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.

I’d gotten a non-FFG alt-art GRNDL at a recent tournament, so I decided to use that for my next corp. I wanted to hit some of the same beats as I’d had in my Next Ice deck, while adding in some Weyland meanness.

I start off with an economic advantage; I wanted to have that feed on itself. So partly that meant throwing in three copies of Restructure, but I also included three copies of Oaktown Renovation and two copies of Corporate War in my agenda mix. Hopefully I can get them out early and defend them enough to score them, at which point my economic advantage grows.

But this is Weyland: I still want to be able to blow people up. I didn’t feel like going heavily on 3-point agendas, and Punitive Counterstrike is less good in a Film Critic world, so Scorched Earth. Which means that I need to land tags; I decided to throw in both SEA Source and Midseason Replacements. (My Next Ice deck showed the power of rig destruction: even if I don’t yet have enough copies of Scorched Earth, Midseason Replacements can let me take out resources.)

When originally building the deck, I forgot that I only had 10 influence, though: with Midseason taking 4 influence, that’s a real problem. I decided to solve that via tutoring: three copies of Project Atlas, and two copies of Aggressive Negotiation. That way I’ll be able to get out Midseasons early; depending on how things go, I can also use that for Scorched.

I decided to include two copies of Underway Renovation (probably my Laramy Fisk deck was inspiring me there): if I get enough money and a defended remote, I might just end up riding that for a while, accepting that I’ll lose one agenda point from it at some point. And I doubled up with resource destruction by including a couple of copies of Corporate Town (since I’d had so much fun discarding agendas for Archer!); also, one Shattered Remains to blow up hardware and three Archers for programs.

The ice is pretty standard; 20 pieces, it turned out a little more advanceable than I expected, but that’s fine.

It ended up at 54 cards: I was including a little bit too much stuff. But hey, given that I have 5 cards in there that have an agenda as part of their rez cost, having extra agendas isn’t bad! I don’t expect it to stay that way, though; if I had to guess, maybe I’ll end up getting rid of two copies of Underworld Renovation, two copies of Corporate town, and one other non-ice card. (And probably swapping the third Archer with a slightly more standard ice.) We’ll see, though, I want to see how it goes.

Here’s everything:

GRNDL, v. 0

GRNDL: Power Unleashed

Agenda (12)

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

Asset (8)

• 2x Corporate Town
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 3x PAD Campaign
• 1x Shattered Remains

Upgrade (1)

• 1x Shell Corporation

Operation (13)

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

Barrier (9)

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

Code Gate (3)

• 1x Builder
• 2x Wormhole

Sentry (7)

• 3x Archer
• 1x Errand Boy
• 1x Nebula
• 1x Swarm
• 1x Taurus

Multi (1)

• 1x Orion

10 influence spent (max 10)
22 agenda points (between 22 and 23)
54 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway

I’d had some bad experiences playing against Noise decks recently; so, when I saw Laramy Fisk show up, I thought that maybe I could experiment with a Noise-style effect coming from Criminal. Get the corp to draw more than they’re comfortable with: partly I just want to make them feel unsettled, but I’m also hoping to get them agenda flooded, at which point either agendas will build up in their hand or in archives.

At least that’s the happy scenario; the unhappy scenario is that it causes the corp to draw exactly the cards they need, propelling them to an economic advantage, while giving them enough ice to protect the extra agendas! That’s honestly more likely, but hey, at least the effect will encourage me to run a lot.

In addition to the identity, I was definitely going to include three copies of Fisk Investment Seminar. I was thinking I’d use Vigil as my console, but when I was browsing cards, Keyhole caught my eye: he’s a classic combo with Noise, and why wouldn’t he work well with Fisk? I don’t have enough influence for both, though, so I need a criminal console, and Box-E gives me the 2 MU to host Keyhole and the extra hand space for the cards from Fisk Investment Seminar.

When planning my icebreakers, I figured I’d be running more on centrals, so I included both Breach and Passport. And for my emergency all-purpose icebreaker I decided to use Faust, with three copies of Special Order as my tutoring. (It feels pretty weird building a deck without Clone Chip!)

Hades Shard makes sense, both because of Keyhole and because agenda floods can feed agendas into archives as well. Thinking about that, I actually decided to include all three of the shards: Utopia Shard plus Legwork can let me access their entire hand (assuming I don’t force the extra draw), and maybe Eden Shard will act like a couple of Keyhole runs? My emergency countermeasure was two copies of Film Critic, I included a couple each of Forged Activation Orders and Inside Job as generic criminal goodness, and everything else was money.

