Valencia, v. 3

The second version of my Valencia deck actually ended up doing a lot worse than the first version. I’m not entirely sure why: the reasoning behind most of the additions seemed sound, so my current guess is that I got a little luck with the earlier version. It’s always been a slow deck; sometimes I can get away with that, sometimes I can’t, and recently “can’t” has happened a lot. And it’s not that the new cards didn’t come up: actually, I got pretty lucky with Paige and Symmetrical Visage coming up early, so that should have helped my draw, but either my analysis is wrong or it didn’t help enough.

So I went to speed it up. I noticed that I was spending too much time on Day Job, so I got rid of one of those (my version 0 of the deck, which I don’t have a record of, actually only contained two copies, probably adding a third was a mistake) and put back in one copy of Dirty Laundry. I also got rid of the two copies of Clot that I’d added: they did help me in one game, but only because I wasn’t finding my breakers, so I figured I should just thin out my deck to make it easier to get the breakers. That still left me with 57 cards, so I started getting rid of more events: my second copy of Forked (cutlery has served me well, but I only had one copy of the other two), my Frame Job (I’ve got enough sources of bad publicity), one copy of Deja Vu, and one copy of I’ve Had Worse.

That last one may have been a mistake: I went 2-3 with the deck today, and two of the losses were flatlines. I think I’m not entirely ready to give up on the deck: I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks seeing how I like my Nasir deck but with Study Guide swapped in, but it still feels like I should try to get the deck down to 50 cards.

I’m actually a little tempted to give up on Rachel Beckman (though it is amusing to see my coworkers all playing her now); I’d have to think about what I’d do with the extra influence. (Maybe upgrade ZU.13 to Gordian Blade and add a second Clone Chip? Now that I think of it, Clone Chip works better with bad pub than Deja Vu does, and I don’t have enough viruses that the “two virus” ability matters.) I might add back the third I’ve Had Worse; maybe get rid of one copy of Vigil, too, and swap a second Day Job for Dirty Laundry, or even just get rid of Day Job entirely? (Kati Jones is coming up enough that my econ is okay, especially with Symmetrical Visage helping.) I think the quantity of icebreakers is about right (it feels a little low, but I want to solve that by making the deck more efficient), and the non-icebreaker programs I have all frequently help me win games, so I think they’re pulling their weight now that Clot is gone.

Anyways, here are the changes:

• -1 Deja Vu
• -1 Forked
• -1 Frame Job
• -1 I’ve Had Worse
• -1 Day Job
• -2 Clot
• +1 Dirty Laundry

And here’s the full deck:

Valencia (53 cards)

Valencia Estevez: The Angel of Cayambe

Event (15)

• 2 Day Job
• 1 Deja Vu
• 1 Dirty Laundry
• 1 Forked
• 3 Itinerant Protesters
• 2 I’ve Had Worse
• 1 Knifed
• 1 Spooned
• 3 Sure Gamble

Hardware (8)

• 1 Clone Chip **
• 2 Cyberfeeder
• 2 MemStrips
• 3 Vigil

Resource (16)

• 3 Investigative Journalism
• 2 Kati Jones
• 3 Paige Piper
• 2 Personal Workshop **** ****
• 3 Rachel Beckman * * *
• 3 Symmetrical Visage

Icebreaker (8)

• 1 Cerberus “Cuj.0” H3
• 2 Corroder
• 2 Eater
• 1 Mimic
• 1 Yog.0
• 1 ZU.13 Key Master **

Program (6)

• 2 Datasucker
• 2 Medium
• 2 Parasite