This definitely the optimal play in most easy-access-to-R&D circumstances. Imp any card that weakens their long term prospects, e.g. don’t bother imping Enigma if you already have Yog in play.
This deckstyle is weak to Glacier builds. It just is, no bones about it. You can win (I beat two at my last Store Championship), but it takes luck and a little good timing with the Siphons. Both games I mulliganed into a Siphon and drew another + Same Old Thing quickly.
I have a Gabe build that runs both Siphon and Vamp, but I don’t know if I’d do it in Noise. With this Noise build in particular I seem to siphon and then blow the haul on setting up my next play, so I’m not sure that there’s enough spare credits to vamp with. Gabe + Pheromones + Siphon + Vamp is a strong decktype, though.
I’m not SamRS, but I am a long time Noise miller who’s had a lot of success with this deckstyle :).
I don’t really focus on clearing through R&D unless i need points badly, trashing cards in hand is generally more productive, hence the hemorrhage to help clear chaff. Magic players call it “mill fallacy” but basically trashing a card in their deck, unless they are a combo deck with no recursion and you luck into hitting a combo piece, does basically nothing. I tend to only trash if either: it’s an economy card they can play immediately, and they’re currently poor, or, i’m planning on another access this turn.
also I agree with not running hemorrhage in sahasrara noise, they don’t run nearly enough to make use of it. in aggressive lists clearing 2-3 cards out of their hand every couple turns makes running hq much more profitable
I’ve been dabbling with a Noise build that runs 2 Mr Li, 2 Sahasrara, and 2 Spinal Modems with the premise being to address Anarch’s weak economy and draw power and keeping my mill/run ratio as close to 50/50 as possible.
It isn’t groundbreaking enough to warrant revealing to the world (it’d have to be on par with criminals for me to do so), but it is more versatile than spending all my influence on Siphon. More importantly, while I don’t have huge blowouts as with Siphon builds, I also don’t get my head handed to me, which tends to happen against heavily-iced HQs or if I can’t draw my Siphons quickly enough. I also appreciate having 7 spare influence to play with, though I can’t find any clear winners to spend it on. (Currently 3 Gorman Drip and 2 Emergency Shutdown)
I am just now starting to toy with the idea of Reina hemorrhage. But I really doubt with the card pool where it is, that I will be able to get much out of it right now.
it isn’t bad, this deck started as a reina list (replaceable with whizzard depending on meta). I just liked noise because it gives you a little more options if they manage to lock you out at the cost of being a little weaker when they’re broke. cut a few viruses for fixed breakers and a datasucker or two, switch gorman to quality time, and you have standard tagme anarch. I will say I think whizzard is better at it than reina atm, just because sansans everywhere
So this is equal parts draw, economy, mill, and break. With 3 QT and 2 Mr Li, I get on my feet faster than any other Noise build I’ve played, supplemented by Special Order.
Li helps find economy right when I need it so the deck never runs out of steam. Sahasrara and Spinal Modem grant huge discounts so I can focus on keeping pressure on all fronts.
There’s nothing groundbreaking about this deck (as in, we’ve seen these splashes before) but I think I’ve hit the sweet spot assembling it all in one deck. As always, glacier builds and Oversight AI are a pain, but Knight really carries its weight here. I’d still like to see new Anarch toys, but they are better off now than I had previously thought.
Thing is though, this deck probably should be a Reina (with Mediums instead of the Djinns). To me it definitely feels like you’re not getting enough value out of your identity, and Reina’s link will help you massively if your plan is to go Spinal on their ass.
(I mean, I get why the Djinns are there, but against rushy decks you’re simply way too slow, NBN of any kind kills you like no tomorrow, and unless you never run on an unknighted face-down ICE, program trashing will own you really hard… dunno, doesn’t feel tier 1 at all )
The days of the dedicated Noise mill decks have long since passed. I see a traditional Whizzard build as incorporating DLR, Vamp/Siphon, and Keyhole. Reina is Rook, Shutdown, Xanadu, etc. Once I don’t have to import draw and tutors, I’ll start thinking about importing viruses such as Cache and Gorman. For now Anarchs have to focus on shoring up weaknesses.
Also this is as fast as Noise gets. My objective is to run aggressively, facechecking everything. I’ve hit a couple Archers unprepared, but the beauty of Anarch is the attack and rig is amorphous, and I can draw/recur/tutor whatever I lost if I even need it.
rara noise is much slower than a lot of other builds. stimhack + workshop and siphon builds are both usually faster, because getting 9-10 credits out of nowhere does that.
