So the corp has to install at least 2 layers of ICE, similarly to Inside Job. I can see DDoS in combination with Omega.

Works all turn long too, so it could be useful combined with an Ice-trashing strategy to keep the servers shallow and grant multiple free-accesses well into the game.

Works all turn long too, so it could be useful combined with an Ice-trashing strategy to keep the servers shallow and grant multiple free-accesses well into the game.

It is time for some Unscheduled Maintenance!

Any idea what DDoS stands for?

Distributed Denial of Service. It's commonly used by hackers. The corporate server infrastructure is overloaded by thousands of proxies sending connection requests at the same time.

Eh...clunky and difficult to fully leverage.  I don't like it.

Cool art though...

I don't think it's too difficult. The 3 credits install cost can be reduced by Career Fair (which is, in my opinion, a must-have in every Anarch deck anyway) and the effect is always powerful. Skip all the ICE the corp uses to protect its more valuable assets - most of the time it's not more than 1 layer. Or, the corp has just installed a new layer of ICE protecting its central servers. Don't worry about what that might be, just skip it.

Technically it's not skipped, so Underway Grid won't work. Also, there's a synergy with False Echo, and you can "force" the corp to grant you Social Engineering money by targeting the innermost ICE.

Sure, when playing very aggressively, this card loses a bit of its value. If your deck takes a while to build momentum, however, it's strong.

Another synergy would be the silverware events. The corp can't rez another ICE of that same type in front of the targeted ICE to prevent its trashing.

For this to be useful, a series of things must be true, and some of them are not under the runner's control, making this a very situational and a very reactive card. Both are strikes against it.

Consider that for the card to be effective...

1) you must have 3 extra credits to spend

2) this card must be in your hand

3) it takes a click to install

4) there must be at least one unrezzed outermost ice on a server that you intended to run for it to have any effect at all.

5) you can't know if the corp was going to rez a particular ice or not, so you might be playing DDoS for no reason

6) the set up to exploit the card favors a mid to late game play

7) BUT the deeper the ice on servers the less useful this card is which favors an early to mid game play

Also, it self trashes, leaving the runner poorer with no long term benefit.

Are there scenarios where the corp has just iced up deeper, but the runner just wants to keep getting in without risking an encounter with new ice? Sure. Is it prevalent and problematic enough to encourage DDoS? Not that I've seen.

It's roughly 4 click equivalents to play it, 5 if you count the draw. Most pieces of ice are cheaper than 5CE to break. To make it worth it you'd need to reliably exploit multiple runs against one or more unrezzed ice that you somehow knew were going to be deadly and/or very taxing and which the corp would have rezzed if not for DDoS.

@KillerShrike - I see this as being more of a turn 1 aggro play, not a mid-late game thing.  It's like an Inside Job for Anarchs that repeats itself up to 3 times in a turn.  How often does a server have 2 or more ice on it during the Runner's first turn?

Your criticisms of DDoS card are true of almost every card:

-You must have the card in your hand

-You must have X credits to spend

-It takes a click

As the corp, I typically relax behind an early game ice like Paper Wall to last me at least until turn 2 to protect my R&D.  Now an Anarch could theoretically dig 3 cards on turn 1, especially with help from Demolition Run (spending the last 2 of 5 starting credits).  I have to agree that you need to see this like Inside Job with only some subtle differences.

@KillerShrike - I see this as being more of a turn 1 aggro play, not a mid-late game thing.  It's like an Inside Job for Anarchs that repeats itself up to 3 times in a turn.  How often does a server have 2 or more ice on it during the Runner's first turn?

The counter question would be how often are there three servers with exactly one pieces of ice that you want to run on in the runner's first turn with your 2 remaining credits? 

What are those three runs likely to gain you, typically? 

Does that even seem like a realistic scenario, where the ideal board condition for your theoretical up to 3 times turn 1 runs exist often enough to make it worth building for?

