Homedude will eat your brains
Like Fairchild 3.0, this is a beefy mid-size piece of ice with a nasty facecheck. It most closely parallels Ichi 1.0 and should be compared to that when you're considering this for your deck:
- It costs 1 more than Ichi to rez, and the cost to break is 1$ less. I'd say that's still a good rez-to-break ratio.
- Like Ichi, there's a time and a place to rez it. You don't rez Ichi if they don't have programs installed. You don't rez Zed 2 if they don't have hardware installed.
- There's no ETR on it, so it won't have the same stopping power of a Fairchild 3.0.
- Virtually all runners have programs, so Ichi will be relevant in pretty much every game. Almost all runners have a console, so I think this will be universally useful enough to include.
- Now that MKUltra is probably one of the most popular killers, I want to point out that it can break this for 6+, 6 and a datasucker token, or 3+ and a datasucker token. None of those are remotely cheap, and all of them are more than the rez cost of 6.
EDIT: The MKU math was wrong because the last sub is blank if they can break. The correct math is 6 or 3 and a datasucker token, assuming they haven't clicked through another ice before this one. Still respectable, but not quite as strong.
The power of the facecheck here is relative to the hardware that the runner has. If they're on Astrolabe or Forger, it won't be that painful for them unless it screws up their . If they're running Obelus or Şifr, that's a pretty notable setback. If I had less than 10 and had to choose between trashing Sifr or taking 2 brain damage, I might take the damage. It's like, deeeyaaaamn...
Can't wait to see these in CD with Fenris, Enforced Curfew, and some splash of Snare! or Neural EMPs.
I also love this card in Weyland decks as a Plascrete/Hopper killer. Taking two brain damage against a deck is obscene, so it's a total lose/lose facecheck.