The Woes of Weyland - Part V: Capital Competition

I think the point of the series was more along the lines of "Here are Weyland's tools right now. They don't quite work. This is why, this is how we got here, and this is some design space that could round out Weyland's options."

GRNDL Refinery is an underrated card, but without other traps it's not an econ asset. If everything you advance is an agenda, they're not going to leave it alone, and you lose money advancing it. If you can protect it like an agenda, why no just score an agenda that gets you money? Cambridge PE works because you have to worried about every face down card. Remove the uncertainty, and everything loses value.

The Root is similar to Eve, but Weyland doesn't get a credit for installing, and it doesn't snowball if left alone. Real credits are worth a lot more than recurring ones. And I'm not convinced Eve works without Adonis. It's got a high buy-in, and isn't a great first piece of econ. You need some more support. If Weyland had one Celebrity Gift level econ option, The Root would be a fine supplement.

Expo Grid is not as good as MHC, because on it's own it does nothing. It's not a threat. Given that so much of Weyland's econ is conditional, this doesn't fill the core slots Weyland is lacking.

Okay - this will be a long one, sorry. I do wish to address all of your major points, but that means I'm going to have to do a fair amount of quote-responding. Bear with.

So, some honest criticism: I feel like, across the whole series, you spent far far FAR too much time making fan-cards... as soon as we veer off into fan-creation land, my interest plummets. I mean, I get it, it's fun to make up new cards... But at the end of the day, they don't really add much to the discussion... So having more than half of each article be dedicated to cards that are not actually real...

The best kind of criticism! I am very much aware that some people see little value in custom cards - in general, I actually am pretty hesitant about most of them myself, as I feel that they don't typically contribute very much to a discussion in and of themselves (simply as stand-alone ideas). That being said, the custom cards proposed in the series are intended to directly address the problems identified in the articles themselves, as an extension of the discussion - they are in no way intended to solely stand on their own merits. Furthermore, it only felt fair for me to actually attempt to proffer suggestions, based on the conclusions drawn during analysis, given that I spent so much time showcasing the faction's weaknesses and deficiencies.

Also, as a minor retort to your 'more than half of each article is dedicated to cards that are not actually real' comment: Part IV was the only article where the 'Solutions' section was substantially longer than the analysis (which is largely due to the fact that it also contained a fair amount of analysis, surrounding the two-pronged approach I suggested for solutions). In Parts III and V, 'Solutions' and analyses are very similar in length, and the 'Solutions' sections in Parts I and II are considerably shorter than the respective analyses. Not really a major point, but given that you admitted that you only read Part I in its entirety and immediately stopped once the others started veering off into the land of make-believe, I thought I should probably bring it up.

... and thus aren't really relevant to a discussion of "how to build a good weyland deck in the current environment" was a bit of a turnoff for me.

In all honesty (yaaaay), this very statement of yours is an indicator that the series probably was just not for you. The Woes of Weyland series (as the title hopefully suggests) was not in any way an attempt to answer that question. It's a very valid question to be asking (and articles like Hollywood Banking with Titan Transnational and A Horizontal Approach to the Weyland Problem by Brian/Saan//u/heffergod address this beautifully) and I personally spend a fair amount of my Netrunner time homebrewing Weyland. This focus of this series, however, was on highlighting the issues that Weyland presently faces (due to a major shift in the meta), many of which Weyland has faced for a long time (typically due to key absences or weaknesses in their card pool), and suggesting how these might be rectified.

I don't believe that any amount of 'clever, innovative, meta-teching deck-building' is going to suddenly make BWBI or the AOWR ice worthwhile, give non-BS Weyland any sort of strong glacier game, or allow Weyland to compare with NBN in the flatline department (though Zealous Judge does excite me). Am I just supposed to end these articles with "So yeah, advance-only-while-rezzed ice are really bad, and most other advanceable ice lack the support to be played. Basically - wait for new cards, hope the meta changes in a major way, or just play other things! Bye!" or something of that ilk? I attempted to offer constructive solutions both because I didn't want the series to be a moanfest (in the case of advanceable ice), and because in many cases I felt certain archetypes just needed a little more support to truly excel (rush tactics).

