against noise especially you have to protect museum or the virus trashing can reach a critical mass. But yeah it’s painful to trash a muesum and leave 2x turtlebacks and 2x DBS on the board.
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What do you guys think of using false lead + Off the Grid + Crisium to ensure a safe scoring of a 5/3? They still have to run HQ twice to even force you to forfeit the false lead. You would generally win with 1 GFI and 4 points of Atlas, Public support and false leads. So based on @CJFM 's Hidden Temple cut a DBS and use 3 GFI, 2 NAPD, 3 Atlas and 3 False Leads. Squeeze in 2 Off the Grid and 1 more Crisium and you have a very strong ICEless scoring option.
The problem with Off the Grid–though I like the idea–is that it trashes for free in R&D, and if you’re dedicating ice to HQ, you’re not dedicating ice to R&D, which is where Gagarin loses.
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So, the spoilers from the next data pack are making things very interesting, I think.
I hope I can be running Gagarin for awhile now. If only we had an AI-immune barrier that was strong against parasite I think we could go places!
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I think the key currently is the 3 Museum of History’s and the 3 Daily Business Shows.
I made a deck previously with just the 3 Museum of History’s, and the low ice amount combined with the large deck size made it unplayable.
However, adding in the 3 DBS’s solves this, as now you can look at multiple cards, and at least double your chance of seeing an ice. Combined with MoH, any ice trashed can be recurred almost instantly.
I’m a convert. The biggest issue I’ve seen is Nexus Kate, mainly because two of your high STR ice (assassin’s) are invalidated by the huge amount of link. But, I’m sure there’s a solution for that. It’s basically a meta call on which high-STR ice to include, since other high-STR ice would be better against Nexus Kate.
I’m not opposed to a singleton Underway Grid. Though, as I said, Nexus Kate (unless she’s running Shrike) has no way to deal with double tour guides.
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Well, she can just Opus-spam and pay for the second one.
The thing is, sure, but you can’t leave her to her own devices. If she sits there gaining money, you will lose eventually. And at some point you should be able to force her to pay money into the trace. The deck is rich.
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I’m not saying it’s an auto-lose, just that it makes it a little harder. Even just switching out the assassin’s if you are in a nexus-heavy meta would suffice, I think.
Agree, what would you swap them for?
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Well, we don’t have many options because they need to be influence-free and high-STR. I might put in another Hadrian’s Wall. Swarm might be an option, I’ve notice I usually have the time/money to advance things if I need to. Nebula is a lower -strength version with one less sub, but it’s not a trace. I kind of like the idea or Orion.
I think it would need testing. Maybe just switch one Assassin out for another Hadrian’s, or a Swarm. Swarm on a remote might get nasty, and might help prevent late-game accesses.
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Bad Pub seems like a terrible idea and swarm is really expensive for what it does anyway. And all that investment is lost to parasite.
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If they parasite that, then one less parasite on your Tour Guides.
I’m not worries about the Bad Pub, with Elizabeth Mills.
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Also, swarm is str 5…
I am testing trying to slot x2 Ash or Hollywood Grid to enable scoring out mid to late game the loss of hostile is something that seems okay so far, even if I do miss slowing runners down.
In regards to Assassin, I too have been getting hit pretty hard by high link runners in the form of Sunny and Nexus Kate.
I’m on 2 Ash in a pretty similar build to CJFM; so far I really like it. It opens up additional scoring windows, and can make those you have a little wider.
I’m generally pretty happy with Assassin. It’s trash against, say, Sunny, but usually I can just race her anyhow. Haven’t played against Nexus Kate yet, but had a couple games against Nexus Kit. Again, I was able to just go faster than her. I even upped the Nexus trace once to keep her out of a server just because I had far and away more money than her. It wasn’t a favorable trade for me in terms of money, but I won the game, so meh.
In terms of influence, what do you give up compared to @CJFM’s version so that you can run Ash? I’m loving all the pieces he spent influence on.
This 100%. You have to force them to ‘go for it’ and keep close on money. Your drip should be strong enough to help you score. I like to express oaktowns into a decent server and stay high on cred.
Hostile infrastructure is the only true flex influence IMO. I don’t think the NAPDs and Food can be messed with without giving up more losses in RnD. If you cut Jackson or DBS you hurt your consistency and ability to keep agendas from stacking up in HQ. Maybe you can cut one turtlebacks but that seems pretty dodgy too.
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That’s what I did, actually. No turtles, no Hostile. The turtles became Launch Campaigns, because I think they’re better at all points of the game, where as Turtles are only good if you get them early, and dead later on. So far it’s felt fine.