LadyDuckland

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 17: No More Scoops

Welcome to the final scoop. Luana Campos is a card I had written almost word for word in my notes app. I'm not even joking. I wanted a tempo-positive Roughneck Repair Squad for Superdeep Borehole decks and this is what I came up with. I don't know who at NSG hacked me but I will find you.

Alright scoops over. How do I feel about the set? Every card is weird jank or near-prints. Is that a problem? Maybe. For the metagame this set may be a blessing in disguise. It's possible that this allows for a wide variety of strategies to flourish on both sides. I doubt it but it's possible. I've already sleeved up some decks to play kitchen table self tag derez VIC vs rush PD. It was fine. I don't have complaints about either deck they each use 3 or so cards from the new set. I don't know if that's a success or a failure however.

Ultimately my concern is this: will this set move the needle on how I feel about the post-elevation metagame. I've decided to commit to trying as hard as I can to make the CBI this year. I decided that before this set came out and I don't want to give up. I decided to go to every event I could feasibly and to bring competitive decks whenever I can. Being a competitive person changes how I feel about this set considerably. I imagine that a lot of people are going to find pet cards within Vantage Point. I've never been that kind of player though.

As I said before I don't know if I'm going to worlds this year. On the one hand I desperately want to. I want to try my hand at doing well on at the biggest tournament of the year. I want to meet all the people I can, all the cool-ass netrunners. I miss the people I met in Montreal last year already, they were lovely. I don't think I can justify it to my bank account if the games aren't also fun however.

And scene. Those are the scoops for Vantage Point. I'm tentatively hopeful for the coming season despite my doomerism. I want this set to be a banger, I don't think it is, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. I hope you've enjoyed reading.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 16: 5 Factions

After a doomer day it's time for some more scoops. I believe this is the last day of scoops but I haven't checked yet.

Reanimation Protocol is beautiful. I adore this art. Pink and green, voxels, pixels, lightning. Just great art all around. Do I think this card is going to be played? It seems unlikely until we get a Bad Publicity deck in Weyland. At 3 Influence I doubt it will come up in Ad Nihilum over Influence-heavy cards like End of the Line. It's also situational, you need big ice in archives which doesn't seem worth the opportunity cost of just running neither.

Cultivate is another beautiful card. God damn the art in this set hits when it hits. Looking at the top 5 of R&D seems worthwhile as an include even without the draw attached to this card. I think this is playable in slow Jinteki decks. Not an Au Co. toy but probably worth a slot in some Méliès U decks.

Lethe is the card that makes me even consider Reanimation Protocol in Editorial Division. 9 cost, non-unique, and almost always tags. This ice wants to live on R&D. It can move a valuable operation to the top of the deck protecting R&D while harming the runner. It's fatal flaw of course is that the face check early is fine. It's also 9 credits. Good lord 9 credits is a lot for in some ways a worse Funhouse.

Sell Out is great flavour for this card. I imagine that trashing a Class Act is where this card is going to live as an alternative to Open Market. Does it give as much value as Open Market however is the question. I think it's less an upgrade and more a side-grade. I can also see this selling Open Market when it gets low. I just find it hard to slot all 3.

Nurse Hanh is a card that interests me in one context. If you're on sabotage you can fire this twice a turn for 4 cards. I don't think this will be slotted over Lago Paranoá Shelter most of the time however as it's more consistent, less click-intensive draw in the majority of matchups.

This is the frustration I have with the set. Every new card has to be weighed against the opportunity cost of existing tools. Most just don't measure up. I predict that the meta is going to have a lot of weak decks being played for a while before people realise Sebastião Souza Pessoa is still busto. I don't know if this entire set moves the needle on what decks are good and what decks are bad. Assets didn't get any more hate, Svyatogor Excavator leaving doesn't stop Ob from being cracked, and Au Co. is still going to only lose to overwhelming tech cards.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 15: Sleepy Scoops & A Rant

Alright 5 scoops, I'm so tired of writing these because the scoops keep making me sad. This may be my problem more than the scoops' problem.

Take a Dive is up first on the block. This seems reasonable but I wonder why it doesn't work on archives. Surely if it requires a subroutine to fire then it wouldn't be busted there? IDK. It's Mining Accident but for Phoenix. I don't really have more to say other than this seems like a one of in Loup, may be a two of. At 4 Influence it's unlikely to see play outside of Anarch the way Mining Accident did.

The Tungsten Tailor is fantastic flavour, the art is incredible, I love the hacker name too. -1 Strength on ice is, just like the previous card, fine. The second clause is interesting, before it this card is just Hardware ICE Carver. I think it can be used with Chisel strategies as a one of. It doesn't have the power to live outside of Anarch however, especially at 3 influence.

I don't get Harmonics, and Reverb is no exception. Now it's an ice that wants unrezzed ice making it the opposite of most Harmonic ice. This is neat but playing Harmonic minigames typically makes your deck a lot weaker and takes up valuable space on the mental stack. Combined with Realloc() (the next card) it's interesting but I doubt it will see any consistent play.

Realoc() is probably not good. That doesn't stop it from being a fascinating card much in the same vein as Nihilo Agent, though less extreme. I actually really like the art on this one. It's abstract but evocative and tells enough of a story along with great flavour text. Combined with something like Distributed Tracing into Unleash targeting Tyr there's probably a really silly deck out there that can do awful things 10% of the time and only against unsuspecting opponents.

Finally is Lotus Haze. It's… a card. It can live next to Flower Sermon in the multi-layered-jank decks.

