Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon

Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon

Identity: Corp
Deck size: 45 • Influence: 15

As an additional cost to access a card in the root of a remote server, the Runner must pay 1[credit].

Sic Itur Ad Astra.
Illustrated by Emilio Rodríguez
Decklists with this card

Order and Chaos (oac)

#2 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Rulings
  • Updated 2017-04-09

    The Runner can decline to pay the 1 to access a card. [Official FAQ]

Reviews

Is Gagarin purely janky silliness, or is there a legitimate reason to play it over Blue Sun and Titan Transnational? It can't go big like Blue Sun, and it can't go fast like Titan, but it can tax the living hell out of the runner. Played correctly (with plenty of econ assets to spam on remotes), Gagarin is designed to give you a edge over the runner. For a Corp player, leveraging an economic advantage means:

Gagarin doesn't tax the runner if they don't run on remotes, so to take advantage of the ability, you want central servers that are dangerous or brutally taxing, and remotes that are just barely enticing enough to run on - that means not too much ICE, and assets that are just good enough to be worth running on and trashing.

Some cards that work great with this strategy:

  • Paywall Implementation - every remote run becomes a 2 swing before even factoring in costs (also mitigates the swing loss from Desperado / Security Testing)
  • NAPD Contract - 5's to access and steal, baby
  • PAD Campaign - 5's to access and (6 swing with Paywall up) is just nasty for an early runner still setting up their own board
  • Launch Campaign - 3's to access and (4-swing with Paywall up) means this a nearly guaranteed 5 profit (yes, that's Restructure-levels of duckets) or a really annoyed runner
  • Tour Guide - great new piece of ICE that directly punishes the runner if they decide they don't want to play your remote-tax game

Because the runner always has to pay the tax if they want to access, Gagarin has a minor consolation against anti-asset cards like Whizzard: Master Gamer, Scrubber, and Imp. It can also be situationally useful against Film Critic or Faust decks that run on very lean economy.

(Old Hollywood era)
Also, you can throw in (multiple) Toshiyuki Sakai for shenanegans. (Oh, you pay 1 to access? Swap. Do you want to try again? Oh, you pay 1 to access? Swap. Do you want to try again?...) —
You've just given me something else to do on my Netrunner bucket list! —

I believe this card would break the synergy of protecting Shell Corporation with a trap, as the runner can choose not to access the trap (when additional costs are factored in, the runner can elect not to pay them and not access, right? Like NAPD Contract or Fetal AI?). There aren't many other times where Weyland would play a trap, though, so my guess is that's not too much of a downside.

(All That Remains era)

Seems underpowered compared to the other IDs, but I think that this will improve over time... Taxing is always good. I'm not really sure that this is a "horizontal" ID, although you can play it that way... you can also make it as the "one more cost" to keep checking a scoring server, although that might only been 3-4 credits in a game in existing Weyland archetypes.

Thats why I said this should get better in time - I don't see the archetype that gets more value from this ID then from the Building a Better World existing today, but I can see the design space for it (things like NAPD Contract and Midway Station Grid).

(All That Remains era)
250

How would this shape up if we had multiple upgrades and the Runner could not afford all of them? Can the runner access the first ones he chooses and not the rest, or does the runner have to go home empty handed?

(All That Remains era)
@nydnarb You're point is valid, however your example/explanation fails to mention that the runner wouldn't even see the Snare if they declined to access, it would stay face-down so the hidden information and trap is still there (unless the Corp player blew it somehow) —
@narcow: You should also mention that the runner can decline to pay additional costs (even if he or she is able to do so) and not access. Look to page 4 of the FAQ under additional costs. Therefore, in your example, the runner starts choosing cards, one at a time. Before accessing each chosen card, the runner either pays 1 credit or doesn't access (runner's choice). It could be the case that the runner refuses to pay the additional costs and accesses nothing. As an example, suppose a facedown Snare! is protecting a rezzed SanSan City Grid, and suppose the runner has 10 credits. There is no ice in front of the server. The runner may run the remote, pay 1 to access the SanSan and trash it, and even though the runner has 4 credits remaining, he can decline to pay the additional cost to access the Snare!. Thusly, he wouldn't access the Snare! Note that the previous example is silly. No one playing Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon would make that play exactly because of this funky interaction. But perhaps someone could devise a better example. This example also illustrates the comment of @linuxmaier. —
@paulxthompson: The runner accesses the first however many he/she can afford. When a remote server is breached, the runner accesses all cards in that server in whatever order he or she wants. So, say you have a remote with cards A, B, C, D, and E in it. The runner has three credits. She chooses to access C, has to pay a credit. Next, she picks D and pays a credit to access that. Then A, pays a credit. Now the runner has no credits left in her pool. B and E have not been accessed. The runner picks a next card to access, B, but she cannot afford the extra cost, so the card is not accessed. The runner then selects the final card for accessing, but cannot afford to access it, so it is not accessed. The run ends. —