Whizzard Oracle "string theory" deck

Decklists
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First off, Credit where credit is due, this deck was inspired by djHedgehog: CT String Theory/Doubles/Oracle May (It works) - #14 by DJhedgehog Please check out his awesome deck concept. This deck came about as an anarch riff on that concept, and while it’s probably not as tournament ready, it’s a blast to play, and it handed me a 16-game winning streak when I first sleeved it up! The Core of the deck is a ton of events and oracle may; with 38 events in the deck, once you get her out, she’s practically guaranteed to land her ability.

The List:

WizBiz Oracle

Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead)

Event (38)
3x Blackmail (Fear and Loathing)
3x Demolition Run (Core Set)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
3x Déjà Vu (Core Set)
3x Frame Job (Opening Moves)
1x Hostage (Opening Moves) ••
3x Inject (Up and Over)
1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control) •••
2x Power Nap (Double Time) ••••
3x Queen’s Gambit (Double Time)
1x Quest Completed (Fear and Loathing)
3x Retrieval Run (Future Proof)
2x Singularity (Double Time)
2x Stimhack (Core Set)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
2x Vamp (Trace Amount)

Resource (2)
1x Duggar’s (First Contact)
1x Oracle May (Honor and Profit) •

Icebreaker (3)
1x Corroder (Core Set)
1x Femme Fatale (Core Set) •
1x Torch (Mala Tempora) ••••

Program (2)
1x Medium (Core Set)
1x Nerve Agent (Cyber Exodus)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Up and Over

I’ve been tweaking this here and there for some time, and a buddy of mine asked me to post it, so here’s the current card breakdown:

The Breakers:

-Corroder: too good to not include. I tested morningstar + scrubbed, and while it annihilated a couple decks, the memory is a problem (remember, we want to run as many events as possible) and without datasucker you can get caught behind an unbreakable hadrians or curtain wall.

-Torch: I’ve gone back and forth on this, but unlimately, it’s too much of a beast for just 1 MU. Combos perfectly with retrival run, so the huge cost is rarely an issue. If you want to switch it out for influence, I suggest going all the way and taking (shudder) force of nature. This swap actually plays pretty well, but doesn’t have the sheer ICEcracking strength of torch.

-Femme: 1 influnce and 1 mu for a real do-it-all breaker. this deck isn’t the best at re-targeting her, but you can get her out cheap and often early, allowing some great medium or nerve agent shennanegins.

Core Cards:

-Oracle May + Hostage: better than 2 oracles, as the hostage is less dead than a second oracle would be if you draw it second. (which is to say, it powers up may and power nap, but is otherwise just as useless). If you’ve never played a functioning oracle may deck, the econ and draw is amazing for just one card.

-Deja Vu and Retreival run: Gotta love the in-faction recursion for anarch- makes you extremely flexible, and nullifies the problem of inject and oracle trashing your programs out-of-deck. Remember to hang onto your last deja vu if your LARLA gets trashed for any reason.

-Nerve agent and medium: while I am loathe to put any extra non-events into this deck, multi-access attack is a must in most/all decks, and these great in-faction choices allow us to avoid wasting precious influence. the extra program also allows you to overwrite femme if you absolutely need to re-target. Don’t be afraid to switch between these two; if the corp-over ICEs one, just switch to the other!

-Duggars: Early iterations blew most of their influence on a precious few copies of test run for fear of the “bottom of the stack corroder.” Duggars brings it all together by allowing you to essentially tutor any card in a few turns; simply draw your entire deck! I rarely use this card, but it can be a true lifesaver when you need to dig for answers.

-Inject: Perfect for this deck: I actually prefer my programs to be be trashed so I can immediately retreival run them instead of needing to overdraw and give the corp a chance to ice archives.

-Power Nap: SO MUCH MONEY. The third copy would be my next splash if I had 2 more points; there are a ton of doubles in this deck, and I regularly get 7-9 credits (from 0!) from each nap. the swing is huge; I love to alley-oop with this and a stimhack to make a 18 credit run from 0 credits and still have a click left!

-Demo Run: the coup-de-grace in 90% of games. combined with virus multi-access, this allows you to wipe their hand or shred their stack. Actually combos well with whizzard, imo: use the ID to clear out assests and upgrades, then swoop in with the demo to catch even more ICE and operations. Also of note: this is your soul weapon against tag and bag: try to keep an eye on HQ; if you see a sortch, it’s time to swoop in with a nerve agent demo run and clear em out!

Other cards worth explaining:

Whizzard: The strongest ID for this deck, I feel, he is worth so much money against so many corps; I almost always net at least 9 credits from his ability, often far more. He basically allows you to just be super-aggro when you would otherwise have no right to be. Edward Kim is also a strong possibility once O&C comes out.