As scoop season begins to close and the reality sets in that this set is our lot for the year I'm not entirely sure how much netrunner I'm going to play this year. I was initially really excited for NA worlds being so close to me, just a few hours away. I don't think I'm going to go anymore, between having to schedule it around school and the meta seeming stale and the cost… IDK. Maybe as it approaches I'll feel more positively. Maybe the metagame will be saved. Maybe there's an unrevealed card that suddenly makes me excited again.

I don't want to end on such a bleak note. I want to be excited about this set. Writing these every day has been both useful and detrimental because I've been brewing so many decks so quickly for them. Every deck I brew that I think about sleeving up uses at most 3 cards from Vantage Point. VIC, Kompromat, Borrowed Goods (1x). Au Co. with Esca to poison archives. Maybe I'm just not seeing the vision but the Corp decks I've always enjoyed are asset based. They've been very good to me this year, me and everyone else. It's no wonder that I got no toys on that front. On the runner side things get bleak for me. The last time I really enjoyed playing runner was playing Hypermantle Kit by Rhahi and 419 from Chouxflower. That could entirely be hindsight. Things have this tendency to look better in the past.

Since rotation I've been playing teched up Sable at tournaments. At smaller events I've brought Stealth Lat with Afterimage, Mantle, and The Twinning. Strangely enough I think a large part of my aversion to playing runner comes down to one factor: installing cards isn't worth it in the matchups I play 90% of the time. Against Au Co. I don't have time to pull breakers, and they aren't using ice that ends the run. Against assets Ob which I played a lot of before ScrObs became the popular brew all you need is an early way to get through barriers and you're set, just play run events.

The thesis is that corporation decks I play against regularly require you to play so fast that you're seeing maybe 20 cards. If you don't have good money and draw in your top 6 you're cooked. Does buffing slower scoring corps help this? I feel like I'm hitting a slot machine on runner side. In Au Co. or Ob I have so much more agency is the key. I feel like I'm winning on my Corp side, on runner I feel like my deck is just doing it's thing.

Maybe this just shows I'm not built for netrunner but given how rotation was the real impetus for this feeling I doubt it.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 14: Anarch and HB with a Splash of Shaper

It's finally time! Chain Reaction! The big boy on the block! 5 Influence! The grand return of Apoc? Not really. I don't really know how to break this but this card is pretty ass. It's bad with the other scoop Hackerspace (we'll get there) and it's bad without Hoshiko to support it. The only way I can see this being reasonable is in Phoenix? Maybe? I don't understand this card. I don't think it's going to do very much and it makes me a little bit sad. The previous anarch quest card, that is, a card that require 3 runs one on each central server, was Climactic Showdown and that also was bad. To a degree quest cards are doomed, Jeitinho had to be extremely specific, Deep Dive is just over the curve and lowkey hated. They feel impossible to balance.

Hackerspace. This card is a 2 cost for 2 credit and 2 hand size card. I don't have much to say this seems like memory diamond but worse? It suddenly gives every corporation a big tag punishment, or worse, amazing payoff for Above the Law. Just play memory diamond, next.

Retirement Plan is our next card. I was hoping this would cheer me up this morning after reading the two previous cards. It doesn't really. Install from Archives is a useful effect but a rarely game changing one at 2 clicks. I can see it being a one of include in a lot of HB decks for safety that gets cut in time.

Perfect Recall reminds me of The Red Room but in some ways significantly weaker. I can imagine it doing well protecting HQ because the card you want to protect is always going to be there. On a remote server this gets quite a bit weaker because you'll be giving the runner information and they can still hit upgrades. All in all I think this card could do some really gross things, especially if paired with The Red Room.

Finally Aircheck. Oh how the mighty have fallen. From a faction staple to this… thing. If you don't know what I mean look up Trick Shot and weep. Make 2 runs without real credits is a tough ask, though Touchstone and Methuselah help. Running R&D as shaper has been getting a lot tougher with cards like Illumination and classics like Conduit. In most corporation games I just slam my first ice onto R&D because I know Illumination is game losing. This is a jank card that makes you play other jank cards. Does that mean it can be situationally good or it's doomed to decks that just suck? Time will tell.

The part that stings the most is that we'll never get Trick Shot back.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 13: NBN Toolkit and Shaper's Wacky Bag of Tricks

I have a theory. Every card in Vantage Point has fit into two categories: BANGER corporation staple or silly little guy for one ID. Stick And Poke? Silly little guy for one ID. Let Them Dream? Banger corporation staple. This will be the lens I'll be applying today.

First is Hype Machine. 2 to trash is the first thing I looked at on this card. When I first saw this in the fan I was worried it'd be a 4 trasher but here we are. It feels a lot like Arella Salvatore but has just enough key differences to make it interesting. The main one I can see is stacking this darn thing in Epiphany and scoring 4 points in one turn from a never advanced 3/2. Alternately you can technically use it for traps but that's extremely silly. I think this fits in the category of Banger corporation staple, it's going to show up in any asset-based NBN as a one or two of for the foreseeable future.

Second is Grubber. Oh bother. 5 strength Barrier, good, breaks for at most 6, bad. Bad especially in a Bad Publicity deck where you're going to have the credits back for the next run. On top of this it gives Bad Publicity on rez. This does allow it to be pulled by Ad Nihilum (Editorial Division) but I don't think that gives it legs. Silly little guy for one ID. Next!

