Piranhas

Piranhas 5[credit]

Ice: Code Gate - Illicit - AP
Strength: 6
Influence: 3

As an additional cost to rez this ice, take 1 bad publicity or remove 1 tag.

[subroutine] You may draw 1 card.

[subroutine] Do 1 net damage.

[subroutine] End the run if there are more cards in HQ than in the grip.

Eat, grow, deny. A truly ravenous generation.
Illustrated by Júlio Rocha
Decklists with this card

Rebellion Without Rehearsal (rwr)

#117 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Rulings
  • Updated 2024-05-27

    If the net damage subroutine on Piranhas trashes a copy of Steelskin Scarring from the Runner’s grip, can they draw 2 cards before the final subroutine on Piranhas checks the number of cards in the grip?

    Yes, any conditional abilities meeting their trigger condition due to the net damage must be resolved first before resolving the following subroutines.

Reviews

Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

It can be difficult to give good constructive feedback because I love this game, these cards and everything I'm about to say comes from a place of love and wanting to help the designers. This card... sucks. It's probably one of the worst cards released in Liberation and sees a proportional amount of play to that power level.

The runner can just run through this, like, without breakers... with very minimal drawbacks. If you're wondering how here are some options:

  • click 1: draw, click 2: draw, click 3: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
  • click 1: use Dr. Nuka Vrolyck, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
  • click 1: play Diesel, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
  • click 1: play Steelskin Scarring, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
  • click 1: use Verbal Plasticity, click 2: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
  • start of turn: Earthrise Hotel triggers, click 1: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
  • last turn: play The Class Act, click 1: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
  • better yet, have a Stoneship Chart Room installed and you can face-check this ICE and still get through it

(You can also use a Botulus or Boomerang if you don't want to take any damage and either option will get you in without any problems)

This is absolutely hilarious, this card is Diviner (which is already a very weak card), yet more than twice as expensive and somehow even less consistent at ending the run. Just to be kind, the Corp then gifts the Runner a Bad Publicity to help them run through all the rest of their ICE more efficiently because why not?

This card does less damage than an Anemone, draws the Corp a card as though that's somehow worth the cost and then sits around twiddling its thumbs as the Runner moves past it, I don't know how you could have designed a less scary version of Piranhas.

Its sister program, Valentão, at least makes some sense, it's pretty reasonable to assume that a Weyland player would have more money than the Runner (though some Shapers will give the Corp a run for it's money, no pun intended), even without the first two subroutines firing, the third has a legitimate threat of ending the run anyways. Let all the subroutines fire and Valentão triggers a 4-credit swing and bounces the runner out. This means if they want to get in, they have to break it, and that's where these two cards really shine.

These cards tax a lot, with the exception of the first turn Euler is played these two cards tax the runner as much if not more than the rez cost, which is amazing by most ICE standards. The only problem is that while the runner actually needs to break Valentão to get in, you'd have to mind control the Runner to convince them they're locked out by a Piranhas.

The fatal flaw of this card, of course, is to assume that credits and cards are comparable, in many ways they are for purposes of card draw or econ, but where credits can be stacked unlimitedly, cards top out at 5 (for most). This makes getting yourself more cards than Corp, substantially easier than getting more credits, the Corp simply can't generate a hand-size lead in the same way they can generate a credit lead. To achieve this in Faction you'd either have to play Superconducting Hub, which is a pretty bad 3/1 agenda on its own, or use something like Spin Doctor to trigger card draw mid-run, which, is hardly the best use for such a powerful card.

It would have made so much more sense for this card to be put in literally any other faction too, put it in Weyland and they can try and synergize it with The Outfit: Family Owned and Operated and Regulatory Capture or Roughneck Repair Squad instead of needing to pay 3 influence per copy to import it.

Put it in Haas-Bioroid and they can synergize it with Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design to make it much harder to ignore the effect, or with Thule Subsea: Safety Below, further punishing the runner for their lack of hand size and just generally making it much more likely the ETR sub will fire.

And of course, there's Jinteki, by combining this card with additional forms of damage you can more reliably keep the runner out, or you could use this card's single instance of damage that the runner doesn't want to have to break to charge up a Prāna Condenser, or soften the runner up for a trap or Fujii Asset Retrieval.

But NBN, they have almost no way to use this card, except perhaps to generate an extra credit from Your Digital Life? And pricing it at 3 Influence just makes it so much more cumbersome to import this card into any other faction who might try and do something cool with it.

The idea of Code Gates having "conditional" end-the-run effects while Barriers have "hard" end-the-run effects is cool and very thematic and I'm interested to see more cards designed in this space. But, Piranhas is just a swing and a miss that is not worth it's price, let alone the bad-publicity.

Beyond these practical mechanics considerations, this wasn't quite what I was expecting for such an iconic cultural icon as Piranhas. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but perhaps something that did more damage the fewer cards you had in hand, like an ICE version of Blood in the Water that's used as a finisher. Or something that starts with 7 end-the-run effects and has one less for each card in hand. Or maybe some kind of ICE, where you can include 6 copies in the deck and it tutors other copies of itself out onto the board when you do net damage with it, like, the first Piranhas draws blood and then that attracts the rest. Or maybe even just a really expensive piece of ICE with like 5 "do 1 net damage" subroutines to represent lots of small fish each taking a small bite out of you and that adding up.

TLDR: A rather weak card that sees very little play in the current meta because it can be so easily circumvented and provides very little actual taxing power despite its superficially large numbers.

(Rebellion Without Rehearsal era)