The initial version of my Spark Agency deck did quite well. Which, I guess, isn’t a big surprised: I’d been playing a netdecked fast advance deck before then, so I’d gotten a better at playing that style, and building a deck with those same capabilities but with econ attack and some horizontal assets mixed in turned out to work fine.

In fact, I left it alone for two or three weeks: the only thing I was sure about from the early playtesting was that Adonis Campaign wasn’t the right choice: I wasn’t going to defend it, and it’s too expensive to rez just to cost the opponent a credit. I was pretty sure that a straight up swap with Launch Campaign would have been an advantage, but I mostly wanted to get my deck down to 49 cards instead of do a small tweak. Also, I kept on forgetting to use Team Sponsorship, but I wasn’t yet convinced that that was evidence that the card was a bad fit: it still seemed like a good idea to get advertisements out of the trash.

One of my coworkers was playing an Apex deck, and I was more vulnerable against that than I would have liked: Apex can attack both aspects of Tollbooth just fine, and Wraparound is also no problem. But I didn’t want to focus too much on that, either.

Ultimately, I decided that the big experiment that wasn’t working was Rebranding Team / Media Blitz. Yes, having more assets marked as advertisements is useful, but I don’t have that many non-advertisement assets, and chances are some will already be out before Rebranding Team comes into play; and if my goal is to cost my opponents money, then most of the time NAPD Contract will cost them more money than Rebranding Team would. And, without Rebranding Team, Media Blitz is useless; and, again, it’s not at all clear that Media Blitz will hurt my opponent more than it will cost me, even if Rebranding Team is there.

So I got rid of both copies of Media Blitz and replaced three copies of Rebranding Team with two copies of NAPD Contact (adding to the one I already had). That put me at 51 cards, so I had to get rid of two more to make it legal; I got rid of Adonis Campaign for one, and that freed up some influence that I could use to replace my third NAPD Contract and my License Acquisition with a Global Food Initiative. (I was sad to see License Acquisition go, but not sad enough to want to ditch something else.) That put me at 49 cards, with one influence to spare; I used that influence to swap one Wraparound with an Eli 1.0, and I also swapped my second Tollbooth for a second Assassin. (I’ve really liked how Assassin plays; and I’d doing well enough scoring without a particularly well-defended remote, whereas putting an Assassin in front of a central can really mess up my opponent.)

Here’s the result:

Spark Agency, v. 1

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach

Agenda (10)

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

Asset (12)

• 2x Daily Business Show
• 2x Jackson Howard
• 3x PAD Campaign
• 2x Team Sponsorship • •
• 3x Turtlebacks • • •

Upgrade (5)

• 1x Cyberdex Virus Suite
• 1x 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

I like it, and it’s been doing well. I can keep my opponent off their game, I can either run horizontal economy or make them spend money trashing that economy. It’s low on icebreakers (once you get ignore the six advertisements), but it’s got enough to slow them down and I’ve got enough money and tools to be able to score agendas without much protection. (I don’t like rezzing a San San knowing that my opponent will trash it next turn, but it turns out that I’ve got enough money to make that work.)

I imagine the next tweaks that I make will be on the ice: e.g. I’m not convinced Turnpike is a great fit, or that I need three copies of Special Offer. And I’m tempted to add in Launch Campaign and/or more copies of Product Placement. We’ll see how the new version does.

The initial version of my Sunny Lebeau deck won sometimes, but not particularly reliably. If it went long enough, then I could get a fair number of credits at the start of each turn, a free run, and a look at the top of R&D; but it took a while for that to build up, and breaking into a scoring remote, while possible, was a bit expensive. Also, it was at 52 cards, making a bloated ID even more bloated.

So I decided that I needed more money, and that I couldn’t count as much on drip economy. I like the idea of Data Folding, but it’s three credits to install and requires me to keep memory, and I’m not leaning quite so much on cloud breakers that I’m sure I’ll always have the memory. So I got rid of the three of those plus the two Dyson Mem Chips. Also, Power Tap didn’t seem to quite be pulling its weight; I used that influence on a Security Testing, since that would dovetail well with Jak Sinclair.

