By Any Means

By Any Means

My goodness.

So this card may boost Anarchs back up to degenerate tier 1 status.

As of writing this, the Counter Surveillance/God of War deck archetype is real and played, if not top-tier stuff.

And by using its patented multiaccess combo with 20+ tags (obtainable by installing multiple God of War's) in conjunction with By Any Means you win the game. Immediately.

It looks like a Runner equivalent to old CI7 builds, whereby if the opponent has not won on turn 10, they lose, in this case by being decked out.

With some of my testing, it was actually very easy to pull off, (but not out of MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock as she trashes the combo pieces) Jarogniew Mercs with 20+ tokens to protect you from the meat damage, Dean Lister to boost your breakers' strength cheaply, Obelus to ensure hand size and a draw option...

Back up plan includes regular heap breakers, Hades Shard and Clan Vengeance for some regular accesses out of archives, regularly.

In classic Anarch fashion, you don't mind much about what gets hit, but if you do, Titanium Ribs is there to help.

Unless this gets changed between now and Store Champ season proper, I can say that I'll be bringing it - although only to events where I don't mind making enemies...

The Plan

  • Install God of War as early as possible
  • Take tags every turn. You don't care. You're going to use them against the puny multinational spacefaring corporation
  • Draw through your deck to get Obelus online ASAP, because otherwise you'll die. Feel free to install small Mercs with few counters during this time, as it is a unique card, and as such can be overwritten by installing a new one, gaining you more tags and increasing how much your opponent hates you.
  • Play combo pieces or not as you like, because everything is going back in your deck anyway.
  • Game Day. Backup plan if you don't get it. Draw like mad.
  • Dummy Box should be down at some point as well. Furthers the opponent's despair as he can't touch your resources, and Best Offense does nothing.

The Turn

  • Scalp Melty. Your opponent groans as he knows what's coming.
  • Install Mr Hoodie. Nearby tables turn to look at your opponent with pity.
  • Install something else. Depending on board state, or the opponent's ID, this is where you run, and you'd better have another Hoodie down because...
  • You go for it. Dean/EMP gets you through whatever puny 18 ICE they have defending R&D, or all the money you've been getting does. However you want to do it, you can. Also, add insult to injury, get revenge while you're there.
  • R&D.
  • Get kicked out of the venue, lose all your friends, your wife leaves you and your dog dies. But hey. You won.

If for whatever reason, be it skillful counter play from your opponent/not enough time for infinite tags due to pressure, you don't manage to trash absolutely everything, use Hades to access their entire heap. You probably win.

Disclaimer: This was all written before events could legally use Sovereign Sight, so most of this is conjecture.

122
Tl;dr: Netrunner is broken again. —
Seems like a nonbo to me. CS decks don't tend to be particularly rich and have the added struggle that the turn they need to win requires 4 clicks - play MFM, install Dean, install CS, run. By playing this card you make your combo needlessly more difficult to pull off as you now need to ensure prior to the combo turn that you have enough money to pay for CS at the end of the turn before you combo, you need to have Dean or the Mercs already on the board and the corp needs to not trash them (because one of your clicks has to be spent installing one or the other, you don't have the clicks for both and tbh its probably the mercs you install which gives you another tag so makes the combo cost 1 more). This makes the combo harder to pull off and only really improves your matchup against Jinteki where you don't really want to access a bunch of traps in your big CS run as you can flatline before you win. Frankly, if you have got to the point where you can pull off the combo in this way, it would have been easier to just win with the regular combo the turn before. Given that CS decks have hardly been the scourge of the meta, I don't expect this card to provide a meaningful boost to their power level. —
How do you not die? —
Oh, my bad, you mentioned mercs. —
This crying over a card is stupid. Why would I bother using counter survailence with this to trash 30 cards when I can just access 30 cards and win anyway, without killing myself in the process? —