Ghosttongue

♦ Ghosttongue 2[credit]

Hardware: Cybernetic
Influence: 3

When you install this hardware, suffer 1 core damage.

The play cost of each event is lowered by 1[credit].

Arming the resistance with disarming charm.
Illustrated by Martin de Diego Sádaba
Decklists with this card

Midnight Sun (ms)

#5 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Midnight Sun
Rulings

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

For Esa milling decks this will be a good enco card, at least 3 Часту́шка and 3 Running Hot will trigger this card's ability, and some other econ cards' cost will be lowered as well. So this is at least a Wildcat Strike and at most a Stimhack, though unique. In other decks this seems bad compared to Prepaid VoicePAD and Mystic Maemi. 3.5/5

(Midnight Sun Booster Pack era)
76

I think it's not strictly comparable to PPVP and Maemi because this is not giving you a drop of one credit per turn, it's reducing the cost of every event. So if you play 2 sure gambles and a dirty laundry this card is earning you three credits in your turn compared to the one offered by PPVP.

—

Yeah, but in this case I'll choose to play Dirty Laundry in this turn and Sure Gamle in the following 2 turns. And as this card costs 3 inf, it's unlikely to be added to other faction like Tenma decks, so having 3 or more events to play 1 turn won't happen in 90% cases, I reckon. Admittedly, these 2 cards cannot be compared strictly, but I think in most decks with id not Esa PPVP will be better.

—

I mean, there are also Lat + Aniccam decks that play like 20+ events and typically use PPVP to try to generate a massive amount of money for Khusyuk and Deep Dive and so on. I could imagine that this effect would make those decks even richer, since it will stack with PPVP effectively. But also like, the core damage is pretty bad for Lat. So maybe not the right fit.

—

If you find it right away, Ghosttongue is very good value. And it helps a little with Esa decks being cash-poor all the time. However, unless you're mainly including this card to trigger Esa, it's not great economically. Dirty Laundry also costs $2, and depending on how you value Ghosttongue's brain damage and TVM (time value of money) I think you need to play maybe eight above-$0 events before this is economically superior to Dirty Laundry, it's a tall order. In-faction, Mystic Maemi is probably better because it can contribute more than $1 to a single event.

Ghosttongue is VERY inconsistent. It's probably a dead draw or an inferior sabotage card if it's in the bottom 20-25 cards of your deck. (Assuming events which cost above $0 are around a quarter of your deck and you need to find at least 7 to consider playing this card economically, you need at least 28 cards remaining across your deck-plus-grip). It's also really hard to play against most HBs, many Jintekis, and anyone else on Keeling or End of the Line. It's not a great time to be French-kissing frozen railroads right now.

Unfrequently asked questions:

  • "Can I prevent the damage on Ghosttongue?" Yes, but I'm not sure this card can justify the $2 install cost most of the time, let alone any additional money on prevention cards.
  • "It's economically inferior, but it's an Esa trigger!" You sweet summer child.
  • "No but really, Esa!" A recursion card to bring back Chastushka or Finality or (if you're on Augustina) Fermenter will probably produce more sabotage value in a wider variety of situations. If you're gunning for let's say 3-5 Esa triggers, which is spectacularly dangerous in many matchups, I think your least bad path runs through many Finalities, 1 Marrow, maybe a Bergemot, and maybe a corp-inflicted brain damage in desperation crunch time.
  • Does this have any use outside of Esa? No
(Midnight Sun era)
393