Can you justify the Government Contracts over High-Risk Investments? In my experience, HRI makes the Government Contracts look like monkey work. If the runner is rich, so are you. If the runner isn’t rich, you don’t care.
9 Likes
Thanks for the tag @endgame - I’ve been working on a similar Argus agro deck lately.
My latest list has even fewer ICE than this one, and looks to leverage a Profiteering to give it enough gas to score out 7 points and keep threatening Midseasons.
Agenda (14)
2x False Lead
3x Hostile Takeover
3x NAPD Contract
3x Profiteering
3x Project Atlas
Asset (10)
3x Dedicated Response Team
3x Jackson Howard •••
2x Melange Mining Corp.
2x Snare! ••••
Operation (14)
3x Beanstalk Royalties
3x Hedge Fund
2x Midseason Replacements ••••• •••
3x Scorched Earth
3x Traffic Accident
Barrier (6)
3x Ice Wall
3x Paper Wall
Code Gate (3)
3x Quandary
Other (2)
2x Chimera
All of your ice folds to parasite or atman. That can’t be a good idea. I can see a subset of runner decks you do well against, but it’s a pretty small subset. This also seems to be the sort of deck which likes Anonymous Tip in the Jackson slot. If you’re taking a Jackson Mulligan you’ve probably lost.
You’re certainly into your extreme early game decks! I guess you like breaks between tournament rounds 
Love the idea! A buddy of mine has been grinding away unsuccessfully at making Argus work, and I think invasion of privacy might be the missing link - especially with IHW in the mix, I can think of many of my decks that would have most hands shredded by that card.
I’ll be passing the idea along, and let y’all know how it works!
With each BP (one of which Checkpoint strait up gives you), the trace strength effectively drops by 1, which usually makes the runner say “trace me” rather than trying to hurdle over the 7 strength. If you go ahead and pay to increase the strength of the trace, usually the runner can just choose to let you win the trace, and just jack out after the Checkpoint in order to avoid the meat damage. Every time I try Checkpoint, especially in a BP heavy-ish deck, it just leaves me wishing it was a different piece of ice.
1 Like
Despite loving some of the deck’s decisions, I can’t help but agree strongly with this point. Admittedly, I loathe Government Contracts with basically every fiber of my being. However, even if I were to retract my unrestrained disdain for it momentarily, I think it’s pretty clear that, when reduced to the simplest mathematical level, High-Risk Investment makes you so much more money so much faster.
Hypothetical time: Even if you only make, say, 10 credits off your High-Risk counter (which really isn’t a huge amount, considering that some Runners will have drastically more credits than that) - that’s a full 9 credits better than a click-for-credit. Using Government Contracts, you would have to use its double-click ability five times (10 clicks across five turns) before you’d functionally made more money than said counter.* For a deck that seems to be all about maintaining/creating key flatline/scoring windows, I feel that the sudden burst of credits should logically be so much better (Siphon recovery, for instance).
*That is to say, 10 clicks of GC = 20 credits; HR counter for 10, click-for-cred 9 times = 19 credits.
Having not played the specific deck and acquainted myself with its play-style intricacies and general pace, I recognize that I cannot say with certainty that HRI would be better (even if the maths all seem to suggest as much); however, having played numerous Weyland kill decks in my time (Argus included), especially ones that run bad pub (most of them), I find that opting for the long game (which Government Contracts certainly promotes) is rarely an effective strategy.
All that being said, I do look forward to testing out the deck, possibly even with the creator’s own Government Contracts, just to prove to myself it is as execrable as I think it is (and has always proved to be) and swap them out. Ain’t I a stinker?
Incidentally i think invasion of privacy is immense in this, and in fact generally in kill decks, as your trashing cards in a way that can’t be prevented (it’s not technically damage). With the amount of event heavy decks on the runner side i think this is brilliant card to include. Bravo.
6 Likes
I am very skeptical that Rainbow is better than Bastion here.
Hmm, surprised to see a lot of people upset with Rainbow. It’s an alright way to absorb any of Knifed/Spooned/Forked if you put in front of a high value Ice… But maybe other metas aren’t seeing as much of this as mine. I’d put Rainbow in front of Data Raven or Archer, maybe even Checkpoint in this decklist. It costs a bit to break too.
