Welcome back! If you missed the first half of this Review, check out Escalation – Stimhack Community Reviews and Meta Predictions (Runner). This is the second installment of the Stimhack review of Escalation. In this article we’ll be covering the Corp cards and giving our thoughts and opinions on them. Let’s get started.

Fairchild 3.0

Rjayz

The last datapack gave us Fairchild 2.0, an extremely strong Code Gate only offset by being able to be broken for free by Yog.0. Fairchild 3.0 raises the bar even higher, by being harder to click through, having painful subroutines to faceplant into, the potential to ETR to protect remotes, and a higher strength at a modest price increase. Just like Fairchild 2.0, Yog.0 is still the best way to mitigate it, albeit requiring help from some combination of Datasucker, Ice Carver and Net-Ready Eyes. It is a fantastic piece of ICE, and an automatic 3x include in any Haas-Bioroid deck. While Rumor Mill is a major blow to the classic Foodcoats deck, there are ways to mitigate it, including Enhanced Login Protocol, relying more on Biotic Labor, and playing the never-advance game. I foresee Fairchild 3.0 making a very strong meta impact, reinforcing at least one flavour of HB as a solid choice in the post-Escalation metagame.

SimonMoon

This is the strongest piece of ICE that has been printed in a while. It fills every role you need of ICE in HB: scoring remote, early campaign remote, facecheck threat, taxing centrals. Facechecking this after click one is often backbreaking, losing six credits and taking the Corp’s choice of a brain damage or ETR. This facecheck punishment past click one drastically limits the Runner’s options, even if you don’t have it on the board. Gordian Blade breaks it for six, which is an amazing ratio for a six-rez piece of ICE. The only way to break it well is with Yog.0, and Yog requires at least one other piece in Datasucker, and even Datasucker can be taxed out. Fairchild 3.0 will see play in every EtF deck, and will likely be 3x in most of them. It’s a huge boost in power to any HB deck trying to tax their opponent out in any way, and I expect to see HB represented at the top tables, with a good chunk of that because of the power of this card. I would be shocked if there were not multiple decks with Fairchild 3.0 in the Top 16.

Terrificy

Hitting with this ICE is a true joy, while it simultaneously boosts Ravana 1.0 to a very high level, by being able to turn that into a 3-credit 5-strength Code Gate that reads “Do 1 brain damage, End the Run or do 1 brain damage”. Strong enough to be a 3-of in any Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future deck. It is both amazingly taxing against many of the ordinarily useful breakers, while simultaneously being a hard hit to suffer. It heavily discourages running blindly later than click 1, while Architect heavily discourages running blindly on your later clicks, giving HB even more ICE that you just don’t want to hit. Yog.0 with support is the best way to break this, which is why any EtF deck playing Fairchild 3.0 (which should be all of them) should also remember to pack Cyberdex Virus Suite, as purging to hit with Fairchild 3.0 is strong. Runners should beware of hitting this, and if you do, be sure to keep easy trashes around – such as empty D4V1Ds (and do note, that D4V1D can technically break this for two counters and trashing itself!). You’ll see a lot of this. Corps, remember that the “End the Run” option is nice, but limiting your opponent’s options with early brain damage is often a better choice, unless the run is high-value (such as a powerful event or multi-access).

Ark Lockdown

Rjayz

I imagine I wasn’t the only one whose imagination went wild with ideas on how to remove those pesky Runner breakers from the game, especially those Paperclips carelessly thrown into the Heap. In reality, things don’t work out that way. It’s not an easy feat to blow up breakers in the first place, and unless you’re up against Criminal there’s quite a few ways the Runner can retrieve them from the Heap before you get the opportunity to remove them. I see this card having two homes. The first is a net damage deck the likes of Chronos Protocol: Selective Mind-mapping and Jinteki: Potential Unleashed, where you attempt to bin your opponents breakers using net damage, Salem’s Hospitality or Power Shutdown, and then use Ark Lockdown to remove them while you score behind cheap ETR ice. The second is playing it out of HB to get rid of Clot, enabling you to score with Biotic Labor. The first type of deck is unfortunately not a very strong strategy, and while Clot is out of favour at the moment, even if it returns HB can already beat it without needing a niche card. I don’t see this card being very useful in the metagame.