@wren, it’s a decent runner deck, and hemorrhage definitely has its place, but everyone is currently playing anti siphon out here, so i dropped the deck in favor of other things.
Workshop also loses to NBN (Breaking News tags) and Jinteki (brain damage). Plus dumping a bunch of viruses isn’t advisable if Jackson and Archives are protected. Finally, it isn’t as versatile as Rara Noise.
Not saying Rara is definitively better than Workshop, but they are different builds, requiring different drawing engines. I prefer Rara against heavy ice decks, which I consider Noise’s biggest weakness and not all Rara builds are slow.
Oh and Siphon builds are horribly inconsistent in Anarch, as they can’t draw worth shit and if the opponent knows your deck or ices HQ early, you’re screwed.
Disclaimer: Anarch is my favorite faction and Lysander managed to touch upon a subject that’s a bit of a pet peeve, card evaluation-wise. The combination of those two factors will probably cause this post to be long and possibly argumentative. If you’re not in the mood for that, just cruise right by.
With that out of the way… {cracks knuckles}
But here’s the thing - the important question here isn’t “Is Noise’s ability doing something for you?”, it’s “Would one of the other Anarch IDs do more than this one?”. Anarch is the easiest faction to evaluate this for, as all of their identities are 45/15 and will be still for a while to come.
Realistically, I’d be expected to draw (and play) about 4 of those viruses (going through about half the deck seems like a reasonable assumption), with an estimated 1-2 uses of Djinn’s tutoring. Let’s say you draw and actually play one of your Deja-Vus and the 2 viruses you get to recur. That leaves us with an estimation of 8 virus mills. Let’s say about half of them will be targeted (which is pretty generous of me, given the complete absence of RnD multi-access in the deck), the other half will be equivalent to random accesses.
So, that’s what Noise gives us. What do Whizzard and Reina give us?
Whiz is reasonably obvious at being a weaker choice than Noise here - it’ll cost you an extra click, but you can simulate Whiz’s trashing of, say, a Jackson on access with a targeted virus mill. You’re running Imps (which you can recur), so memory issues aside (which I’m leaving out for now, even though you could easily run into them - Spinal only gives +1 and you want an Anarch-style big rig), Imp can simulate Whiz’s pressure on assets and upgrades.
Reina, though, is a different picture. You’re running 3 Knights, 3 Parasites and recursion for that, which will all increase the number of ICE the corp has to rez during the game. I’d actually assume Reina to cost the corp around 10-12 credits during the game with this particular deck. That’s quite a bit of econ pressure, about equivalent to two Siphons when you think about it. This alone would probably leave me playing Reina in this particular setup, and that’s without the other important consideration: Link.
You’re playing Spinal Modem as your console, which makes traces more important (duh). You’re not running ICE Carver, Bishops or anything similar, so tracey sentries with STR 4 or more have the potential to be massively problematic, especially after a purge. Negating Ichi 1’s trace sub is a substantial benefit already, and that’s before you imagine it to say “take one tag and two brain damage”. Now imagine a (relatively common, in my experience playing Anarch) situation where the easiest place to get your sucker tokens after a purge are Archives, and they’re guarded by a lone Ichi.
Add to that all the benefits re: early game aggression (running through a Caduceus is much easier with Link, for instance), and if you aim to be a fast anarch deck, Reina becomes a much better choice for this particular deck, in my opinion.
This is a very restrictive way of looking at things and I think you’re evaluating the identities wrong. The thing I’m taking the biggest issue with here can be best illustrated on your Reina archetype, so I’ll use that.
Reina has an interesting ability, in that there are two ways of looking at it. One way is what you just demonstrated - “Hey, it’s a denial ability, so it’s telling me to build a denial deck”. A great number of really bad decks have come out of this, we all know the story - you go for denial, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, you’re boned because your deck cut a lot of corners in order to go heavy on the denial angle. If that isn’t enough to stop the corp, gg.
The other way of looking at it (and I’m arguing it’s an equally viable one) is this:
“Hey, I basically have a free Xanadu on the table. That’s cool, it means I’ve got some denial going already, so I don’t need to dedicate any more slots to it, and can be more versatile instead”. There are plenty of non-Reina decks that play Xanadu (and where it’s good), so having one on the table for free from turn 1 has got to be decent, non?
The other identity this principle applies to greatly is Gabriel. One of my most efficient Gabriel decks actually only had the identity (and one HQ interface, if memory serves) as an HQ pressure tool, with all those slots you’d otherwise spend on repeated siphoning, clearing tags, shutdowns and such being used for other interesting tricks. It worked pretty well, and actually got shut out of HQ way less than HQ-centric Gabriel builds, which in the end led to getting way more mileage out of his ability.
