Mimic

Mimic 3[credit]

Program: Icebreaker - Killer
Memory: 1 • Strength: 3
Influence: 1

Interface → 1[credit]: Break 1 sentry subroutine.

November 5th: the day when all would see the corrupt machinations of the corporate oligarchy.
Illustrated by Ed Mattinian
Decklists with this card

Core Set (core)

#11 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Rulings

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

Simply one of the best killers. Cheap, high base strength, and 1:1 credit to subroutine ratio, for standard memory and one influence makes this card excellent for resilience against most sentries that cost less than 5 credits to rez. It's easy to get it in range of most of the bigger sentries, and anything too far away is in D4V1D range.

Reliable? Somewhat. Efficient? None better.

(Order and Chaos era)

Not a good sentry breaker. Why? Because of its fixed strength.

Is it worth it? Maybe, with the right tools. But those tools must be useful for your other breakers. Otherwise, it is not worth it to have multiple tools to fix only one breaker.

What are those tools? In faction, you have Leech and Ice Carver. Both of which lower the strength of the ices. Those will help you get the sentries to a strength of 3. It will only cost you in additional creds and clicks to install those. This means that it cost you at around , 4 and 4 to make Mimic work, if you use Leech. But Leech will be usefull for Buzzsaw and Cleaver. Once setup, anarch become very efficient at breaking ices, just like shapers.

Out of faction, you can use Dedicated Processor or Takobi. The former being better than the latter. But it is not as efficient as using Leech and Ice Carver.

Of note, Injection Attack is useful here, while you are trying to find your combo cards. There are very few sentry above a strength of 5 (Hydra ,Trebuchet and a stacked Surveyor are the most notables).

Considering that Echelon and Na'Not'K cost 1 influence, you must need your influence greatly to not use those breakers (there is also Carmen at only 2 influence). But if you use only anarch breakers, using the aforementioned tools will let you be efficient in breaking ices (while being somewhat slow to setup). This is why Mimic is unlikely to be used out of faction.

It is a bit sad that this breaker has such drawback, because the art and quote are very cool. Still, is has its place.

(System Update 2021 era)
3864

As one of the old guard, it's fun to see how perceptions have shifted. In the early days of Netrunner, Mimic was undeniably the best Killer in the game. Before Mongoose, we really didn't have any good options to break sentries besides Mimic and Faerie. And now we have Bukghalters and Carmen and Nanotk and their ilk, spoiling us for choice...

You're right, I'm playing an anarch "your ices are 0 str now, how about that" kind of deck these days, it's funny but I'm out the game until I draw my str reductors.