I believe that's strength 1, not 10...

What possible reason could anyone have for running this POS? 1 more cred than gordian blade and worse strength and an extra cred lost to toll booth. BLECH!

You don't always play Shaper, and don't have infinite influence available while deckbuilding.

What he said. Running two of these instead of Gordian Blades in your anarch run-centric deck (like, say, Whizzard) means you can pack two more Inside Jobs, for instance. Surely you see how that could possibly be worth the tradeoff?

I think it would be good in a Kit deck.

almost as bad as tyrant... almost ><

I think it would be good in a Kit deck.

Why on earth would you run this over Gordian Blade or Yog?

Lol for real man, it's the worst decoder in existance. Its 1 influence cost should tip you off about that.

influence is not a tip in anything. Yog and Mimic are 1 influence are not considered bad breakers by anyone

Not at all, but they need a specialized series of support cards if you want to use them as general purpose breakers, cards that cost more influence themselves.

It's basically an in faction breaker. So if you are tight on INF points then it's an option ... not a great one but still an option. I would rather take Crypsis. Still the same cost all in all. Yes you do have to use an action to place a Virus counter in order to break a sub on a piece of ICE but you have to use 2 creds to break a sub with FON anyway when it comes to Code Gates. So from an economy point of view, Click=Cred, it's the same and you can break all ICE types with Crypsis .

Lol for real man, it's the worst decoder in existance.

Anyone who ever tried to use Peacock to get through anything will strongly disagree.

...you have to use 2 creds to break a sub with FON anyway when it comes to Code Gates.

I'm not so convinced this reasoning is sound. Been playing Crypsis as my main Code Gate breaker for a while now and there's two issues with this:

a) a lot of code gates actually have 2 or more subroutines, so you're really only paying 1 per subroutine (or 1.5 per, in the case of 3 subroutines) to break through with FoN
Crypsis ain't so hot for one simple reason: you can't bank actions over multiple turns the way you can bank credits. The best you can do in the case of Crypsis is you can place a Virus counter... but the Corp can take that away much more easily,

Peacock is much better than this.

well you wouldn´t be running this outside anarch deck anyways. And with the mulitude of ICE-strenght-reducing for anarchs FoN is ok if you wanna save your influence for something else

Yog is the best decoder in the game if you can reduce strength. It could be pay 1 break 2 subroutines and 1 less cost, or at least less initial cost, as it is it looks kinda pointless maybe some limited scope of anarch decks that for some reason cant run yog, or some really hi-str code gates coming.

It's basically infrastructure for anarch decks that don't care about running viruses. It exists because it has to exist.

Yog is the most cost efficient Decoder in the game, especially when you can put it on Dinosaurus, or get Personal Touches on it.
So far I would say, the best decoder is Gordian Blade: costs less, has a higher base STR and can break single subroutines.
So why does force of nature exist: as wolfone says: it has to.
Every Faction should have their base set of Icebreakers with increasable strength.
Yog is a Great card, so is mimic, but thei are just not the archetypical baseline Icebreakers that can handle any Code Gate/Sentry, given the money, they are limited.

So long story short: Force of nature isn't Gordian Blade, but it hasn't to. ANd its neither Aurora/Peacock/Pipeline either.

@Wolfeone
could you explain to me, why you would say peacock is better?
it breaks 1 SR for 2 creds.
I just looked over the Code Gates and see that due to the very low base str force of nature actually looses against some Code gates compared to Peackock, especially because most Codegates only have 1 SR.
I assume that is the reason, although Peackock is still a bad card imho.

Exactly what you said TheBarracuda, Force of Nature usually ends up being either the same cost or 1 credit more than Peacock, while costing 2 more Credits to install. There are only specific cases where it's cheaper, and they disappear if E3 Feedback Implants are installed.

Thus Peacock is supposed to be an average decoder, Force of Nature a bad one and Gordian Blade the best

I gound three cases where force of nature actually is better: Enigma, Hourglass and Viper, all thre have multiple SR and are in an unfavorble Strength range for Peacock.

But a win on 3 the same on 3 and loss on the rest makes force of nature subpar, though Ice Carver, paraties and Datasuckers change the game again, but then yog comes again.

Funny thing that peacock, the aurora for code gates, is a ebtter Icebreaker then Aurora, because code gates tend to fewer subroutines (4/11 vs 4/9)

yes and all those cases revolve around losing clicks so you could play around those.

Agree with Wolfone88 on Peacock vs FoN.
As for Peacock vs Aurora, the SR of ice you commonly encounter also makes Aurora worse and Peacock not as bad.

Thanks to Lotus Field I'd have thought Yog would have greatly diminished in popularity. Is this the case? I've been running FoN when influence doesn't allow for Gordian Blade purely for this reason. I only have a few months experience with the game, so I'm not across all of its history.

Thanks to Lotus Field I'd have thought Yog would have greatly diminished in popularity. Is this the case? I've been running FoN when influence doesn't allow for Gordian Blade purely for this reason. I only have a few months experience with the game, so I'm not across all of its history.

 

Lotus Field definitely shakes things up. I think Yog will still be played, Yog+Dinosaurus was already popular and is now even better.

 

Breaking subroutines for free is just too good to ignore. I expect we will see less reliance on Datasucker with Yog in Anarch and more spending influence on The Personal Touch.

 

Force of Nature is just really bad. Sure, it beats Lotus Field, but at a cost of 5 credits every run. Also, Quandry is popular and costs 1 to rez - I would be happy to let you spend 2 every time you encounter it.

Also, off the top of my head, I can't think of any popular multiple subroutine Code Gates. I can't think of a single match-up where this is a desirable ICE breaker.