Weyland Consortium: Building a Better World

Weyland Consortium: Building a Better World

Identity: Megacorp
Deck size: 45 • Influence: 15

Whenever you play a transaction operation, gain 1[credit].

Above the Competition.
Illustrated by Kira L. Nguyen
Decklists with this card

System Update 2021 (su21)

#70 • English
Startup Card Pool
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Reviews

So, six extra credits during the game with the cards from the core set don't seem so powerful? It gets better.

This identity works with:

and last but not least, Paywall Implementation, which is a current, but currents are still Operations. If only this could give extra credits each time Implementation is activated...

So it's possible to have at least nine cards that have synergy with it in your deck (usually Beanstalks, Hedge Funds and Restructures) but if you want you can invest some influence points into Blue or Green Level Clearances to make your economy even less reliant on assets. It's important to notice, that while even without it, Restructure brings you a lot of credits, this actually makes cheaper cards like Beanstalk Royalties and Green Level Clearance more powerful. Like 33% more powerful! Math can't lie.

Add to this some recursion from Jackson Howard and you can get much more than basic six credits.

But beware of Edward Kim: Humanity's Hammer, he will be your doom! Or Imp. Or Keyhole. Or Demolition Run. Seriously, what's about those Anarchs and their hate towards corporate money making?

(The Source era)
288

Where have you gone, BABW? I hardly see you any more. I've only been seeing your younger siblings-Titan Transnational and Blue Sun more than anyone else. And I don't understand why, because when it comes to actually making money, you leave them all behind.

Blue Sun's advantage is liquidity. Rezzing ICE costs money, but that big ol' power plant can suck those credits right back up. So it never loses money on rezzing ICE. But, if you keep sucking up and reinstalling your ICE, you are spending clicks, and not actively increasing your money pool, unless you pull shenanigans with Oversight AI, Priority Requisition or other free rez effects.

Titan Transnational's advantage is being able to "win more". When Titan scores a Project Atlas, it gets that juicy tutor for free, and scoring a Hostile Takeover with Mark Yale on the board basically prints money ('cause it's a bank, get it?)

The thing is, though, that these abilities are conditional, and leave vulnerabilities. Blue Sun can get screwed if their big ice keeps getting Emergency Shutdown or Crescentus'd. Titan's ability can provide substantial value, but it needs to score agendas and needs Mark Yale to truly become efficient, meaning if it falls behind it can have trouble catching up.

But BABW? You just make Beanstalk Royalties into Hedge Fund, Hedge Fund into Restructure, and Restructure into the single most efficient money-making click in the game. There is no gap, no vulnerability except for maybe Edward Kim and Imp.

And the thing is...Blue Sun's ability will never really get more powerful than it is right now. Titan Transnational will always need to score agendas to get any value from its abilities. But every time another transaction is published, the toolbox for BABW just grows and grows. While in the core set, you could only run 6 transactions, now even the most basic BABW deck could run Beanstalk Royalties, Hedge Fund, Restructure, Paywall Implementation, and Commercialization to have up to 15 transactions without spending a single point of influence...and Green Level Clearance and Successful Demonstration are only one point each.

Well, I believe in you, BABW. You were once the king, and once the sparkles from Order and Chaos leave everyone's eyes, they'll remember what made you so good.

(The Valley era)
Sorry, as much as I love BaBW, OAI'd Curtain Wall in Blue Sun is more money than Restructure in BaBW —
Actually, the difference between OAI Curtain Wall in Blue Sun and Restructure in BABW is not as wide as you think. OAI Curtain Wall takes 2 clicks (install, oversight) and 2 cards for a conditional (i.e. ice not broken, shutdown etc.) 6.5 credits per click. Restructure in BABW is an unconditional 6 credits per click, although with the downside that you need to start from 10 credits. —
Green and Blue level clearance are a must in BABW, IMO. The ID needs to keep drawing into transactions. The one edge it has over ETF is that its ability can trigger more than once per turn. Unfortunately that's a pretty big influence hit. Still though, BABW was my first Weyland love and it's always my go-to for trying out in-faction ideas. —
As I understand it, Blue Sun wouldn't give you more money back than the actual install cost. So just because an ice is 10 credits to raise, if you were to put it back in hand you'd make nothing. This may or may not be true but I tried to stack Blue Sun with Breaker Bay Grid and was told I wouldn't net the 5 credits Breaker Bay saves in rezz cost. —

We live in a new era for the consortium. All of the previous still holds of course, Beanstalk Royalties becomes Hedge Fund, Hedge Fund becomes IPO, and IPO becomes a financially obscene 6 credits for one click. That's the entire plot of Armagedd- I mean the Roughneck Repair Squad in one go.

Blue Level Clearance remains useful in a deck heavy on transactions that empty your hand of cards. Now of course we have also Red Level Clearance to help out, which is like if Process Automation and Build Script had a baby and that baby was raised by Lateral Growth.

Winchester exists now to help keep HQ a little safer and your money from being stolen by Diversion of Funds although of course that only works so well tbh. SDS Drone Deployment is just good and the trashing helps protect your economic lead. Keep in mind that to maintain a healthy income you will probably require a Preemptive Action to keep more economy cards in your deck or to help out a little should Laramy Fisk: Savvy Investor show his face. Of course that doesn't exactly jive well with Blockchain since you're taking cards out of Archives and reducing its possible subs just to stay in the money but then if you were looking for a deck that made sense you probably wouldn't be reading this now would you?

EDIT: BABW has been reprinted in System Gateway! In standard Beanstalk Royalties is now replaced by Predictive Planogram, and Restructure returns in the form of Government Subsidy. The Planogram costs an influence which hurts a bit but the flexibility it provides is more than worth the new inf cost. In addition we have Hansei Review which is quite nice, though in standard this means one loses Blue Level Clearance and as of the time of this writing Violet Level Clearance is now banned. Unfortunate, but luckily for us we're still Too Big to Fail

(Uprising era)

When i saw this card way back in my first core set i immediately knew what Weyland was all about: Making money. For some reasons this boring effect has encapsulated so much flavor for me and i had a soft spot for it ever since. Weyland has a blunt approach to everything and cash solves a lot of problems.

You can try to go for the kill plan with a HHN deck packed full of operations and it's certainly fun. Supports a more rushy aproach as well when you try to out-money the runner and score behind some early ICE. I would have liked to have a more diverse set of transactions from a design perspective. They just almost all provide you with money (which i have to admit kinda makes sense) but this also leads to a very predictable game play.

The problem is: Blue Sun is just way better at making money, getting the important tool of building blocks lately. Some of the HB transactions have also left the game one way or another. So don't expect to see this one too often, especially as the game is entering it's late stage where it gets more and more solved.

I like to think that this ID is still pulling the strings from the shadows, out there trading to expand the consortium.

(Magnum Opus Reprint era)