3/2 is generally the strongest agenda statline, but unless you've got a realistic kill combo lined up or are all in on fast-advance, you're probably better off with one of many strong 4/2 agendas, like Oaktown Renovation or Offworld Office.

This is due to a few things: While 2 damage is a real tempo hit, it's nothing compared to the tempo gain that Oaktown or Offworld give you. The trash is also very annoying - you install cards because you want to use them, and pitching them is a real tempo hit. Even in Ob Superheavy, which gets more value out of trashing your own stuff than any other ID, the trash is still annoying simply because the turn you score an agenda is the least useful time to tutor and install a card.

Of course, this all changes if a 3/2 is substantially easier for your deck to score or you have some Neurospike nonsense lined up. I haven't theorycrafted these things, but the other reviews have - this is closer to a "vegan" review than a full review of the card.

293

Too weak on basically every front to see serious play.

2 rez 2 trash is a very weak asset statline, and needs serious upside at the start of each turn to be worth considering. This is because this statline requires you to protect your investment, as otherwise the runner can quickly trash this for very little. Is it worth protecting?

Consider Anonymous Tip. Like CSR, Anonymous Tip draws cards. However, it costs 0 and draws 3 immediately, instead of over time. It's sometimes stronger to get your draw over a long period of time, but in general the faster the better. In order to draw the same number of cards as Anonymous Tip, this needs to sit on the table for 4 whole turns - and you paid 2 for it.

So you need to make a remote and protect this 2 cost asset for 4 turns in order for it to still be weaker than a card which saw very little play: remember, there's a strictly better version of Anonymous Tip now, and that's still only a pretty good card.

In general, decks which are looking to power draw tend to want a lot of cards very quickly, not a small number of cards over a long period of time. Every faction except Jinteki has a startup-legal card that does the same job, but better: Weyland has Wall to Wall, NBN has Predictive Planogram and Daily Business Show, HB has Red Level Clearance and Tranquility Home Grid, and of course, in standard, every faction has Rashida Jaheem.

293

Maskirovka's big issue is that it completely folds to Cleaver, by far the most popular fracter in startup, and struggles against Paperclip, by far the most popular fracter in standard.

While the facecheck seems nice, compare it to using an Ice Wall:

  • The runner runs into an Ice Wall. They bounce off of it. You're down one credit and have an Ice Wall rezzed.

  • The runner runs into Maskirovka. They bounce off of it. You're down one credit and have a Maskirovka rezzed.

So on facecheck, you're at the same credit level as an Ice Wall. The main question is, is this better than having an Ice Wall rezzed? I'm not sure. It's one credit more taxing for clippy, but you can't advance it like you can an Ice Wall. Even Ob Superheavy tends to prefer to have 1 credit ice rezzed to tutor 0-cost cards rather than having 3 credit ice rezzed to tutor 2-cost cards - the options are simply more powerful and flexible at 0 cost - Rashida Jaheem, Spin Doctor, Reduced Service, Anoetic Void.

Of course, if the runner doesn't facecheck it, you'd almost always be better off with the Ice Wall, although neither are ideal in the situation where the runner has a fracter on the table. Weyland has a lot of solid options for barriers at 3-cost: Akhet, Sandstone, Palisade. I think it's hard to justify Maskirovka over any of these.

293

The review from Gerrark mentions a lot of cards that were menaces against ice, but have since rotated out of standard. I'm glad to tell you that three years later, we have a brand new assortment of cards trivializing ice!

The three new big non-icebreaker ice answers are Botulus, Boomerang and Endurance, (Hey, one in each faction!) and this makes all of those very sad as well. In particular, since the boat often relies on banking a large number of counters to threaten a remote, this can give you a late-game scoring window you'd otherwise never have. The boat looks primed to be a serious metagame threat, so having a card which shuts it off for a critical turn can be extremely powerful. In addition, since the addition of powerful upgrade hate like Light the Fire and Pinhole Threading it pays to have a way for glacier to score which isn't dependent on such cards.

The caveat is the same that's always been true for all the lockdowns: you want to use them the turn you're planning to score and it therefore takes up a critical click on the turn you need it most, so unless you're trying to score out a 4/2, you're probably not using the best tool for the job. Scoring a 3/2 is probably easier through a fast-advance plan, and a 5/3 requires additional clicks to score. Thankfully, since you're playing this in HB, you've got the best support card possible: Seamless Launch, which enables you to install-advance a 5/3 and still score it next turn.

The deck that this most neatly slots into - defensive upgrades, HB, Seamless Launch - is the turbo glaciers we've seen out of Precision Design. PD has to make very few changes from the most popular decklists to slot this, and this card could end up being a premium non-tech tech card in the coming metagame.

293

Stavka is a contender for best destroyer ever printed.

4 credits for a 7 strength, two sub destroyer makes you question what you were ever doing playing Rototurret, and Rototurret has seen a fair amount of play. It's similarly tough to facecheck as Archer, but doesn't constrain your agenda suite or put you behind on points the way Archer does. The "trash a card" downside is real but does enable some neat finesses, like trashing an agenda that you would otherwise lose. If you're playing Ob Superheavy, the trash ranges from "mildly inconvenient" to "enables game winning shenanigans." Players will note that this is answered by Boomerang, but what ice isn't? The trash is optional, so you can let the runner pop the Boomerang even if you don't trash anything. Despite being a mediocre ice for taxing on turns after the rez, I think that this is so powerful that this will see play in other IDs and out of faction.*

*What's this asterisk doing here? Oh yeah, two metagame threats that make this card sad.

First, the conspiracy breakers. Trashing Clippy is an annoying 4 credit tax on the runner, but won't win a game by itself, and until it either rotates out of standard or gets banned, everyone and their dog will probably be playing Paperclip. The full conspiracy suite is less common, and you'll probably have support programs you can smash instead, but this does lose some of its absolute game-destroying potency that you might have hoped to see. The silver lining is that MKUltra is relatively inefficient at breaking it both on rez and on future turns.

Second, the Boat. Endurance very neatly answers this on rez, and it'll be very very hard to try to slam an Endurance runner into Stavka when they're out of boat counters and also don't have money to break with a killer and also have programs you can trash. The boat seems primed to be a serious metagame threat in the upcoming era of Netrunner, and particularly hoses the kind of fast, rush-based play that would otherwise love a big meaty destroyer faceplant.

So, in a vacuum: Stavka is amazing. Premium efficiency ice, capable of winning a game outright, very hard to play around. In a meta where the boat and conspiracy breakers are extremely common, Stavka is probably very sad.

293