Third is Read-Write Share. 2 MU to kinda do nothing. It lets you save some cards for later. I can see this being used with Ashen Epilogue? Maybe? I don't really know. Outside of Dewi this is probably worthless. Silly little guy for one ID.

Fourth is Methuselah. Ok Marlon Ruiz, I see that we're just cooking out here. Banger art on this card right here. Unfortunately it is a silly little guy for one ID. 4 credits for a +1 MU console that gives at most 2 credits a run. Admittedly this is basically free if you have Buffer Drive. Combine Methuselah with “Knickknack” O’Brian and you can get some really solid money coming in. This card has one fatal flaw however: it's very, very slow. 4 credits is just so much for something that doesn't give you as much tempo as something like Lilypad. The final angle is stealth of course. This is a consistent source of stealth credits that, with setup, can fuel an Afterimage plus Penrose especially combined with Touchstone. Does that make for a reasonable deck however.

I think that Vantage Point broadly does succeed pushing the needle towards scoring and glacier from the asset meta we've been living in. As that shift happens a lot of decks on runner side are going to become unviable very quickly. I think run-based shaper is going to be hit, criminal is going to have trouble consistently getting through big ice without tricks like S-Dobrado, and Anarch is going to rely more and more on ice destruction. Ignoring the new cards for a moment the new standard ban list certainly makes me think that assets are going to have a place. Yes Dreamnet is fantastic against assets but the 3 install cost is a temp hit. Daily Casts is another important card, neutral economy is hard to come by and this can bolster runner decks against trash costs. I do however think that Oppo Research is a card that punishes the “trash everything” mindset so hard that it'll stratify corp decks into two forms: those that can get to the cut, and those that can win the cut.

Getting to the cut of a tournament in my opinion is a different skillset for a deck than winning in the cut. To get to the cut you have to be unexpected. I've thought about slotting a one of Urtica Cypher in Au Co. for instance because against someone who isn't expecting it it can instantly win the game. It's a trick much like a one of BYTE. I think that as scoring strategies get more popular getting to the cut on assets is going to get easier as runners are less tech-ed for them and practice less against them. Keeping in mind that at most small to medium sized tournaments you only need to win 2-3 corp games against a mostly random field to get into the cut. That means game 1 against someone random, game 2 against someone who's basically random as well, and game 3, the tough one. Unfortunately because of closed decklist you can still cheese the runner pretty easily. Random BYTE, random Urtica Cypher, random Clearinghouse are all good choices. One can also reasonably expect that a shell game strategy with Mitosis could work fairly well here.

As soon as you hit the cut however decklists are open. This means much tighter margins for the cheese decks. It means advancing Urtica Cypher and bluffing it's an agenda. Holding BYTE in hand instead of spamming them on the table becomes the optimal play. When I think of Netrunner I inevitably think of Au Co. It's the deck I've sunk the most time into by far. It's almost inextricably tied to assets as a strategy. I think that Au Co. asset spam is going to fall apart against some of these new decks, and something like VIC has a really good matchup into Jinteki tags because Oppo cannot combo you to death, there's always one turn to clear the tags. The egg is fragile. It already has had a hard time with Shaper as a faction due to their overwhelming card draw and economy from cards like “Knickknack” O’Brian.

Does Au Co, tags or grinder, have a realistic gameplan in open decklist or is it stuck being a “get to the cut” deck? I don't know. And that's scary to me.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 12: A Bunch of Jinteki Tags!

The title of this section could not be more accurate. Holy moly tags are back on the menu boys!

First up s Vicsek. This is a trap ice that looks like it has real combo potential. The ability to deal theoretically infinite damage is not lost on me. This card means business and with some of the later options could potentially become busto. That being said I have to temper this with the fact that Jinteki doesn't have great ways to tag in faction. That has changed somewhat with these cards but still importing Oppo Research costs influence, requires setup, and needs credits.

Second is Esca, an ambush! I don't think this card is particularly good, especially when compared to the likes of BYTE. Yes it's free, yes it taxes the runner, but it's such a small tax that spending a card slot on it will be hard.

Third is ezaM. This code gate reminds me of Tributary but less toxic, which is cool! I always thought the concept of ice that buffs other ice was nifty. Bottoming a card on R&D is really good in Jinteki especially if you're going for a tag kill line and can bottom a Fujii Asset Retrieval.

Fourth is Unleash. Ok here's the Vicsek combo! This card looks sick. I can imagine all kinds of wacky combos with it, from pulling an Empiricist out of thin air and blasting the runner for 2 for and End of the Line combo to, well, Vicsek becoming Boom. This card has tough competition with Mindscaping + End of the Line however. In Au Co. I've found that combo to be incredibly deadly already. This could remove the 4-8 influence spend on End of the Line which is sick but requires quite a bit more setup to work with Vicsek, namely, 4 tags. At that point 2 Mindscapings would already be a reasonable kill line. I'm excited for this card nonetheless because there's probably something buck wild it can do, I just don't necessarily think in Au Co. it is better yet.

Fifth is The Red Room. Hell yeah this card's flavour is great. I always love a good spooky scary corp card. Not only is the flavour scary but the ability to end the run on any server at instant speed is fantastic. Getting power counters? A bit of a pain. Sending the runner through Sisyphus Jinteki ice only to have the run ended with this? Priceless.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 11: Ansel 2.0 and Baker

Today we've got a big ice and a way around it.