Here’s the result:

Laramy Fisk, v. 0

Laramy Fisk: Savvy Investor

Event (20)

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

Hardware (2)

• 2x Box-E

Resource (13)

• 2x Daily Casts
• 1x Eden Shard •
• 2x Film Critic • •
• 1x Hades Shard •
• 2x Kati Jones
• 2x 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 ••• •••

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

The prior version of my Chameleon deck was starting to show promise: I gave up on one bad idea, added in Self-Modifying Code, and I’d had some proof of concept that I could cut through big ice when I wanted. It was at 43 cards, so I wanted to slim it down, and see if I could focus it a bit more.

I didn’t actually make a lot of changes: I’d had good enough experiences with Film Critic that I figured I could afford to get rid of one Plascrete, I got rid of the Sharpshooter, since Deus X was clearly the more important emergency special purpose icebreaker, and I somewhat reluctantly got rid of the Forged Activation Order copies. And I added in two copies of Legwork: I’d had the most success with the deck when I picked my runs, so I wanted to increase the effect of those runs.

Here’s the result:

Chameleon, v. 2

Chaos Theory: Wünderkind

Event (7)

• 2x Legwork •• ••
• 3x Sure Gamble
• 2x The Maker’s Eye

Hardware (10)

• 2x Clone Chip
• 2x Cyberfeeder • •
• 2x Dinosaurus
• 3x LLDS Processor
• 1x Plascrete Carapace

Resource (11)

• 2x Armitage Codebusting
• 2x Daily Casts
• 2x Film Critic
• 1x Ice Carver •••
• 2x Kati Jones
• 2x Personal Workshop

Icebreaker (5)

• 3x Chameleon
• 1x Deus X
• 1x Gordian Blade

Program (8)

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

15 influence spent (max 15)
41 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Old Hollywood

I’d felt that the deck had possibilities but wasn’t great: a little low on money, and a little slow. So my guess for the tournament was that it would go 2-3, and, honestly, 1-4 wouldn’t have particularly surprised me. But I actually went 3-2, which did surprise me: I felt that my Next Ice deck was significantly better than this one. Though, again, luck played a factor: in particular, in my first game my opponent got super agenda flooded, and that combined with getting a Film Critic in my initial draw gave me an easy win. (I’ve forgotten the details, but Film Critic played a key role in at least one other game as well.)

The other surprise about that tournament was that I played against two other Chameleon decks! All three decks were pretty different; one of them looked really interesting, I wish I’d been taking notes.

Fun experiment; I don’t think I have a good enough feel for what to do with it to want to continue honing it, and I also don’t think it will be particularly useful for my coworkers to practice against. So I’ll be on to Laramy Fisk next.

I was starting to get happy with my Next Ice deck after the first set of tweaks, but I needed to prepare it for the tournament. I’d initially experimented with not having any traps, but I figured I should add some in; program destruction had been key to its success, so I went with two copies of Aggressive Secretary. And I’d been doing well with money (in particular, I’d frequently been able to ride Melange to a good amount of money), so I got rid of an Adonis and a Peak Efficiency; I also swapped a Hedge Fund with a Restructure.

After that, I noticed the Pop-Up Windows weren’t really paying off well, so I got rid of both of them; I used the influence on a Wormhole, and I added that third Hedge Fund back in to bring the money up a bit.

Here’s the result:

Next Ice, v. 2

NEXT Design: Guarding the Net

Agenda (10)

• 3x Accelerated Beta Test
• 1x Corporate War
• 3x NAPD Contract
• 3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (11)

• 2x Adonis Campaign
• 2x Aggressive Secretary
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 2x Melange Mining Corp.
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 1x Sundew •••

Operation (8)

• 2x Enhanced Login Protocol
• 3x Hedge Fund
• 2x Peak Efficiency
• 1x Restructure

Barrier (7)

• 3x Eli 1.0
• 1x Heimdall 1.0
• 3x NEXT Silver

Code Gate (5)

• 1x Lotus Field •
• 3x NEXT Bronze
• 1x Wormhole ••

Sentry (7)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 2x Architect
• 3x NEXT Gold

Other (1)

• 1x Mother Goddess

12 influence spent (max 12)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

It had done well at work: not great against a Noise deck, and it’s a little more vulnerable against ice destruction than I would like, but I feel like I know how to play it, when to go for money, when to go for agendas, when to blow up my opponent’s programs. (Answer: whenever you can, I’ve never regretted rezzing an Archer.)