Frame Job/Blackmail: I slipped this combo in to help power up power nap, as well as giving me a great alternate route of attack if finding breakers proves problematic. Side bonuses: eats up shi.kyu and domestic sleepers and spits out free money, and punishes BP weyland hard.

Singularity: I first included this on a whim to juice up power nap, but I’ve ended up using it to great effect quite a few times. An excellent counter to Mushin no Shin, as well as HB super-servers. Use it to override corp bluffing if you have the cash and clicks to spend, otherwise, toss it for cash when you powernap. combos well with queens gambit; if the mushin when you’re at zero credits, just toss 3 extra tokens their way then trash it with the money you made.

let me know what you think, or give it a try yourself! I have been super surprised by how much better it plays that you might think it would, but I’m hoping to get some feedback on possible improvements or changes I could make.

edit: current testing is running -1 Frame Job, -2 vamp, -1 quest completed, +1 singularity, +1 spinal modem, +2 surge per the discussion below. good results so far.

1 Like
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How do you avoid losing Duggar’s to May?

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it doesn’t happen often, but deja vu can cover that. I generally am pretty stingy with my deja vu’s for just this kind of reason. It’s a very powerful card for recovering from any kind of problem.

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I don’t think Queen’s Gambit works with Singularity. If you use Queen’s Gambit, you cannot access. On Singularity, the phrase ‘instead of accessing’ appears. Since you cannot access, you cannot do anything instead of accessing, so they don’t work together.

I am tempted to sleeve this up and give it a try. I really like the Chaos Theory version. At first glance, money looks like it could be tight, especially if they don’t let you Queens Gambit by rezzing everything. Then again, if you dump them and powernap, you recover the cost.

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Singularity works fine with Queen’s Gambit. It’s even an example combination FFG described on their website!

It’s not particularly efficient most of the time…

2 Likes
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Correct. QG says that you can’t access the card, but it doesn’t turn off the access cards phase of the run. This means singularity can replace it with its effect. Like how you can Sneakdoor through a Hudson 1.0.

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Wow! That is cool. I guess because you can access upgrades it still works. You can access cards, just not that card.

I am still skeptical on Queens gambit, but when you realize that dumping one into the garbage is essentially worth 2c when neither of the naps have been played, it doesn’t have to work every game.

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The corp decks lately are running lots of assets and upgrades. That means Queen’s Gambit as a one of or two of is really good - influence free Lucky Finds, a lot of the time.

2 Likes
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One final question before I sleeve this and try it out… Have you tried running Grimorie as a 1x? Obviously it hurts your Oracle chances and stretches your deja vus thin, but if you can host all of your programs at once, you’ll save clicks in the long run by not having to swap between viruses. Then, when you levy, your oracles will be 100% because literally everything that can be installed is installed.

1 Like
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Actually I revise my question and suggest spinal modem. Not only does it add to the WTF factor of this deck, and it has a picture of Whizzard on it, it also helps mitigate the cost of your breakers. Two free credits of breaking and three of trashing is pretty good. Just don’t lose a trace!

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Ran this a couple of times on OCTGN tonight, exactly as written, and was surprised by my success. Both games, I felt like I was way behind until suddenly I was crushing it. Haven’t had a chance to get good value out of Frame Job/Blackmail combo yet, though, and usually just ended up dumping those cards. Singularity has been nice against PE, though, and Whizzard’s ability made NEH more manageable. Won both 7-6, and will continue to test.

1 Like
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With all those doubles, is it worth considering Starlight Crusade?

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For Starlight to break even you have to play a double every single turn. For it to make a profit you have to be playing two a turn reliably.

Hostage gets played once a game. Frame Job once a game as well. Singularity might get played once in a blue moon except against PE. Power Nap only gets played once you are are a fair way through the deck. Queen’s Gambit relies on your opponent’s plays.

Which is also one of the reasons I’m sceptical about Anarch doubles as a concept at the moment. That and the lack of Disiel/QT which are what really makes the CT build hum.

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I played with this a couple of times as well. I am also surprised at its success, but there is room for improvement.

I am not convinced about the frame job / blackmail combo. It seems like something that might happen once every 5-6 games if you are lucky. Definitely not worth running 3x of each, though I’m okay with 3x frame job. It is a power nap enabler and it gives a free bad pub every once in awhile. The blackmails need to go though. I was never happy to see them. Their only apparent job is to make the decision easier of what cards to dump post-duggers.

Also, I really liked having spinal modem in there. It paid for itself very quickly and I was able to dodge any brain damage from it. Having everything up at once is great after the levy. Just watch out for shinobi. That thing could be instant death if you smack into it while poor.

So my only changes right now are -3 blackmail and +1 spinal modem +2 infiltration. Infiltration is a decent general purpose card that could help save you from traps, shinobi, and makes the ‘run or Queens gambit’ decision easier. Worst case it is a small economy boost as opposed to a dead card, and even though it makes the duggers decision harder, it feels like a more solid choice. However, they will likely be replaced soon.