Ansel 2.0 is World Champion Patrick Gower's second take on Ansel. This sentry is bigger and meaner than the original by quite a bit. 5 Strength sentries are a useful breakpoint against Revolver, and with 4 subroutines it can tax Revolver out quickly. Echelon breaks this, with 3 breakers, at 7 credits. Breaking every subroutine is worth it in most cases with this ice because goodness look at those effects. Essentially taking an installed runner card and removing it from game is wild, plus installing from Archives is always a useful effect. The install gets even more valuable when you consider many runners are going to be taxing their clicks to get through this ice, not having the ability to contest the table later. At 8 cost I don't see this slotting into the classic PD rush decks but in something like LEO? I can imagine having to break Ansel 2.0 twice is almost impossible.

The second scoop is Baker. This criminal program allows you to move your run from Archives to HQ or R&D. Is this a criminal card or a shaper card? I don't know yet. Stealth in Criminal has always been a tricky thing because Penumbral Toolkit is pretty sketchy. Maybe you can splash a Mantle but it's hard to get it consistently leaving you with Trickster Taka? I suppose that leaves Touchstone as the out-of-faction option. In Crim? Not awful, but there's probably better things to do like the aforementioned Penumbral Toolkit. Ultimately this looks like an Eru replacement for certain Criminal decks that already want to play a little stealth.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 10: Borrowed Goods, Knowledge Seeker, Touchstone, and Rotary

We are big scoopin' today with 4 goober lil cards.

I'm going to put Borrowed Goods and Rotary together. They are criminal tag support though provide surprising benefits. Anarch tags have traditionally been about gaining credits (Friend of a Friend) or recursion (Privileged Access) but these are, much like crim as a faction, quite different. Borrowed Goods however I don't really feel. I don't really understand it. Yes criminal could use the MU but slotting it seems difficult, especially outside VIC. Perhaps that's part of the point, they're cards that won't be good in other crims, but I'm not sure that's necessarily what the meta needs right now. Rotary is VIC's console. It's basically another Docklands Pass with a bonus tag and working on R&D. The main downside of course is that it can be trashed.

These two cards fit a very specific type of criminal. That criminal is VIC. They will likely see very little if any play outside of VIC. That's probably fine considering that VIC feels emotionally like the Sebastião; an ID that gets their own toys and doesn't share. I think that would sit better with me were this a normal set but as a set that in my understanding is to “fix” the metagame it seems odd. I would certainly prefer this if Sable wasn't simultaneously banned, now it feels like MuslihaT and Zahya are the only “reg” criminals. The only criminals that play the way I prefer to play criminal right now at least. This could be my bias but the loss of Sable almost feels like it happened to return Deep Dive and to a lesser degree Info Bounty to the metagame, the former I expect won't last particularly long.

Doomer-ism aside there are more scoops to go.

Knowledge Seeker is a buck wild card. It purges, has a subroutine that sometimes harms the corp, arranges the top of R&D like Anansi, and has an ETR subroutine. For a 5 strength Code Gate it is very under--costed at 5 credits. Perhaps the downside of the de-rez makes up for it, but with more and more runners using viruses (Fermenter in shaper, Physarum Entangler stocks increasing in both shaper and Crim with VIC's MU, and Anarch relying on Botulus and Audrey v2) I predict that there will be board-states where you don't want to let this derez. Combined with Mycoweb this could make for an interesting Jinteki glacier strategy in Restoring Humanity or Méliès U.

Finally Touchstone. When I first saw this card I, wrongly, assumed it was a console. It kinda looks like one is the only reasoning I can give. This card's flavour-text is fantastic, combined with 0mission's story it does hit those retro feels well. My second thought upon reading it was: Aniccam is back on the menu boys! This combination allows for a VERY fast Lat. I say Lat because the precedent has always been for run based shaper to be built in Lat. It's possible Dewi could do a lot with the same archetype. This is where the flavour starts to break for me, I don't think that 0mission would ever slot this card. He doesn't seem like an event kind of guy.

I think the scoops have been exciting today, they're some real build-around cards. I'm however worried about the overall design of the set as it feels like corporations are getting general tools and runners far more specific ones. Many of the runner cards are for one ID more than the corp cards that is. We'll just have to see how things shake out.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 9: Myōshu, Event Horizon, and Flywheel

Today we have scoops from The Process ANR Podcast and the Stimhack Slack. I won't be including the cards here so go there.

Myōshu is the first up. This card looks really interesting. It raises the stocks of Nuvem for sure but I'm more interested in doing gross stuff in Issuaq. Myōshu has a place in any scoring Weyland that doesn't fast advance so probably not Ob. Mostly I'm curious where this will crop up outside of faction. Maybe nowhere but as mentioned Issuaq is a fun shoutout.

Event Horizon is a few interesting things. First, it's Border Control. Border Control is a cracked card that hardly needs introduction. Without it stopping Deep Dives was a pain, scoring windows in the remote didn't exist, and midrange ice was basically worthless later in the game. Event Horizon fixes a few these issues for Weyland and even out of faction I can see it becoming a stable tool. The 0 Strength is interesting to me, it makes it a lot easier to trash than Border Control with Arruaceiras Crew. I think this will also be a great card in Ob because being able to ETR then pull an ice for the next run is great. Alternately I imagine a kick-flip where you over-install an agenda with Anthill Excavation Contract then spin the agenda away.