I replaced a Clone Chip with an SMC (fortunately, I had one influence that I hadn’t been using): with a big deck, I needed to get cards out of my deck more often than out of trash, so two SMC and one Clone Chip made more sense than the reverse. To replace the drip economy that I’d lost with the earlier changes, I added in a third Dirty Laundry and a third Sure Gamble, and three Daily Casts. Also, with the loss of Power Tap and Dyson Mem Chip, traces were going to be more expensive again; with Security Nexus, that could be a problem, so I put in two copies of Access to Globalsec. And, finally, I got rid of my two copies of Traffic Jam, to bring it down to 50 cards.

That version felt a lot better: I would typically start off the game with quite a bit more cash than my opponent, and with enough ways to make trouble (an early Jak Sinclair and Security Nexus, say) to keep my opponent a bit on the defensive. (C.f. the first stage of Noah McKee’s Plan.) In the middle of the game, though, it would get a bit bogged down: I wouldn’t have a full icebreaker rig out, and the money could go away surprisingly quickly. So I wanted a bit more draw: I added a Quality Time, getting rid of a Mimic to pay for the influence, I added a second Shrike so I would still have two sentry breakers, and I got rid of an Access to Globalsec to stay at 50.

Then one of my coworkers had a deck with Surveillance Sweep; that really scares me, because it has the potential to destroy my econ advantage, so I decided to add back in my two copies of Traffic Jam as current removal. (And as Astrochain defense.) To make room for those, I got rid of both copies of Overmind: I’d been leaning on Overmind early, but with the Dysons gone, I didn’t have the memory to pull it off, and Overmind really is pretty expensive to use. Also, I had yet to use Deus X, so I swapped it out for a Film Critic. (Shrike helps in some situations where Deus X is important, in particular it’s great against Komainu.)

Here’s the result:

Sunny, v. 1

Sunny Lebeau: Security Specialist

Event (9)

• 3x Dirty Laundry
• 1x Quality Time •
• 3x Sure Gamble
• 2x Traffic Jam

Hardware (6)

• 1x Clone Chip ••
• 1x Plascrete Carapace
• 1x R&D Interface ••
• 3x Security Nexus

Resource (24)

• 1x Access to Globalsec
• 1x Adjusted Chronotype ••
• 3x Daily Casts
• 3x Earthrise Hotel
• 1x Film Critic •
• 3x Globalsec Security Clearance
• 3x Jak Sinclair
• 2x Kati Jones
• 1x Security Testing •••
• 3x Symmetrical Visage
• 3x Underworld Contact

Icebreaker (6)

• 1x Corroder ••
• 1x GS Sherman M3
• 2x GS Shrike M2
• 1x GS Striker M1
• 1x ZU.13 Key Master ••

Program (5)

• 2x Datasucker • •
• 1x Parasite ••
• 2x Self-modifying Code ••• •••

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

It’s been doing pretty well? I like the economy; I would say 6 icebreakers feels small in a 50-card deck, except I have three copies of Security Nexus, so it’s really 9 icebreakers. Security Nexus and Shrike are more expensive than I would like, but so far I’ve had enough economy that I can get out Security Nexus without destroying my economy. And the increased economy means that I’m now happy to see an Earthrise Hotel instead of worried—in earlier versions, just playing Earthrise Hotel would use up lots of my money, which would mean that I wouldn’t have the money to install the cards I was drawing, but with more money it turns into a happy cascade.

I haven’t been getting as much use out of Datasucker as I expected; I’m still leaving them in there, partly because it’s good to get active benefits out of runs and partly because, with the tanks, one Datasucker token can frequently save two credits. I’m still not convinced that I need all three copies of Security Nexus, Jak Sinclair, and Globalsec Security Clearance, but they’re all actively helpful and in-faction, so I’m sticking with them for now.

