In our December Minecraft session, I got back to building out my cave. There were some natural rooms in the back that weren’t really connected to other parts of the cave; I decided to tackle those.

First, I looked at the top room. If I’m remembering correctly, it connected on the inside to the room on the right of the cave; I decided to also connect it to the outside, by building some long stairs up and to the outside. That turned out to lead to an outside room where I had put some workbenches.

Stairs leading up and out on the right side

There’s a lower room in the back as well, though. I decided to connect it first to the upper room, and then to the first room that I had finished on the left side:

A view of the two rooms in the back of the cave

A new door leading to stairs to the bottom back room

Here’s the top of those stairs

Then I squared out that room, added railings and a floor, and put real stairs in the passage instead of blocks.

The room is enlarged and squared out a bit more

Adding a floor

I moved the stairs back, to have room for real stairs instead of blocks

Inside the stairs

While this was going on, Pat (I think, it might have been Dan?) built a path in the air extending out perpendicularly from Dan’s path. Partway along there, Miranda found a village, and decided to improve it.

Village in the rain

The side of one of the houses

The center of the village at night

One of the gardens, with a path next to it

Miranda worked on the paths and on making the heights sensible. And then there was one house that was actually completely inaccessible: if I’m remembering correctly, it had a door, but the door opened up into dirt? It ended up making sense to put a tunnel where the door was, with a path above it at the same level as other parts of the village.

More garden / path improvement

A house and garden

Inside one of the houses

Making the buried house accessible

People had been trapped in the house

The tunnel entrance outside

The village well

Pat, meanwhile, while building the path, found an area that he thought would work well for a lighthouse.

The finished state of the castle he built the prior month

A sandy peninsula

Working on the lighthouse

The base of the lighthouse

Inside the lighthouse

The lighthouse at dusk

Meanwhile, Dan spent time widening some of the tunnels in his path.

Widening out the tunnel

A tunnel through a forest

Hello, chicken

After doing this, I did a render of the whole world, you can see some of these features there.

In the previous version of my Spark Agency deck, I get much benefit out of Team Sponsorship; that was partially my fault, I suspect, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I was feeling Turtlebacks, but a draw, an install, and two credits means that I have to install four more servers for one to break even, and while my deck is horizontal, it’s not that horizontal.

So that gave me five slots and five influence to play around with. Cyberdex had been useful, so I added a second one; I’d seen some games where City Surveillance had been quite annoying, so I threw in a couple of those; and I added two more ads and used up my influence with an Adonis Campaign and an Eve Campaign.

City Surveillance cost too much to rez and to protect, though, and I’m really not built around tags, so I got rid of those, adding in a third Jackson and a second Product Placement.

Here’s the result:

Spark Agency, v. 2

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach

Agenda (10)

• 3x AstroScript Pilot Program
• 1x Global Food Initiative •
• 2x NAPD Contract
• 3x Project Beale
• 1x 15 Minutes

Asset (10)

• 1x Adonis Campaign ••
• 2x Daily Business Show
• 1x Eve Campaign •••
• 3x Jackson Howard
• 3x PAD Campaign

Upgrade (7)

• 2x Cyberdex Virus Suite
• 2x Product Placement
• 3x SanSan City Grid

Operation (6)

• 2x Biotic Labor •••• ••••
• 2x Hedge Fund
• 2x Sweeps Week

Barrier (3)

• 1x Eli 1.0 •
• 2x Wraparound

Code Gate (7)

• 1x Archangel
• 2x Enigma
• 3x Pop-up Window
• 1x Tollbooth

Sentry (3)

• 2x Assassin
• 1x Turnpike

Other (3)

• 3x Special Offer

15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

It went 2 and 2 at the tournament this month; that’s not awesome, and there were too many situations where my ice in particular didn’t feel right. I’m starting to get comfortable playing without much ice if I’m doing fast advance; but I’m not really playing that deck like fast advance much of the time. Also, Turnpike makes absolutely no sense in this deck.

So: changes ahead! And I have nine cards on the Most Wanted List to deal with. Which could be bad, but the Adonis Campaign and Eve Campaign aren’t really doing me much good; that’s half the difference, at least.

I want to stick with Sunny for a while: I’m not in the habit of getting to know a deck, and I figured my Data & Destiny decks are as good choices as any. But the prior version of my Sunny deck didn’t feel like it was just a tweak or two away from being great, so I figured I would look more broadly.

I’d been ignoring Security Chip; given that there are so few in-faction cards, I figured I should try them all out! I also poked around NetrunnerDB for other Sunny decks; Sunny Taps Out was one I looked at, and in particular it suggested that Career Fair could get Data Folding working in a way it didn’t in the zeroth version of my deck. I also hadn’t thought of using Rabbit Hole to get Power Tap working.

I tried that for a bit, and then I saw another deck (I think it was a Kate deck, actually?) that had The Supplier; I decided to work with that instead of Career Fair.

Here’s the current version:

Sunny Lebeau, v. 2

Sunny Lebeau: Security Specialist

Event (8)

• 2x Dirty Laundry
• 3x Modded •• •• ••
• 3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (10)

• 2x Plascrete Carapace
• 3x Rabbit Hole • • •
• 2x Security Chip
• 3x Security Nexus

Resource (26)

• 1x Adjusted Chronotype ••
• 3x Daily Casts
• 3x Data Folding
• 1x Dr. Lovegood •
• 2x Drug Dealer • •
• 3x Earthrise Hotel
• 2x Globalsec Security Clearance
• 2x Jak Sinclair
• 3x Power Tap • • •
• 3x The Supplier •• •• ••
• 3x Underworld Contact

Icebreaker (6)

• 2x GS Sherman M3
• 2x GS Shrike M2
• 2x GS Striker M1

Program (2)

• 2x Datasucker • •

25 influence spent (max 25)
52 cards (min 50)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

This deck has been hilarious against my coworkers. It’s very slow to get started, but once it gets going, the amount of money it generates is unbelievable. And if my coworkers aren’t thinking and have tracer ice out there, it’s just absurd: e.g. I remember one game where there were two copies of Viper in front of R&D, and I could start my turn making a click-free run that netted me 8 credits (I only had two of my Power Taps) in profit plus a Datasucker token.

Like I said, though: it’s slow to get started. I spend quite a while doing very little in the way of offense, just building up my rig, and against a fast advance opponent that’s enough time to win the game. Then there are maybe two turns where it feels like a normal deck, and then a switch flips and I have more money than I’ve ever seen and can break into anything. So if I can make it that long, I’ll win; if I can’t, I’ll lose. That means that, against my coworkers, I win, but when I took it to a tournament, I went 2-2 with it (with one win on time), and I felt lucky that it had gone that well.

I’m going to stick with it and see what I can do to improve it: get rid of the two extra cards, try to get in a little bit more draw, see if there’s anything I can do to give me early options. And just learn how to play it better: I do, for example, need to start running a little bit more at the start just to force my opponent to rez cards, and to at least pretend a bit that I’m not just going to sit back for turn after turn.