Finally is Flywheel. 3 strength sentries are fantastic, they just are. It's low enough that the card won't be too expensive, high enough that it's a pain to break early, and for crim, always a pain to break. At 2 cost this card in Ob can fetch some useful tools on trash though without Svyatogor Excavator it now requires an Extract or similar so you can't fetch Humanoid Resources and pop it. Beyond it's utility in Ob this card's face-check is fantastic… in Ob. It lets you spam assets at a wild pace if you land this early. Genuinely I really only see this card as an Ob piece but I'm hopeful to be proven wrong.

I think Myōshu and especially Flywheel really bring into focus why Svyatogor Excavator had to go. Not only does it have wild numbers, +3 cred on rez with a 4 trash cost, the new toys Ob is going to love in this set are terrifying. Triple advance score a 3/2 then gain a click off wage and play Myōshu? Hell yeah, it's gross as hell! Ultimately these cards are not really for Ob. They're for Nuvem, they're for closing games in Built to Last. I just wonder how long Ob has left if it can find a way to use these tools.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 8: Big Scoopin'

So the cards are now images so no text of them here, you can find them on the Neon Static and Daily Casts.

First up is Stowaway. It's Kyuban… but worse. Probably that's good enough to put 1 or 2 in Ari or Madani lists and get that little bit extra money. It is a whenever effect so that's probably worth something when alongside conduit for 4 runs on R&D.

Second in order of me seeing them today: Paywall. It's like Popup Window. I don't have much more to say other than I hope to never see GameNET again. Please leave me alone GameNET. I think this card is cool and can find a nice home in the most obnoxious NBN decks.

Third is Witch Hunt. Holy moly they gave Ad Nihilum (Editorial Division) a sick agenda. Give the runner 3 tags plus tutor an End of the Line or another Witch Hunt? Yeah ok sick. It's a nifty card, I like that the runner gets value from stealing it so there's a bit of give and take here.

Fourth is Tailgate. I love the flavour and art on this card. Social engineering attacks are very crim. I worry that it could be overshadowed by the likes of Jailbreak just for the lower cost and extra card draw. Jailbreak also being a neutral card makes it fantastic if you were considering Tailgate out of faction. The lowered cost I can't imagine mattering very much because each ice costs at least 1 credit to get through in most cases. Perhaps some derez + economic denial strategy can really make this shine.

Fifth and final (ish) is Kompromat. Another Scott Uminga, another banger. It feels a lot like a worse version of Mining Accident, or at least a lateral move for the concept. I already saw Nick on Neon Static make a cool play with it, running a server with nothing in the root and 1 unrezzed ice protecting it, using Baz and Underdome Irregulars to make the rez extra painful.

Finally we get to Underdome Irregulars. I totally forgot about this card because it was scooped so long ago, in the before times. It's meh until you pair it with a derez Baz. Then it's still bad but it's at least cool. Also in this lot is Corsair and Lampades, two cards I doubt will have any significant impact on the metagame.

Finally finally we get to the last two cards: the oldest scoops! Synchrocyclotron is a nifty card that makes you play bad cards. I think it can find a home in NBN sideways decks or in Flood the Market combo decks in HB. That brings us to Flood the Market. It's great for kickflips, the turn where you score a bunch of points almost out of nowhere. I say almost because it is certainly a win-more card. If you already have several servers iced with stuff in them you're probably able to score anyway.

These scoops I'm mixed on. Much like most of this set to be honest. I really like some of the changes and designs here but there's this prevailing feeling that it's entirely reactive. I don't know if that's always bad but it is at least a bit sad. I like when games are pushing the envelope to the new, fresh, and strange. I haven't played the game long enough to really know if that's a thing that netrunner does.

[ladyduckland]

The Isle of Sorrows - 19/02/26

Part 2

So I'm one session deep and I have thoughts.

The starting party:

Rebekah, a midwife exiled after being framed for the crime of poisoning a baby. She's constantly trying to look small, scared for her life, but confident in matters of survival.

Grigori, a soldier exiled for failing to follow orders. He was told to show mercy but butchered his enemies instead. He's fatalistic and cynical.

Maeve Penrose, a witch exiled for being a witch. She's unrepentant and bold.

Reginald Wilhelm, a court physician exiled for failing to save the duke's son. Being a doctor in this world has to suck. He is a coward but rolled the best stats by far (6 HP / 14 STR / 16 DEX / 16 WIL) At the start of every combat he panics.

The session began with my players on a ship to the titular Isle of Sorrows. I had them explain their backstories, how they got there. I think giving them the power of the narrator worked really well. It's definitely something I'm going to do again, especially for downtime. They went due north seeing a massive seabird and other exiles before hitting the forest. They camped a night but by morn Maeve found hands and fingers grafted to the trees and they decided to GTFO.

Heading west they spy a tower and village in the distance and start by heading to the village. This is the Stone Farm, where stones are farmed for their meat. The party found whisps leading to the basement of one of the houses but with a chain holding the cellar shut they left it alone.

My descriptions of Stone Farm have been very simple: abandoned but everything that could be taken was. The thatch is rotted, probably at least a year since the people left. The water that was used to irrigate the fields is sour. I wanted to paint a picture of a place that once was, but only recently was brought to ruin. A place that could be again.

After hunkering down through a storm they headed to the tower. Combat went fast with the tower's guardian, an animated suit of battered armour. It was defeated by throwing a chair at its head. This is where my concerns really start to appear. Combat can be extremely linear where both sides just bash each other over the head until someone dies. It's a function of damage vs HP + STR. Who dies first. Now I'm not saying that combat can't be interesting in this system. I just think that combat itself isn't interesting, it requires other things to juice it. Environment is the most obvious to me but others are few and far between.

