Card of the Day

Written by Foolkiller

If you aren't playing to Tag'n'Bag, but you still end up marking the Runner for other reasons, Closed Accounts (C.A.) is an excellent addition to your deck. The ability to reach out and trash a resource is handy, but to shut down the Runner's finances can be a fantastic boon.

Many Runner's rely on Emergency Self-Construct to discount the effectiveness of tags. They often forget that the Corp can reach out and strangle their bank accounts given a lead. This is usually because the Corp isn't using this card so the Runner gets lazy. They avoid using resources and dig up that ESC before starting to Run, then they think they are untouchable. Or they secret away some Identity Donors or Arasaka Owns You in their hand and hope you'll try to plant some explosives in their basement. Well, let's not allow this to happen. Call up that connection at the bank, wipe out the Runner's accounts and then install that Agenda in the good fort. You know, the one with Colonel Failure.

Many Runners ignore the effects of City Surveillance, or dare the Corp to take action by playing Drone for a Day and Edited Shipping Manifests without taking time to ditch the tags. Some will even go so far as to plant Remote Detonators in our forts and then blow up our ICE without taking action to remove the obvious trace signals. If more Corps used C.A., Runners might not be so brazen!

Using C.A. instead of Scorched Earth might not be as immediately gratifying, but its also a much more solid play which the Runner can take no action to prevent. Time to Collect can save Resources, ESC and others can stop meat damage, and cybernetic hardware is nearly impossible to destroy. But the bit pool is WIDE OPEN. Get a tag and make it stick and you can keep the Runner poor with enough of these cards.

Cards which work well with C.A. include Datapool by Zetatech, Corporate Detective Agency, and Power Grid Overload. Of course you will need some method to tag the Runner, but we will leave that to your imagination for this discussion. This assumes you play sane Runners. If you often find the player sitting across from you wearing a maniacal grin and dropping Drone for a Days like mad, then maybe you don't need a way to tag the Runner! Once you've got a bead, make it stick with Datapool. If the Runner is smart, they will start paying to remove tags, or use some other method, such as Armadillo Armored Road Home or Total Genetic Retrofit. If not you are set to wreak havoc. If they do, they're wasting bits and actions protecting themselves which is almost as good.

If you are going to go after the Runner's money, seriously consider using Corporate Detective Agency as well. Not only is it a great way to deal with Time to Collect, but it gets rid of other resources that generate money, like Broker, Streetware Distributor, and Floating Runner BBS. Try to remeber to take out any Junkyard BBS which might allow the Runner to retrieve his lost money-sources.

Power Grid Overload is another nasty surprise that works well with C.A. Keeping with the theme of attacking unexpected targets, Overload can wipe out that deck, or those Surge Buffers, or all those Eurocorps Spin Chips. Again, there is little the Runner can do to prevent this, and that is what these cards are about. Utility over expediency. They are more useful in more situations than many other cards which use similar circumstances (i.e. tagging).

Another nice feature is that C.A. and its companion cards are very inexpensive, compared to the often high costs of blowing up the Runner. If you are operating on a limited budget, C.A. won't deplete your accounts while it nails the Runner's, unlike the Runner version, Priority Wreck which costs 1 for 1 to break the Corp.

If the Runner is using Score! as a bit engine, they will have to slowly replace the lost bits. If they just gained 39 bits with misc.for-sale you can wipe out the whole transaction for a bit and a card. Then you have more time to proceed with your own plans without worrying about Runner intervention.

Some things to consider before relying on C.A. Lucidrine can be a nasty surprise if the Runner is using it for bits. Also, Newsgroup Filter can put a crimp in this strategy because there is no way to trash programs by virtue of having a tag. Livewire's Contacts will also still work, but the obvious slowdown will still help the Corp.

Overall, Closed Accounts is a very powerfull card which does not have the weaknesses of many other tag-reliant Operations. If you know where the Runner lives, put a few of these in your deck.