The Woes of Weyland - Part II: Rush Revisited
anrnz.com/2016/01/the-woes-of-weyland-part-ii...
anrnz.comPosted Jan 13, 2016, 10:55 PM UTC
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anrnz.comA good write-up. I'd say there are two big points missed here:
First, Rush has never been an end-all be-all strategy. Even at the height of GRNDL Supermodernism, you had to pack a secondary win condition--either meat damage, or, in the case of HB/NBN, Fast Advance. This is because, no matter how fantastic your game, no matter how many times you trash breakers, the runner will eventually find a way in, likely before you're at 7 points. Rush works best if your agendas can be used to fuel your alternate win condition--like Atlas to meat damage, or Astroscript to fast advance. The failure of Wey Rush can be seen as not having a good alternate strategy for their rush decks.
Secondly, with Weyland's advanceable ice, you could easily see some design space for a rush-> glacier style deck, where you slow down after the runner installs his third breaker and advance your ice to an oppressive level. These type of "transition" style ICE seemed like a uniquely Weyland thing, with Security Subcontracts and Hive, though we haven't support since Spin Cycle. And we've gone over the math here, and there's no reason to spend time advancing your ice wall against a corroder.
Ultimately, I think it's fine that rush isn't an all-in strategy, since that would feel like a game of "who draws better," but without these supporting strategies pulling their weight, Wey rush just can't compete.
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Thanks for reading; great suggestions.
Even though I was frequently tempted to broaden the scope of each article, my decision to split the series into five separate parts meant that each part had to be fairly self-contained (lest I find myself repeating points).
Despite the title of this part, 'Rush Revisited' is an analysis of Weyland's rush ice, not the strategy as a whole. The rush archetype will continue to be discussed in the following articles, with respect to different aspects of Weyland's card pool.
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It's a small wonder to me how Weyland is the only faction without some kind of anti-AI-ice. Jinteki has Swordsman, HB has Turing, NBN has Wraparound, all of which are good, very playable cards, but Weyland has nothing.
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I think it might be because they're nominally the "rush faction". Same logic as why Criminal doesn't have an AI breaker with Siphon in faction.
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Are they, though? They are a faction which can rush, but so are HB (who got an entire ID dedicated to it in NEXT Design) and NBN (who, if they can score an early Astro, get the next one for free). I think a large part of the reason why we see Weyland as a rush faction is that a larger than average chunk of their income is expected to come from scoring agendas.
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Swordsman is definitely the weakest of the three, as it's pretty terrible against decks not running AI. However it is still definitely playable.
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I wouldn't say it's terrible - one net damage is fairly annoying. I mean, it's half a Pup which cannot be paid through.
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For 2 extra credits. The whole point of pup is the hyper efficiency.
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I'm not saying this is 50% as good as Pup, I'm just saying that even in a game in which it doesn't fulfill it's primary purpose (kill AI), it's not nearly dead. It's still a slightly taxing thing you can slap on (say) Archives to prevent free runs there. I'd install a 2 rez, 1 net damage sentry on something like Archives to prevent free sucker tokens or security testing and not even be sad.
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Gorgon is awesome, but sentinel is... messy. Its far too narrow of a design concept for the first two abilities, but I really like the second subroutine. I could definitely see that ice printed with 2 of those etr unless the runner trashes a program, or even make it more dangerous with a tsurugi like condition where the corp chooses if the runner doesn't break.
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Intriguingly, people's responses to the 'solution' ice vary a lot - people typically love one or the other (or neither); not many actually like both. On top of design concerns (such as yours regarding Sentinel), there are also doubts about balance (Gorgon too weak/positional, Sentinel should cost more to rez, etc). Really goes to show both how hard it is to balance cards, and how different play experiences can affect our judgment of the potency of certain cards.
Anyhow, thanks for the feedback.
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I for one really like both. Sentinel is probably, just as you said, a bit aggressively costed. However, that is very much so a fixable problem, either by upping the cost or bring the strength down to three.
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nice dota2 reference.
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I was sure someone would pick up on that.
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And hello again!
Rush ice is the topic of discussion this time around in the Woes of Weyland series, and it actually isn't all woes. This one's not quite the novella that was the advanceable ice article, but you still probably want to set aside a bit of time for it. Grab a milk/sody pop/mineral water and enjoy!
Ta!
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Is that a pokemon reference?