After their encounter with the guardian they headed up the tower to it's apex and met the Mage. Every good tower has a mage. This one doesn't know his name, nor much else, he's a ghost both of his former self and also literally. He does however know astrology and how to stay in his lane. This entire encounter was hilarious and threatening. He constantly shut them down when they asked about matters non-astrological. He offered that if they can get the stone farmers to bring him 3 stones to eat he'd cough up a spellbook. Reginald did the bulk of the negotiation here and it was nice to have him open up a bit. The party has yet to talk about their pasts, in a way they don't matter. 

I think Cairn may have been a poor choice for this game because it assumes a very narrow set of characters. Everyone knows how to hunt, make camp, and can travel long days. This is, weirdly enough, why I chose it in the first place. It removes a lot of the bookkeeping I'd normally have to do and removes the possibility of what I call “Lock Out” where a single skill check stops the story in its tracks. I think about what would've happened if I used a more complex OSR-y game or something like Forbidden Lands. I don't have another group to try it on (yet) so I guess I'll never know.

For now I'm happy with how session 1 turned out and excited to see where things go.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 7: SBL, Flagship, and Magistrate Revontulet; The Day the GOAT Died

HOLY SHIT!!! She's dead! My queen! My goat!

Daily Casts unbanned

Deep Dive unbanned

DreamNet unbanned

Info Bounty unbanned

Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist banned

Luminal Transubstantiation banned

Nyusha “Sable” Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy banned

Svyatogor Excavator banned

I had to take a moment this morning after waking up and seeing the news. Hoshiko Shiro has without a doubt been the best ID of the NSG era. Her impact on the metagame is hard to overstate. Every single anarch ID is measured against Hoshiko. Every single non-anarch gameplan is measured against Reg Hosh. I have played dozens of games of Hosh and in every single one you can feel the reg value, the sheer cliff the corp has to climb to tax your credits or card draw. And that's just the start of this SBL update!

Starting with the remaining bans from least to most interesting to me: Luminal Transubstantiation goes back in the binder. I don't know if cards have been banned twice before? Probably I'm not looking into it right now. With the new 5/3 I think this new set is an overall buff for HB. I've never liked one of cards that are as impactful as luminal so it's probably fine that it's gone.

Svyatogor Excavator is an odd duck on this list. Every other ban makes more sense to me. Yes Ob has been an extremely performant deck recently but it at no point to me has been beyond Au Co. In my testing they have very similar win rates but I doubt I have as much data as NSG, especially given the potential of new cards shaking things up.

Sable finally going is buck wild to me. She's gotten a couple of cards banned with Deep Dive, Info Bounty, and nearly even Bravado. With her rotated to the great binder in the sky they can finally return. Weirdly enough I think in a butterfly-effect sort of way Sable made Shaper more Blue. I will not elaborate. I've played a lot of Sable, she was my second foray into Crim after 419. I'm sad to see her go and excited to see what I can do in shaper with Deep Dive, what I can do in Crim with VIC now that it has space, and hopeful for more Mark support one fateful day.

UNBAN TIME!

Holy shit we have new toys returning from the binder. Funny enough I never got to play with Dreamnet, so I'm excited to see how cracked it is in VIC. Meanwhile -Cataloguer +Deep Dive seems to be the move for most shapers. Again I don't have much to say, it's a good card and when it comes back I'm going to have to blow Shapers up even faster or snipe it out of hand with Phat. Finally Daily Casts making a return is a nice little econ boost. I don't have strong opinions on any of these. I think it's good to get some toys back but ultimately they're all very expected.

Now, finally, for the scoops.

Flagship Unique Weyland Consortium Upgrade: Ritzy Rez cost: 3 – Trash cost: 4 – Influence cost: 2 HQ or R&D only. Runs against this server cannot be declared successful. (This effect does not cause runs to become unsuccessful.) Persistent → During each run against this server, the Runner cannot access more than 1 card other than this upgrade.

Magistrate Revontulet Unique NBN Asset: Executive Rez cost: 2 – Trash cost: 3 – Influence cost: 4 As an additional cost to steal an agenda, the Runner must pay 3credit. Whenever you score an agenda, the Runner loses 3credit.

Flagship is 2 influence Crisium Grid with the limitation of no Archives and the benefit of preventing multi-access. I imagine this card was printed in response to the Deep Dive unban and I'm sure we'll see a lot of it if shapers pop off. I don't have too much more to say, it's a card we've almost entirely seen before. I think it could be good in the right deck but I don't know what deck that is yet.

Magistrate Revontulet is in a way worse Phat for NBN at higher Influence cost. I doubt both in a deck would make sense however. The ability to tax steals is huge in Epiphany decks that want to imprison the runner for 55 minutes in a Double-Sided Swiss set and make the last game pure slot machine. Genuinely a fantastic tool for prison NBN. I could see swapping out Public Access Plazas in my Epiphany brew for this because money has rarely been an issue however I'm sure that a new, even more toxic brew is possible. With a trash cost of 3 and being a must-trash card Magistrate Revontulet.

So what does today mean for netrunner?

This is the wildest day of scoops and it's not even close. I'm cautiously optimistic for what comes next. I've never been fully trusting of the Standard Ban-List Team. I know they know more than me but sometimes the meta just kinda sucks and one has to wonder why the last ban-list was the way it was. I don't lay meta issues entirely at their feet however. Though there's been issues they're doing the best they can with more of a card puddle than a card pool and with the entire community analysing their every move. I dislike ID bans in theory but with the meta so centralized I think these two are justified. After all we've had a lot of time to enjoy reg Hosh, let's give something else a try!

