So which factions do people want to see as the two focused in the next big box. For me I want to see Jinteki and Anarch, I feel the more cards Jinteki gets the more tricks up their sleeve will help that faction even more so than the others. As for Anarch I feel the last thing criminal needs is more options...

This hasn't been announced has it? I haven't seen anything on it yet so I am assuming this hasn't been announced.

No official announcement, but the rumour is Jinteki & Criminal, and the name Honor and Profit.

So which factions do people want to see as the two focused in the next big box. For me I want to see Jinteki and Anarch, I feel the more cards Jinteki gets the more tricks up their sleeve will help that faction even more so than the others. As for Anarch I feel the last thing criminal needs is more options...

This hasn't been announced has it? I haven't seen anything on it yet so I am assuming this hasn't been announced.

Actually criminal doesn't have that many options. Whereas shapers and anarchs have all kinds of different deck archetypes to work with most criminal decks are very similar to one another (and I don't think it's for a lack of trying). So I for one am happy that the next deluxe expansion will be for criminals (assuming the rumors are true).

I meant more they don't need options because the options they have are so good already. Maybe its just my meta but its allll blue

Where do those rumours come from? Is there a post or a leak of pictures somewhere? :-)

Personally I prefer to play Anarch and Weyland, so I'm always happy about more cards for those two factions, but I'm fine with the others too. It's not only fun to have new cards for your decks but also to retune your deck to deal with the new cards in the opponents decks.

I meant more they don't need options because the options they have are so good already. Maybe its just my meta but its allll blue

Nah... it's that way everywhere. In a lot of metas there are more Shaper players, but Criminal are generally the most dominant in competitive play.

There was a twitter account called @ANRSpin supposedly based in China that had some extremely early spoilers in the past that turned out correct; a few weeks back it tweeted Honor & Profit as a Jinteki/Criminal box. Last I heard the account had been suspended, so make of that what you will.

Sounds interesting!

So assuming this will be a Jinteki/Criminal box, what do you guys expect to be in there?

Jinteki is obviously the "trap" faction. So I think there will be some really cool new traps and assets which can be advanced and therefore look like an Agenda. Maybe there'll be some ICE which have sort of "corp may place an advancement token on a card in this system" subroutine?

Criminal could get some cards which are more into what a criminal does: stealing things. Maybe there's some new card to directly steal money from the corp? Or something else?

What do you guys think?

Maybe there'll be some ICE which have sort of "corp may place an advancement token on a card in this system" subroutine?

So, a weaker Matrix Analyser? I say weaker because Matrix Analyser in on encounter, not a subroutine, and so can't be broken (but can be bypassed). It's certainly possible, as C&C gave us baby Tollbooth and baby Government Contracts (Datapike and Gila Hands, respectively).

Maybe there'll be some ICE which have sort of "corp may place an advancement token on a card in this system" subroutine?

So, a weaker Matrix Analyser? I say weaker because Matrix Analyser in on encounter, not a subroutine, and so can't be broken (but can be bypassed). It's certainly possible, as C&C gave us baby Tollbooth and baby Government Contracts (Datapike and Gila Hands, respectively).

Exactly, though I'd not necessarily consider it weaker, because you could drop the "pay 1 credit" condition and increase the strength value. I don't think it needs to be something brand new for every new card, slight alternatives of existing ones are often nice to tweak your deck strategy in detail.

The main thought of my post was to have something that empowers trap/advancing strategies though, which is very Jinteki-like.

Jinteki has a bunch of themes and mechanics that I expect to be expanded upon:

- dealing net damage (d'uh!)

- positional ice (Chum, Sensei) and ways to reposition ice

- reposition the runner during a run (Cell Portal, Bullfrog)

- lowering of rez costs (Braintrust, Akitaro Watanabe)

- the Psi mechanic (Snowflake, Bullfrog)

It's hard to predict what kinds of effects we'll see out of Jinteki, as they tend to be quite outside the box; the devs could go a lot of different ways with expanding on those themes. Creation and Control really focused on the bioroid theme, which is understandable as that is HB's big thing, but outside of a few decent pieces of ice it's ended up being too gimmicky for the most part. The box didn't do much to give HB new toys outside of that. The support for non-bioroid themes was okay for some (click advantage) and rather underwhelming for others (brain damage). I'm hoping the next deluxe will be more consistent in its support of the corp, whichever corp it ends up being.

Typical Criminal themes and mechanics are:

- bypassing ice (Inside Job, Femme Fatale), indirect bypasses (Sneakdoor Beta, Copycat)

- (de-)rez manipulation (Forged Activation Orders, Emergency Shutdown, Blackguard, Crescentus)

- exposing ice (Satellite Uplink, Snitch, Lemuria Codecracker)

- HQ hate (Gabe, HQ Interface, Account Siphon, Pheromones)

- run-based economy (Gabe, Account Siphon, Bank Job)

- interesting sentry breakers starting with the letter "f" (Femme Fatale, Faerie)

- crappy breakers for everything else

Most of the Criminal tricks are already quite potent, so I'm not sure FFG will give them extensive support in the box. I'm definitely expecting more HQ manipulation, as that could be done in myriad of ways, and more interesting sentry breakers. Shapers basically got an entirely new theme out of Creation and Control (heap recursion -- which I thought was an Anarch thing), so I'm wondering if we'll see a similar lateral extension of the Criminal toolbox, though they don't need it as much as Shapers did, who had been a one-trick (or no-trick, if you're a cynic) pony.