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Hmm, I didn't actually think about that. I'd probably have to change the first beverage to lemonade for it to serve as such!
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Interesting read, but I feel like there are a few things that could use mention:
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Doesn't using Faust make the runner more vulnerable to death by meat damage, as it eats cards? Doesn't that make Weyland uniquely well suited to deal with Faust?
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Doesn't Power Shutdown (and, incidentally, Power Grid Overload) do a solid job of blowing up those cheap, shaper shenanigans? Power Shutdown feels like a great rush archetype enabler for Weyland.
I could be totally off base here, but a rebuttal to these points would be cool. :)
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Sure thing, happy to oblige.
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Faust does indeed make the Runner more vulnerable to dying (I frequently run Snares for this very reason), by virtue of its icebreaking mechanism. However, the fact that Faust requires no credits to use (while the Corp still has to pay to rez their ice) means that the Runner is better equipped to beat any SEA Source trace the Corp throws their way. Furthermore, Plascrete Carapace and I've Had Worse are still cards that exist. There's certainly a bit of back and forth with respect to Faust Runners teetering on the edge of death, but the Adjusted Wyldside draw engine, alongside D4v1d for Archers, Tollbooths, etc, typically ensure that Runners end up the victors.
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Power Shutdown does a reasonable job of wiping SMCs and Clone Chips (as briefly noted in the article), but is both timing-dependent and made enormously sad by Levy AR Lab Access. Occasionally, the stars will align and you get to Shutdown a Clone Chip/SMC which opens up a wide scoring window for you, but it's less common than you'd hope.
EDIT: So, basically what u/zagzagal said. I think this is what the young'uns refer to as "Ninja'd".
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While it's true that Faust saves the runner credits by not using them to break ice, more dedicated Faust decks also tend to be poorer because they just don't need money to function, so Faust might not make the runner any less vulnerable to Sea Source/Midseasons.
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- Doesn't using Faust make the runner more vulnerable to death by meat damage, as it eats cards? Doesn't that make Weyland uniquely well suited to deal with Faust?
In my experience no. Decks that use Faust often have very good ways of preventing meat-flatline. A plasticrete or I've had worse. This is exasperated by the card draw they tend to have, they have a much better time finding it in the natural flow of their game. So you aren't getting one of the big advantages of meat damage, them digging for cards to prevent it.
Second on your big ice that eats cards (ie. Archer) they have better ways to get around it then Faust (D4v1d) so in order to flatline them, you often have to bait them into a 3 deep remote (spiderweb, enigma, and chimera for example) and then into a snare! to flatline them.
- Doesn't Power Shutdown (and, incidentally, Power Grid Overload) do a solid job of blowing up those cheap, shaper shenanigans? Power Shutdown feels like a great rush archetype enabler for Weyland.
Yes but often its too late to the party, you draw it too late or worse as both cards require a run the turn before after the cards have already lost there usefulness.
edit: In addition to the points made above about the Faust match-up, one more major point to add is: Faust uses no money, so the chances of having a window to SEA source/Scorch or Midseasons/Scorch is much lower. The other common option for tagging in these decks is Posted Bounty but then you have to leave an advanced agenda on the field, which they most likely can steal.
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I'm personally totally ok with the Runner using all three D4v1d tokens to get around my Archer... that just turns on Orion/Wormhole/Fire Wall/etc.
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Oh I have nothing against that ether, but the question was does Faust/D4v1d open up more avenues for flat-line. If you are running any of the other big fun Weyland ice Faust is much less of a concern, and in that case yes it would open up other avenues. Though that is conjecture on my part as I'm almost exclusively a rush/Supermodern player.
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Short, sweet, and to the point, which I liked.
I guess the main things that I'd like to point out (not so much pointing out that you're 'wrong' because I think we're in total agreement here), is that 1.) Rush isn't really a valid strategy in ANY faction anymore with runner econ and tutoring. Early-FA may get easily interpreted as rush, but most of those decks aren't really 'rushing' as much as just getting their FA tools out as fast as they can draw them; and 2.) I'm not sold on the idea that Rush was intended to be in Weyland's color pie... every faction has cheap ETR ice they can score an early agenda behind. Now, GRNDL is definitely looking 'rushy' to me, but most of Weyland's other IDs don't really lend themselves to that strategy.