I’m now proposing that unless you consider this angle as well when trying to decide which ID to use with a particular deck, you’ll never get the most value out of that decision.
Respectfully disagree - you’re running a crap-ton of slow cards (Djinn, Sahasrara, Deja Vu, Daily Casts, Kati Jones) and very few fast ones (like, Stimhack and Dirty Laundries - that’s about it, really). If you wanted to be fast on your feet, I’d be expecting two Johns, a third Sucker and a third Dirty Laundry, at the very least. Maybe an Inside Job or two, those work very well in Noise decks that have the ambition to actually be fast.
(sidenote: dunno if I’m being too offtopic or not, if I am, feel free to split me into a separate thread, move me into a dark corner and forget all about me)
Excellent points. I’m more unfamiliar with Anarch than any other faction, so anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt.
I like having some sort of Archive pressure, but I share your concern with Noise’s variance in random mills. I’ll try the deck with Reina and report back.
Perhaps you can enlighten me. I’ve always preferred Whizzard over Reina, and I don’t see her niche atm. Too many moderate-trash assets exist right now (Ash, Sansan, Adonis/Eve, Shock, Jackson, Sundew, etc). The only faction she beats Whizzard against is Weyland, but it (and all factions now really) has such a booming economy the extra credit scarcely matters, even if it adds up to 12+ c per game. Whizzard forces the Corp to spread more thinly to protect high-trash assets, which I value highly.
So in the current competitive meta, why not run Whizzard over Reina?
Whizzard’s ability IMO is actually broken. The downside is that he’s completely blank against one of the best decks in the game (Supermodernism Weyland) and has limited utility against transaction HB or Jinteki.
from personal experience, reinas ability is most useful in vamp lists where you want the ice to be unrezzable. it’s not great just as a 1 credit tax, but if you set them to 0, enigma costing 4 to rez is a big deal
I agree in re: Whizzard: I don’t see much value in the ol’ Whizzard, sadly. He’s a nice matchup against HB Glacier with their recurring Eve/Adonis/SanSan and some of those “untrashable” style RP decks, but he’s too often just blank.
I think Reina missed her window for greatness, sadly. The +1c per rez hasn’t turned out to be all that devastating given how spacebux rich corps are these days. Her link is really nice, though, and vamp/siphon builds out of her get some extra mileage for that +1c.
RaRa noise vs. Workshop noise is, imo, largely about playstyle comfort zones. They’re both good in the right hands, but RaRa peters out versus big ice and workshop peters out against NBN.
Funny - I got a lot of crap for saying Whiz is better than Reina over on Cardgamedb when she came out
Your summary of why he’s strong is pretty spot-on, although I don’t think the proper counterplay to Whiz is actually protecting the assets. In my experience, it’s “forget you have them and use them as hand padding/run bait”. It’s not like you magically have 10 more pieces of ICE because you suddenly can’t play your PADs unprotected, and making each central run cheaper is just about the last thing in the world you want to do when playing someone who’s presumably packing at least a medium or a keyhole, possibly both.
Personally, I consider Whizzard to be the best Anarch identity, and always have ever since he came out. I’ve won a regional with him, several other tournaments, and a bunch of league finals. I just had a string of bad luck with him lately, which led me to believe that corp decks got too fast for Anarchs to handle… but I’m trying to reevaluate.
The main reason I said your deck is better as Reina is her link, rather than her ability. I assumed you wanted to keep the Spinal, and the link improves it by a factor of, like, a hundred or so It also plays well with early aggression in general, unlike Whiz who just makes some opening plays outright nonsensical.
I am performing an experiment, though. I’ve been putting together a list of requirements for what a runner deck should contain in order to be competitive against certain post-double time matchups (most notably, both TWIY rush and CI) at the same time, and so far it looks like it might actually be a good fit for teh queen (spinal modem will presumably be strong in what I have in mind, and it looks like it needs to be an anarch deck so far). Don’t even have a rough cut ready yet though, so I might be completely mistaken.
Even those often run Refineries these days
Sorry, but this is completely wrong, I feel. If nothing else, you can threaten Jacksons so much more effectively, you’re almost immune to Ash, and nuking a SanSan doesn’t put you on welfare checks for 3 turns. Those are all cards that see nigh-universal level of play. If the downside to my opponent not playing any of them is that I don’t have an ability, I’m totally f***ing fine with that.
Completely screwing ICE-light horizontal builds is just a nice benefit.
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