Double or Nothing
Synchrocyclotron and Flood the Market
I’m not talking about the new Shaper right now. Calvin wrote a fantastic piece of fiction, go read that.
As for the runner, my current opinion is quite negative. However, as I’ve mentioned quite a few times these last few days, we have not yet seen the cards in the rest of the set that are meant to synergize with this ability.
And I would rather not spend my time spreading negativity. While the folks at NBN might love their engagement bait, I would rather focus on things I enjoy. So instead, let me focus on two of the other cards previewed at Worlds!
Actually, I do have one positive thing to say about Hiram: I think his matchup against Méliès U will be quite interesting.
Just a little faster…
This is not the first card in Netrunner that specifically calls out double, it is in fact the third. However, it is the first corp card. Of the two runner cards, one is actually very similar to Synchrocyclotron.
Starlight Crusade Funding was… not great. It turns out that having to play a double every turn just to break even was just not doable. It did see some play later, when Adjusted Chronotype allowed you to get around the drawback, but even then this was hardly taking the meta by storm.
The other card was Power Nap, a rather generic economy event.
Synchrocyclotron is the first corp card that cares about doubles, and it makes them cost one click fewer. Simple, right? Well…
Double Down
At three credits to rez and three to trash, Synchrocyclotron does not have a bad rate, though I expect it will draw a lot of comparison to Wage Workers.
Wage Workers has a different triggering condition, but the payoff is quite similar. Both effectively net you one click. One point in Wage Workers favor is that it can trigger more than once per turn, which doesn’t come up often, but when it does tends to be quite powerful.
Wage Workers currently sees play in a lot of asset-based decks as a way to install additional cards. In these kinds of decks, taking a turn that is install → install → install → do something else is very common, and helps keep filling the board with problems for the runner to deal with.
Additionally, when combined with operations that give you additional clicks or installs, such as Red Level Clearance, Nanomanagement, or Greasing the Palm, it is possible to use the extra click provided by Wage Workers to fast advance agendas. This requires pretty heavy investment in terms of deck slots as well as needing to hold a lot of cards in hand.
This then brings us to Synchrocyclotron. It lacks the combo potential that makes Wage Workers such a powerful card, at least at the moment. But it also lacks a lot of the rigidity required to make Wage Workers function. You just put doubles in your deck and benefit.
At time of writing, there are six double operations in standard, plus one more confirmed to be in Vantage Point. That’s a small enough number that I think I can just cover each one.
Corporate Hospitality is a good card. I remember being quite low on this card initially, comparing it to Archived Memories (which had just been banned), but having now played quite a bit of it, I think it is good.
“Good” does not make me want to put Synchrocyclotron in my deck just to use this. However, if I’m playing HB and already playing other doubles, this will certainly take the place of another economy card. Synchrocyclotron also solves the problem of overdraw this card can have, where by spending two clicks to effectively draw three cards, you might be forced to discard at end of turn.
In terms of combo potential, I think Distributed Tracing has the most going for it right now. The ability to give a tag to the runner on the corp’s turn is very powerful, and this card is appropriately restrictive in when you can play it (only if they stole an agenda last turn) and only giving you one click to actually use the tag before it passes back to the runner.
Enter Synchrocyclotron. Now we get two clicks to use that tag. The best I’ve been able to come up with is being able to use both Hypoxia and End of the Line. This isn’t a guaranteed flatline on a runner with a full grip, but it would get the job done against runners holding four cards, which is typically considered “safe”.
If you do want to go full combo, you can add in a Wage Workers and a second Hypoxia.
Mitosis is about creating shell games and traps for the runner. I don’t suspect that the ability to discount a click (at the cost of needing to have another asset that costs three credits in play) will make a difference. The cards you install with Mitosis cannot be scored or rezzed that turn, preventing any kind of fast-advance shenanigans.
Pivot is an undeniably powerful card that hasn’t seen a lot of play yet. If Synchrocyclotron does see play, I hope we will also see some pivots. The potential power to search R&D for a card and then immediately play or install something in a single click offers a tremendous amount of compression.