SimonMoon

I think Ark Lockdown is a pretty bad card in the current meta. While it’s easy to get lost in dreams of its tremendous upside, the majority of the time it won’t do anything. The most likely target is hitting a Paperclip that has intentionally been ditched, but doing that doesn’t win you the game. Barriers are generally the worst ice type, with many decks running only three or four barriers. So in order to turn a Paperclip kill into a win, you need to run additional (and hard ETR) barriers, which makes your deck worse if you don’t manage to kill Paperclip. Additionally, with Temüjin Contract sucking up all the spare influence that Runners have, Clone Chip is at an all-time low. For these reasons, I don’t expect to see any Lockdown in the cut, but I expect there to be a decent amount of Ark Lockdown in Swiss, so it would make me slightly less inclined to play a deck that can randomly get hosed by Lockdown (MaxX).

Terrificy

I like this design. It reminds me a lot of the Magic: The Gathering card Surgical Extraction, which is a lot better and would be oppressive in Netrunner. I suppose Ark Lockdown is cool if your opponent is unlucky with MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock or their Injects, but the effect is rarely worth the card slot, if ever. Even if you get to recur this with Clone Suffrage Movement (haha), it’s just not worth it.

Dogs

The problem with Ark Lockdown is it will typically force the Corp to play a suboptimal strategy in order to maximize it. Killing Paperclip is nice, but Paperclip isn’t strictly necessary to break Eli 1.0. So, you replace Eli with Vanilla or Bastion, but then you’re sacrificing HB’s best barrier by far in order to maybe achieve a pipe dream scenario that smart players will play around.

thebigunit3000

It’s not a powerful card, but its existence changes Runner behavior versus EtF – you’re going to cost anybody running Paperclip an extra click and credit, plus the tempo hit of having to install it upfront. This card screams “Consulting Visit me!” You want to play it in a deck that nobody is expecting it from, but you also don’t want to have to spend too much influence or deck space on it.

Hellion Beta Test

Rjayz

While the effect is very strong, the prerequisites of having a monetary advantage and the Runner trashing one of your cards somewhat conflict, as usually in HB having a monetary advantage is the result from the Runner not trashing one of your campaigns, and if the Runner is poor enough for you to land the trace they probably aren’t contesting your assets. With Temüjin Contract being a card, landing the trace is even harder than it would normally be. Hellion Beta Test feels a lot like a 50th card to me, a card with a potentially very powerful effect, yet ultimately not making the cut.

Terrificy

I guess the effect of this is cool and useful, but it requires an economic advantage, targets that makes it worth paying into the trace, and they have to actually have trashed an accessed card (e.g. this will not be playable after a Parasite has trashed a piece of ICE). In this meta, there are better Exodias to assemble. If we see a low-credit deck (such as Blackmail recursion, Stealth or another archetype) rise to the top, this might see play, if that archetype will also want – and have the money – to trash your stuff. I don’t see that happening.

Dogs

I see people saying the trace is weak, but I don’t entirely agree. The trace follows the standard “playcost + 1” formula, and so like most traces requires the Corp to have more money than the Runner in order to be successful. Unfortunately, in a Temüjin Contract meta, it can be very difficult for Corps to actually build up that credit advantage. That aside, the potentially devastating impact of a successful Hellion Beta Test trace means runners may be wary of trashing your cards, which may not be ideal but ultimately is a bit of a win for the faction that has Eve Campaign, Adonis Campaign, and Ash 2X3ZB9CY.

Gejben

I’m definitely looking forward to testing this card. The effect is strong and since runners are so rich now you probably have the best shot anyway at being able to win the trace after they have gone into your remote and trashed a campaign or something. So the downside seems quite minor. Many archetypes rely on support for their programs (stealth credits, Net-Ready Eyes, Ice Carver etc.) to safely break bigger ICE like Fairchild 3.0 so trashing some of those might be good.

Project Kusanagi

Rjayz

Only seems good in Jinteki: Personal Evolution, and very questionable at that. Against that ID, runners are already wary of facechecking your ice, and doubly so if you have this scored early. It doesn’t give you a point towards winning either, and needs you to waste a Mushin No Shin to realistically get counters on it. In most scenarios this is about as good as Shock!, and that’s a very mediocre card in PE. It’s cool to see Jinteki getting their own Project Agenda five cycles later, but this isn’t nearly as good as the others.

Terrificy

… I suppose it’s a Shock! that boosts your Philotic Entanglement in Jinteki: Personal Evolution? The effect on this isn’t very good. Maybe useful if you are the true lord of Yomi.

Gejben

This card reads “Sets up the kill with Komainu if the Runner is stupid enough to facecheck when this agenda is scored without a Sentry breaker”. The card that was taken out to fit Project Kusanagi was almost certainly better, put it back in instead.