Unfortunately, it went 1-4. Part of that was bad luck: in one game I fired an Accelerated Beta Test and had three agendas appear, and a couple of others could have gone either way. Still, it’s clearly not as reliable as I thought.

I’m going to keep it assembled, though: I think it’s a good enough representative of a glaciery archetype to be useful for my coworkers to test against. I’m not particularly planning to tweak it, but if I were, I’d consider getting rid of Sundew (it scares opponents, but I don’t have the ice to defend it), Heimdall 1.0 (it’s not having enough of an effect for me in this deck to justify the rez cost), and one or both Architects (people always seem to have an answer to it, so it’s really only a blip). And maybe even swap a Project Vitruvius for a Corporate War: three-for-two agendas are nice, but I don’t ever use the ability, while the extra money for Corporate War is really useful. (Hmm, actually: maybe I should instead start overadvancing Project Vitruvius…)

On to GRNDL for my next deck; I’m hoping I can use my experience from this deck when building that one.

The initial version of my Chameleon deck tried to include Hyperdriver as well, but I basically knew from the start that that was too much for one deck. So I got rid of Hyperdriver (2 copies), Quest Completed (2 copies), and Notoriety (3 copies). Also, Hayley’s identity never helped, so I swapped her out with Chaos Theory, giving me more memory so I could get rid of the two copies of Cybersolutions Mem Chip.

That brought me down to 41 cards; and, I figured that, with the smaller deck, I’d get rid of both Diesel’s as well. I used the freed up influence to add two copies of Forged Activation Orders; also, Film Critic seems like the new hotness, so I included two of those.

That was a clear improvement; I needed more tools to get stuff out, though, so I added two SMCs, making room by getting rid of one Personal Workshop (which I’d been feeling a bit dependent on) and one Dinosaurus (which is important but, given the number of tools I have to match Chameleon’s strength, not essential to get out early). Here’s the result:

Chameleon v. 1

Chaos Theory: Wünderkind

Event (7)

• 2x Forged Activation Orders •• ••
• 3x Sure Gamble
• 2x The Maker’s Eye

Hardware (11)

• 2x Clone Chip
• 2x Cyberfeeder • •
• 2x Dinosaurus
• 3x LLDS Processor
• 2x Plascrete Carapace

Resource (11)

• 2x Armitage Codebusting
• 2x Daily Casts
• 2x Film Critic
• 1x Ice Carver •••
• 2x Kati Jones
• 2x Personal Workshop

Icebreaker (6)

• 3x Chameleon
• 1x Deus X
• 1x Gordian Blade
• 1x Sharpshooter

Program (8)

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

15 influence spent (max 15)
43 cards (min 40)

It’s certainly a lot better than its initial version; I’m not surprised when it wins, though I think it doesn’t win half the time. It’s just on the edge of having enough money; also, I don’t run as much as is a good idea in general. But, when I do pick my runs, I can make it in: for example, yesterday I won a game where I could walk right through strength 7 ice, which is a very useful ability. Film Critic has been useful in a couple of situations, too, I’m definitely keeping that.

Still: needs improvement, given its record; and being three cards over the minimum is a sign that I’m not looking hard enough at it. I also think I need to learn how to pilot the deck better…

The initial version of my Next Ice deck had some success, but there was work to do; I decided to start by tweaking the ice. I had a little too much expensive ice and Architect wasn’t being helpful enough to support three copies; so I was thinking that I’d try switching some of the ice over to economy-generating ice, to have the economy work better with my identity power.

So I added two copies of Errand Boy and one Pop-Up Window; to free up the influence, I swapped a Sundew with an Adonis. And the ice I got rid of was one copy of Heimdall 1.0, one Architect, and my only Rototurret.

Errand Boy really did not work out well: I’m not sure I ever saw a copy get run through twice, and without that it was hurting my economy instead of helping. So got rid of both of those, adding in a second Pop-Up Window and a Lotus Field.