Your criticisms of DDoS card are true of almost every card:

 

-You must have the card in your hand

-You must have X credits to spend

-It takes a click

So, there were other criticisms that you snipped. A more accurate thing to say would be "SOME of your criticisms of DDoS card are true of almost every card". And, that's not actually a true statement.

You don't have to have cards in hand to initiate lines of play that use them if you have already installed them in previous turns*.

Many cards cost less than $3; some even cost $0, and some even give you $. Cost of the card to play matters and -$3 is a non-trivial amount.

Playing a card does generally take a click, but there is no presumption that in a given turn you will do so; a card such as this that costs a click to set up does have an impact. For instance some cards cost a click to play but initiate a run, thus if you were going to make a run anyway the impact of the click to play the card is essentially nil. Other cards cost a click to play but then continue to benefit you over the course of the game, diminishing the initial impact the longer the game goes on. This card costs a click just to install, and you get to use it exactly once; thus its click tax is not lessened in any way.

As an example, you compared this card to Inside Job. Well, Inside Job costs $2 play, but initiates a run thus swallowing the click tax. That's 3 CE (including draw) compared to DDoS's 5 CE (including draw). And Inside Job can be recurred with Same Old Thing, whereas DDoS cannot. Also Inside Job passes the first ice encountered and thus has an effect as long as one piece of rezzed ice is encountered regardless of position, whereas DDoS just prevents rez of the outermost ice...if it isn't already rezzed that is. 

As the corp, I typically relax behind an early game ice like Paper Wall to last me at least until turn 2 to protect my R&D.  Now an Anarch could theoretically dig 3 cards on turn 1, especially with help from Demolition Run (spending the last 2 of 5 starting credits).  I have to agree that you need to see this like Inside Job with only some subtle differences.

I'm pretty sure I could absorb the impact of a turn 1 runner blitz using Demolition Run off of a DDoS, and exploit the fact that they just bankrupted themselves. And, since as of turn 2 I know they might have more than one DDoS and Demo Run in their deck to add to the likelihood that they would find that questionable combo in their opening hand, I would play accordingly. Lets just say I would be more worried about an early Account Siphon with the risk of keeping me from ever establishing a board position than I would be of an Anarch running a turn 1 DDoS => Demolition Run. 

* it is true that you could install DDoS in a previous turn and use it later, but doing so gives away the element of surprise and gives the corp an opportunity to mitigate the impact of it. Seems sub-optimal when played in that way.

Edit: correcting a stupid oversight. Also, a point in DDoS's favor is that it can be combined with other run initiating cards, which the Demo Run allusion implicitly illustrates. In the interests of fairness, that facet of the card does open up some lines of play involving combining it with other click actions. It isn't that I think this card does nothing; there are some specific scenarios where it does neat things. I just don't think those scenarios are common enough or impactful enough to overcome the card's limitations. As always, other people's mileage may differ.

I think a decent use of this card is early game to guarantee runs on all three centrals, allowing the use of Notoriety or Quest Completed and their ilk.  Very niche idea though.

I would say the main idea here is to use DDoS alongside cards like Blackmail and Inside Job to force the Corp into deep icing remotes just to be able to rez something. The pure threat of those might give you a few turns and make the Corp install second or third layer of ice. Also, this card is here to give headaches to horizontal Replicating Perfection decks - just try to run Whizzard, install this against double or triple Sundew and watch the Corp player throw ice around. Not that it is cheap, but if you are going to stop that 6 credits per turn, there is hardly a better option.

There are plenty of strange and interesting interactions here: Cyberthreat? Trash during the Corp's turn if it's running Amazon Industrial Zone, or combo with a few other cards.

But nothing here states that the only way this is useful is if you get 3 (or 4 or 5) runs out of it. It costs 3 credits -- 1 more than Inside Job -- for an effect that's not quite as good for a single run, but is still pretty good. Is it as good as Inside Job? No, but are we expecting Anarchs to be the new Criminals?

Anarch is good enough as-is, and this thing as a kind of Grade-B Inside Job is perfectly fine in-faction. Hitting HQ and R&D early is just fine.