However, in contemplating this card, I run into a problem I’ve had a few times while writing this article: the best uses for Synchrocyclotron all seem to also have a Wage Workers involved somehow. Because with a Wage Workers, this can become a super-powered version of Greasing the Palm in the combo I mentioned above with Red Level Clearance and other operations that give more clicks: search your deck for a 4/2 agenda, immediately install it, and because you’ve played two other operations that turn you get a click back. Then advance three times, get an extra click because of Wage Workers, and score a 4/2 right out of your deck!
This honestly sounds like a really cool combo deck, but as soon as we analyze the critical cards for the list, it becomes obvious that the key card here is Wage Workers, not Synchrocyclotron. That doesn’t meant Synchrocyclotron is bad, but it will need more support to stand on its own.
Secure and Protect is a fairly niche card, mostly played in glacier archetypes that want to heavily ice their central servers. These kinds of decks won’t have a spare remote server for Synchrocyclotron, and even if they did, I’m not sure the runner would care you spent one click fewer on Secure and Protect.
This card is banned in standard. That was almost going to be my full review, but then I glanced at NRDB once more and realized it wasn’t banned in Startup, so if you want to, this card does let you flatline runners there.
For those unfamiliar, the reason why Touch-Ups is such an important card for kill combos in Standard is that it allows the corp to do two “damage” before they try to go for the kill, and because they are not actually trashing the cards, it will not trigger Steelskin Scarring.
I was going to be pretty down on Touch-Ups, but I actually think that Synchrocyclotron can solve one problem the deck sometimes runs into: in order to benefit from Touch-Ups, the corp needs a card in play that they can advance. Because Touch-Ups costs two clicks and the kill card played afterwards one click, the corp needs to already have an advanceable card installed. Synchrocyclotron would solve this by giving you a click to install something before you play the Touch-Ups.
But wait, there’s more!
We know there is at least one more double coming in Vantage Point: Flood the Market.
When Fully Operational was printed in Downfall, it gave HB asset decks a distinct style compared to the other factions; you were rewarded for putting ice on your assets, something that other factions would frequently forgo.
It is interesting, then, to see Flood the Market use that same style of gameplay. I had suspicions that this might be related to the NBN ID in this set, but now that we seen the Editorial Division, I don’t think they’re particularly interested in this. A simple answer might be that allowing existing HB decks to play this without giving up something in the form of the three influence was simply too good.
Inversely, I suspect it is worth trying to see if Fully Operational is worth three influence in Synapse Global, assuming that Vantage Point has more support for NBN assets.
Compared to Fully Operational, Flood the Market is either a much stronger or a much worse card. If you have fewer than three remote servers occupied and protected, the card does effectively nothing. However, as soon as you hit that threshold, it becomes a powerful fast advance tool. Keep in mind that the agenda you’re putting the counters on can be in one of those servers, so you only need two “extra” servers.
I am reminded somewhat of Psychographics, a NBN operation that was in System Update and could place multiple advancement counters if the runner was tagged.
In both cases, the runner is to some degree able to stop the corp from using this card. With psychographics, a runner had to end their turn with at most a single tag. And with Flood the Market, the runner has to try their best to keep the remote servers clear. Because a corp that starts their turn with two occupied and protected remote servers, as well as a third server that’s iced but empty, can install a 3/2 agenda and play Flood the Market. But they won’t have the clicks to set up those servers the turn they do that.
Which, actually, brings us back to Synchrocyclotron, as well as Red Level Clearance, Greasing the Palm, Wage Workers, and all the other things I mentioned earlier. If you reduce the cost to play Flood the Market by a click, you can use that click to set up an additional server. If we use Red Level Clearance, we can install Synchrocyclotron while getting the click back. Oh, oh, and then we use Greasing the Palm to install a Wage Workers, so we get a click back when we play Flood the Market. And then we can advance four more times and…
Wait, what do you mean Project Beale isn’t in Standard anymore?