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 6: Stick and Poke

Let's talk about Phoenix. Phoenix has been a favourite of mine since release. Trashing the Corp's entire hand then landing Chastushka just feels amazing. Drop a cacophony on top? It's a beautiful thing. Since the banning of Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga Phoenix has fallen off hard with the only notable placement I know of being a based Bankhar-less deck pre-banlist coming into effect at Toronto Megacity 2025. That deck landed in 2nd despite collapsing against Nebula in the finals. I'm a Phoenix enjoyer. So let's look at their new support card!

⬩ Stick and Poke Unique Anarch Resource: Companion – Virtual Play cost: 0 – Influence cost: 3 The first time each turn you encounter a piece of ice, it gains “sub Do 1 net damage. The Runner draws 1 card.”, before its other subroutines, for the remainder of that encounter.

Ok let's not get too excited. Flavour? On point. Art? Fantastic. Is it good? Not really… BUT IS IT FUN??? YES! This card looks hilariously fun to play. I've been hoping for more subroutine manipulation for a long time. The design space feels underexplored in the current card pool. This card becomes a brick in the Au Co. matchup but weirdly enough that's probably not the worst. It becomes HP after all.

One thing has been rolling around in my head with this card: do you play breakers in Phoenix? Perhaps Audrey for Cacophony synergy with Gourmand? It's an odd question because before it was obvious to me: Buzzsaw for ETR code-gates, Banner for Barriers, and Botulus just in case. This along with Arruaceiras Crew and Devil Charm allows you to punch through basically any ICE while firing your ability off Banner. It's still not a great deck (~35-40% win rate in my ~70 Jnet Casual games) but it has enough teeth to capitalize on mistakes.

So far it does feel like Stick and Poke will work well with an Audrey + Gourmand package which allows one to use Cacophony. I would probably include a rising tide just for the rare Semak-Samun or consider ICE destruction with Chisel + Devil Charm / Leech and 3x Simulchip. This allows you to keep your credits up with Strike Fund more easily though you sacrifice some Influence. With 17 I doubt that's much of a concern however.

Here's my list. I think there's a few more cards that could easily be cut but I can't see them. Maybe Leech + Stoneship? Then I may add a pinhole IDK.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 5: GFI & Ikawa Project Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Today had two scoops, both agendas, both make me a little bit weird feeling.

Méliès City Luxury Line Haas-Bioroid Agenda: Expansion Advancement Cost: 5 – Points: 3 As an additional cost to steal this agenda, the runner must spend click. When you score this agenda, gain click.

Let Them Dream Neutral Agenda: Initiative Advancement Cost: 4 – Points: 2 – Influence cost: 1 When you score this agenda, you may search HQ, R&D, or Archives for 1 agenda and reveal it. (Shuffle R&D after searching it.) Add that agenda to HQ or the bottom of R&D. While this agenda is in the Runner’s score area, it is worth 1 less agenda point.

I'll just go in order of me seeing them this morning. Méliès City Luxury Line is a bit of a mouthful and the text on this card is extremely reminiscent of Ikawa Project. That being said the differences make it less a generically good agenda and more one that one runs in ridiculous click gaining decks. I can foresee 5 point turns on the horizon. Am I happy about that? Not really. I never loved playing into decks that ICE HQ, R&D, and a Wage Worker then just pop off scoring 5/3s from hand. I know how to play into them, trash the Wage Workers and they can't do nearly as much, I just don't like it. The gameplan on either side feels pretty static is all.

Méliès City Luxury Line feels like it also belongs in LEO for the simple reason of being impossible to steal unless the runner has a huge pile of money to pay for Manegarm Skunkworks and getting into the remote… twice.

Ultimately I think this card is fine because HB isn't a particularly good faction and needs some agendas. It's a slightly wonky card, but basically alright. Does LEO now run 7 agendas with Vulnerability Audit and this. I don't know I've never played LEO.

Let Them Dream on the other hand I absolutely fear. This agenda is reminiscent of Global Food Initiative (GFI) a card I never had the displeasure of playing against but have heard a lot about. It's not as toxic as GFI but as a concept remains similar. I've already seen it floated using it to cycle Slash and Burn back to the hand. I've seen it come up in conversations about Ob kill combos though I personally prefer The Basalt Spire for that. I'm not entirely sure where this card belongs. In kill you're not scoring but it could be useful to have a 1 pointer that takes a 2 pointer slot.

Still no egg cards have been scooped unless you count Let Them Dream which I will not. I'm probably a fool for hoping for something to put in the egg but I can't help but dream!

Finally the startup ban updates deserve a little attention. With the rotation of 1/3 the card pool the format is going to change drastically. I don't know what that will look like yet, nor will it finally make me play Startup in all likelihood.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 4: Hiram “0mission” Svensson: Shadow of the Past

Scoop time!

Hiram “0mission” Svensson: Shadow of the Past Shaper Identity: Natural Pronouns: He/Him Minimum Deck Size: 45 – Influence: 15 – mu limit: 4 – Base link: 0 Whenever you install or trash a piece of hardware (from any location), look at the top card of R&D.