Here’s the result:

Next Ice, v. 1

NEXT Design: Guarding the Net

Agenda (10)

• 3x Accelerated Beta Test
• 1x Corporate War
• 3x NAPD Contract
• 3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (10)

• 3x Adonis Campaign
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 2x Melange Mining Corp.
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 1x Sundew •••

Operation (8)

• 2x Enhanced Login Protocol
• 3x Hedge Fund
• 3x Peak Efficiency

Barrier (7)

• 3x Eli 1.0
• 1x Heimdall 1.0
• 3x NEXT Silver

Code Gate (6)

• 1x Lotus Field •
• 3x NEXT Bronze
• 2x Pop-up Window • •

Sentry (7)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 2x Architect
• 3x NEXT Gold

Other (1)

• 1x Mother Goddess

12 influence spent (max 12)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

It’s been winning about half the time at work? Archer just keeps on paying off: I was intending this to be a nice deck, but it can really destroy my opponent’s rig. And I’m getting into a rhythm where I can usually get out a Melange pretty early, have enough ice to defend it and my centrals so nothing awful happens while I click on Melange for maybe three turns, and then go on the offense with enough money to rez ice. But I’m not doing well against one of my coworkers’ Noise deck: both the Noise identity ability and the ice destruction from Parasite put me on the back foot, and I don’t work quickly enough to win before Noise’s ability takes over.

So I have work to do on that; also, it’s time for me to work a trap or two into the deck.

My last three corp decks have all been focused on offense in different ways, so I figured I’d build a deck based around ice and money. No traps at all! (At least in this iteration…) I decided to experiment with Next ice; and I figured NEXT Design must be a good match for that, right?

Next Ice, v. 0

NEXT Design: Guarding the Net

Agenda (10)

• 3x Accelerated Beta Test
• 1x Corporate War
• 3x NAPD Contract
• 3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (10)

• 2x Adonis Campaign
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 2x Melange Mining Corp.
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 2x Sundew ••• •••

Operation (8)

• 2x Enhanced Login Protocol
• 3x Hedge Fund
• 3x Peak Efficiency

Barrier (8)

• 3x Eli 1.0
• 2x Heimdall 1.0
• 3x NEXT Silver

Code Gate (3)

• 3x NEXT Bronze

Sentry (9)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 3x Architect
• 3x NEXT Gold
• 1x Rototurret

Other (1)

• 1x Mother Goddess

12 influence spent (max 12)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

10 pieces of Next ice (counting Mother Goddess), out of 21 in total; I decided to tilt more heavily towards ice than towards money, to maximize the identity ability. Though, thinking about it a bit more: maybe I should find room for some economy ice, say Pop-up Window or Errand Boy? Influence is tight, though; we’ll see how much money I have as I try it out…

The initial version of my NBN Interference deck had its moments; in particular, Psychographics plus Information Overload can make for a very entertaining combo. (Whereas I didn’t get as much out of isolated tagging.) So I decided to focus on that when slimming down to 49 cards.

I got rid of my Gutenberg and Virgo, and added a third Midseasons. I decided I didn’t need both Blacklist and Chronos Protocol, so I got rid of both copies of Blacklist. The agenda I ditched was one copy of Market Research, and PAD Campaign was the last card I ditched.

Playing that a bit, I felt low on money and vulnerable to Noise; so I added a third Hedge Fund and a third Jackson Howard, removing both copies of Daily Business Show.

Here’s the result:

NBN Interference, v. 1

NBN: Making News

Agenda (11)

• 3x AstroScript Pilot Program
• 1x Breaking News
• 2x Chronos Project
• 2x Market Research
• 2x Project Beale
• 1x Restructured Datapool

Asset (10)

• 2x Aggressive Secretary •• ••
• 3x Jackson Howard
• 2x Marked Accounts
• 1x PAD Campaign
• 2x Primary Transmission Dish

Operation (13)

• 3x Hedge Fund
• 3x Midseason Replacements
• 2x Psychographics
• 2x SEA Source
• 3x Sweeps Week

Barrier (3)

• 2x TMI
• 1x Wraparound

Code Gate (3)

• 1x Inazuma ••
• 2x Tollbooth

Sentry (9)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 2x Data Raven
• 2x Ichi 1.0 •• ••
• 2x Information Overload
• 1x Rototurret •

15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

I took it to a tournament, and if I’m remembering correctly, I went 3-2 as Corp, which is certainly better than I expected! I’m sure I got lucky, but the two losses also both easily could have gone the other way. I still don’t think it’s a great deck, and I’m not planning to work on refining it, but maybe there is something there? (Though it’s pretty vulnerable to Film Critic…)

I have no idea why Inazuma is still in the deck. Also, I’m not sure I need to focus on blowing up rigs in quite as many ways: Information Overload is staying (though two copies is enough, I think), and Archer is fabulous, but maybe I should replace one or both copies of Ichi or Aggressive Secretary?

Oh, also, one technique that I figured out at the tournament: if your opponent is running Astrolabe, then, by creating two servers on your first two clicks, then you can net 6 credits out of Sweeps Week instead of 4.