My First Blue Sun

kevinjpowe 1

Looking to take advantage of Cosmic Ice abilities as part of building big ol' servers.

5 comments
22 Dec 2015 iceqs

FYI, if you advance your Space ICE, you cannot use Blue Sun's ability to get it back at the original cost, which means that if you rez Orion for 0, Blue Sun is gonna give you 0 credit if you take it back. This is why people stay away from Blue Sun if they play Space ICE.

22 Dec 2015 NetrunningAmok

@iceqs I am pretty sure he is aware of that and is trying to abuse it with Constellation Protocol and Trick of Light jank. I've tried the same approach and it did not work, or at least I could not get it to work. The runner will not let you keep the CP rezzed for long at all and even if you can get it working, constantly re-installing and advancing the space ice is so click intensive.

While it is generally true that advanceable ice is bad in Blue Sun, I have actually had a lot of fun and reasonable success with Orion and Wormhole. If they survive a turn after Oversight AI you can pick them back up for lots of s and then install and advance them to rez them for free later. This way you actually get to keep most of the s gained. Asteroid Belt and Nebula aren't horrible and can be used for this as well. However, they are broken a lot more easily and simply aren't as powerful. The Ice Walls and Shadows are terrible in Blue Sun: Powering the Future

@kevinjpowe I get what you are trying to do, but I think that it isn't going to work the way you want it to. If I was you, I would take out the Ice Walls and Shadows along with the Constellation Protocols. I would keep 1 Orion, 2 Wormhole, 1 Asteroid Belt, and 1 Nebula Those should give you enough counters to make Trick of Light work. The rest of your ice I would replace with more standard options. You could maybe include Fire Wall and or Hadrian's Wall as those are pretty decent even without being advanced.

Sorry for the long comment, my 2 s ended up being more like 20 when all was said and done...

Cheers and good luck with the jank! :)

22 Dec 2015 kevinjpowe

@iceqs Yup - completely understood. Idea is to see if Oversight AI/Constellation Protocol can make it worthwhile.

@Gilgamesh_KoH I like those suggestions. I've only had one test-run so far, but Ice Wall quickly became useless, whereas Fire Wall would have more stamina. What would you recommend Sentry-wise? Caduceus? Thanks for the well-wishes!

I've got a bad feeling that the idea is going to prove too janky overall, but it's my first real deck building, so it's teaching me a lot already, and I'll FEEL THE POWAH when I switch to more strong/standard options. :-)

23 Dec 2015 kevinjpowe

Also, didn't mention it before @Gilgamesh_KoH, but thank you so much for taking the time to give such a thorough review! Huge help for a newbie.

23 Dec 2015 NetrunningAmok

@kevinjpowe Glad you are finding my advice useful. I am by no means an expert deck-builder either, but I'm happy when/if I can help somebody out.

As far as sentries go, I would lean away from Caduceus. I feel like post D&D most runners will be able to just let the traces fire, especially if you are going to be floating bad pub from Hostiles.

I would for sure go with at least 1 Archer, maybe 2. Since you are already running Hostiles it shouldn't be too terrible to rez. 1 Nebula would be good. Other than that the options really aren't amazing without spending influence.

Everyone is playing Assassin lately and its not without reason. Ichi 1.0 is awesome if you can spare some influence. Otherwise, in faction Negotiator might not be terrible. The subs will never fire, but it is a 4 tax without a breaker and a 2 tax once they get a Mimic out. It also gives "Trash a program" targets for Wormhole and Orion.