Congratulations!
How much mileage did you guys get out of Datasucker? My most recent version drops both for a second Legwork and Test Run (to make cheating Femme in easier).
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Nice job, Nords. ANR runs such a razor’s edge. Those games I barely lost R3 and 4? I won my corp fakes just barely, one pushing a PriReq at time.
Good to hear. Deus is great. Against my HB, it could’ve broken both Heimdall’s, Janus, Viktor, and Ichis. Still, none of that matters if one faceplants an Inazuma. I gave out around 10 BD all day.
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Ichi isnt ap for some reason, sharpshooter is the only easy breaker for them, ichis were in every deck it seemed. The suckers were nice but I think I could live without them in favor of more tricks
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Ugh. Thought they would be. Is it because it is a trace?
I think it’s because Ichi is just about every other subtype so they cut off AP.
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I’m not sure there’s room in the type line for ICE: Sentry - Bioroid - Tracer - Destroyer - AP.
Flare is a tracer that’s also AP, but it isn’t a Destroyer.
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@chill84 Nice job man! Way to represent the pre-paid build. Should anyone ever have doubts about pre-paid again, I shall direct them here, and specifically to your and @spags success. If it can do that well in that field, it’s proven in my assessment. Cheers to a great tourney!
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FWIW - I think AP means “Anti-Personnel” I.E. anything that does damage to the runner. Ichi hits progs and traces, hence Destroyer-Tracer,
In case anyone didn’t know that…
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Playtested Lysander’s recent list (still with 2x Sucker 2x Parasite) yesterday. Wasn’t Regionals, so the fact that I won every runner game wasn’t really relevant since some people were playing fun decks and the pressure wasn’t on (I played against one newer player, and 3 store champions from the Massachusetts area, so hopefully this playtesting can at least be somewhat relevant). I can, however, comment on the playability of the deck itself. Things I noticed:
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I found myself wishing for Legwork a lot more often. I was only running one, so I can see why Lysander and Ajar settled on two now.
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I missed Sharpshooter. SMCing Femme is expensive when you run into an Archer, and Femme is so inefficient against it that you might as well just let them destroy the two programs, then recur them (which is what I did). This could have been more a symptom of poor play on my part. Sharpshooter may be more of a crutch, because while it saves you from a mistake in the short term, it uses up a tutor that could have been used to get some of your long-term rig out. I think it should still be a card on the short list for inclusion if you can make the space.
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I never used Datasucker (well, maybe like, one token) and I didn’t miss it. I wasn’t making enough repeated runs on centrals to pile up a lot of tokens, and it was also a very popular Power Shutdown target. People in my meta HATE it. I did find myself wishing it was there to keep me from playing 2c to pump Femme, but the setup probably wasn’t worth it when this deck has plenty of money. I think I’d honestly rather draw another money card, multi-access card, or breaker. I also was able to get off a few parasites to actually destroy larger ice (for instance, a Grim) without sucker support, and able to sit one on one of the aforementioned Archers and wait until it put the ICE into efficient Femme-breaking range.
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I didn’t face any HB, but Deus Ex was a star against Jinteki. That and the lack of Sharpshooter made me feel heavily reliant on my recursion, which makes a second Test Run even more appealing, especially given the Femme + Scavenge combo potential and the PPVP synergy.
So yeah, just some more playtesting supporting the idea that dropping the Suckers for another Legwork is probably correct, and that adding another Test Run may be a good way to fill in the 2nd card slot that frees up.
@Lysander, I’m curious what else you added when you dropped down to one Parasite. Was it the 3rd Lucky Find?
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But Ichi does do damage to the runner (if the trace lands), and Flare and Viktor 2.0 are both AP.
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@aerosaucer Here it is. I think you’ll appreciate the addition of Sharpshooter. It’s identical to Ajar except his is -1 SOT, +1 Clone Chip.
