REVIEW DELETED
Big thanks to the NSG team for updating this page with clear Judge rulings. Apologies for any confusion that I might have caused.
(NRDB feature request to be able to delete reviews that are no longer relevant)
You must rez it if it has no additional costs and you can afford to. Otherwise you may decline additional costs, and won't rez if you cannot afford to. You must reveal if you don't rez.
— TamijoAlso more importantly it's ice, not ICE.
— InactivistI have opinions about this card. Of all the cards in System Gateway, I don't know why this one sticks out to me: but it does, so here goes.
At worst, Mutual Favor is a straightforward upgrade on Special Order - costing 1 less credit, with 0 downside.
Special Order was a staple 1x in the majority of criminal decks - filling the slot of "2nd Paperclip" for reg decks playing 2 x of each breaker, giving flexibility to Aumakua lists to find the breaker they need to stop being locked out of turtle counters, and helping Engolo lists find the only breaker they need to start landing Diversion of Funds. So, at worst, this is an easy upgrade.
But here's the wild part.
At best, if we've made a succesful run this turn, Mutual Favor is a better use of a slot than any redundant copy of any icebreaker - and in this situation it's actually preferable to draw Mutual Favor than the icebreaker we plan to install - because not only does Mutual Favor gives us the flexibility to install any icebreaker, it removes that icebreaker from the deck so we won't draw it later as a dead card.
I humbly propose Mutual Favor for consideration as the most understated card of System Gateway, and I invite you to try playing it as a 2x or 3x instead of any redundant copies of Bukhgalter, Amina or Aumakua.
Yeah, it's a little bonkers how much of a straight-upgrade this is compared to Special Order. It does technically cost one more influence comparatively, but then again probably only Criminals themselves are the only ones who ever used it, so not a big deal. I think the only runner out-of-faction that ever used Special Order was Sunny... who... well, poor Sunny weeps for many reasons. This will just be added to the list.
— ChezniRigshooter rise up
— Jtfq99999I concur - nothing more to add
— CouncilThe only thing necessary then is to play some sort of recursion, as losing your breakers through any means spells trouble. Simulchip is good but costs influence (and potentially other programs). I have toyed around with this concept myself to decent success in Startup, but the issues with this I have also learned through it.
— chaosof99As a followup to the above comments: I've been playing rigshooter recently because I think it's good against the top Runner decks, and was playing against one of Kikai's decks (but piloted by a different player, not by Kikai). It didn't go well for the Runner at all, and I'd constructed up a hard lock (with no icebreaking ability left) early enough that only 1 agenda point had shown up. Mutual Favor might be a great way to thin your deck, but sometimes those redundant breakers are really needed.
— callforjudgementimho, Mutual Favor could be slightly tighter, like non-virus icebreaker or non-AI icebreaker. (even though "strict better" reprints aren't bad, if the card being reprinted was very fun or was too weak or something.)
Checkpoint is a weird card, and I'm glad it exists - because Code Gates, IMHO, should require you to twist your brain to use/defeat them effectively.
Clearly 4 for a strength 7 code gate is great value, and on the face of it, trace 5 seems pretty strong - and how often can a runner sustain 3 meat damage? I've Had Worse and Plascrete Carapace not withstanding.
The thing is - I would say that Weyland does not trace well. SEA Source works fine in Weyland because it's a one-off trace that usually leads to a flatline, and if there's one thing that Weyland does do well it's having a boat load of disposable - but Checkpoint is not usually a one-off end-game trace, it's a subroutine trace that may well fire repeatedly. Spend too much money tracing, and the runner can simply jackout and run again - slowly draining the corporation coffers.
The other thing that Weyland does well, of course is Bad Publicity - giving the runner free credits to spend to help evade the trace. Suddenly the trace 5 looks more like a trace 4, and if you're also playing with Hostile Takeover (and why wouldn't you?) - well, it doesn't take a huge amount of to render Checkpoint pretty tame.
So what is Checkpoint good for?
In Weyland, you might find a way to use it in front of a remote as part of a kill combo. Stick it in front of a fully advanced Posted Bounty or Vulcan Coverup and maybe you can jack the trace up so high as to force the runner into a situation where they are damned if they steal the agenda and damned if they don't.
Checkpoint could make for an interesting splash in protecting Jinteki: Replicating Perfection remotes - synergising with Excalibur and Enhanced Login Protocol. When each is a precious commodity, jacking out to re-run doesn't always seem like such a good option.
