Phoenix (🧑🏻🎤🐦🔥) is giving “Red Mercury”, “interactive Esâ”, and “flexible MERChant”.
She synergizes with:
- Subroutine-“Rewriting”: like Bankhar. You can “pass through” even a Biawak, without either breaking its EtR subs or suffering its Destroyer subs.
- Subroutine-“Melting”: like Banner (or Shred). You can “break” EtR’s, such as Tree Line’s or Logjam’s, without breaking them.
- “Direct”-Subroutine-Breaking: like Botulus. Against “two-sub tax+check ice”, you can break the EtR and let the non-EtR fire.
- (Subroutine-)Effect Prevention: like AirbladeX against APs (let the sub resolve, and neutralize its resolution).
and with:
- other Subroutine-Resolution rewards: like Raindrops Cut Stone.
- ‘other’ Sabotage: like Chastushka. The smaller HQ is, the better the cards they must discard (like agendas or win-cons). And if HQ is empty, they must start milling cards.
Likewise, trashing Operations/ICE from HQ, like Eye for an Eye, Gourmand, Carnivore, etc.
Design
His quasi-Sabotage is a pseudo-multi-access, like Mercury’s (true) multi-access, but where you must resolve subroutines, not just bypass or derez over them. (And his a successful run targets any server, like Hoshiko’s access, not just centrals.)
IMHO, “Resolved-Subroutines-matter” is much healthier than “Unbroken-Subroutines-matter”. Letting the Corp resolve their (non-EtR) subroutines is more interactive than “just don't break ice” or “just touch a card”.
PS. This is my favorite spoiled Runner ID (before playing with any).
Cards
Bankhar in Phoenix is extremely synergistic:
- sets up the
a subroutine resolved check.
- helps with
a run becomes successful check.
- lets you flexibly attack any server with an outermost, single-sub, rezzed ice (if available).
Banner can “melt” past most Barriers, like Kessleroid’s two ↳ End the run’s. (Will we sleeve up a Banner alongside two Rising Tide? I WANT TO BELIEVE.)
A Shred can “melt past” a singular gearcheck (Tatu-Bola, Ablative, Ping, Descent, Flyswatter) unless the Corp suffers “1 HQ damage”, while still triggering Phoenix (since the ↳ End the run was not broken and yet the Barrier was still passed), thus forcing the Corp to either suffer “1 HQ sabotage”. CF. a The Corp trashes (1 card at random or) 1 card of their choice from HQ. fork.
Raindrops in Phoenix feels kinda like Bravado in Baz.
And Chastushka will mill (at least) 2 cards from R&D, if Phoenix has bonked the Corp down to 2 cards in HQ. (That is, the smaller HQ is, the weaker R&D gets: their “Forced-Discard” synergizes with Sabotage.)
However, Jinteki can bin Fujii Asset Retrieval (for Regenesis or Moon Pool), and any Corp can choose to bin a Petty Cash (losing “only half-a-card”).
ICE
Against ice with a “conditional”/“situational” subroutine, you can sometimes trigger Phoenix with impunity, getting the credit and ping for no marginal cost (beyond the encounter).
- Doomscroll: if your taggedness is under two.
- N-Pot: if the threat-level is under four.
- Valentão: if the credit-pools are close enough.
- Piranhas: if the hand-sizes are close enough.
- Mycoweb: if no Sentries/CodeGates are rezzed/relevant.
- etc
Against ice with a “secondary”/“incidental” subroutine (not trashing programs, suffering dealing multiple points of damage, ending the run, or so on an), you can “partly break” it to trigger Phoenix (if you can afford to suffer it).
↳ The Corp gains _[$].: like Maskirovka, Valentão or Vampyronassa, etc.
↳ You may draw up to _ cards.: like Piranhas, Unsmiling Tsarevna, etc. Especially if you don't think they can risk doing so. (However, firing Empiricist’s “safe-draw” would be counterproductive.)
↳ You may install 1 … from HQ.: like Scatter Field. Especially if you don't think they have anything left to install, no server to install it, no ice left if it's ice-only, or so on. (However, firing Drafter’s recursion would be counterproductive.)
↳ The Runner loses 2[$]. or ↳ … unless the Runner pays 2[$].: like Maskirovka, Afshar, Syailendra, Valentão, Vampyronassa, Attini, etc.
↳ Do 1 net damage.: like Anemone, Piranhas, Syailendra, Attini, Phoneutria, Doomscroll, etc.
↳ The Runner loses [click].: like M.I.C.. Which is “taking a nonbasic action”.
↳ Give the Runner 1 tag.: like Virtual Service Agent, Starlit Knight, Jaguarundi, Hammer, Doomscroll, etc.
Rules
- Unfortunately, Runner effects like Phoenix,
The Corp trashes 1 card from HQ [at random], Sabotage 2, etc won't trigger your Cacophonies but will trigger their AU Co..
Flavor
We'll be singin',
When we're winnin'.
We'll be singin':
I get knocked down! but I get up again
You're never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down! but I get up again
You're never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down! but I get up again
You're never gonna keep me down
PS. Here's a microstory liberated from one of NSG's dataforts:
At just -5mo old (second trimester), during its Chromal-Reveal Party, Ryo's parents had brought an unintentionally hypergolic mixture of two gray-market chemicals, trademarked as Albion Blue and Red Fuming Nitric Acid (resp.). When its Dad bumped into the canisters while chanting “The chromosomes are X_!”, causing a grain of one to drift into a drop of the other, and (about one millisecond layer, according to the coroner), generated a deci-thermonuclear explosion which incinerated multiple chromosomophilic cultists. Fortunately, its Mom had stayed home sick, and no people lost their lives during the event. Instead, the district lost any presumption as one of the last such havens for chromosomal cults left in the city, due to the unexpected decline in membership (after the leadership's molecular instability).
Immediately afterwards, still in the womb of its Mom, an ex-Weyland lawyer turned homemaker, the Churchosome sued the foetus for “gendernetic terrorism”. This was the flaw that broke the enamel's back, however, and its Mom broke with the cult, defending her still-nameless proto-baby Ryo in court, winning before going into labor. Then, with the support of a somewhat obscure Weyland corp's legal team (not her previous employer), and despite a Jinteki division joining the trial as prosecution (citing concerns about “clones' rights extremism”), she won again on appeal. This set jurisprudential precedent for prude juries that “Foetuses cannot be convicted of Terrorism and/or Nucleotide-based Crime.”, in 23% of corporate jurisdictions terrestrially (and 89% extraterrestrially).
Twenty-•••• years later, Phoenix released its first post-Nebula hit, “Chromonuclear Bomb”, followed by “Gender Tremor”.
RIP Ryo, you may get knocked down, but you'll get up again.
— D4v1d-Gr43b3r