We had our first tournament at The Covenant Store, Tulsa a few weeks back and boy… did I have some things wrong! I posted a blog this morning on my Team Covenant blog discussing a few cards that I initially thought were really good or really bad and how my perspective on those cards has changed. A simple run down of the blog is:

Akamatsu Mem Chip - better than first thought
Tinkering - Good, but not as good as I first thought
Infiltration - Meh, not nearly as good as I first thought

You can read the whole blog here . What do you think the top cards are available for Shaper? Are you a fan of Infiltration?

Zach

Very interesting write up! I like your thoughts on Akamatsu and Tinkering , and your pushback on Infiltration is insightful. I've included it in my Anarch deck, but I'll be reconsidering that now as I don't think it fits into the strategy for the faction.

Keep up the great posts!

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Dude! Thank you so much for your kind words. I have no intent of not writing blogs! I find that writing about things forces you to be much more informed and opinionated than you otherwise might be.

As for infiltration, it's just lost it's glow for me. In a game about information, it's certainly somewhat useful. I just don't think it fits with how I approach the game at this point (particularly with the shaper build I have). Only time will tell!

Thanks again for reading and for the kind words.

I disagree with your assessment of Infiltration but that is likely because you are using a Shaper deck. In Shaper the card is less than optimal. For Criminal or even Anarch it is much more useful for the expose a card ability.

I too disagree with your assessment of Infiltration, I'm always happy to see it in any Runner deck. I would say that its value fluctuates depending on the corp you're facing, being most useful against Jinteki and least useful against Haas Bioroid. Exposing a trap that the corp has invested clicks and credits in setting up is very valuable indeed.

I would also say that while Maker's Eye is great, and certainly makes R&D runs more potentially powerful, you will have to run on remote servers at some point in most games, and being able to scout ahead doesn't hurt. Also,if you concentrate your runs on only one server your actions become predictable.

That said, as runners gain access to better tools (perhaps something similar to Lemuria that's actually worth playing), Infiltration may fall out of fashion. For the moment though, I'm a fan.

Thanks for starting your blog, I'm really pleased that there's so much buzz about this excellent game.

Very nice write-up! Really helps me as a budding Shaper player