Personally, after sleeving up an IG build, I found these to be pretty much the most boring, shuffle intensive decks in the game. Hated every moment of playing it. If people are getting good results with it and can stand it, so be it, but it really isn’t my cup of tea.
It seems to be both the IG and Gagarin trend. Take whatever new thing comes out and see if you can make it work in those ID’s. So it should only last a few more boxes. Hopefully.
I think what makes people upset about Museum games taking a long time is that MoH drastically changes the game’s dynamic: if you’re a runner who can’t secure the win, you have an advantage running out the clock. It turns the passive late game runner plays into a liability instead of a strength. It’s not just that the Corp is prolonging the game but it’s prolonging it in a way that shifts the burden of closing out the game onto the runner.
IG kill has basically replaced Cambridge for me as my go to tournament kill deck because it forces the runner to play into my strategy more. Museum cuts down on my odds of seeing Mushin+Ronin but gives the deck a lot more lasting power, which can sometimes be a problem with PE nowadays. And like Cambridge, I find most games ending quickly and games I need to grind out not taking overly long.
Shrug. I played against more PE when I was testing for the SC last weekend on Jinteki than anything else.
And I play a Gagarin Museum deck. (@CJFM’s with tweaks.) I only went to time twice on the day, against Criminal Desperado/Security Testing that forced me to change my normally aggressive playstyle. (Trying to rush out agendas, or spam assets, against that sort of Criminal is equivalent to suicide. So I had to play a slower, more defensive game and wait for my ICE to show up.) I won one, lost one in those matchups, it was the Runner side that ended up going to time with only 20-25 minutes left to play the game.
Might be different environments, but I don’t expect to go to time even once, so twice seems like a lot.
How often do you play against SecTest/Desperado Criminal? Do you change your playstyle against them?
I hadn’t played against them very often, indeed I pegged the local meta as not really on those kinds of decks (I played the only two in the tournament) so it’s one of the reasons I brought Gagarin, since that style of Criminal is, in my limited experience, very difficult for Gagarin. By no means did I play slowly, but the pace of the game changes because Criminal WANTS you to go fast and to try, and be punished for it, so trying to do that against their superior posture for that sort of game felt like it would just lose you the game. (Both Crims were Leela as well, so NA’ing an Atlas isn’t always a good thing to do like it is against other runners.)
I believe the first game took 40 or 45 minutes, while the second took between 30 and 35 minutes. There was another difference between the two Runners: The first one had Masanori. For the first one, I turtled hard, only installing remotes behind ICE. I finally got all centrals locked down with Museum and DBS behind ICE and a scoring server with ICE too, so that it finally killed his econ engine. I think he won off an R&D single access, but it’s hazy now. The second runner I went more reckless, because I’d managed to Contract Killer his Kati, and Corp Town his SecTest, so I started just playing out naked remotes again, and he couldn’t find a replacement for SecTest before I won.
(Basically I just had a really good draw against the second Crim)
I think you’ve made a strong case for Killer. I’m going to give that a try!
It also lets you see your mushin and ronin combo far more times than the number of those cards you put on your deck allows. Can’t tell you how many times I reshuffled in a hedge fund only to see another one on my next draw.
Are Ronin-based strategies viable anymore with Councilman and Political Operative out there? I guess we will see how often those Ronin defusers/killers are played.
My IG has Contract Killer, which can work to take care of it to some extent.
That’s a serious concern of mine for IG going forward. A month or two from now it won’t be as big of a deal, but since they’re brand new they’ll be stuffed into a lot of decks right now. I’ll likely shift back over to PE or Biotech and focus on Ronin/Hiro/other rezzables less until things die down.
The problem then is that you can’t get down on Bioethics to as good effect. I think we just have to cope. Maybe run snatch and grab? I don’t tend to be rich compared to my opponent though 
Snatch and Grab is a solid one of in Jinteki murder, but yeah, money is too much of an issue to use it reliably. Most of the IG kill combos I use (aside from ones involving runner blunders) involve every rezzed card working and Pol Op/Councilman mess that up. You could go the Profiteering route and sit on a pile of creds. That was already good.
I haven’t done a ton of testing yet but I’m a little underwhelmed with Bio-Ethics thus far. You really need to rez at least two of them at the same time to maximize their potential (by that I mean setting up a kill combo) and finding multiples can be a pain in 54 cards. I almost feel like they’d fit better in a 1000 cuts deck than IG right now, but that’s likely because I haven’t played with them enough yet.
I think I dig enough to find enough of them, but if you want to find them as needed, you can EBC/Tech startup, but it shows your hand. It does encourage running facedown cards more and more as the game progresses, because you can’t pressure the runner to run anything facedown until you have at least 6 advancements out among the cards (4 and 2 usually). With bioethics, you can usually do it sooner. Also, you can rez 2-3 to try to ping out IHW while you build up to the kill turn… I think its just another good tool in the belt.
Definitely agreed, they’re nice to have and can get a lot of work done if they happen to zap IHW. I love them with Hiro, myself.
I think IG Bioethics needs one genetics pavilion. Genetics + one bioethics seriously constrains the number of useful actions the runner can take, especially faust. Mumbad City Hall + Heritage committee tricks can help you find the kill pieces. You don’t need any other kill pieces although shock, fetal, snare and hostile infrastructure are of course nice.
It’s more about taxing the runners clicks than killing. Each bioethics is essentially -1 runner click.
Dear Everyone I Work With,
I’m not going to name names, but some people should really leave me alone while I’m trying to play on Jnet.
Sincerely,
Me
Councilman doesn’t do anything to Ronin or Bioethics, since you can rez these once at the end of the runner’s turn to force it out and again at the start of yours.
The Chairman is pretty well hosed, though.
If Councilman/Political Operative were worrying you in IG, you could go full filth mode and spend your influence on Eliza’s Toybox and Corporate Town I suppose. Come to think of it, that sounds pretty funny against any resource-based Runner. Deck slots, deck slots…
Please do not leave the game until you’re sure you have got the winning agenda cause 6 points doesn’t win the game in ETF
Except then they use the councilman to block your corptown rez and waste your 3 clicks. Or they use the Pol Op to trash the toolbox before you can use it.