1 Like
My interest is piqued by the HRI over Government Contracts idea. The only reason I went with GC is because I found myself with a lot of turns where I was just clicking for credits anyway, and I seem to score them all the time. I was worried only using HRI once was a waste compared to the repeated GCs. I can definitely see how HRI is better Siphon recovery, but honestly, this deck almost never gets Siphoned anyway. I’m definitely going to try this change out and see how it works!
Refinery usually nets me 12-16 if they let me keep it. It’s mainly in here to force a run. I may replace these with Contract Killer whenever that pack comes out. The economy is kind of secondary with this thing. Taurus works great against D4V1D because they need all three counters to get through Archer. If they use a counter to save their Plascrete, I get to score out behind my Archer unless they throw a program of my choice at it.
I have yet to have any issues with Atman or Parasite. They can eat Rainbows and Ice Walls all day long. The only thing I install over to recycle is Data Raven, which ignores Atman anyway. Femme is the biggest issue here, but unless they’re spamming Femme recursion I can just install over and recycle to ditch the token. Expose doesn’t really hurt anything but the Shattered Remains, since I usually don’t install the Snare! I guess Silhouette running Femmes and Plascretes would be the toughest matchup, since I’d basically be relying on my single Taurus or scorching through them.
Speaking of Rainbow, it’s AWESOME in this deck! It’s cheaper than Bastion, it protects my Data Ravens against Forked, and sometimes it steals Cujo counters or even a Faerie if they think they really need to access. It costs a solid 3 credits each time through with almost every oft-used breaker. It’s basically a poor-man’s Eli here, but I actually like it more for this particular deck.
Bandwidth is an interesting idea that might find a home here instead of Ghost Branch if I decide to ditch one of the Invasions. Just grabbed The Valley last night, so I’ll test this out.
As far as BP canceling out the Checkpoint trace, well, I have yet to end a game with more than 4 BP, even against Itinerant Valencia. If they want to let the trace hit and then jack out, more power to them. I’ll just score out or make GRNDL money. It actually works better as an ETR ice than anything else in this deck but Data Raven. In theory it seems like a bad deal, but in practice, nobody ever runs through it. It’s worked so well I’ve been considering trying to find space for a second one, but that might put me over the BP event horizon.
Thanks for all the interest. I’ll have to post stuff on here more often. This is fun!
1 Like
Can you please expound on this first part? I’d be interested to see what small subset of runner decks the Twin Cities meta takes to tourrnaments to the exclusion of all else.
I’m not sure why you think Anonymous Tip would help here? Jackson is more for recursion than card draw.
I was replying to @jesseo_o’s post where he suggested an alternative. Your deck looks much stronger in my opinion. It’s a neat idea, I’ll give it a go next time I get to play. Invasion of privacy is a great idea.
Oh, sorry! I’m not used to how the threading here works yet.
I think you might be right about Anonymous Tip. I also think his deck might be better with Manhunt instead of Midseason. If you’re just running Midseason anyway, the Argus damage/tag is kind of incidental. Not sure about the DRTs, either, but Manhunt works a lot better with them than the Argus ID ability does. As a pretty dedicated flatline corp player I’ve always hated DRT anyway, so it might just be my own personal bias talking here.
I think the issue is most people don’t see Forked or Cujo at all, I know I haven’t.
Cujo’s been gaining a lot of steam around here lately. I’ve been using it in every Anarch deck I’ve made lately, as it’s basically an influence-free Faerie.
Forked is less likely, but a lot of MaxX decks seem to run one just in case. What would you replace the Rainbows with, and why?
No doubt. I believe we’ve hit a point in the game’s lifespan where it’s time to revisit old ‘binder fodder’ (for those fogies who still use binders), esp. when new IDs arrive.
7 Likes
Yeah, I need to get rid of this damn binder.
3 Likes
88+ clicks on Invasion of Privacy
I laughed harder than I should have. I’m sure you get the same feeling when someone looks at the card after you play it.
I certainly do for Snatch n Grab. The era of Kati is here (again), folks.
Funny you should mention that, because I’ve actually put serious thought into making room for a Snatch and Grab in this deck. I’ve held off so far because Kati hasn’t caused me too many issues yet. I think it’s because scoring False Lead makes the fact that she requires a click to unload a bit unwieldy.
What, using a binder is for fogies? I’m not denying the fogey tag, but…
What am I supposed to be using instead of binders? 