I have other potential alternatives that I would like some advice on how to get them in there, or alternatively convince me that I shouldn’t bother. They are on my wishlist of things to squeeze in. Scrubbed can save some money, especially with femme, and it clears ELP so you can apply pressure while you are still searching for the breakers. It would have come in handy against RP, but I can see it being useful everywhere. Cyber threat might be better than infiltration and serve the same purpose as blackmail if the Corp is poor. Finally, being able to surge before a big demo run would be cool.

So I have the two blackmail slots that are currently filled by infiltration, and don’t really know where else to make cuts. I don’t want to weaken power nap by cutting doubles as a nap later on can really be rejuvenating. I am okay cutting quest completed I think. I would like to know how often that gets fired off to positive effect. So that makes three slots to fill.

Edit: the below comments on singularity are incorrect.

One final thing that I liked is Singularity. I haven’t used it before now. It is a great way to slow down the Corp. What you do is run the centrals, and they’ll rez making themselves poor (especially if you pull off a vamp or have your viruses out). Then you Singularity their empty scoring remote when you know they cannot rez anything big. The Corp is really in a tough bind after that.

In any case, what are your thoughts on the proposed changes?

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Singularity doesn’t trash ice. We’d all be playing it if it did.

4 Likes
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Well dang. That isn’t the first time I screwed up ‘in the server’ and ‘protecting the server’.

Another potential cut, but again it is a decent power nap enabler. I used it to clear hostile infrastructures that were guarding my opponents Sundews.

1 Like
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I think Singularity is good for:

a) Trashing triple advanced cards in Personal Evolution.
b) Dealing with Ash when you can’t afford to beat the trace or run the server more than once (but you can afford to play Singularity?!)

It’s wildly over costed. It could cost 2 as a double and still not get played. Maybe one day it will be a good card. There’s so many Anarch cards I want to love (Demolition Run, Singularity, Liberated Accounts, Surge, Morningstar, Spinal Modem, Frame Job, soon to add Showing Off) but are so difficult, if not impossible, to make good use of. But I think Morningstar is going to be all over the place very soon, so maybe the others will start cropping up too.

I guess it’s a nice useless double for Power Nap.

3 Likes
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Too bad. I was wondering why there wasn’t more discussion about this card.

That being said, I still its uses against fringe decks. My friend’s foundry deck uses annoying upgrades like amazon, corporate troubleshooter and experimental data. They pose as agendas to force runs (and gaining rezzes), and boost his next ice out of parasite range. Being able to bust in there and dismantle everything with one swoop would be nice. Similarly, you can try to bust in and kill the ash/caprice sitting there, but you’ll need to make sure to win the psy game. Finally, it gets around the whole ‘edge of world sitting on a shell Corp’ thing.

That is an aside though. 2x is fine and if it weren’t for it being a double, it would be cut. I gotta keep reminding myself that discarding a double is the same as gaining 2c if you haven’t played a power nap yet. That alone saves that card for now.

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very true. 2 clicks for 6 credits is boss, and I have yet to face a corp that doesn’t let me play at least one. usually though they are extremely easy to get value from.

No, and I don’t recommend it, but I have tested Surge, and that can be quite powerful. something to try if you are changing things up and looking to fill slots. for non-events, I really try to stick to programs, to keep flexibility with retrieval run.

Never ever ever. Since you cannot voluntarily trash or stop using starlight, you would need to play 2 doubles every turn for this to be useful.

I haven’t liked any hardware, and my experience has been that the rig is pretty easy to get out. That said, I think you’re right about blackmail; it’s won me a couple games, but 90% of the time it’s taking up space.

Infiltration seems like it might be a great add, thanks for the tip! I have tested Scrubbed, Surge, and Cyber threat. of the three, surge is by far the best and I am currently considering putting it back in. I thought Cyberthreat could be a nice little tester but the problem is the first click requirement; in 4 games I could only use it once, and it was just so-so in that scenario. Scrubbed is solid, a definite slot if you see a lot of RP glacier in your meta.

I agree totally on singularity, hence it’s inclusion. In a deck that wants throwaway double anyways, it’s such a nice silver bullet to have in your pocket, against strategies where the counter is usually “guess what card they have” one thing to note, though, it doesn’t trash ICE; use it on advanced targets that might be traps or servers you think might have red herrings/strongbox/ash. perfect for the overly paranoid runner like me.

Thanks everyone who’s taking a look at the deck! I realize it looks/is super janky, but it’s been playing pretty well and I’m so glad to have feedback!

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My first suggestion would be to try it once or twice with Spinal modem. I ran it both times yesterday and didn’t regret it. The economic gain and ability to run both viruses simultaneously seemed completely worth it. Avoiding tripping over a virus with Oracle and not wasting clicks on deja vu/retrieval runs post-levy seemed great as well. And if you are facing making news, install it last or don’t install it at all.