Avgustina Ivanovskaya

♦ Avgustina Ivanovskaya 1[credit]

Resource: Connection
Influence: 1

The first time each turn you install a virus program, sabotage 1. (The Corp trashes 1 card of their choice from HQ or the top of R&D.)

"Sometimes being a union rep calls for action even more... direct."
Illustrated by Dave Lee
Decklists with this card

Midnight Sun (ms)

#8 • English
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  • Updated 2022-09-10

    Does the Runner gain a credit when they sabotage and have Demolisher installed?

    No, the Corp is trashing the cards when resolving a sabotage effect.

Reviews

At $1 this is priced like a Spoilers rather than a major character ID in a non-ID slot. A $1 price feels like probably a misread on how many cards will be sabotaged and/or how much a sabotage is worth. I'd guess that $1 Augustina will easily produce 50-75% as many pseudo-accesses as a $6 Maw. Maybe 100%+, Augustina gets installed a few turns faster and can trigger on the Corp's turn with cards like Gachopon. I hope you love those Maw MU.

The main drawback to Augustina - and this is huge in Standard - is that she demands like 10+ virus deckslots to justify her own 1-3 deck slots and building around viruses is much harder for Augustina than when Noise decks had Parasite. (This could cause problems in Eternal, though -- it adds a lot of value to something Noise decks are already doing to great effect).

(Midnight Sun Booster Pack era)

I agree, I feel like 3<span class="icon icon-credit"></span>s would be more reasonable for her ability.

Yeah, it's literally Noise but for 1c. Seems too strong right now.

On the plus side, Augustina only fires once per turn, and runner recursion is weaker now than it used to be.

Maw seems like a poor comparison to me - a large part of the value of Maw triggers comes from hand disruption, which Avgustina doesn't do at all unless the corp lets her (and even then, random discards are so much better).

"Noise but for 1c?" I gotta say, I feel like the difference in power between "Once per turn the corp discards a card and gets a choice of a worthless HQ card or a random card from RnD" and "Force the corp to mill 1 off RnD as often as you like, and are able" is huge. Not to say that this card might not be overtuned, but Noise for 1c this ain't.

I think the Corp chooses to burn the top card of R+D 80%+ of the time. There are a few situations where a sabotage is much weaker than Noise’s R+D hit, like Regenesis, but overall Augustine works a lot like a Noise resource.

Comparing Avgustina to The Nihilist makes her look awfully mispriced. She's better than the nerfed Noise in some ways and worse in others, but pretty close in total power.

She's also just 1 inf, which is odd thematically and interesting strategically. I'd expect Avgustina to be played mostly in faction, where all the other sabotage effects and most of the good viruses are, but maybe the 1 inf means she'll find a role elsewhere too.

(Midnight Sun era)