Regarding the discussion - I liked the first part, but (as again, with a number of previous ones) I feel like you're accepting "weyland sucks right now" as a foregone conclusion, rather than something to be examined, and so while you list off a bunch of cards that could help, you basically hand-wave them away without really considering them.

This doesn't feel fair. You only see the end product of the completed article - just because I give a reasonably brief dismissal of a card within the article doesn't mean that I didn't give it substantial consideration prior. An in-depth analysis of exactly why "all of Weyland's asset economy requires either building around or playing around" would be a massive effort, and would likely kill the article's pacing entirely. Furthermore, in Part III, after comparing each faction's agenda suites, I came to the conclusion that Weyland's agendas are actually fine, and that it was the lack of scoring support cards that were the problem. I only bothered writing this series because I had already well and truly identified that there were problems via previous examination; I just decided to dig a little deeper and explicate more fully for the articles. Also, I'll comment more on the "Weyland sucks right now" thing at the end.

To address some of your specific points about cards you thought I downplayed:

GRNDL Refinery is a lot more than a "pseudo-ambush in economy form." It's an econ asset, pure and simple.

Yeah, sorry, but I'm simply not going to agree with you there. I do enjoy it with the Dedication Ceremony thingamajig, but outside of that, it's really not consistently reliable enough at providing cash for me to consider it 'pure and simple' economy.

It's a shell corp or Kati Jones, except you can use it as many times per turn as you want.

And it requires its own server. Which is a huge deal.

If you can keep it on the board (even unadvanced) for a turn, it's basically a melange, and it only goes up from there.

A Melange for one turn, yes.

The root is very similar to Eve campaign, (gives you a good long-term credit stream, plays nicely with Breaker Bay Grid, but requires some investment to protect) but again, you just brushed on past it, all while gushing about how eve kickstarted HB's econ.

The Root rezzes for more, trashes for less, gives you discounts instead of real credits, and frequently won't pay off every turn. Far from awful - but its problems are presently far too significant for me to consider comparable to Eve. The only thing I would (and do) gush about The Root is the art. Also: "Haas-Bioroid was always the 'other' rich Corp in the early days, particularly after Eve Campaign showed her face to complement her Adonis counterpart." Hardly 'gushing' praise.

Expo Grid is every bit as good as Mental Health Clinic. 0 rez cost, 3 trash cost, with a minor drawback/restriction... The last one is particularly perplexing. You even have the spread of all the other in-faction drip econ, and then just... leave off Weyland's? And instead add a snarky comment "Let me guess, Weyland - 'economy' isn't part of your colour pie?" even though they actually have one and you talk about it two paragraphs later?

I feel you are perhaps trying a little too hard to frame cards in a similar light in a way that makes it sound like they are of roughly equal worth (as you also demonstrated with Eve and The Root), when there are other factors at play causing one to be favoured over the other. For instance: "Desperado and Doppelganger are both 3 cost Criminal consoles that give 1 memory and reward successful runs, so why do we give Doppelganger such a hard time?" (Obviously the MWL List complicates things, but you see what I'm getting at.) 'Giving the Runner plus 1 hand size' (assuming you aren't planning on killing them) is a much smaller drawback than 'having to have this card in the same server as another asset, which has to be rezzed'. At a bare minimum, MHC triggers itself, while Expo Grid requires another rezzed card (and is thus a combo card).

Regarding the points on Weyland's econ ice, totally fair. I should have given them at least a brief mention, Caduceus particularly. Errand Boy, I'm less of a fan of, because of its weakness to Parasite, but hey, not awful.

Anyway! I've enjoyed the articles in general, but I do wish the tone were a little bit different. Less "Weyland sucks right now and nothing can change that except some new, powerful cards" and more "Here are Weyland's tools right now. Let's make this work."

As stated before, it sounds like you ultimately wanted my series to be something that I had never intended it to be. All the same, I understand your views and may end up writing more on subjects similar to what you describe in future.

