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Snowball


  • Cybreos86 likes this

Snowball

Snowball


Type: Program: Icebreaker - Fracter
Cost: 4 Memory Units: 1
Faction: Runner Shaper
Faction Cost: 2
1 [Credits]: Break barrier subroutine.
1 [Credits]: +1 strength.
Whenever you use Snowball to break a subroutine, it has +1 strength for the remainder of the run.
Strength: 1
Set: Trace Amount Number: 027 Quantity: 3
Illustrator: Adam S. Doyle
Recent Decks Using This Card:
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Want to build a deck using this card? Check out the Android: Netrunner deckbuilder!


7 Comments

Pretty situational, but very useful in conjunction with Tinkering.
    • Stoicakovic and CoreSetHeroes like this

Pretty situational, but very useful in conjunction with Tinkering.


Then again, most Shaper icebreakers are very useful with Tinkering. If your rig has Snowball and Gordian Blade (what Shaper wouldn't run Gordian?) then the Gordian will almost always be the cheaper choice.
The only reason to play this is its 1MU cost IMO, and the fact Corroder (core) exists makes pretty much all other fracters useless in comparison...
After breaking one wall you have a more expensive corroder... nowwhere near nice, but it you can't spend influence on corroder and Battering ram is too mu heavy this one is not that bad actually.
    • MagisterWrigley likes this
Photo
swornabsent
Feb 03 2013 02:36 AM
Agree, Zephyr. It's not better than Corroder, but it's not so much worse that it's inconceivable to spend that influence elsewhere, if you really need it.
The problem is Battering Ram (core) is pretty much also superior to this, unless you really need this 1 MU, so this cards use is quite limited. Especially when test run is added to the pool and even 1 corroder will be enough in a deck. Maybe some future cards will make snowball better, but i cant see much that can be done to boost it.

Yeah, as others have pointed out, the similarity between this card and Corroder is the biggest heartbreaker for me. It's very rare that this is better than Corroder, where as Battering Ram and Inti usually are worse than Corroder, and often worse than Snowball also, but they can be better, which makes me keep smiling towards them and frowning towards Snowball, which is just always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

The four corporations each have a very different feel and "the color pie" has been handled very well there. With the three runners, I don't feel the same.

Criminal and Shaper are very differentiated from each other, while Anarch can seemingly do everything.

The fact that they put good fracters in one color, good decoders in one and good killers in one is weird and doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't shapers be able to handle sentries and criminals be able to handle code gates?

 

I could see a case for Criminals having weaker breakers (like Alias, Passport, Breach) since they also have Shutdown, Cortez Chip, Inside Job etc) and Anarch and Shaper each having their own take on weird breakers -- fixed + sucker or chess or eater + cutlery for Anarch; keep-strength + tinkering or stealth or workshop + install midrun or atman + smc for Shaper. O:NR had a wide variety of breakers.

But I have a hard time seeing the case for the three factions being divided by ice type. How they break ice, how they check ice? Yeah, give us variety across the faction. What types they can break? Now that's just weird.


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