Wendigo

Wendigo 2[credit]

Ice: Code Gate - Morph
Strength: 4
Influence: 2

Wendigo can be advanced.

While Wendigo has an odd number of advancement tokens on it, it gains barrier and loses code gate.

[subroutine] Choose a program. The Runner cannot use the chosen program for the remainder of this run.

Illustrated by Wylie Beckert
Decklists with this card

First Contact (fc)

#47 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
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Printings
Rulings

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

This card's worth 1 or 2 slots in almost any Blue Sun: Powering the Future deck, and other Weyland IDs may benefit, too.

PROS

1) This is the perfect counter for runners using the Keyhole/Eater engine. At 2, 4 strength, it's expensive to chew through (3 for Eater, barring any Datasucker or similar effects). But chew through it they must if they want to be able to keep using Eater on the rest of the cards protecting your R&D. It's a respectable tax.

2) Can counter the runner's anti-Archer cards like Femme Fatale or Faerie.

3) It's a freaking Wendigo. Who wouldn't want one prowling around their perimeter?

CONS

1) You don't want to draw this as one of your two starting ice, but even if you do get one out early it can milk an extra turn or three out of any low-cost ice like Ice Wall, Enigma, Chimera, or Quandary.

2) Can't protect a server on its own, unless the runner is afraid to face-check it.

(Order and Chaos era)
It only costs Eater 3 bucks to eat through Wendigo, which is alright but not that significant of a tax. Its also extremely prone to Spooned, since it wants to be the outermost piece of ICE —
It costs as much to spoon it as it does to rez it, which is better than most spoon uses. I conceed the error in cost and will edit shortly to fix that. —
Another problem is that it suffers from the same problem as Inazuma: if there is no ice behind Wendigo it is useless, except for maybe Imp. —
This might synergize very well with Matrix Analyzer and Trick of Light —
Interestingly, this might be quite useful against the conspiracy breakers (Paperclip, Black Orchestra, and MKUltra), since trashing isn't a reliable way of dealing with them. —