Finally, I am a little off-put that you (twice) described this series as "Weyland sucks right now", when I don't believe I once said words to this effect, and in fact, made very different points on several occasions. Part I was the only truly negative segment (but that's sort of to be expected when Salvage and Tyrant are involved); Part II notes that Weyland is especially good at rushing out agendas, and has many ice that suit this purpose - Faust and SMC/Clone Chip just put a bit of a spanner in the works; Part III observes that Weyland has a couple of very solid agendas, it just lacks the support to actually score them; Part IV is indeed fairly disconsolate about Weyland's flatline capabilities, which is precisely why (given that it was the first part I actually started writing) I decided to propose creative solutions to address the identified issues. Heck, Part V even kicks off with "Weyland's economy is as good as it's ever been" and notes several of its money strengths, particularly with respect to bad pub.

Whew - within 10000 characters! Thanks for the contribution!

The last one is particularly perplexing. You even have the spread of all the other in-faction drip econ, and then just... leave off Weyland's? And instead add a snarky comment "Let me guess, Weyland - 'economy' isn't part of your colour pie?" even though they actually have one and you talk about it two paragraphs later?

I don't know, honestly a lot of Weyland econ is really underwhelming. I really wanted to find more econ for that Titan deck I just wrote about, and almost everything in Weyland isn't very good for it. Right now I'm trying out GRNDL refinery to have additional synergy with Dedication Ceremony, but it's kind of slow and clunky. If they see it off R&D or HQ, it just gets dumped, and I never see the money. If I can get it in a server, it can do okay, but if I don't also see Dedication at the same time, it's a slow process to make that money, and I need to actually keep them out of the server to get it.

As for Expo Grid, I actually just took it out of my Gagarin deck in favor of Mumbad Temple. The problem with it (and with GRNDL refinery, actually) is that it's conditional. If you can get an asset on it, it gives you a smooth drip, but only if you get an asset on it, and only if they don't trash that asset. With Temple I almost always have something to rez in that deck. Plus, it creates more servers for the runner to check, which is also good. If I install something facedown on a PAD campaign, there's no real mystery as to what it is, so the runner never needs to check.

There's something about both the decks I made for Weyland. They both use primarily neutral econ cards (especially the Gagarin deck now that Expo is out -- the only Weyland econ left is the single copy of The Root and the single Oaktown I run over 1x NAPD that I lost to the MWL). The issue is that it's just not consistent enough or good enough. I'd replace Beanstalks in a heartbeat in the Titan deck if I had a single good option. 3 credits is such a low number these days. As I said, I'm trying GRNDL, but I'll probably go back to Restructures at the end of the week, because even though it costs 10 to play, it still might be more consistent than an econ card that gets trashed for 2 if the runner sees it before you do.

I've always been of the opinion that a constructive critique without a solution is just complaining. I particularly enjoyed the custom cards since they offered a possible solution and way to improve the issue. Without them I would be much less inclined to have read every article since it would just feel like another whine post about how bad something is. Every game has those, but few people actually provide solutions and that's where the real interesting creativity appears.

Though to agree with you, I do feel like this last article and perhaps the series in general was a bit less focused on discussion of all current cards in the pool and more on the fan cards so I do see where you're coming from.

I just like to see people actually provide possible solutions to problems rather than just complain about how underpowered or overpowered something is. If more people did this there would be less complaining because they would either realize how difficult the solution is or that things aren't as imbalanced as they thought.

