Compare: Femme Fatale × Botulus
Flavor: This slime-mold can ooze through the pores in ice, or find its way along the walls of a maze, but it cannot ooze through the walls themselves. (Not all EtR ice are Barriers, but all Barrier ice can EtR.)
Related:
- Femme Fatale: also a “subcount-taxed bypasser” (
Whenever you encounter the chosen ice, you may pay [$1] for each subroutine it has. If you do, bypass it.
). - Botulus: also punishes low-subcount host-ice (and also is
Virus - Trojan
). - Ika: a “Host-Sentry breaker” (
Killer - Trojan
). - Savant: a “non-Barrier breaker” (
Killer - Decoder
).
Note that it counts subroutines (ignoring strength), and that it says is not a barrier
(not is a sentry or code gate
, affecting Mythic
/etc ICE too).
“Femme-like Bypassing” is especially powerful against low-subcount ICE with higher strength or harsher on-encounter triggers. For example:
- You can skip
“when encountered”
triggers, including those adding subroutines/subtypes while only paying for the printed subroutines (e.g. bypass Starlit Knight for$2
, even if you have∞ tags
; or bypass Loki for just$1
, even if there's a rezzedBarrier
), as well as those unbreakably punishing you (e.g. bypass Tollbooth or Funhouse for just$1
).
And immobile trojans (unlike Hush) obviously synergizes with trojan-rehosting (like Spree?) or ice-exposure (like 419?) effects, as well as undermining ice-rezzers. For example:
- If a Týr has been revealed by a Jinja City Grid and/or “pre-rezzed” by a Haas-Bioroid: Architects of Tomorrow), you can “physarum it” (before even your 1st encounter with it), bypassing it for
$3
. Ditto Tucana’ing an iceberg.
Physarum (via Latin from Greek «φυσάριον» (physarion, “small bellows”) are slime-molds.
…
They studied slime molds and their abilities to solve mazes by placing nodes at two point separated by a maze of plastic film. The mold explored all possible paths and solves it for the shortest path.
Links:
A lot of design space for corp decks can be easily blanked by this single card, expensive sentries/codegates are basically forbidden because of this card, I really agree with you and hope this card will be banned.
— Blue_Disco_Dude