DNA Tracker

Rjayz

This ice puts Jinteki back on track (pun intended) for enabling glacier strategies. Combining high strength with three painful subroutines, DNA Tracker joins the ranks of Fairchild 3.0 and Tollbooth as an expensive and very taxing Code Gate. How much play DNA Tracker will see strongly depends on the viability of Jinteki glacier, and how much Rumor Mill and Political Operative see play, as those decks still strongly bank on Caprice Nisei to score out.

Terrificy

This is a good piece of ICE. If Jinteki glacier ever becomes a thing again, I am sure that this piece of ICE is in it, probably replacing an out-of-faction high-impact high-cost Code Gate (that would be Tollbooth). When it was originally spoiled, people were even testing it in Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future, but Fairchild 3.0 really takes up the same spot. There aren’t many great reasons to currently import this into another faction, and as Jinteki isn’t really that much of a thing at the moment, it is unlikely that this will have any real impact on the meta.

thebigunit3000

Here’s an ID that loves high-cost ICE with facecheck punishment — Blue Sun: Powering the Future. The existence of this ICE should strike fear into runners’ hearts, keeping a D4V1D or Code Gate breaker at the ready. Because Blue Sun can bring this right back to hand, it can move this incredibly powerful piece of ICE to wherever it would be most useful, and can bring it back whenever it needs to pay for an expensive Midseason Replacements or BOOM!

Jinteki: Potential Unleashed

Rjayz

Jinteki’s 12-influence ID looks menacing with its bloody circular saw blade as a homage to the “Thousand Cuts” archetype it aims to bring back. In practice it doesn’t quite deliver. It suffers from a similar weakness as other non-Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions Jinteki net damage decks: they can’t touch a Runner that sits back and builds up their rig, they don’t have a great scoring plan to apply pressure against that strategy, and unlike IG their kill condition is too easily disrupted. Barring a very careless Runner or a lucky shot off a Bio-Ethics Association getting a critical breaker, it will be hard to get runners to bleed out against this ID.

Terrificy

An interesting ID that could lead to a resurgence of the “Thousand Cuts” playstyle. While it most likely does nothing when it comes to competitive high-level play, it is a very fun, casual ID – I guarantee you will rejoice when your opponent hits a Komainu. While it can run decks out of cards or get lucky and simply bust recursion-light decks, this will happen infrequently.

thebigunit3000

Coming to a Netrunnerdb Deck of the Week near you. Featuring an all-star cast including: House of Knives, Fetal AI, Shock!, Komainu, Aiki, and more! It’s definitely a fun ID, but it may take a while for its full potential to be unleashed upon the meta.

Alexa Belsky

Rjayz

“Another NBN card that lets you hide away HQ cards, yet worse” is my synopsis of Alexa Belsky. Unlike Special Report, Alexa does not give you new cards to replace the ones you’re trying to hide away, and compared to Disposable HQ the effect is not repeatable, nor does it stow away cards safely at the bottom of R&D. I have no clue as to how she makes more money than MacPherson, but being recruited by corps is definitely not one of them.

Terrificy

This effect isn’t good enough. If this card does something good, it’s because your opponent pays ten to fourteen credits to prevent you from shuffling five to seven cards into your deck, and if they do, they’re likely to make other mistakes that will lead to you winning the game. But then again, you made the mistake of playing Alexa Belsky…

Inactivist

Maybe one of these pseudo-Jackson Howard effects will get pity slotted after rotation, but it’s probably not going to be this one.

Observe and Destroy

Rjayz

Unfortunately it seems like there won’t be any destruction to observe in the near future of Netrunner as this card, while nice, is another tag punishment card that already has stronger alternatives. It’s much harder to set up than Closed Accounts, The All-Seeing I or Exchange of Information due to the additional condition of needing the Runner to be poor, and unlike those alternatives it removes the tag as well. Destroying any installed card is a powerful effect, but too hard to set up in this fashion.

Terrificy

This seems like a win-more card. Using this against tag-me opponents is unlikely to be good, as their decks are probably designed towards a high level of redundancy. If you are using this in some sort of combination with Closed Accounts, you are really just doubling down on tag punishment, one of which needs support from another piece of tag punishment. While definitely a strong effect, the clause about the Runner being on six or fewer credits isn’t good enough in this meta. Even if your opponent decides to abandon their gameplan and take fifteen tags off of Data Ravens, you should have better ways to leverage those.

Gejben

While the effect of trashing any type of card is strong, it will be quite difficult to set up. Runners are rich so you will probably have to pair it with Closed Accounts and then you can’t easily combo it with Breaking News. It might be an okay way for Midseason Replacements kill decks to get rid of Plascrete Carapace, but I think that ultimately it will very rarely, if ever, be worth a slot.

