This doesn't have any reviews yet?? Okay, I'll do one!
I don't know how to do these really, so I won't link to anything else or say anything insightful, but this agenda is one of my favourites in the game. Public agendas occupy a weird place in Netrunner, and it's one I love. Some are fantastic, like Oaktown or Hollywood Renovations. And some are just annoying, like New Construction or Underway Renovation (even though I secretly quite like Underway...) In my view, City Works absolutely fits in to the former group!
Outside of Oaktown, City Works is the easiest public agenda to take advantage of. Meat damage is Weyland's thing, and one of the big pushes for Kitara seemed to be trying to make meat damage work in a way not dependent on tags as it frequently was in Scorched times, but rather on interaction - or lack of. City Works does damage on access, whereas Urban Renewal, also in Kitara, did damage after several turns if it wasn't trashed. I think this card achieves this aim really well!!! And is certainly a more positive play experience than Urban Renewal.
City Works is strong. It does 2 meat damage, plus 1 extra for each advancement, so it's frequently costing the runner 4-5 cards to steal. Follow this up with Punitive, or even just the threat of Punitive, and you can really put the runner is a bad place! (Death. Death is that bad place!) It can also be combined with cards like Dedication or the new Argus Crackdown lockdown to increase counters on City Works or do extra damage. Even with no Punitive to follow up, costing the runner 4-5 cards is a fairly strong effect compared to other 3-pointers.
The main criticisms of this card are: it folds to Film Critic, which sure, and it doesn't do anything if accessed from a central. The card would of course be stronger if it did 2 damage regardless, but it is certainly not a deal-breaker. This card is good!
Where this card really becomes one of the best agendas in Netrunner is with a certain identity. The best identity. A Kitara identity that was released alongside City Works in the same data pack. Coincidentally, my FIRST data pack I ever bought! (It also had Rashida in... eh, they can't all be perfect) SSO works off of face up agendas! It uses the agenda points on installed face up agendas to place advancement counters, and, in SSO, City Works becomes a behemoth! If they run and steal, they take damage and you have the threat of Punitive. If the runner sits back, you charge up your huge servers and slowly score it!
City Works is such a fantastic card in the right gameplan. Still, it's not an agenda that should be thrown in a Weyland deck that just needs a few more points. Without a strategy, it can just be easy points for your opponent.
Play SSO! It's great. I should do a review of that card next... And Hollywood Renovation... And Mass Commercialisation...
I have always liked the flavor. All the public agendas do things as advanced, because the corp can progress them in broad daylight, whether it's burning out all the runner's friends from the underway, or gentrifying old Oaktown. Here, in Africa, SSO, after losing the space elevator bid, is making He3 reactors for affordable power. So, instead of it doing things right away in increments, what builds is the public backlash when the runner wrecks it. I like to imagine the runner just booking it through the savannah, flying jeeps filled with angry villagers a scant mile behind, hahaha.
— lp87Maybe a silly question, but does CWP do the damage in steps or all at once? I'm curious if accessing this with 3 tokens on it and having 2 cards in hand and one of them being I've Had Worse will still flatline the runner?
— ValkyriezGamingYeah, it's a single instance of (2 + adv tokens) of damage so in your example, the Runner would flatline.
— BlackCherries