PeachHack Preview: Escalation Corp Side Spoiler

PeachHack is proud to present today’s Escalation spoiler, Ark Lockdown:

Corps these days have it rough when dealing with recursion: Levy AR Lab Access resets players decks who are burning through it with Wyldside, Same Old Thing enables endless Account Siphons and Blackmails, and Clone Chip keeps runners’ rugs safe from program destruction.

Until now, the primary ways that corps had to shut down recursion have been Chronos Project and Blacklist. Chronos Project is arguably one of the top 3/1 agenas in the game due to its ability to remove key cards in the runner’s heap from the game. However, for such a powerful effect, you have to score it as an agenda first, and more often than not, this will mean leaving it on the table for a turn, vulnerable to a steal. Blacklist hasn’t quite seen the popularity of Chronos Protocol largely due to the fact that it is only a “soft” lock on the heap, giving the runner an opportunity to trash it and turn off the effect. It has decent rez/trash stats, but due to the need to defense another remote, it unfortunately doesn’t make the cut in corp decks already tight for slots.

With Ark Lockdown, for 1 credit and a click, as an un-stealable, infrequently-trashable operation, a corp can target the runners’ most key card in their heap and completely remove it from the game, as well as all its other copies in the heap.

The possibilities this opens up are staggering, given current popular runner archetypes. Here are some options that spring to mind:

– Remove the Paperclip that the runner cleverly threw in the trash

– Remove a pesky Clot from the game to turn your Fast Advance game back on

– Salem’s Hospitality for a key card (such as Levy AR Lab Access), then immediately remove it

– Bring back rig destruction as an entire archetype by trashing and removing key breakers

– Win every game against MaxX

– Force Valencia to find their last copy of Blackmail instead of recurring old ones with Same Old Thing and Deja Vu

I am extremely excited to see how this card affects the way runners play, and I hope it gives them pause before they lean on heap recursion as a core part of their game plan.

Tune into the Southern Megacity Circuit Championship Invitational tomorrow on Sunday, September 18th for a spoiler from the Runner side of Escalation!