Service Outage

Rjayz

Won’t serve you any good outside of not being in your deck. Service Outage joins an already quite bloated suite of NBN Currents as a meager contender. The effect, unlike Enhanced Login Protocol which wastes an entire click, is very weak, and New Angeles Sol: Your News, the ID that wants currents the most, has better alternatives in Targeted Marketing and the other new current in this datapack, Scarcity of Resources. At a single influence point it’s easily splashed, but the other Corps have their own superior Currents.

Terrificy

In the current state of affairs, this card is simply not impactful enough. A single credit per turn, at best, simply isn’t that good. There are better Currents to recur with New Angeles Sol: Your News, and no decks can really abuse having this around for a longer period of time. There are no archetypes or IDs that can use this in the way that Jinteki: Replicating Perfection used Enhanced Login Protocol back in 2015 – which is probably for the best.

BOOM!

Rjayz

BOOM! is no doubt what you’ll be shouting out loud after flatlining an unfortunate runner with this card. While the two tag requirement, being a Double Operation and the Runner being able to trash this card make it quite hard to set up, seven meat damage is sure to kill any runner not wearing a Plascrete Carapace. BOOM! will find a home in two different decks that are best suited to landing tags and then killing: Blue Sun: Powering the Future, and NBN kill decks. Blue Sun is the ID best equipped to set up a BOOM! kill in Weyland, due to it having the credit advantage necessary to reliably give the Runner a large amount of tags with Midseason Replacements. NBN can give the Runner two tags on the Corp turn with Breaking News and 24/7 News Cycle. The viability of these decks hinges strongly on the amount of Plascrete Carapace being slotted into Runner decks. I’d argue that a large enough portion of players are afraid enough of BOOM! that while the top tables might not slot it, you will see multiples in the Swiss section of a tournament, making these decks questionable choices in my opinion.

SimonMoon

This card has tremendous potential in various kill decks. It provides improvements over previous kill packages in I’ve Had Worse avoidance, deck slots, influence, and draw consistency (needing only one instead of two kill pieces). Its drawback is mainly its trash cost, which makes it hard to keep in hand. There are roughly three decks I see it fitting in: Blue Sun: Powering the Future Midseason Replacements, Yellow Power Shutdown Kill, and Butchershop Yellow Kill. The Power Shutdown combo decks are probably the scariest, but I think they also have a host of problems. Their ice is porous, meaning it’s easy to snipe Jackson Howards from hand, leaving them unable to combo. Since they only need to score one Breaking News, running HQ repeatedly is a strong strategy, and a Medium dig that trashes every Jackson is actually incredibly hard to beat. Additionally, you have to draw a lot to find your combo pieces, giving your opponent easy access to agendas. I actually have found Blue Sun Midseasons to be a stronger deck. With Consulting Visit having a bunch of relevant targets (Midseason Replacements, Oversight AI, Currents, BOOM!), I’ve found you’re often able to get the money lead, at least in the early game, and leverage that into a strong score out or Midseasons plan. The yellow kill decks are not actually massively different with BOOM! in my opinion, and should basically be treated as the same as before (a meta call depending on the Plascrete saturation). Ultimately, I think while BOOM! only represents a moderate improvement on meat damage kill decks. I would expect to see a large amount of BOOM! in the Swiss rounds at Worlds, but will not be massively represented at the top. I would guess BOOM! will make the Top 16, but would not put heavy odds on it.

Terrificy

I guess a whooping seven meat damage is nothing to scoff at. However, it comes with costs – the Runner needs to have two tags, it costs four credits and two clicks, and on top of that it’s trashable at a very low cost. All of this makes BOOM! a bit hard to pull off. The Runner can even remove it from the game with Salsette Slums, which seems to be a popular card choice currently. It might see limited success in NBN, where decks can either install-advance a protected Breaking News, advancing and scoring it the next turn, then dealing seven meat damage (providing the Runner doesn’t steal the agenda or hit BOOM! in HQ). It is also possible to score Breaking News, and then hitting the Runner with a Power Shutdown combo, using Jackson to shuffle in Sweeps Week, 24/7 News Cycle and BOOM!, then playing all these three with Accelerated Diagnostics. While this is a Power Shutdown kill-combo for seven damage from two credits, it isn’t as easy to pull off as it sounds. Undoubtedly, someone will do something absolutely bonkers with BOOM!, but that person won’t be me. In any case, it is a cool card design, and I’m sure it will remain a casual favourite for a long time.

Dogs

This card is big for Blue Sun: Powering the Future. Not only is Consulting Visit / Oversight AI spam a great way to build up credit advantage for a Blue Sun kill deck, but Glacier Blue Sun can try to masquerade as kill, forcing runners to play slow and suboptimal until it’s too late.