I think part of the problem is that economy actually isn't one of weyland's big problems. Hostile Takeover and Oaktown Renovation do a lot to allow you to score without taking an economic hit, and scoring atlas with even a single extra counter (none in Titan) allows you to search up a hedge fund or a hostile takeover on demand to get you back up to a reasonable credit pool. Having access to crisium grid influence-free makes you naturally resilient to account siphon and vamp, and there are other things that boost Weyland IDs contextually, I.E.:

Titan: Being able to use Mark Yale to milk all your hostile takeovers and oaktowns for an extra 2 credits is not insignificant, and in decks that play it Firmware updates can also turn into a decent econ card in his presence, not to mention that mark never turns up cash negative. Scoring High-Risk Investment ensures you will almost never be without necessary money, since you'll get to use it twice while running an Atlas fast-advance train

Blue Sun: In addition to cards like Oversight AI/priority requisition + expensive ice, even flipping a Launch campaign back and forth between your hand is nice econ, let alone flipping the much more popular Adonis Campaign back and forth. Even Caduceus starts making you a little bit of money, paying for itself when the runner hits it and returning to hand as a free beanstalk royalties when it loses relevance.

Gagarin: Expo Grid is very, very good here. You play enough assets that it's almost always "on", and unless they've got an active scrubber, impo, or paricia it's very unusual for people to pay to access the expo grid, so running it generally only turns it off for a turn. Not to mention all asset-based economy becomes slightly harder to stop due to the increased access cost, and the additional cost of accessing even non-economic assets like Ash and agendas will magnify this.

BABW: The only thing your ID does is make money! Loading up on transactions should be enough to propel you to reasonable credit totals, the issue has never been money with this ID.

BWBI: Sorry guys, you get to hang out with custom biotics at the kids' table.

In general, I think that this series has stated reasonably well the problems with weyland that most people acknowledge, but I think this point in particular is one of the weaker ones (in comparison to problems like having too few good agendas in HT, Oaktown, and atlas, having ICE that's too homogenous and not punishing enough, and having a failed/borderline failed mechanic in a deluxe set)

I don't like the custom card bits either. What value do they add? It's essentially a reworded should've, could've, would've.

The fact that The Root doesn't give you credits is a very, very big difference. I tried it out in place of Adonis Campaign for my Blue Sun deck, and it was horrible.

Credits to advance things? Nice if I want to spend my whole turn advancing something, but it's really rare I would want to do that... and I can't advance agendas because The Root is in my scoring server (or else it's going to get trashed pretty quickly - unlike Adonis Campaign, it doesn't turn off, which means the runner needs to wreck it ASAP)

Credits for rezzing? Nice if I have other assets, but outside of Gagarin I don't see a lot of Weyland horizontal.

Credits for installing? If I have the ICE in hand and already have a 2/3-deep ICE stack, that's great.

But... half the time it would just sit there, doing nothing, because the runner was smart enough not to run unrezzed ICE when I had $3/turn sitting around to bring it online.

Expo Grid suffers from basically the same problem: Weyland just usually isn't playing that many assets, and the ones they do play don't tend to stick around. The faction of Hostile Takeover, Oaktown Renovation, and Geothermal Fracking doesn't really gain a lot by running PAD Campaign.

And even if I do pull the combo off, I've now got two valuable income cards in the same server. Unlike an Adonis Campaign, I probably can't leave that naked and count on the runner not trashing it, because once again, it doesn't turn off - the runner can't really afford to leave me with $2/turn. But I want agendas, not assets, in my scoring server, so this is pulling ICE away from my other servers...

GRNDL Refinery is deeply under-estimated, and it baffles me that people pass over it like that... doubly so now that there's the Hollywood Renovation / Dedication Ceremony combo to encourage you to play, well, Dedication Ceremony alongside it (2 cards, 3 clicks: gain $12? That's not a bad deal! And if you can last another turn, it makes it $21 o.o)

I feel like you could do a whole mini set on "BP for weyland" that would suddenly make a LOT of their cards go from trash to potentially playable.

YOU ARE WELCOME! I don't wanna keep repeating myself (I have said words to this effect many times now), but regarding bad publicity, I think it is a mechanic that needs to be approached hesitantly (it is intended as a downside, after all), but like with tags for Runners, there should be some Corp strategies that actually reward you (even if in non-standard ways) for accruing BP (that aren't Ireress).

And I see the 'Shin-ra and Weyland' comparison. Heh.

Heh. Sales Optimizers was definitely my preferred custom card. I like Gagarin and I like BABW and I think both would benefit from some dedicated support.