The credit savings for using this on a triple Keyhole are fine any time of day, really, and that's a situation for which Inside Job is completely useless, because it's a Run Event. If you want your justification, there it is.

The credit savings for using this on a triple Keyhole are fine any time of day, really, and that's a situation for which Inside Job is completely useless, because it's a Run Event. If you want your justification, there it is.

Yeah, that's a much more legit scenario. Forcing through a bunch of keyholes all at once can flip a game. But this is in-faction for Anarch, home of many ice trashing strategies that synergize nicely with Keyhole + Eater. But if perhaps you can't spare enough card slots to ice destruction, or can't support the economy of it, DDoS might be worth running as an alternative.

However, unless you are using expose or de-rezzing ice, you have no way to know if the outermost piece of ice is even a threat. Thus you normally wont know if playing it is a total waste or not. I actually would like this card better in Criminal, backed up by Crescentus, Emergency Shutodown, Snitch, even Satellite Uplink. Much better chances that I could _force_ this card to be impactful if I needed to.

I think a decent use of this card is early game to guarantee runs on all three centrals, allowing the use of Notoriety or Quest Completed and their ilk.  Very niche idea though.

If you decided to make a deck to make the run all three centrals cards work, DDoS would be a good candidate. Influence would be tight, but it might be fun. However, a combo made up of several questionable cards is risky at best and hapless at worst.

I would definitely give you props for doing something thematic and fun like that, even though I would not be shocked if it crashed and burned.

I double that - unleash the zombies!

If you decided to make a deck to make the run all three centrals cards work, DDoS would be a good candidate. Influence would be tight, but it might be fun. However, a combo made up of several questionable cards is risky at best and hapless at worst.

 

I would definitely give you props for doing something thematic and fun like that, even though I would not be shocked if it crashed and burned.

I agree completely.  Very niche idea, like I said, but I'll probably think about trying it at some point.  I doubt it'll ever be fully competitive, but it's a fun card that can throw the Corp off their game for a turn.  Nothing wrong with that!

I just saw another idea for this - some guy did a DDoS + False Echo + Keyhole combo, adding in some Hyperdriver clicks for good measure. Regardless, if you have enough False Echos/Clone Chips, you can uninstall a server right away - just DDoS before first click run, pass the first ice, trash the ice with FE, jack out, then run again, trash second ice, rinse and repeat. Emergency Shutdown is a must here, as some of the ice may be rezzed. Not very practical, but it sure gives new life to False Echo for some extravagant builds.

I just saw another idea for this - some guy did a DDoS + False Echo + Keyhole combo, adding in some Hyperdriver clicks for good measure. Regardless, if you have enough False Echos/Clone Chips, you can uninstall a server right away - just DDoD before first click run, pass the first ice, trash the ice with FE, jack out, then run again, trash second ice, rinse and repeat. Emergency Shutdown is a must here, as some of the ice may be rezzed. Not very practical, but it sure gives new life to False Echo for some extravagant builds.

False Echo doesn't trash the ICE: it adds it to HQ; so this elaborate setup has cost the Corp a click and the cost of an install.

False Echo, making other cards worse since 2013

False Echo doesn't trash the ICE: it adds it to HQ;

That is what I meant, although I am writing stupid things instead. The ice is still removed from the server which is the idea. Really tough to set, might do some work for Quetzal/Kit, otherwise stick to Inside Job.

...jack out, then run again, trash second ice, rinse and repeat. 

I don't see why you need to jack out.  They can't rez the outermost ice.  As soon as the outermost ice is returned to HQ the second piece of ice is the outermost and can't be rezzed.  With enough clone chips and false echos you could uninstall all the server's ice in a single run.  Much better for keyhole :-p

Also, first turn DDoS into account siphon is boss.  I hear there are some anarch decks running account siphon already.

Effective Apr. 12, 2017:

https://www.fantasyf...cement-tactics/

DDoS is now on the NAPD Most Wanted List. It costs 3 additional neutral influence to include this card in your deck.