Slap Vandal

Slap Vandal 1[credit]

Program: Icebreaker - AI - Trojan
Memory: 1 • Strength: 6
Influence: 2

Install only on a piece of ice.

Interface → 1[credit]: Break 1 subroutine on host ice. Use this ability only once per encounter.

"I consider it an improvement."
—Arissana Rocha Nahu
Illustrated by Adam S. Doyle
Decklists with this card

The Automata Initiative (tai)

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

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

This Trojan has some great synergies !

First, the most obvious one is Poison Vial. With both, you can break any 3-sub, Strength 6 Ice for 1 cred and 1 counter. If you have a Flux Capacitor, this combo can keep on forever. If you have Arissana Rocha Nahu: Street Artist and Urban Art Vernissage to move it and install it for free (while making a profit) (and LilyPAD to draw a card while you're at it), it gets really silly, really fast.

A second combo resides in the fact that this card is an Icebreaker, which means it supports both Echelon and Unity, which makes for a great rig.

However, this card is an AI, and a fixed-strength breaker. It is, for instance, incapable of breaking an Advanced Pharos, and AI hate (like Swordsman ) both resist it, and destroy it.

It is one of the core breakers every Arissana deck should field, in my opinion. Without her flexibility and the trojan support ( Urban Art Vernissage), it loses a lot of its utility, so i don't think it's going to see wide play outside of Arissana.

(The Automata Initiative era)
33

A "green Botulus" - this is an awesome card for early game pressure. Unlike Botulus, you can slap vandal multiple times in one turn, and it's immune to purging. Of course, the downside is that vandal costs real money to use, but at least it's cheaper to install!

Beware Týr!

(The Automata Initiative era)

Slap Vandal is like a simplified (de-Caïssa'd) and greenshifted Knight, crossed with a Botulus: high-strength fixed-strength Trojan AI are “card-specific” icebreakers.

Being best against one-sub or low-subcount ice (or ice with one good sub and a lot of bad subs), this one-subroutine-per-encounter restriction is another interesting Shaper program that breaks ice along non-subtype axes: like Atman, a “strength-specific” AI; or like Living Mural, a “column-specific” trojan; or like Alpha and Omega, “row-specific” AI. Vamadeva, a “height-specific” AI. could be simplified (de-Deva'd) and greenshifted too.


Synergies:


Flavor: Arissana vandalizes ice by slapping stickers onto them (the artwork depicts a Tollbooth, the yellow ring gate with currency symbols, getting vandalized with green shaper-y symbols).

(The Automata Initiative era)