I got Spark Agency when we divvied up the corp Data and Destiny identities at work; I like hurting my opponent as the corp, so it seemed like a natural fit, though looking through the cards I’m actually getting a bit curious about SYNC as well.

When building the deck, I initially went into too many directions. I thought about going horizontal with a bunch of traps and no remote ice; I thought about having a bunch of tags. But when I threw in all the cards that came to my mind, I had close to 100 cards, so obviously I need to figure out a plan and pare things down.

I’ve been doing a netdecked NEH fast advance deck recently; I’m not very good at it yet, which I’m taking a sign that I have a lot to learn and that I should stick with that until I learn how to play it. So I decided to ultimately give up on the punishment / fake ideas that I was floating around, and stick with a fast advance that’s more horizontal because of all the advertisements.

Speaking of advertisements, I only included one Adonis Campaign and no copies of either Eve Campaign, Launch Campaign, or Rex Campaign. But I have 3 each of PAD Campaign, Pop-up Window, and Special Offer, and one Product Placement. And I’m doing Team Turtlebacks; I also three copies of Rebranding Team to try to turn those cards into advertisements, plus a couple copies of Media Blitz to let me activate Rebranding Team when it gets stolen.

It’s light on ice (16 of them, but 3 are Special Offer that is only econ plus (probably) a one-time 1-credit Runner tax); I’m hoping that that will help me commit to advancing quickly. 54 cards for now, though of course I’ll bring it down soon.

Spark Agency, v. 0

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach

Agenda (12)

• 3x AstroScript Pilot Program
• 1x License Acquisition
• 1x NAPD Contract
• 3x Project Beale
• 3x Rebranding Team
• 1x 15 Minutes

Asset (13)

• 1x Adonis Campaign ••
• 2x Daily Business Show
• 2x Jackson Howard
• 3x PAD Campaign
• 2x Team Sponsorship • •
• 3x Turtlebacks • • •

Upgrade (5)

• 1x Cyberdex Virus Suite
• 1x Product Placement
• 3x SanSan City Grid

Operation (8)

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

Barrier (3)

• 3x Wraparound

Code Gate (8)

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

Sentry (2)

• 1x Assassin
• 1x Turnpike

Other (3)

• 3x Special Offer

15 influence spent (max 15)
22 agenda points (between 22 and 23)
54 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

At work, we divided up the Data and Destiny IDs; my runner ID was Sunny Lebeau, by far the most normal of them. I’ve been playing a netdecked Prepaid Kate deck recently, but when I started to put it together, econ resources jumped out at me more: Underworld Contact, obviously, but also I’m hoping that cloud icebreakers gives me the memory for Data Folding.

Speaking of cloud icebreakers, I looked into the disposable Criminal suite, but they eat up a fair amount of influence, especially since I’d want Clone Chip to pull them back. (I did pull in ZU.13, though.) Also, when looking at suggested cards, I noticed Power Tap; it can pay for the Security Nexus uses, and I even threw in couple of copies of Dyson Mem Chip both to help with Security Nexus and to keep Data Folding working. And, going with the “lots of memory” theme, I threw in a couple of copies of Overmind as my general-purpose icebreaker.

Of the in-faction cards, I didn’t end up including Security Chip: a slight boost from disposable hardware didn’t seem like the way I wanted to go, Datasucker seemed like a better route there. (It seems more useful in a cloud criminal build.) I only included one of each tank, for better or for worse; I’m hoping Overmind or standard breakers will work better. I did include all three copies of both Jak Sinclair and Globalsec Security Clearance (with one Adjusted Chronotype to help him), until I get a feel for them.

Here’s the result. I only ended up using 24 influence, and I’m at 52 cards, so clearly there’s room for improvement. And I suspect it will be the sort of deck I’m overly fond of building that will be unstoppable once everything’s out, except that I’ll already have lost by then. We’ll see; I’m tentatively planning to try to stick with this one for a while.

