no, I'm not obsessed with will o the wisp

notrocketscience 19

it's just an underrated card

3 comments
3 Nov 2015 Bigguyforyou518

I think it's fairly accurately rated, actually. It's rig destruction of a peculiar sort, but rig destruction nonetheless. Ideally what rig destruction does is knock out a breaker right before they hit the ice that they needed that breaker for, which Will-o'-the-Wisp literally cannot do (it only works after they've succeeded the run, and likely stolen the agenda). Ash 2X3ZB9CY can enable a cute play with this, but consider that's 6 just for the rez costs, assuming you don't need to buff the Ash trace.

The other problem is obviously that it doesn't actually trash cards. This may seem like a strength, because you can't use recursion like Clone Chip to immediately pull them back again, or Sacrificial Construct to save them, but consider that Shapers and Criminals both have powerful icebreaker tutors that are almost always included 3 times in their decks (Self-modifying Code and Special Order).

3 Nov 2015 notrocketscience

I've been playing Will-o'-the-Wisp with varying degrees of success for a while and while it's certainly not an auto-include in any style of deck and probably doesn't even really belong in a tier 1 deck, it's better than the binder fodder that other people seem to think it is. It's not a tool to stop the runner from stealing an agenda right then unless you also install it with Ash 2X3ZB9CY or Red Herrings or something else that gets into combo-wombo territory. The way to make it work is on servers that the runner needs to run repeatedly- either on a central (particularly against a medium deck) or in a never-advance style deck where you run a bunch of assets, upgrades, and 3 advance agendas and make the runner check your remote repeatedly to see if the latest newly installed card is actually an agenda.

3 Nov 2015 notrocketscience

Also, in this particular deck I'm hoping to use Breaker Bay Grid and The Root to mitigate the rez cost on my Will-o'-the-Wisps, because it is definitely overcosted at 4 and would be way more playable at 3 (in line with Cyberdex Virus Suite)