#Netrunner Datapack Review: Daedalus Complex — Haas-Bioroid
Runner reviews
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
NEXT Wave 2 — Include
Ooh, this has potential. Either you work it with the native ID, or with the Foundry, and you’re pretty much guaranteed at least one activation. NW2 rewards you for playing “standard” Netrunner in an inherently powerful way — by slowly reducing the runner’s pool of options to push back.
I’d pack this in with Self-Destruct Chips and Defective Brainchips as a grinding late-game lock: eventually, either the stacking NEXT effects lock them out, or they’re simply flatlined. Notably, this addition to NEXT glacier indirectly solves a current problem with it: ice destruction, like with Sifrsite, where the NEXT cards are made weaker with every one removed. But you only need one up to deal brain damage, and with six hand-shrinking agendas, even one active piece of NEXT ice is potentially damning.
Zed 2.0 — Include (Conditional)
It’s out of the range of a base-level Mimic, and when it works it REALLY hurts. But hardware destruction isn’t necessarily what you want when it goes off. Sure, we’re all scrambling for ways to take Sifr offline, but is it worth having a piece of otherwise dead ice on hand or installed? If their plan is more software or resource-based than hardware-based, you’re going to wish you had an end-the-run effect instead.
…maybe as a one-of.
Defense Construct — Exclude
Bah. JACKSON HOWARD isn’t out of the meta yet. And even if it was, there are much better recursion effects in Haas-Bioroid, of all factions. It costs 2+N and N clicks, where N is the number of cards you want to recycle. Archived Memories, Friends in High Places — all inherently superior options without a trash cost, AND you can grab stuff that isn’t facedown either, nor do they necessitate that the runner choose to go through Archives.
So many conditions just to recycle even one damn card.
The art is hilarious, though. A shame it was packed with a fundamentally awful card.