Sunny, v. 0

Sunny Lebeau: Security Specialist

Event (6)

• 2x Dirty Laundry
• 2x Sure Gamble
• 2x Traffic Jam

Hardware (9)

• 2x Clone Chip •• ••
• 2x Dyson Mem Chip
• 1x Plascrete Carapace
• 1x R&D Interface ••
• 3x Security Nexus

Resource (24)

• 1x Adjusted Chronotype ••
• 3x Data Folding
• 3x Earthrise Hotel
• 3x Globalsec Security Clearance
• 3x Jak Sinclair
• 2x Kati Jones
• 3x Power Tap • • •
• 3x Symmetrical Visage
• 3x Underworld Contact

Icebreaker (9)

• 1x Corroder ••
• 1x Deus X •
• 1x GS Sherman M3
• 1x GS Shrike M2
• 1x GS Striker M1
• 1x Mimic •
• 2x Overmind
• 1x ZU.13 Key Master ••

Program (4)

• 2x Datasucker • •
• 1x Parasite ••
• 1x Self-modifying Code •••

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

In the October Minecraft session, I continued building out the cave that I’d been working on in September. I’d been vaguely thinking that I would build a room on the other side of the water from my earlier room, but there really wasn’t a good space there for a room; while figuring that out, I decided to at least build a passage from the right side of the water (if you’re facing up the waterfall to the entrance) to the left side.

The left side was somewhat lower; I decided the best way to connect the two was to dig a passage through the rock behind the waterfall.

The entrance to the back hallway

Inside the back hallway, with stairs down to the far side

Needs a door

Here’s the exit on the other side

I still wanted a room, though; I’d been digging through a fair amount of stone, so I wondered if I could fit a room in there, with a glass front that you could use to look out through the waterfall.

Starting to dig out a room behind the waterfall

First version of the glass wall

That was too cramped, let’s go three blocks deep

Add a bit of a fence to demarcate the entrance in the back

At this point I had to deal with Minecraft fluid dynamics. I tried various locations for the cutoff, and I was frustrated by the fact that, as far as I can tell, adding a block and then remove it can permanently alter the water flow. So, while I don’t think the front of the room stuck out more than had been there before, the water didn’t flow as gracefully as I remembered it.

Here’s a view again from the earlier room

Here’s a view from a higher angle, so you can see the glass

Once I had the outlines fixed, I added some more decor.

Adding some furniture

The view towards the rear

The bottom of the stairs needs a door, too

With that finished, I needed to figure out how to use the space at the bottom of the stairs. The part next to the water was pretty narrow, so while it made a nice viewing area, it wasn’t going to turn into a room. But when I turned around and faced the back wall, I realized that there were a series of passages there that I could turn into a wide, graceful set of stairs that ended up curling back to the water, beneath the new viewing area.

The water viewing area by the bottom exit from the passage behind the water

In the other direction, there’s a place for a passage to start curling around to the left

The stairs continue to curve

The bottom of the stairs

At the bottom of the stairs was a lovely little pond. If I’m remembering correctly, the dirt was already there, but I added the grass. And then if you follow the water along there, you’ll see where it starts connecting back to the end of the waterfall.

A pond at the bottom

Following the water back

Standing on the stairs, so you can see both the pond and the viewing area above

The view from the viewing passage up top, facing the stairs instead of the water

That’s what I spent my time on; Pat was also there, and he finished detailing his pyramid:

The finished pyramid

Then he followed me to my cave, stopping off at the fort (which I think we’re calling Pinetown?) to make sure villagers were doing okay and rescuing some golems from the water.

Rescuing golems

This lookout pig does not, however, need rescuing

After looking at my cave, he poked around a bit in the surrounding terrain, and found some places where he’s considering building next.

A dramatic floating island

A mountain rabbit

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do next, but I think I’ll continue with the cave: I suspect that there are more spaces that are worth paying attention to, and for that matter some of the spaces that I mentioned above could probably use some refinement. I’m also going to look up and see if there’s scope to do something interesting there, with bridges crossing the space.

