"Of course I still run 3 Temujin..." (Undefeated at GNK)

Cpt_nice 1954

"Run Archives 3 times, your turn". I bet I said this about 6 or 7 times today.

Yes, Temujin might have jumped in influence, but it still as powerful as ever and there is no reason not to still run 2 or 3 in most decks. Smoke especially gets a lot of value out of this card. I did have to cut corners with my remaining 6 influence, which meant dropping Switchblade for Dagger, but no situation came up where it would have made a difference. I also dropped scrubber, which I did not miss either because of the lack of asset spam.

Due to the release of TD I decided to slot in one Sacrificial Construct to deal with Scorpios shenanigans, but I found Film Critic and Employee Strike were all I needed. Scorpios and influence were also the reason I dropped the Clone Chips, which nearly cost me a game because of Marcus Batty, but luckily I had Atman as a back-up.

In total, I played 4 matches: Jinteki PE, Blue Sun, Nisei Division and Scorpios. Went undefeated against them. The only changes I would make is dropping Pol Op for the Turning Wheel, and maybe changing the one of Ghost Runner for a third copy of Net Mercur or a second copy of Sacrificial Construct if Scorpios becomes more popular.

2 comments
30 Apr 2017 dawspawn

How is Blackstone these days? I'm always hesitant to run it without NRE or a Datasucker. With Eli off the MWL it seems tough to justify.

30 Apr 2017 Cpt_nice

@dawspawn Blackstone breaks Eli for one credit more than Corrodor (5 vs 4), and that credit is stealth, so it is 'free' anyway. With a lot of common barriers (Bailiff, Vanilla, Ice Wall, Fire Wall, Next Silver) blackstone is just as efficient, and with high level breakers it is obviously the bees knees.

Sure, level 4 barriers are not quite common and situations were Blackstone is more efficient than Corroder (Wall of Static, Hive) are rare, but I think it is an extremely underrated fracter for Stealth decks. Let's also not forget, Blackstone keeps its strength for the duration of the run, which is an advantage Corroder does not have. This came up in my Blue Sun match up when my opponent had a Curtain Wall and Meru Mati stacked on HQ. Getting in that server would have cost me 14 credits with Corroder. With Blackstone it cost me 6 + 2 stealth credits.

tldr; If you can find the influence for it, Corroder is of course still gold standard in terms of barrier breakers. But Blackstone is great too, and definitely worth it if influence is tight.