#Netrunner Datapack Review: Daedalus Complex — Criminal
Ratings:
- Exclude — Hell naw. Usually a better option. Or it’s just totally not useful at all and actively hurts the player that includes it. If you can make it work, it requires an extremely laborious setup, vulnerable to disruption. Ex: Eden Shard, Record Reconstructor, Disrupter
- Include (Conditional) — Niche effects, combo-reliant, or meta-reliant. Sometimes a dead card. Ex: Keyhole, Escher, Paintbrush
- Include — A solid card to run, particularly if you’re in its faction. Ex: R&D interface, The Turning Wheel, Diesel, I’ve Had Worse
- Include (Ubiquitous) — In a lot of cases, you’re going to want to import this even out of faction. Ex: Sifr, Temujin Contract, Daily Cast
- JACKSON HOWARD — You’re actively hindering yourself by NOT running this, regardless of your deck’s strategy. Ex: JACKSON HOWARD, Sure Gamble, Hedge Fund
Exploit — Include
Normally, Quest cards like Exploit are relatively niche. Though powerful in effect, the difficulty and expense inherent in breaking through what are usually heavily-defended central servers means you have to build around the Questlike specifically, at least to some minor extend.
This may not be true for the first Criminal variant. The faction has a ton of powerful ice-bypassing options available to it, allowing Exploit to be relevant even way late into the game against a Glacier deck.
And then it turns off the three most expensive or impacting cards on the field, forcing the Corp to either bleed themselves dry on the next turn, or allow the Runner access.
That’s a solid damn gameplan.
Spot the Prey — Exclude
Eehhh…
The problem with expose effects in Netrunner is that, eventually, you get good enough not to need it. Once you delve into relevant deck archetypes, learn what to defend against, and how much resource you need before taking a risk, expose effects sorta lose their worth.
That’s especially true if you’re limited to only non-ice cards. Being able to peek at the defenses before you commit to a run without all breakers online: valuable, and potentially a net gain. If they’re bluffing with an expensive piece of ice they can’t rez, that’s an easy decision to run. Being able to identify a PAD Campaign without the chance to access and trash it: not as valuable. You have to ask yourself if two credits is worth the information gained, and it usually isn’t.