After the prior version of my Laramy Fisk deck, I decided that I needed a better way to break into servers, and in particular to give up on the Faust idea. So I got rid of Faust and Passport, adding in a second Corroder and ZU.13. I’d been at 14 influence, and that added two, so I replaced one Film Critic with a Plascrete.

After that, I decided Breach wasn’t helping, and Earthrise Hotel wasn’t the best source of card draw for me, so I got rid of those plus my third Security Testing, replacing them with a Symmetrical Visage and experimentally re-adding two Forged Activation Orders.

Here’s the result:

Laramy Fisk, v. 2

Laramy Fisk: Savvy Investor

Event (21)

• 3x Account Siphon
• 3x Dirty Laundry
• 3x Fisk Investment Seminar
• 2x Forged Activation Orders
• 2x Inside Job
• 2x Legwork
• 3x Special Order
• 3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (3)

• 2x Box-E
• 1x Plascrete Carapace

Resource (12)

• 2x Daily Casts
• 1x Film Critic •
• 1x Hades Shard •
• 2x Kati Jones
• 2x Security Testing
• 3x Symmetrical Visage
• 1x Utopia Shard •

Icebreaker (7)

• 1x Alias
• 1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
• 2x Corroder •• ••
• 1x Faerie
• 1x Femme Fatale
• 1x ZU.13 Key Master ••

Program (2)

• 2x Keyhole ••• •••

It went 2-2 at the tournament; that would be fine, except both wins were on time (because my GRNDL deck is slow!), and one of them didn’t feel like it would have turned into a win. It was definitely a fun experiment, but I also don’t feel like I did as good a job with the experiment as I could have: e.g. this blog post talks about not running early without threat cards, but that’s exactly what I did. It wasn’t that rare for games to come together to where I could take apart my opponent at the end (basically, waiting until they got to a situation where they could win soon, and then doing a few last Keyhole runs and popping Hades Shard), but there were too many situations where that strategy got shut out.

So, again, evidence that I should probably netdeck for a bit, to get a better feel for what good decks feel like.

As noted in the prior version of my GRNDL deck, I thought I was playing it wrong, and I also needed to fix the ice. Amazon Industrial Zone wasn’t a good idea as Blackmail protection, so I got rid of it and added two copies of Elizabeth Mills. I got rid of PAD Campaign and Shell Corporation, and added in a Capital Investors. And, also I got rid of Corporate Town. And, ice-wise I got rid of Hadrian’s Wall, one Ice Wall, and Swarm, and added in a Builder, two Enigmas, and a Nebula.

Capital Investors was a bad idea, though: I wasn’t going to protect it, and it doesn’t make enough money in the short term, so I replaced it with a couple of copies of Melange. And I got rid of both copies of Builder and added in a Quicksand.

Here’s the result:

GRNDL, v. 2

GRNDL: Power Unleashed

Agenda (10)

• 2x Corporate War
• 1x Government Contracts
• 1x Hostile Takeover
• 3x Oaktown Renovation
• 3x Project Atlas

Asset (7)

• 2x Elizabeth Mills
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 2x Melange Mining Corp.
• 1x Shattered Remains

Operation (13)

• 2x Aggressive Negotiation
• 2x Hedge Fund
• 1x Midseason Replacements ••••
• 3x Restructure
• 3x Scorched Earth
• 2x SEA Source •• ••

Barrier (9)

• 2x Fire Wall
• 2x Ice Wall
• 2x Meru Mati
• 1x Quicksand
• 2x Spiderweb

Code Gate (4)

• 2x Enigma
• 2x Wormhole

Sentry (5)

• 2x Archer
• 2x Nebula
• 1x Taurus

Multi (1)

• 1x Orion

10 influence spent (max 10)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway

I brought it to a tournament; it went 1-3, and the one win was against a new player who mad some basic mistakes that let me flatline him quickly. It was too slow, and ultimately didn’t have a non-flatline winning condition; I did pretty well on money in several of the games, but my opponents reacted appropriately by getting even more money; that, combined with Film Critic, meant that I couldn’t either flatline them or keep them out.