Hell yeah we got Lantern of Insight in Netrunner! Oh god we got Lantern of Insight in Netrunner! MtG comparisons aside I'm actually worried about this card, maybe in a good way. Shaper control has always been a decisive playstyle, and for good reason. In many matchups it can feel suffocating. It brings to mind discussions of flat game state, where no Corporation cards matter and no server can be defended. In this metagame where ICE has, at least in my limited time as a player, never been weaker, it feels inevitable that a hard RnD lock is established. I imagine this deck running 3 Airblades just for the sole purpose of getting a peek at RnD. Not to mention how it would crush the Au Co. matchup with that include.

The more I think about this ID as a dedicated Au Co. spammer the more worried I get to be honest. What do you mean my usual strategy of protecting RnD with a Phat on the table won't work! I think right now 0mission needs just a few pieces to become a real meta threat. Pieces that are inevitable in Vantage Point.

Here's my extremely undercooked build for 0mission keeping in mind that I'm terrible at building shaper:

[ladyduckland]

updated list, less garbage, better vs Au Co. and significantly more annoying for other corps too.

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 4: Hiram “0mission” Svensson: Shadow of the Past

Scoop time!

Hiram “0mission” Svensson: Shadow of the Past Shaper Identity: Natural Pronouns: He/Him Minimum Deck Size: 45 – Influence: 15 – mu limit: 4 – Base link: 0 Whenever you install or trash a piece of hardware (from any location), look at the top card of R&D.

Hell yeah we got Lantern of Insight in Netrunner! Oh god we got Lantern of Insight in Netrunner! MtG comparisons aside I'm actually worried about this card, maybe in a good way. Shaper control has always been a decisive playstyle, and for good reason. In many matchups it can feel suffocating. It brings to mind discussions of flat game state, where no Corporation cards matter and no server can be defended. In this metagame where ICE has, at least in my limited time as a player, never been weaker, it feels inevitable that a hard RnD lock is established. I imagine this deck running 3 Airblades just for the sole purpose of getting a peek at RnD. Not to mention how it would crush the Au Co. matchup with that include.

The more I think about this ID as a dedicated Au Co. spammer the more worried I get to be honest. What do you mean my usual strategy of protecting RnD with a Phat on the table won't work! I think right now 0mission needs just a few pieces to become a real meta threat. Pieces that are inevitable in Vantage Point.

Here's my extremely undercooked build for 0mission keeping in mind that I'm terrible at building shaper:

[ladyduckland]

Scoop 3: Editorial Division: Ad Nihilum & Friends

Lots of changes and a rare triple scoop in this one! I want to start with the rules changes and work backwards this time. The bulk of this is trying to simplify Bad Publicity which I'm sympathetic to. I, as a new player, routinely messed up the gaining Bad Publicity during a run interaction. These changes mean that you cannot lose credits from the Bad Publicity pool which makes cards like whitespace a bit more threatening in a very specific matchup. Does this matter? Probably not. I think it actually is going to take a little bit for me to adjust but we'll see.

The cards then.

In reverse order of how interested I am in them:

Vulture Fund Weyland Consortium Operation: Transaction – Liability Play cost: 7 – Influence cost: 2 Gain 14credit and take 1 bad publicity.

Editorial Division: Ad Nihilum NBN Identity: Division Minimum Deck Size: 45 – Influence: 15 The first time each turn you take bad publicity, you may search R&D for 1 non-agenda black ops, gray ops, or liability card and reveal it. (Shuffle R&D after searching it.) Add that card to HQ.

Nihilo Agent NBN Asset: Enforcer – Liability Rez cost: 1 – Trash cost: 3 – Influence cost: 2 When you rez this asset, load 3 power counters onto it. When it is empty, trash it. When your turn begins, remove 1 tag and 1 bad publicity. When your discard phase ends, give the Runner 1 tag, take 1 bad publicity, and remove 1 hosted power counter.

Vulture Fund is in a way Too Big to Fail. Vibes wise they are extremely similar cards with one key difference: now you can get a giant pile of money. Will this matter? I don't really know. In Weyland Glacier probably, in Ob it's possible, outside of that? I have my doubts. We'll have to wait and see.

Editorial Division: Ad Nihilum feels like the name is backwards. I'd love to be saying Ad Nihilum for this card but here we are. Aside from that minor critique, hell yeah give me the Superdeep Borehole decks! Lay the Superdeep Borehole on me! I'm a sicko for that silly, silly card. As for serious decks to build with this, I think we have to see more cards first. Piranhas feels like the obvious card to have 3 of in this ID. On REZ pull another big ICE? I mean that's fine but it isn't anything wild. Pulling Measured Response is an interesting line, you can have one in hand, play the Vulture Fund, then double Measured Response for the win. This card is 100% getting more printed support, especially given the ICE we saw on the back of the ID. We'll just have to wait and see.

Nihilo Agent is more evidence that Ad Nihilum should've been the name of the NBN ID. I don't know why I'm hung up on this. This is a weird card. Jank through-and-through. I don't think it's good but I think it's cool. Pair this with a derez package and B-1001 and you can probably do some awful things to a runner. I haven't thought it through entirely but it probably does some awful things. It gives you a lot of options which means I doubt we'll see the full potential of this card for a while. I doubt the reward is good enough for this card to really pop off however.

My final feelings on this day of scoops is pretty mixed. I think that rules changes, however important, don't spark joy in the same way that something like Méliès U (The Jinteki ID) does. None of the new cards stand on their own, they're all pieces in a puzzle that isn't yet complete. I'll wait until we can see more of the picture to judge them. For that reason no deck-lists this time. Maybe tomorrow my terrible builds will return!

[ladyduckland]

HAHA I LIED! Have a decklist that sucks!