I'm assuming that the Fast Advance portion of this discussion is going into a different article? Because that's the one that's really got me fascinated currently. A scoring strategy of Rush-to-Glacier is possible, typically out of Blue Sun, but feels clunky because you're either moneying-up with Bad Pub agendas or you're stuck in the early game choosing between advancing ice or agendas.
Rush-to-FA, as the-_-hatman mentioned above, is really strong in HB and NBN, where they can easily get extra clicks and have SanSan/Biotic in-faction. Giving Weyland an agenda that lends itself towards FA (like an Astro) is probably a non-starter, but I'd love to see an operation or an asset that Weyland could use to do some kind of FA in-house, instead of importing the SanSan/Biotic/ToL.
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The feedback is much appreciated. A number of y'all have commented that you do not believe that rush is meant to be one of Weyland's specialties - I'm actually happy to hear the dissent. While I certainly aim to be objective and well-researched in my articles, inevitably my biases will slip through, and occasionally even threaten to degrade my arguments. Whether this is a case of bias clouding judgment or just my superior knowledge (I jest, I jest), thanks for keeping me in check.
Also, I will definitely be covering Weyland's lack of fast advance tools in another article. Perhaps even the next one?
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Some feedback/responses:
Having established last time that Weyland's ice really isn't especially suited for glacier strategies,
I know this was from last week, but I thought you made a pretty poor argument. You mostly just complained about the "bad 3" suite of only-advance-while-rezzed ice. Which, I agree, is pretty bad, but I don't think you made a good case that Weyland's ice is any worse for glacier builds than anyone else's. (Honestly, it's better than most factions - they're mostly barriers, which tend to have the best ratio of "cost to rez" vs "cost for the runner to break" around.)
Weyland, the gear-check/rush faction, is the only Corp faction to not have an anti-AI ice
Why in the world do you think that Weyland is the rush/gear-check faction? And what does that even mean? Every faction has ice of all types. Every faction has ice that is painful to hit if you can't break. Really not sure what you mean by this. I agree that it would be nice if they had some in-faction anti-AI ice, but all of it except Turing is only 1 influence to import, so it's not terribly difficult to bring in.
Weyland's problems are really simple:
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It only has one 3/2 agenda, unlike everyone else. This makes rush strategies incredibly difficult. (I'm not arguing that they should GET more 3/2 agendas - I like having the factions have weak points and differences. But it definitely colors their strategies.)
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It has only one of the two things you need to make successful glaciers: It has great high-cost ice that is reasonably cheap to rez. The only thing it's missing is a "server multiplier", that forces the runner to run a server multiple times. (Ash, Caprice, Batty, Old Hollywood Grid, etc.)
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Weyland's secondary win condition (flatline through meat damage) is scary enough that EVERYONE techs against it.
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I definitely spent most of my energy in the last part slamming the AOWR suite pretty heavily. As I stated in Part I though, that was largely because of the negative impact they had on later installments of advanceable ice - which I did also discuss, albeit in less depth. I actually also covered Weyland's glacier ice in the introductory article, additionally making the point that Weyland's bad pub-accruing goes counter to its glacier ice. Props - I shall reword accordingly. 'Established' is perhaps too definitive for what is merely a discussion, but hey, I do enough second-guessing of myself already, so I might end up leaving that one.
EDIT: "Having established thus far that Weyland and glacier strategies do not gel well" - The ice were only part of the problem for Weyland glacier, after all.
Interesting that you disagree with my comment about Weyland being the rush/gear-check faction - I know that I am not alone in this assertion. The likes of Ice Wall, Archer, Oaktown Renovation, Hostile Takeover, morph ice, etc, are what make me term it such, but it's certainly not quite as clearly set in stone as 'Jinteki as the net damage faction', for instance.
Regarding the problems you yourself identify: I agree with all of them (as will become obvious in the following articles); I just feel that those three points are an oversimplification of Weyland's issues.
All the same, thanks for reading and responding. Obviously we disagree in various areas, but constructive feedback is always welcome.
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Why in the world do you think that Weyland is the rush/gear-check faction?
While I would agree that reasonable rush decks can be build out of other factions: [[Next Design: Guarding the Net]], [[Harmony Medtech: Biomedical Pioneer]] like [[GRNDL: Power Unleashed]] effectively start the game a turn up on the runner.
Also every faction has at least one cheap barrier to fill the function of Ice Wall: NEXT Silver, Himitsu-Bako, and Wraparound.