I suspect that I’m not playing it optimally, but I also suspect that I’m building decks wrong: this one feels too conservative, too slow. I’m thinking that I should spend some time playing good net decks, to understand how a good deck plays (following this advice); hopefully that will give me a better idea of what a good deck feels like. (And it will improve my play at the board, too: if I’m losing, then it’ll be the fault of my play, not of my decks!)

For the September Minecraft session, I decided to start work on a room inside the cave I’d been obsessed with for the last several months: there was an area not too far in off of the water that looked like a reasonable beginning of a room so I decided to pretty it up.

Here’s what the front looked like initially

And here’s what the back looked like

Here’s the view up the waterfall from the front of the room

I started by putting in a floor; then an alcove in the back seemed like a natural storage area, and finally I added some furniture. It’s still pretty basic, especially the front of the room, but it’s a start.

Adding in a floor

Armor and bookshelves in the back alcove

A couch and a painting

A side table next to the couch and a work area on the other side of the room

Then I decided to build some stairs up the waterfall, to connect the room to the entrance:

That protuberance up there is a little ugly

Starting work on the stairs

While I was in the middle of this, Pat told me he’d finished the glass structure that he’d been building in the ocean last month, so I flew over to see that:

Looking up from the bottom

A glowing floor

The view from high above

A closer in top view

Looking down from the top; the line is Dan’s path

Then I flew back to continue my work; I ran into a neat looking round passage on the way.

Round passage

Inside the passage

Finally, I finished the stairs, and looked around to see what to do next.

The top of the stairs; I gave up on zigzags here

The finished stairs

The entrance looks cleaner now

Here’s what the path looks like near the room

This is on the other side of the water; I think I’ll build there next time

The initial version of my GRNDL deck has, honestly, not been doing as well as I expected. It sometimes manages the double-Scorched win, Midseasons is sometimes doing double duty by hobbling resource-dependent decks in non-kill situations, and in general all of the out-of-faction cards seem like they’re good choices; but I expected the deck to be able to win through agenda points more often, and I think it’s only done that once.

Part of that is that I have the wrong mix of cards, at multiple levels: the wrong agendas, the wrong ice, the wrong assets. In terms of agendas, the problem is Underway Renovation: as far as I can tell, it’s simply not a good card. If the runner’s deck is fairly full, then I’m doing nothing to change the odds that the next card that they draw will be useful, and while I might happen to hit a card that is painful for them to lose, runners frequently have better tools to get cards out of the heap than out of the stack, so I might actually be helping them by forcing them to trash a good card.

Underway Renovation still probably hurts the runner if I ride it for long enough, but that’s expensive and, if that really is hurting them, then they’ll eventually get in there to grab it; it’s also probably helpful if they’re playing a high-draw deck and I can cause them to run out earlier than I’d like, but that’s going to be a middle or end game situation, and if I can defend an agenda long enough to cause problems there, then I’ll be better off scoring a 2-point agenda instead.

The ice problems are a little more subtle. I love Archer, but I think three of them are a bit much (especially since I don’t like two of my 1-point agendas); and the experimental ice (Swarm, Taurus) hasn’t been working out in practice. Also, I need to give up on trying to use Errand Boy, it’s not a good card. Finally, the ice is a little barrier-heavy, which is especially problematic with the bad pub: e.g. once they get Corroder out, Ice Wall is useless.

The basic problem with assets is PAD Campaign: with the bad pub, it’s too cheap to trash. So I either need to have defended agenda assets or I need to switch my economy more to operations. And I have yet to use Corporate Town as anything other than run bait. (Though I will say: run bait is pretty useful, especially when your opponents are playing Blackmail…)

With that in mind, I made a bunch of changes (bringing it from a 54-card deck to a 49-card deck in the process.) I got rid of two copies of Underway Renovation, one Corporate Town, one Archer, two Pad Campaigns, and Errand Boy. And I added in a second Spiderweb (which makes me still more barrier-dependent, but at least it costs a bit of money to get through…), and an Amazon Industrial Zone as experimental Blackmail protection.

