No One Home

No One Home 0[credit]

Resource: Virtual
Influence: 1

The first time you would take any number of tags or suffer any amount of net damage each turn, you may trash No One Home to force the Corp to "Trace[0]. If unsuccessful, the Runner avoids any number of tags or prevents any amount of net damage."

"Go away! I'm not here!"
Illustrated by Alexandr Elichev
Decklists with this card

Council of the Crest (cotc)

#45 • English
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  • Updated 2024-03-29

    ANCUR UFAQ 21 [Michael Boggs]

    If the trace on No One Home is unsuccessful, can the Runner choose to avoid/prevent fewer than the total incoming tags/damage?

    Yes.

    When a Snare! resolves, when does the Runner have to choose between preventing the net damage or avoiding the tag with No One Home?

    Because the net damage and the tag are simultaneous, No One Home triggers after the corp pays 4 and immediately before the rest of the ability resolves. If the trace is unsuccessful, the Runner then chooses between avoiding the tag or preventing the net damage.

    If the Runner has two copies of No One Home installed, can they use both the first time they would suffer net damage or take tags?

    Yes. Both copies of No One Home meet their trigger conditions simultaneously, so the Runner triggers them one at a time. The Runner makes the decisions to trash each copy of No One Home or not when resolving the ability on that copy, so the first trace will fully resolve before the Runner has to decide whether to use the other copy.

    So if an ability like Snare! would both give tags and deal net damage, the Runner can avoid all of those effects with two unsuccessful traces from two different copies of No One Home?

    Yes.

    If the Runner uses a No One Home the first time in a turn they would take damage, can they install a second No One Home and use it the first time that same turn they would take tags?

    No. No One Home only triggers the first time the Runner would either take tags or take damage. Even though the later event may be the first time one of those two things has occurred, it is not the first time that the event encompassing either of the two options has occurred.

Reviews

No doubt about it, this card is fantastic and you're going to be seeing it a lot before too long. If you're not sure why, then you're probably new to Netrunner, so allow me to explain:

Corps can win in two ways, agenda points or kill. When it comes to the latter, while there's three types of damage (meat, net, and brain), you'll really only ever see two of them in a serious competitive setting--Sorry brain, you're expensive and less useful than you immediately seem. When it comes to meat and net damage, they're dealt in two different ways. If meat, then the corp is going to land lots of tags, because that's the only way to turn on their ability to do so, at least to reliably threaten a kill. When it comes to net, they're likely to give you a ton of tiny cuts, with a few big ones here and there (or at the end of your deck) to try and finish you off, or at least create a tempo swing big enough to do something nasty, like score. There's exceptions abound of course, but once again, in a competitive setting that's what you're likely to see. It's reliable, it's established, it works.

Now, there's more than a few cards out already that help protect you from the dangers I just described. Misdirection and Deuces Wild are excellent at removing tags suddenly when the corp thought they had you right where they want you, and Sports Hopper and Jarogniew Mercs can either make your hand too big to frag or just plain take the hit for ya. When it comes to net damage, every Jinteki player alive already knows how awful it is to see a Feedback Filter or Caldera. So if there's already so many good solutions, why am I so confident No One Home will become popular? BECAUSE IT'S SO DANG GOOD, WOW.

Misdirection and the Mercs are good, but they're both specifically for meat and pretty silver bullet-y besides. Same for the Filter and Caldera with net damage, with the added problem of the both of those cards being pretty darn expensive to make use of; if you don't have the strong econ, good luck using those more than a handful of times.

No One Home has none of these problems. It's zero credits to play (and theoretically to activate as well), so it'll never be a tempo swing; if you've got the time and you suspect death, there's never any reason not to slap this down. It's only one influence too, which means that any runner of any stripe can make use of it. But most importantly, it doesn't just protect against one of those types of kill. It protects against both. Whether the corp is planning on giving you a hard hitting tag storm or annihilating you with a Ronin, No One Home protects you. Sure, they can circumvent it with a strong trace, but good luck with that corp, you just spent a ton of your credits and clicks trying to make it land in the first place!

Heck, they don't even have to be trying to kill you with meat damage. If they're just trying to tag and punish you, it stops that too! NBN: Controlling the Message got ya down because you just trashed a Mumbad Virtual Tour? Well you may not be able to avoid the ID tag, but you can avoid the two tags you'd get from AR-Enhanced Security, and that's undeniably valuable.

Now sure, it does have some downsides. It's a resource, and a zero cost one at that, so it's vulnerable to a fair amount of cards, cards you're likely to see at least one of at your local tournament. Plus, if the corp is at a 100 credits and you're at 10, it doesn't matter how many of these you've got slapped down--Say your prayers.

Still, do you want protection from tags, meat, and net, all in one place, that's easy to use and way less of a silver bullet than every other option? Just remember that when the corp comes knocking, there's No One Home.

(Council of the Crest era)
199
I'm glad you pointed out its downsides. Best Defense is already used a lot for SacCon and Tapwrm hate and this card just got added to the list. There was another downside that you forgot to mention and that is that the card is limited to "first time this turn". Aka the runner is put into a hard decision when the corp SEA Sources click 1. Use NOH right away? Or let it be trashed click 2 for the HHN click 3? —
One thing this does differently than other tag hate is protecting you from tags on the corp's turn. Citadel Sanctuary, Crash Space, Deuces, Misdirection, all amazing cards. Buuuuut, they won't protect you from Sea Source into Exchange of Information or All-Seeing I. Before this we had On the Lam, but this card is strictly better because it prevents any amount of tags/net damage, unless you can't outmoney the corp. —
Oh also, this is absolutely nuts in Sunny —