It is simply that rush is mostly defined (not without reason) by Supermodernism and the decks that are based on it. It has long been the most popular, successful and influential rush style deck.
And what does that even mean?
An aggressive deck that means to win in the first and second phase of the game (when the runner isn't sure what is going on, and later before they have a rig to deal with it). It traditionally does this by scoring out agendas from a remote (not FA) behind a couple of binary ice. Also it prioritizes scoring over fully defending it self.
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And what does that even mean?
An aggressive deck that means to win in the first and second phase of the game...
I think you're answering the question of "what is a rush deck", but what I'm saying is "what does it even mean to be the gear-check faction?" (and why would someone think weyland was it, as opposed to anyone else?)
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Ah sorry misunderstood you. I guess its just historic, or a stereotype at this point. Easy iconic program destruction (archer), combined with classic binary ice (Ice Wall, Caduceus).
Almost any faction can do gear-check now days. The limiting factor was traditionally a good solid end the run sentry. Now HB has Fenris, and NBN has Troll.
Edit: It also doesn't help the stereotype when gear-check is still one of a factions strongest archetypes.
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Wait, Troll isn't gearcheck ice: it doesn't even have subroutines. Troll is just an annoying and outside of bypassing, trashing, or derezzing, unavoidable tax.
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I run a very fast Blue Sun Rush deck turns glaciers and I pack of a lot of barriers to keep the shapers dog out. However, I do suffer a lot when I play against Anarchs. Once they pull a Faust with Wylside Pancakes combo, no Ice can stop them and it's very difficult to tax them when Faust costs cards and not credits. So it's difficult to win by trace (for tags/punishment) when they are sitting on a big pile of credits. Life is tough with Faust and no anti-AI hate. Maybe importing 1 Swordsman is required....
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You spend a large portion of both articles saying things like "Wayland doesn't have this tool, but other Corps have tools that do this, therefore the deck type doesn't work in Wayland" - but the game is built around Influence as a balancing mechanic. Some cards are intentionally put in the "wrong" faction in order to give them an influence cost. For example, you say that Wayland rush decks don't work because they don't have tools against AI breakers - but I think you are intended to use Influence to get these tools.
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You spend a large portion of both articles saying things like "Wayland doesn't have this tool, but other Corps have tools that do this, therefore the deck type doesn't work in Wayland"
I feel like you may be oversimplifying my arguments a little, but I see what you're saying. Regarding Weyland's glacier difficulties though, the fact that their advanceable ice are overcosted and/or terrible is not something that can be solved by splashing for better ice out of faction (considering that would mean that you lack influence for anything else of value - protection upgrades, Jackson Howard, Global Food, etc).
I'm assuming (based on your subsequent points) that you're primarily referring to my comment about Weyland lacking an anti-AI ice? If so, I am patently aware that cards are sometimes put in the 'wrong' faction in order to make the IDs/factions that would benefit (most) from them have to pay influence for them - Cache being a Criminal card, because of Noise, being a key example.
I understand the argument that Weyland is 'intended' to use influence in order to get such tools as anti-AI - I just disagree with it. For balance reasons, it does not feel justified. Unlike the "Criminal doesn't have AI breakers, because Siphon" logic, "Weyland doesn't have anti-AI tools, because... they're already the best at rushing?" does not fly for me. Whether it's because of Scorched Earth, Archer, some combination of the two, or something else entirely - nope.
But hey - the above paragraph is all subjective. Of course I would think like that - otherwise, why else would I bother writing the dang article? Anyway, thanks for the feedback.
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I was definitely simplifying your argument - my intention was to highlight lack of reference to Influence which I felt was in the article.
Influence is a key part of the how the game is balanced, and as such I do believe it should have more then a passing reference in the article.
Let me be clear that I do think the article is otherwise good and thank you for writing it!
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Thank you for clarifying - you make a very good point. When writing, it's pretty easy to forget that what might seem self-evident to oneself, is not actually in any way clear to others, and very much merits acknowledgement. Such is the solipsism of the sedentary act.
I will be sure to keep this mind when reviewing the upcoming articles, before I publish them. Again, thank you.
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Both of your ice suggestions (AI hate and trash-ability hate) are fairly common for Weyland, but I never find myself very impressed. Both seem alright, but annoyingly niche. My favorite suggestion for a pieces of Weyland rush ice was posted on Stimhack a while back, and I thought it was very quality design. Recreating from memory:
Slick
ICE: Barrier - Code Gate
Rez: 4c / Strength: 2
Weyland
Icebreakers cannot break more than one subroutine on Slick per run.
