Keggy said:

Nowhere have I suggested that! This topic is about What Lies Ahead, so I was talking about What Lies Ahead and what bothers me about it . . .

But since you brought up the new expansions, the same principle applies to them as well. FFG could have put two (or even three) new identities into one pack and then none into the next few. Therefore, two pack would contain the rest of the five missing identities with only one wasted space, and the rest of the data packs could contain three whole new cards (nine all together with three copies each!) that you are not going to get the current way. Another way of looking at it is only two useless cards as opposed to the current fourteen in the cycle.

Considering the current situation, the new HB identity seems (to me) weaker than the "original" one. Raising the strenght only of the Bioroid ICEs (there's just 4 so far, and one is Janus…) makes it pretty limited, especially when it's quite easy to disregard the strenght by paying clicks to pass.

Morning Star seems quite useless when they have Corroder which costs only 2 credits AND can raise its strenght… you can't always possibly have enough tokens on Datasucker to lower the strenght of Barriers you encounter. Also, considering the frailty of Anarch's economy… 8 credits is a steep price to pay for an Icebreaker.

Plascrete Carapace might be the best Runner card of the bunch, especially if the Trace mechanic will indeed be empowered in the following Data Packs. This one could become quite a common sight.

Janus 1.0 is a monster, being impossible to pass just by paying clicks, it's indeed very dangerous to face… but the price makes it a LOT risky to play. If you place it without money to rezz him, it might get trashed (and there's Cortez Chip to help on that, now)… and using agendas to place it requires either a lot of time, or a careful planning (and Precognition too), which can't always be easy to obtain.

All in all, plenty new options, especially for the Corps.
Unfortunately none of the Runner cards has an influence cost of 1, but at least ZU.13 is a welcome substitute for Gordian Blade freeing 2 influence points that can be spent elsewhere… for another copy of The Maker's Eye for example!

Rince said:

This pretty much sums up of how I feel about the triplicates

I agree having three of each Identity is complelty useless. I would rather like to see either three different Identeties each pack, or one ID card and two reprints from the one offs from the core set.

LOVE the new NBN Agenda…

darkpact said:

First World Problems.

This has already been done to death in other threads as well, but ANR is being treated no differently from Game of Thrones, where 3x agendas means 2 useless cards.

Since each pack is probably 1 print sheet printed 3x, cut and packed, what you propose means increasing printing and packaging complexity, which in turn would increase the cost of the pack by a couple dollars or more.

FFG is pretty good about quality and value, so I think it's fair to assume they made the decision that works out best for everyone. We can accept that, or we can keep beating the subject to death, but it's probably not going to change - AGoT players have lived with this issue far longer than we have.

I didn't see this in the thread, but which store was it?

Syphus said:

Store for what exactly ?

Toqtamish said:

The one he mentioned in the first post having it in stock / where he saw the spoilers.