Here’s the result:

GRNDL, v. 1

GRNDL: Power Unleashed

Agenda (10)

• 2x Corporate War
• 1x Government Contracts
• 1x Hostile Takeover
• 3x Oaktown Renovation
• 3x Project Atlas

Asset (5)

• 1x Corporate Town
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 1x PAD Campaign
• 1x Shattered Remains

Upgrade (2)

• 1x Amazon Industrial Zone
• 1x Shell Corporation

Operation (13)

• 2x Aggressive Negotiation
• 2x Hedge Fund
• 1x Midseason Replacements ••••
• 3x Restructure
• 3x Scorched Earth
• 2x SEA Source •• ••

Barrier (10)

• 2x Fire Wall
• 1x Hadrian’s Wall
• 3x Ice Wall
• 2x Meru Mati
• 2x Spiderweb

Code Gate (3)

• 1x Builder
• 2x Wormhole

Sentry (5)

• 2x Archer
• 1x Nebula
• 1x Swarm
• 1x Taurus

Multi (1)

• 1x Orion

10 influence spent (max 10)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway

It’s still not great, though I still think there’s a seed of a good idea here. And, more importantly, I frequently play it wrong: it’s tempting to use GRNDL to get out some agenda early, but if I do that, I’ll lose my economic advantage (unless the agenda is Oaktown Renovation or maybe Government Contracts, but those are the two hardest to score early), and I may even lose an agenda from my hand or deck in the process. And, if I don’t have an economic advantage, then I’ve lost my identity power benefit and I’ve given my opponent a bad pub, which means I’m behind with nothing to show for it. (There’s a variant of this where I try land a Midseasons early; again, though, that’s not useful because I won’t have the Scorcheds yet for the kill and they won’t have resources out to trash, and I’ll be behind on money anyways!)

So I need to slow down. I should start by defending centrals and starting to build up a scoring server but not actually trying to score right at the start; then I can get to a situation where I’ll be excited to see a Corporate War, because I’m pretty confident that I can score it and increase my economic advantage in the process, instead of going broke. Or, indeed, to see any of the agendas, because they all have their uses: Government Contracts gets me money; Hostile Takeover feeds into Archer and Corporate Town (if I keep the latter in here, which I probably won’t); Oaktown Renovation and Corporate War get me money; and an overadvanced Project Atlas sets up a kill combo as well, and in a pinch a 3/2 agenda is never a bad thing. Also, these all feed into Aggressive Negotation, which has been a very useful card for setting up the kill combo.

But I also need to fix the ice. There are too many barriers; and one of my coworkers is having great success playing a strength 5 Atman against it. (And, like I said, it’s vulnerable to Blackmail; I’m not sure how much I should worry about that, but in general baiting non-agenda runs to drain my opponent’s economy is probably useful.) I’ve got another week before the tournament; we’ll see if I manage to improve the deck and, more importantly, improve my playing of the deck enough that it can hold its own.

The initial version of my Laramy Fisk deck got off to a great start: the first time I played it I was swimming with money and my opponent was really off-balance, and I won easily. And having the opponent be off balance wasn’t uncommon in subsequent games; that game was by far my most profitable game, however. I usually had enough money, but I didn’t generally have much of a surplus, and in particular I didn’t have enough money to make big runs most of the time.

Also, I don’t have the icebreakers to reliably make big runs, or sometimes even runs at all, on remotes. My icebreaker mix is central-heavy; I do have Faust, but while Fisk Investment and Symmetrical Visage give me decent card draw, I don’t have good enough card draw to make regular Faust runs.

So my first tweaks were around money and card draw. I decided to add a third Security Testing, a third Dirty laundry, and an Earthrise Hotel; I got rid of Eden Shard, and after dithering a bit about the other two cards to get rid of, I decided to get rid of Forged Activation Orders.