Door to Door

Rjayz

I had a paragraph written up about how Door to Door could never be good, but felt like I was wasting too many words on a card that will never leave the binder for most people. The numbers on the card are too weak to work with. You can put those Aryabata Techs away, everyone.

Terrificy

A few people once told me that this card was good, and I spent a couple of minutes looking at it, trying to figure out why it wasn’t an absolutely horrible card. That is probably the most effective thing this card will do. What a ruse.

Gejben

A Current needs a pretty damn strong ability to warrant costing three credits since it is removed by the runner scoring or playing another current. Unfortunately Door to Door does not have that. You have to dish out even more money if the runner has link (but no one plays Andy or Kate, right?) for it to do anything at all. Even if it does actually fire, the ability to do one meat damage or give one tag is probably not even worth the three credits it costs to play the card in the first place.

Scarcity of Resources

Rjayz

I’ve had this played against me on my first turn and if there’s one thing Scarcity of Resources is good at, it’s slowing down Runner setup. The effect is strong enough to warrant inclusion, but hinges strongly on finding it early. I’d expect Scarcity of Resources to find its way into Corp decks that have space for multiple copies, especially those that are more vulnerable to Rumor Mill as this doubles as a solution to it.

SimonMoon

This card enters the meta at a great time, with resource econ dominating as well as overwriting Runner Currents (Rumor Mill / Employee Strike) being important. It’s important to note that its value maxes out at two credits per resource, because the Runner has a variety of options for dealing with it: paying two credits, discarding resource, holding resource to play after stealing agenda / current. We should assume the Runner will pick the best option, so we should assume that in the cases they don’t pay the two credits, their option chosen is less than two credits of value. Scarcity of Resources earns its deck slot around the third Resource played (or not played because of the cost). This is a pretty reasonable situation to hit, though you’ll have some matchups where it’s dead, and its value falls off hard if you don’t draw it early. There are three decks I think Scarcity helps. It provides a worthwhile fourth Current for New Angeles Sol: Your News which increases the deck’s consistency, though I think a 3 / 1 split of Targeted Marketing / Scarcity of Resources is what I’d go with. Additionally, it provides a solid Current to Weyland and Jinteki who don’t have a good, general-purpose Current, and have extreme weaknesses to Employee Strike / Rumor Mill as factions. Ultimately, I think it will provide a slight boost to a couple of already decent decks, but will not bring anything to the top on its own. I would guess there will be some in the top 16, but they will largely be the decks you’d expect to see anyway (IG, Sol).

Terrificy

A very fine neutral Current, though it (spoilers) isn’t as good as people say. It can be a neat tempo hit, especially in the early game. Not every deck can afford two added credits to Street Peddlers or Earthrise Hotels. Pairs up well with cards like Hard-Hitting News, as a lot of the Resources in the meta right now are related to economy — Security Testing, Liberated Account, Temüjin Contract, etc. Won’t be in every deck, but will see play in this meta. Knowing when to install your Resources anyway is a valuable skill.

Dogs

Excellent in New Angeles Sol: Your News because of increased reliability, and in general as a way to turn off pesky Runner Currents. The effect shouldn’t be relied on for most Corp decks, which likely will only run it as a singleton. Still, I suspect this will become a standard Current include for many decks.

Gejben

Scarcity of Resources seems to me to be a bit overhyped. I think it is mostly worth playing it if you get it early, and that means dedicating a lot of deckslots to it. I think that the only deck that will run it effectively is New Angeles Sol: Your News, an ID that wants to dedicate a lot of slots for Currents anyway. Even then, it’s hard to turn down Targeted Marketing, a Current that doesn’t cost anything to play. Even if you can get it early and get it to stick, it is dependent on the runner running resources which is not always the case. However, most strong archetypes at the moment seem to, so Scarcity Sol might be in a good place in the meta right now.

thebigunit3000

Definitely a powerful card in the current meta. Scarcity works well when you can protect your Current (by discouraging runs and playing less agendas) or protecting it by virtue of being New Angeles Sol: Your News. It’s also useful as a Rumor Mill / Employee Strike killer, if nothing else. I have little doubt that we’ll be seeing Full Art copies of this card next Fall.

Conclusion

That concludes both parts of the Escalation datapack review. This was a big project bringing a lot of people in the community together putting their time and energy into helping provide more content for everyone. I’d like to thank Rjayz, SimonMoon, Terrificy, Dogs, Gejben, and especially Inactivist and thebigunit3000 (for going through and editing the entire thing) for everything they put into this article! We hope to bring you more for the next datapack: Intervention. Until next time!