Wake up everyone. New big-ass ICE just dropped. Big in cost, big in strength, big in impact, big shits in your pants if you get hit by it. Any unique piece of ICE had better be like that, given that you can only have one rezzed.
Interesting mechanics surrounding its encounter status, too. We all know the "when encountered" ability, having paid for more Tollbooths than a lot of us would have liked to (on both sides of the game!), but how many ICE have "when the encounter ENDS" abilities? Not like Kakugo where the net damage hits after you pass the ICE, because an encounter with a piece of ICE ends whether you break the subroutines or not. Touch this snake in any way and you will get bit.
And what a bite! You as the corp trash one of the Runner's cards unless they take two tags or three net damage? Brutal. Those are the subroutines you'd have to break anyway! No wonder this thing costs 10. That still might be cheap considering how much tempo this will cost the runner. Maybe even if this was illicit and gave the corp bad puclicity if they rezzed it. That's how hard this thing hits.
One question I have is how bypass abilities work in relation to the encounter ending. My assumption is that bypassing essentially acts like the encounter didn't happen, so you would pass through without dealing with this monster.
Bottom line, find ways to avoid encountering this most dangerous noodle.
No, Cloud Eater’s ability fires even after bypassed by Inside Job. It’s the same effect as Anansi. Short of trashing/derezzing it before the encounter ends there’s no way to stop it from happening.
— bowlsleySadly, Flip Switch does actually stop the ability from firing, because of the paid ability window on approach (before encounter). :/ I had this happen to me and even though I was very rich, the tempo hit from outright rezzing this for the full price and then nothing happening cost me dearly.
— Chaostheorie7
Depends on the card. If the text says "on the encounter blahblah, then bypass" there has been an encounter so Cloud Eater fires. Inside job bypasses before encountering for example then Cloud Eater doesn't happen.
— valerian32