Here’s the result:

Laramy Fisk

Laramy Fisk: Savvy Investor

Event (19)

• 3x Account Siphon
• 3x Dirty Laundry
• 3x Fisk Investment Seminar
• 2x Inside Job
• 2x Legwork
• 3x Special Order
• 3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (2)

• 2x Box-E

Resource (14)

• 2x Daily Casts
• 1x Earthrise Hotel
• 2x Film Critic • •
• 1x Hades Shard •
• 2x Kati Jones
• 3x Security Testing
• 2x Symmetrical Visage
• 1x Utopia Shard •

Icebreaker (8)

• 1x Alias
• 1x Breach
• 1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
• 1x Corroder ••
• 1x Faerie
• 1x Faust ••
• 1x Femme Fatale
• 1x Passport

Program (2)

• 2x Keyhole ••• •••

14 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Universe of Tomorrow

It’s still got a lot of problems. The icebreaker suite is bad: having only one Corroder really hurts me sometimes (especially if it gets sniped and means I can’t hit remotes without Faust, but also Breach is expensive even for centrals), and I still don’t have enough card draw to feed Faust. So I either need to commit to Faust and add two more copies of Earthrise Hotels or get rid of it; I’ll probably do the latter, which will also free up the influence to get a second Corroder. (Though that won’t solve the whole problem, I’ll still have issues with code gates.)

I am getting super lucky with being able to draw Hades Shard, though; it’s definitely the MVP of the deck. Keyhole is useful, albeit not quite in the way I’d been hoping: I’d been thinking I could use it for constant pressure, but in practice people manage to defend R&D enough to make that expensive, so it often turns up as a surprise at the end: I’ll pick a turn when I’m going to pop Hades Shard, and I’ll get a couple extra Keyhole runs that turn.

I’m somewhat on the fence with Eden Shard, but ultimately it’s useful in that last turn (I’ll pop Eden Shard before Hades Shard), and also Eden Shard plus Legwork make a nice combo to see the opponent’s entire hand. (Or all but one card in their hand, if I force them to draw.)

I’m vulnerable against double Scorched (because Box-E only brings me up to 7 cards); that hasn’t been a problem in the local meta, but it might be a problem in tournaments. But you can’t protect against everything; these days, Film Critics are filling my deck slot of corp shenanigans defense, and it’s been useful.

The one blowout loss I’ve had was against core HB: they just kept on installing cards, getting them money and keeping their hand size low enough that I didn’t want to use my identity power. On which note, I’m still not sure when to use the identity power: do I use it when they have 4 cards? What about 3? What if I’m running on their hand? In general, I lean towards using it, so I’ll probably use it even if I’m running on their hand and even if they have 4 cards, but I’m not sure yet. And I suspect it’s vulnerable against rush decks: it takes a while for enough excess cards to make it to Archives, and I’m not great on remotes (and my identity power assumes I’m regularly running against centrals), so if an opponent realizes that, they have a decent chance of scoring agenda points before I create too much trouble.

I’m also seeing situations where one card in my hand sits in my hand (with multiples) for a while, then I find a way to use it repeatedly to suddenly apply focused pressure. That happened in that first glorious game: I spent a while in a board state where Account Siphon didn’t work, so they were just clogging my hand, until I got to a situation where I could make it into HQ and my opponent had six or seven credits: so then I ended up playing Account Siphon on three consecutive turns (clearing tags and letting them try to recover money each turn), at the end of which I had a lot of money and they had none. And in my most recent game against a core HB opponent, I was waiting to play Fisk Investments but their hand size was too low; once they hit a big enough hand size, though, I played it on three consecutive turns, and a lot of good stuff ended up in archives.

So there’s a lot to learn in how to play it. And, like I said, the deck composition isn’t right yet. But it’s fun, I’m definitely glad I built it, and I’m looking forward to trying it out at a tournament next week.