PPVP Blitz
Kate “Mac” McCaffrey: Digital Tinker (Core Set)
Event (23)
3x Diesel (Core Set)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) ••••
3x Lucky Find (Double Time) •••••
2x Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Scavenge (Creation and Control)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
2x Test Run (Cyber Exodus)
3x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set)
Hardware (8)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
1x Dinosaurus (Cyber Exodus)
2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)
3x Prepaid VoicePAD (Second Thoughts)
Resource (3)
3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
Icebreaker (7)
1x Corroder (Core Set) ••
2x Cyber-Cypher (Creation and Control)
2x Deus X (A Study in Static)
1x Femme Fatale (Core Set) •
1x Sharpshooter (True Colors)
Program (4)
1x Parasite (Core Set) ••
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
My only remaining decision now is whether to run Cyber Cypher or Gordian Blade.
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It was a pretty great tourney, and the Shaper presence was strong for sure! It looked like both of your builds went off pretty well.
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My only remaining decision now is whether to run Cyber Cypher or Gordian Blade.
Been musing on that myself. I was resistant to the idea of relying on CC when you first presented it here, but decided to give it a try. I only used it once all day, which supports the idea that Gordian might be overkill. Removing it for a single Gordian would make room for the other Clone Chip/SOT, but reduce the value of Scavenge.
In general, the Code Gates I’m going to hit are Quandaries, and in those cases the extra strength on CC won’t be valuable (and they’ll sometimes get Parasited anyway). So what other Code Gate will I hit?
I’d expect Tollbooth, RSVP, Viktor 2.0, and Inazuma. All of those are much more easily broken by CC. CC’s downside is that you can’t use it on multiple servers at once (without installing a second one), so I guess the primary concern is faceplanting into them unexpectedly. If you know they are there, you can figure out another way around them, or aim your CC, before having to deal with them. The first 3 are fine to faceplant into, provided you have clicks/creds to deal with Viktor. Inazuma, however, is brutal to faceplant into when it’s in front of a Destroyer or AP. If we hit it unexpectedly, we really need to either SMC/Clone Chip a breaker, or already have one at the ready. We can play around this if the ICE in question is installed in front of something we know is dangerous.
I guess worst-case scenario is they have a big code gate on their remote and another one on R&D, and we don’t want to give up on either of those attack vectors. However, I think Femme or Parasite are enough to handle this frankly unlikely turn of events (and if either one of them is Viktor, there’s always the option to click through him).
So CC seems better for this deck. It’s single-server nature seems less likely to hurt us than the extra install cost and lower strength on Gordian. We can also justify two copies while I don’t think we can justify two Gordians. Having two copies means we’re more likely to be able to pitch one into the heap to recur later or pull one out of the stack with SMC, whichever is more convenient for us. However, I think if I ever decided to drop Scavenge, I’d switch to Gordian. I think Scavenge + SOT really pushes CC over the top.
I’m interested to hear what you and others think, because despite this logic I’m still resistant to relying on a single-server breaker. 
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We used Cyber-Cypher plus Tinkering in Kate Blitz, where it was awesome. In this incarnation of Kate, we need Test Run + Scavenge for Femme alone, Femme + Dino, and Corroder + Dino. Since we have Scavenges, SMC, Clone Chip, and SOT, Cyber-Cypher is a strong choice.
After the total lack of success yesterday I am pleased to report I was 5th in the swiss (7th after KO rounds) in a field of 42 in the London Regional (playing a slight variant of @Nordrunner’s CT PPVP and BNB:MN).
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Are we getting close to moving this into Kit?
Yeah, I like this build. May even want to pull the Site for a Planned Assault or an Emergency Shutdown.
10 influence in Kit would be a real problem. Might be worth testing anyway, but there would be some tough choices.
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Have you considered ZU.13 Key Master instead of Gordian Blade?
- I don’t think you’re going to get to take advantage of Gordian’s “for the remainder of the run” very often, and Cyber Cypher is already great in such situations.
- Most of the time that you are being kept out of an un-Cyber-Cypher’d server it’s by something like Quandry. But even when it’s something larger, the fact that you’ve already Cyber-Cyphered another server usually means that it’s not a server you want to be running very often, so you’re probably not going to be making the 4 runs that it would take for Gordian to have been better.
- You could even do something like -1 Dinosaurus +1 Dyson Mem Chip to make the MU situation easier (in my (brief) experience with this deck I’ve always felt light on MU (mostly due to Deus X)).
I like this list a lot, but it’s really hard to look at and not want to jam in a third Clone Chip, Test Run, or Scavenge. Of course, it’s even harder to figure out what I would cut in exchange 