For protecting centrals, splashing Checkpoint into NBN: Making News with ChiLo City Grid works really well - but if you're playing NBN you already have access to Gutenberg so Checkpoint is probably overkill (and if you're that determined to tag the runner you probably want to save the influence for Scorched Earth and Traffic Accident).
(I cannot think of a single example in HB when you would want to splash this card - but I would love to hear some.)
@MrWeasely has already mentioned the synergy with The Cleaners - if you are playing wide (Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon kill deck new meta?) then Dedicated Response Team is probably also a good idea. Maybe in the server protected by Checkpoint (trollolololol)
Consistency is, arguably, the most important thing in any competitive deck, and for me this is what makes Silhouette's 40 card deck minimum so attractive. At the time of writing, the only Runner with the same out of the box consistency is Chaos Theory: Wünderkind, and +1 isn't as much fun as peeking at an unrezzed piece of ICE before you face-check a remote.
Time for a bit of maths. Pick a card, any card that you consider a must-have card to get your deck going - Magnum Opus drives my economy, so I'll use that as an example, but it could be anything. My ideal first turn might be to drop Magnum Opus #1, and then for 6 . If I put 2 x Magnum Opus in the deck, that's a 1/20 chance of drawing it first card, with increasing odds as I draw more cards and the deck gets smaller. With a 5 card starting hand, that's better than 1/4 odds of Magnum Opus being in my opening hand, and me playing my perfect first turn. The option to mulligan increases those odds to (roughly) 1/2, meaning that every other game my opening turn could be exactly the same.
For those games when you don't beat the odds, a 40 card deck isn't too difficult to dig through - Quality Time is a cheap splash, but it encourages you to overdraw, and the last thing you want to be doing with such a small deck is discarding cards. For that reason, I prefer Earthrise Hotel - the drip style draw gives you more time to get cards out of your grip and onto the table.
It's probably not a good idea to over rely on a single card for your economy, but you get the idea - out of the box (and ignoring cards like Paige Piper) a 40 card deck is significantly more reliable than a 45 card alternative.
Silhouette's actual ID ability lends itself towards a cautious approach, and has excellent synergy with Security Testing, Feint, and Quest Completed. Just like when facing against other Criminal's, the Corp is likely to ICE up HQ pretty strong, so the central focused breakers (Breach, Alias, Passport) are worth considering.
As I mentioned, discarding cards isn't something you really want to do with Silhouette - so caution is key. There isn't a lot of room for recursion, and you are probably only going to play with 2 copies of any given card, so even the smallest amount of net or meat damage can ruin your day. Install critical software and hardware as soon as you draw it - these cards are much harder to trash once they are on the table. Also, consider Film Critic for disarming Jinteki: Personal Evolution and Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed, and, of course, Plascrete Carapace for surviving Scorched Earth.
Hard counters are mostly Jinteki, and include Psychic Field, It's a Trap!, Underway Grid and Zaibatsu Loyalty.
As someone pointed out in their Chaos Theory review, Andromeda suffers from the first turn rush, a restriction that the 40 card deck ID's do not have. If you subtract the opening 9 card hand from Andromedas 45 card deck, you're left with 36 cards remaining. Silhouette, Chaos theory, etc have 35 cards remaining in deck after their opening 5 card draw, plus an additional ability. (+1MU for chaos theory, expose effect for Silhouette) Meaning that the deck consistentcy is actuall slightly better for Silhouette than Andromeda. So you no have to weigh an extra 4 cards draws that have to be at the beggining of the game (a net savings of 4 clicks), vs. an ongoing ability woth the potential to fire far more than 4 times during a game. (I'd estimate an average of 10+ HQ acesses per criminal game). So when you look at it in terms of click compression, Andy essential saves you 4 clicks of card draw, while Silhouette gives you potentially 10+ exposed cards during a game, allowing you to make much wiser decisions about what servers you run and when, saving you potentially lots of money on wasted or unfruitful runs.
— ShaperLord777More broken than is immediately obvious. Let's you float tags and keep your resources in tact.
Get 2 in play before you are tagged, and force the Corp to spend 2 , 10 to clear them. Combo with even a single Fall Guy and now it's 3 , 16 .
Float tags like you really don't care, using Paparazzi to survive Scorched Earth. Then float more tags, because you really don't care: essentially ignoring the drawbacks of Account Siphon, John Masanori, Vamp, Code Siphon and Security Nexus.
Can create a window for firing Activist Support, and let's you use Joshua B. turn after turn after turn...
Freelancer is the obvious hard counter, but there is also #The All-Seeing I, and Corporate Town
This is incorrect.
— Tamijo