".

>they'll have to explain those install costs a bit beyond "Crim is the money faction".
Especially since it isn't even true any more, with both other factions having better econ options. Their run-based econ got trashed when Desperado left the saloon.

They do have a lot more econ cards than the others, but most of them are also situational and require work to gain them (High-Stake Job, Calling in Favours, Aeneas/Au Revoir). Might be we're just spoiled with the money boost Siphon usually gave them I guess.

Was thinking they more had central-only breakers + raptors in mind if going in-faction only.

>with both other factions having better econ options.

What do you have in mind for Anarch?

That's true too. Interesting dynamic whe you take into account Rosetta as well.

Liberated Accounts and Day Job are clunky but they're still better than anything Criminal's got.

We're a long, long way from the Desperado Datasucker Security Testing John Masanori "click for 4 and a card" glory days.

>Liberated Accounts and Day Job are clunky but they're still better than anything Criminal's got.

Let's give it a rundown:

Crims have:
Bank Job, Aenas, Tapwrm, Easy Mark (will never understand the distaste for that card),Pheromones, Security Testing, TriMaf Contact, the innate ID econ (Stirling, Los, Gabriel, Tenma), Tech Trader/Fall Guy and Power Tap (both very build dependent but extremely good in the right one) , Mobius, Keros, Career Fair, Three Steps Ahead, Maui, Public Terminal, High Stakes Job, Exclusive Party, Cache, Calling in Favor... Zona Sul Shipping & Push your luck (Had to add them).

Disregarding value for now that's 26 cards if I'm not mistaken. 4 of them IDs.

Anarchs have:
Ixodidae, Imp & Scrubber, Cyberfeeder & Spinal Modem, Valencia, Mining Accident, Investigative Journalism, The Archivist, Day Job, Inject, Stimhack, Mars for Martians, Power to the People, Human First, Liberated Account..

So, 16 with one ID.

Now, just going from volume of options, Crims still come ahead. Let's see quality next.