This Just In! - Chill Out!

Welcome to This Just In!, an internal NBN broadcast for training and continuing education for cybersec personnel in using our superlative information network to trace, tag, outpace, and frag any Runners who dare to show their face on the corporate grid. I'm your host, Cybersec Sergeant Scrier.

This is the final episode in your crash course on NBN Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics. If you need to review the last class, you can check out re-runs at This Just In! - Cold as Ice. You better make sure that you've got all this information down, because there's a test at the end. I see you dolts chuckling - you think I'm kidding don't you? What do you think is going to happen when we turn you fools out into the cyberspace wild and Chaos Theory: Wunderkind (Cyber Exodus) comes strolling in? If you weren't paying attention, you'll wish you could find a comfy rock to hide under and die instead of having to march up to the Suits' office to tell them that you got your butt handed to you by a little girl with a stuffed teddy-saur.

So listen up!


Pop-up Window (Cyber Exodus)

You're all familiar with this - you jack in online, hop the grid to your favorite content node, and you're immediately assaulted by 1000 digital voices all screaming promises that this magic pill, this diet plan, this exercise contraption, or this how-to-make-friends-and-covet-their-stuff plan will make you look good, feel great, date supermodels, and drive race cars. We all know it's crap - after all, we're selling most of the crap - so it chaps our hide since it's distracting us from whatever we are trying to access. So imagine now that what you're trying to access is the secret business plan of a multibillion dollar corporation with no compunction about turning your sorry sack of meat into a smoking crater. You can see why the Runners are so willing to pay to make these distractions go away.


This ICE is a pretty minimal nuisance to the Runner, but that doesn't mean it's not effective. There are a lot of times when a nuisance is precisely what we need, especially when the price is right. The price is definitely right on this ICE - it's free to rez. For central servers, this makes a great way to tax a run. Oftentimes, central server access is fruitless for the Runner, and the two-credit swing this can produce on a small series of these runs can be just enough to bootstrap you economically past the early stages of the game where the Runner has an enormous edge. That is the ideal way to play this ICE - place it on whatever central server that your Runner opponent is most likely to run, gathering all these small economy boons into a sizable advantage.

Note, however, that you probably do not want to install this ICE on a remote server, since these servers are normally run just a fraction of the number of times that HQ or R&D will be run (even Archives, if you are playing against Sneakdoor Beta (Core)). An exception to this is as a defense against Inside Job (Core). Many times, particularly in the early game, you will wish to rush an agenda before the Runner has assembled his rig. It's difficult early-game to defend a couple of central servers, set up a two-ICE remote, have credits to rez all these ICE and still have money left over to advance an agenda. In this situation, the free rez cost on this ICE is the feature you will appreciate the most!


Data Hound (Humanitys Shadow)

A lot of the cybersec eggheads are really fond of making some kind of conceptual tie between their ephemeral ICE code and a plethora of more concrete or substantive things. Apparently this gives them some kind of mental model that helps them design it. Okay, I can understand that, but I doubt that 90% of this stuff is really comprised of swords, shields, dragons, ninjas, and pirates. Every now and then, though, you get one that really fits. This one was modeled as a tribute to the dev's favorite hunting dog after it died, and it's been serving us faithfully for flushing out troublesome Runner shenanigans ever since.


This ICE is another nuisance-classed protection that can be used to tax the Runner as well. While it doesn't natively manipulate the credit spread between the Corp and the Runner, many Runners will not want the Corporation looking four cards deep (assuming the recurring credits from the NBN: Making News (Core) identity) into their stack for the trash and reorder effects. Its rez cost of just one credit is great, and its strength puts it in a comparatively costly spot for Crypsis (Core) and most Killer breakers (though for Femme Fatale (Core), it's the install cost and not the break cost that makes this true), with the notable exception of Mimic (Core). The trade-off here is that it is very susceptible to link with its low base trace strength.

If you consider how important some individual cards such as Account Siphon (Core), Personal Workshop (Cyber Exodus), or Sneakdoor Beta (Core) can be to the outcome of a game, the effect of a successful trace from Data Hound can have pretty potent ramifications for the Runner. That said, don't be surprised if the Runner just shrugs it off either, since it can whiff spectacularly as well. In many decks, Data Hound's inconsistent ability and late-game vulnerability to link mean it just can't quite make the cut. I think this could have actually been a reasonably exciting card to have as early game bothersome ICE if it wasn't so overshadowed by the power of Pop-up Window to provide a more reliable benefit for an even better cost. NBN decks will typically run 3 of that card and many run 3 Chum (Core) as well for the benefit it has on tracing subroutines. Since so many deck slots are already occupied by similarly low-cost ICE that does not end runs, there often just isn't room to include Data Hound as well.


Flare (Future Proof)

It's actually pretty understandable why an awful lot of the ICE are named after so many weapons and monsters - an abstract blob of computer code only looks so threatening, even if it actually is threatening to the Runner. Brain damage is a pretty terrible thing, no doubt, but doesn't look nearly as impressive as gutting your opponent with "Excalibur". There are a rare few ICE though that do their business in a very real and tangible way. This is one of those ICE, and it didn't need a name like Uroboros to be frightening. Have you ever "let the smoke out" of one of your electronic gadgets? The magic smoke that makes it work? Do you know what happens when you let the smoke out of a house full of these gizmos all at once?

We call it a Flare, and it makes a very satisfying little fireworks show that will cheer you up on overtime sentry shifts when you see one go off. It turns out that Runners are filled with magic smoke too, but theirs smells god-awful when you let it out. Such is the price for great entertainment!


Where the previous two ICE were nuisances, this one is the polar opposite. Flare gets distinction right away for being only the second mechanism in the entire game that I know of (at the time of release of the Future Proof datapack) which the Corporation can use to trash any piece of installed hardware (the first is Power Grid Overload (Trace Amount); Foxfire (Humanitys Shadow) can also trash hardware, but only that with subtype link). That's not all Flare does either - it also does two points of unpreventable meat damage to the Runner for the privilege of blowing up his stuff, and to further add insult to (literally) injury, it even ends the run afterwards.

Offensive capability this powerful comes with a price. One such price is the rez cost - at 9 credits, this is the third most expensive ICE in the game to rez, behind Hadrian's Wall (Core) at 10 and Janus 1.0 (What Lies Ahead) at 15. It also has the classic trace vulnerability of many NBN ICE, though with a base trace strength of 6, even a Runner with several points of link will have to invest some money to save their gear and their hide. With the combat efficacy of this ICE's attack, you often won't really mind investing a few extra credits in the trace if need be. Because Flare is a high-strength sentry, breaking it is not a trivial economic affair, either. Since Flare is so powerful, but beatable by the Runner simply having access to a large sum of money, try to hold off rezzing this ICE as a taxation mechanism like the previous two ICE, and instead choose a moment to rez it as a punishment mechanism when the Runner's credit pool is insufficient to elude the trace or break it.


That's all for now, soldiers; you've completed the ICE training seminar. Be sure to pay attention to continuing developments in our corporate firewall software, because the cybersec R&D team are constantly look for new and creative ways to encourage the Runners to find somewhere else to cause trouble!