↳End the run.
↳End the run.
Pure elegance.
Wow, that is very cleverly designed. Once a full breaker suite is assembled, Slick is broken very cheaply, but two breakers are required in order to pass it. Brilliant. The epitome of a rush ice.
Amusingly, this thing is also a pretty excellent Patch target.
Sub Boost, not Patch. Also Sensei or Marker, although those are less reliable.
No, no, I actually meant Patch. Increasing this thing's strength to 4 disproportionately increases its taxation. Assuming the Runner has, say, Corroder as their fracter and Zu.13 as their decoder, they would pay 3 credits total (1 for Crodder, 2 for Zu) to break a regular Slick, but 7 credits to break a Patched Slick (3 for Crodder, 4 for Zu). Pretty great.
Now that you mention it though, Sub Boost is also quite hilarious. AI, fracter and decoder needed! On an unrelated note, Slick is actually somewhat stupid with one of the 'solution' cards in Part III.
Slick is cool! I feel it has the potential to be really broken. I'm worried it isn't really an issue for Anarchs. I feel Hive already fills a similar spot as Slick does - slows down the runner so the corp can score an agenda or two.
I love the idea card designs in the article. I think it's fun to speculate this way.
However, I think Gorgon is a bit un-Welyand approach to this problem. I see some resemblance to Wendigo. Wendigo was already an oulier tho.
I also think Gorgon should be 4 credits. Even with Gordian Blade it's 2 credits to break.
Here is the thing. There is already a good AI hate barrier that should have been Weyland. Sadly it's yellow: Wraparound. So how about designing something like that but better. With Barriers it's fine to go above the curve in Weyland.
Reactive Firewall
ICE: Barrier Rez: 2credit / Strength: 1
Weyland
The strength of Reactive Firewall cannot be lowered.
If there is an AI installed, Reactive Firewall gains 6 "↳ End the run." subroutines.
↳ End the run
Sorry, but reactive firewall is insanely overpowered. Varied and interesting rigs are supposed to be a good thing, right? This doesn't only hit decks that go all-in on Faust, but also those that use AIs in their intended way: shoring up weaknesses and temporarily filling in for a piece of your rig you haven't dug up yet (shapers that run 1x Atman, for instance).
Wraparound is a well-designed card precisely because it behaves like a regular barrier in the presence of a fracter.
Given that reactive Firewall cannot be teched against in any way, 2 extra "↳EtR" would probably hit your stated goal of "above the curve", specially considering it's also immune to parasite.
With that said, I do like the design, and Weyland could certainly use an ICE in that spirit.
My reasoning for going for 6 subs is that if you do break it with Faust / Pancakes / Wyldside you won't be able to finish that turn with more than 3 cards on hand. So you open yourself up to being scorched. But I'm not particularly attached to that specific number if you think this is OP.
The card is strong but there are tools to deal with it. Even Anarch tools.
You can't just cost a card according to 1 specific scenario and completely ignore all other interactions. An cheap, unparasitable, AI hosing gearcheck is very very oppressive for many decks you're not targeting. I think I didn't say this strongly enough in my original comment: This card is not just OP; it's so completely off the chart that I would rather see Faust banned than this card printed. My suggested adjustment would bring its power down to "not insane", still far from printable IMO.
What's needed are broader, more subtle designs that capture some of the same ideas. A gearcheck that's hard to circumvent with parasites / AI, maybe with a touch of scaling well into the lategame. How about the following design:
Reactive Firewall
ICE: Barrier
Rez: 2credit
str: 2
Reactive firewall gains +1 strength and an additional "↳ End the run" subroutine for each installed program that's not a fracter, decoder or killer.
↳ End the run
I think the problem is that while other anti-AI ice can be solved with other icebreakers that ice can't be dealt with cheaply if you have an AI at all. Well okay Parasite.
I presume the slick comment is a joke?
No. Keep in mind it has two types - Code Gate and Barrier.
Ah! I see it now, thanks! Perhaps it would be best to say Individual or One icebreaker cannot break more than one subroutine per run.
Slick makes Apex sad (or sadder, more accurately).
Apex pretty much has to run e3 which solves the problem just fine for slick.