legwork: not sure if NA isn’t better here as you can tutor for it after blowing up hq with parasites
have you considered switching one atman for a sharpshooter?
Overall this deck looks to me as the well known kate parasite recursion deck which sacrifices some of its main theme in order to fit the luckypad econ. Quality Time could help with speeding up the aggresion, but what if you don’t have your pads yet? My gut tells me that a standard parakate deck is still stronger.
Yes and no - two Parasites vs. one has has been debated quite a lot further up this thread and in the Kate Blitz thread. Having two only gives you one extra use of Parasite per run through the deck (if recursing with LARLA) so the long-term sacrifice isn’t so bad. The second copy of course doubles the chance of drawing it naturally, which you could argue increases the aggression factor, but once in hand you have to play it out normally which you usually don’t want to - instant speed with SMC or Test Run are usually more timely.
It’s close either way; it’s just a question of whether you want to increase the utility and decrease the cost in the deck, or go with the slightly more aggressive approach. Grimoire has the fringe benefit of meaning that you can sometimes prevent yourself being locked out of a central by ICE that’s out of range.
In games when you need MU, you need a lot of it usually.
You can usually skillfully play around Archer. He probably costs you $3 and a few sucker tokens to beat with Atman, or you Femme him.
The scenario with a lone parasite I hate the most is when I draw it early, use it, and then I draw more SMCs then clone chips. I guess its personal preference, but I really like to have a spare parasite in the stack for SMCing.
I understand that. I would probably adjust the deck balance to cut an SMC and add a Test Run. Don’t forget you can also Scavenge an SMC for the Parasite (paying the full cost).
In this scenario though you’re unlikely to have the MU to actually play the SMC. Once you have Atman plus a Sucker in play you can’t afford to have another rig piece as well and still have enough capacity to be able to use an SMC to find your other Parasite. If you’ve had to commit to playing Femme, Inti or a second Datasucker you don’t really want to have to trash them.
Just tested your deck with minor tweaks (-1 Quality Time, +1 Test Run, -1 Atman, +1 Sharpshooter) and I must say I am impressed. Nice job!
This works way better then I thought it would do. Even the lone Legwork is fine, last game the winning play was Quality Time -> Diesel -> Legwork. However I would’t dare to run without the Sharpshooter, and 1 Atman feels enough.
Compared to a standard parasite recursion Kate, this deck is filthy rich. What I miss the most is the third Datasucker, now Test Run or SMC is often needed to bring it online (which slows things down a bit).
Thanks! I agree the deck is extremely reliant on Datasucker (and to a lesser extent, Parasite). My problem with the deck as a whole is that I don’t want that reliance on certain cards, as NBN will take advantage of bad draws.
I’m actually in the process of merging this Atman-oriented deck with my Kate Blitz deck, and have been pleased with the results so far. I’ve never been a huge fan of Atman, and now that it’s gaining popularity once more, people are starting to focus on its counters again.
I think we have a lot to take away from @Ajar’s Shaper OCTGN data. It essentially reflects my conundrum - Shapers have the most trouble with HB and NBN, which forces us to focus on both the short and long game. To be candid, I don’t think pure Atman decks are the way to go for this reason because NBN will take advantage of that setup time and potential bad draws. Having discovered Prepaid VoicePAD since making my Kate Blitz thread, I think it’s the solution to HB. Sure, breakers such as Corroder don’t fare well against HB ice such as Eli, but at least PPVP can fund us much better than any other economic engine, so I’ve been relying on that. This allows me to focus purely on quick setups required against NBN.
Funny enough, I found @Nordrunner’s suggestion to use The Makers Eye over Indexing extremely helpful despite my original objections. I absolutely love Indexing, but the problem is that I don’t much care for trashing Jackson against NBN (and Indexing forces me to deal with him). Sure it weakens me against Jinteki, but we have Deus X and Net Shield, so it’s not like I’m without answers on this front.
Feedback Filter might be worth trying. Not that we needed it before H&P, but it absolutely wrecked pre-H&P jinteki, plus it doesn’t take MU :). On the downside: no hardware tutor /me shakes fist
I agree, which is a shame since PPVP will fund it for days. I think if you have enough burst draw you might be able to buy time, but other options are more guaranteed.
Can you give us some insight on your worst match-ups? I played it 4 times only but found it amazing, but I’m not very sure about how to use Atman correctly. I had to use it only once in these 4 matches and it was a breeze, but when and how do you bring your datasuckers to the table? Do you spend SMC on them if a server is open?
the worst matchups imo are people who actually have the foresight to ice all 3 centrals before the datasucker and 5 credit dirty laundries wreck them. i feel like corp players are too slow to ice their archives vs non gabe ids. their RnD and HQ ice get scouted, the datasucker drops and their best ice is now dead…then the ice goes on archives but its too late.
i know everyone bags on cyberdex but ive never been unhappy when its been in my corp deck. i had one in my cerebral imagining deck and when you can celebrity gift -> trial to purge sucker tokens in one turn it almost feels like cheating.
I honestly haven’t played this deck much on OCTGN, as I haven’t had the time. However, tried it last night, and my opponent was like, ‘Where did you get this deck?!? Seems like EVERYone is playing it!’
Yeah I played against a Kit variant last night that wasn’t bad at all. Her ability balances out nicely with PPVP’s sustainability.
One thing I noticed is that it’s this deck’s econ that makes it Shine rather than Atman. With Atman, I want to have one at 4 and one at 6 and use Inti/Femme/Parasite on anything lower. Problem is, many times I’ve won without Atman (as you’ve done, @Sydtrack) and too much is leveraged on Datasucker.
So I’ve gone back to Kate Blitz, importing this deck’s PPVP economy, providing the best of both worlds. I find it plays faster and more in line with Nords’s CT. It fares much better against NBN and a bit worse against HB (lost to Nords’s Red Coats last night, 7-4 though I learned a lot from it).
The problem I have is that nowadays this seems to be everyone. I end up having to burn my Clone Chips recurring Deus X to break Heimdall-Viktor servers because I have no Datasucker counters and no easy way to gain more. I really miss being able to just spend money on breakers, especially since I have money with the PAD economy.
I’m in agreement with @Lysander that we need to get faster again. The control-focused style is amazing against Jinteki, but that isn’t a matchup that needed help, and a slow start against EtF can spell doom. If we’re relying on Datasucker, then it needs to hit the table ASAP. Even then, I had an EtF player spend his entire turn purging my one Datasucker counter because he knew it would lock me out of his remote. Although to be fair, I did end up winning that game.
This is only 4 cards different to what I have arrived at.
I’ve gone with RDI over Maker’s Eye and dropped the Indexing for an extra SOT and Sure Gamble.
I do like Indexing, but a lot of opponents close down R&D straight away as soon as they see a green ID, and very often you have to run against Jackson Howard before you can make your Indexing run, and then go a third time to access. I think the cost (in $ and clicks) of that is probably too prohibitive. It might well be better in the Katman version because the Parasites and Suckers can keep R&D comparatively weak, but Chaos Theory has to solve every problem by throwing money at it. On balance, I’d rather just see an extra card every time and go for an old-fashioned lock.
It’s a tight deck though, Legwork is bananas - I thoroughly endorse 3 copies!