I think you're spot on the money with HQ manipulation for Criminals, as that'll also synergise nicely with Fisk when he gets released.

Certainly I'd like to see more trap support, and more 'sleight of hand' type tricks for Jinteki (Trick of Light, Sunset, Tenma Line etc). I'm prediciting/hoping for an ID with recurring credits for Ambushes.

Will be very interesting to see how they diversify Criminal without adversely introducing power-creep, as they're already such a strong faction (but as you point out, they achieved this well with HB in C&C). Perhaps we'll see less aggro-Crim and see some Bid Rig archetypes developing? Maybe even a use for Leviathan More likely we'll see whole new avenues of play become possible, rather than a rehash of a Shaper strategy.

As much as I was (and still am) a little concerned that a Criminal box, should the rumours be true, might leave Anarchs even more in the cold, I'm confident in FFG. I don't think they'll let us down whichever faction the box goes to.

I can understand the concerns about giving Criminals a big card infusion when they're already dominating the tournament scene. On the other hand, I feel like Criminal is a very stale faction with little variety, whereas Anarch has seen a variety of deck types and strategies, and they're getting another one now as the Caissa theme is getting fleshed out, so I think it'd be great if they managed to create some new archetypes for Criminal with the deluxe.

I have a feeling it will be kind of like the HB big box. The faction will get a bunch of options that aren't ultimately relevant because the same strategies that exist now will dominate. When's the last time you saw a successful HB brain damage deck? Right, you didn't, because fast advance is just better.

Jinteki needs more powerful ICE. I am just starting to play Jinteki finally and am really missing my strong/advancable Weyland ICE

Yeah but keep the balancing in mind. Every faction needs its strengths and weaknesses. That's why we need to choose factions. One of Jintekis weaknesses is the ICE power, which is balanced out by the very good traps. If you power up Jintekis ICE too much, it will be overpowered.

Btw did anyone think about neutral identities already? Could be cool especially for the runner side. A neutral runner who can use all neutral cards plus -say 50- influence. That could give us some cool cross-faction effects and unexpected deck types, which we only touch with the current 15 influence in a faction deck.

Not sure about this idea myself though, whether to like it or not. It's just a thought.

So, now it's official: Honor & Profit, featuring Jinteki and Criminal

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm_sec.asp?eidm=222&esem=1&epmi=s

What do you think?

The H&P Thread on BGG is up to 255 posts, but suffice it to say I'm excited. Mushin No Shin and Plan B would have won me a game last night.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1088016/honor-and-profit-deluxe-expansion

I'm really digging a lot of the Jinteki/corp stuff. Medical Breakthrough seems great, and Plan B and Mushin no Shin would slot well into my current Jinteki deck.

I am a bit underwhelmed by the runner cards. It's not that they're not strong cards, because most of them are, but because they're mostly stuff we've seen before (we get a Maker's Eye for HQ, we get efficient icebreakers with server restrictions à la Cyber-Cypher). Even the runner has an ability that, like Gabe's, triggers off a successful run of HQ. The HQ focus was to be expected, but I was hoping they'd get a little more creative. Still, Silhouette is probably my favorite of the spoilt runner cards, and I could easily see myself slotting some of those icebreakers into my Professor deck. Oracle seems interesting and fun as well, and will probably make one of my shaper decks, as she obviously works well with Test Run and Motivation, and general Shaper recursion tech. Besides, we've only seen a fraction of the cards, so maybe the crazy runner stuff is yet to be revealed.

Aww man, I have to wait for the NEXT big box expansion for more Anarch IDs?

We just got Reina Roja. Some faction had to be third in line. We could just as easily have people in here saying "I have to wait for the NEXT deluxe set for more Criminal IDs?"

And just like in the Spin Cycle, the Anarchs could get another ID in the cycle following Honor and Profit, putting them only 1 ID behind Shapers and Criminals then.

We just got Reina Roja. Some faction had to be third in line. We could just as easily have people in here saying "I have to wait for the NEXT deluxe set for more Criminal IDs?"

It's true they might have done that, but Anarchs are currently the least-played Runner faction and being last in line for the Deluxe Treatment will only exacerbate that.

We just got Reina Roja. Some faction had to be third in line. We could just as easily have people in here saying "I have to wait for the NEXT deluxe set for more Criminal IDs?"

It's true they might have done that, but Anarchs are currently the least-played Runner faction and being last in line for the Deluxe Treatment will only exacerbate that.

Depends how strong they prove to be with Reina and the new cards in Spin and the next cycle - we might see more Anarch love before the next big box, with any luck.

Playing around with Reina, I am very pleased with her, Deep Red, and the Caissas.

I think Whizzard will see some added value as more extremely expensive to trash executives and other upgrades/assets enter the mix. Currently he's kinda weak, but fun nonetheless.

And Noise just straight up changes the dynamic of the game. He's gone from dominant to just strong, which is about right.

Really, I feel there aren't any "problems" with Anarch, per se, just incredibly powerful cards to be found in the Criminal faction that are very expensive to splash, and the strong Anarch breakers (Yog.0 especially) are generally cheap to splash. I'm looking forward to playing more with the new Anarch strategies that are emerging (Flynt-Nerve Agent-Frame Job and deck milling being two examples, the Caissas a third). It'll be neat to see how that pans out.