Consistently thought of as a mid-tier, if not an outright bad, ID, Thunderbolt Armaments is, in reality, the HB version of Earth Station: SEA Headquarters. Of course, whether Earth Station is a mid-tier ID is, in itself, another conversation to be had, but the idea is the same: tax the runner's first run on a remote. This means that the central servers can be made into money generators, but, when it is time for the pressure, it must hurt and annoy the runner, while not bankrupting you along the way. K2CP continues to let the runner wreak havoc in the current meta's late game (as many, no doubt, say like the runner should), and early pressure is the only viable way of having the credits needed to fight back. Diversification pays, but any tempo hit is going to mean Game Over. Hence, the right response. I don't know about making it work with Reduced Service, but I know there is a viable deck there, perhaps just as inseparable as Vulnerability Audit is from A Teia now. Definitely needs NEXT lockdown to keep your deck viable. On to something less straightforward for me.
I don't like this card. I think it warps the meta and is a bit of a one size fits all approach. It's gone from good stuff to best stuff with this card. Some might claim it's the fixed strength breakers but those are gated behind cumbersome boost costs. This card will typically save 3-6 credits per ice when using the icebreakers normally gated behind expensive boosting. Classic circumvention comes in the form of tools like Leech, Crew (i.e. taking tags) or something like monkey wrench which works on a single server.
This card bludgeons all of the other tools out of the way and this is all we see. Proponents claim this card keeps glaciers in check....yes while curbstomping any mid range ice based deck. Once a turbine comes out 80% of your ice is better to not even spend money on the rez. This will drive a lot of asset spam in the meta as players realize ice doesn't matter.
A more nuanced approach to toppling glaciers would be a card like Gebrselassie or Flame-out Adjusted Matrix and Dedicated Processor are the appropriate way to do boosting. I remember when The Personal Touch was a thing as well if we want perm boosts. Perhaps a series of "Seige" support breakers that grant +X str where X is the number of ice installed beyond the first piece.
Lots of more interesting ways to handle potential glacier issues without creating an Ice Doesn't Matter meta.
This just got banned, thank goodness. This makes early runs worthless, one of the best things about Netrunner and the foundation of the Criminal faction. Also makes Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman worthless. How did this even make it past playtesting anyway? SBL team needs to handle all the playtesting going forward imo. Or at least green-light new sets to block all the Endurances Drago Ivanovs and such.
Even if I totally agree that is good that this card is banned, this kind of things happen and will happen even with piles of money and people looking at it.
— valerian32Yeah, but how dumb do you have to be to say, "Let's make an ice that protects every server?"
— Fluffy1Well, apart of using ableism that I think it's problematic there is a reason.
— valerian32As far as I know when you do a set is very hard to nail down the power level of cards. You don't know when a Holo-man or a Rashida or a Stargate or Banklar is going to be good, bad or too powerful. If you don't greenlight some cards that actually change stuff the result would be that the new cards are boring and nobody uses them. And you can tell from FFG times that these same mistakes were made, by people who were paid for this. It needs to happen because if you want to have a Deep Dive it's inevitable that you will commit some Endurance along the way. So, pretty please, don't insult people.
— valerian32@valerian32 Sorry mate, but this turns off a core aspect of netrunner. That is, the trade off of leaving a server unprotected. That effectively doesn't happen with this card, or swings things way over into the corps favour. Making balanced card pools is hard, and yes taking risks is important, but saying to the runner "there are no naked runs now when this ice is out" makes for frustration for runners as an auto-protect spawns in. The corp doesn't have to think, this card does that for them.
— ScoogsyOne thing I will say is that banning cards quickly that are bad is a good thing!
— Scoogsy@Scoogsy, yeah I agree that it's a good thing that this was banned and it was banned really fast. My only point is that this mistakes inevitablely happen and I don't think that there is any workaround it. The better that we can aim is to reduce these situations, but not eliminate them completely.
— valerian32
One of these days, I shall make an asset grinder deck with this, econ, advancements, and net damage, protect them all with meat damage threat, and throw so many goon squads the runner's way for touching it that he is left cowering for the rest of the game while you calmly win.
Eventually the day will come when Dr. Vientiane Keeling gets unbanned, that very day she'll get a Warm Reception from me. By that time I'll learn if I can rerez her between resolving two "when your turn begins" effects. But even if I can't, my jank senses are still tingling.
— ReverieSounds like something really evil is brewing there...
— Victor_Joseph
You see a problem. You take it upon yourself to do something about it (or maybe you never really had a choice). You go to battle. You go back and forth with your opponent, gaining and loosing advantage, taking steps forward and being forced back. You are both more prepared and yet more worn down than you were to being with. You get a major win. Then you look up any realise that for all your progress, you are effectively back at the start. You continue, because you still have much to do.
If this card put the runner through that journey instead of the corp, I would say it would be a flavour home run.
or even a card like Takobi
— D4v1d-Gr43b3r