Andy - Lotus Field edition

Clone chips put in a ton of work for me. I can’t imagine cutting them. I desperately miss my usual indexing, but it’s just not safe out there without clone chips!

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I cannot imagine importing Quality Time over Mr Li. Mr Li is just so much better in so many ways. Card choice, ability to use as much, or little as you want, ability to completely negate “dead draws” like a 2nd Mr Li, Kati, or Desperado. In the middle stages of the game I find myself using Mr Li 2-3 times per turn so that I have the perfect selection of cards in my hand. He finds whatever specific answer you need. Mr Li does so much work in this deck. Clone Chip is there both for instant speed parasites (which are amazing) and for program redundancy. You cannot always control program trashing, or damage that makes you discard, you must have a way to recover your breakers if you want to play a tight deck that only has one of each.

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Do you need both Clone Chips? And what is the deck’s solution to Lotus Field when it drops without a backup Decoder, be it Peacock, Passport, or Zu/Gordian? Seems like it’s a solid framework, but Code Gates could be an issue if Yog is your only Decoder moving forward.

I think the deck’s “solution” to lotus field is going to be “bring a real decoder” :).

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I can imagine QT over Li. I like the burstiness of it. However, losing the Clone Chips is not a great move, IMHO.

(also, sorry to start this talk in this thread. @SneakySly, could you perhaps move our talk to the ‘Andy - Lotus Field edtion’ thread, please and thank you?)

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Why do you have to lose 2 Influence to break Lotus? You can run Peacock (not great), or Passport (decent enough).

Passport doesn’t work in Remote Servers (and you can bet that’ll be where I’m putting Lotus Field for just that reason), and Peacock is pretty painful as far as solutions go. Knight is more generally helpful, and can more-or-less serve as a Parasite for Lotus Field. Either you can break it or they can trash it – either way, it’s gone.

You can also cut 1 Clone Chip, keep the 2nd, and turn Yog into Gordian. Or just add Peacock. It isn’t so bad if you only need to really use it to get through Lotus Fields for 4. Lotus isn’t that cheap to rez. For repeated runs it could be annoying, but if you’re trying to cover all of your bases, it’s really either some combo of Passport/Peacock and/or Yog/Shaper Code Gate breaker.

I would personally prefer my answer to Lotus Field to have some other uses (I guess Peacock isn’t terrible for Tollbooth, but still…) rather than be put in my deck purely as “the answer to Lotus Field.”

This is why I suggest Knight. It’s like a Parasite that’s also an Inside Job. Eats Lotus Field, but can be useful against most any deck (bypassing a Grim, say, that you can’t drop a Femme token on or use Faeries for). It’s not usual for Andy, but I’d take it over Peacock (takes a click to place, but is cheaper and breaks Tollbooth for 2 less overall).

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For the same 2 Influence, you can upgrade Yog to Gordian and call it a day. Gordian works just fine and doesn’t need to boost vs. the early annoying Gates, and can easily get up to strength with or without Sucker support in case of a purge. It’s also 1 cheaper to install. Not the worst option, and also stops stacking of Code Gates to some degree. Knight is OK, but only a marginally cheaper solution to Lotus and requires clicks to ensure it isn’t simply trashed.

I have done a little bit of playtesting with regard to all of these things:

(1) Gordian Blade is a WHOLE LOT worse than Yog.0. I felt it basically every time. I tried a Zu.13 and a Yog, and a Knight and a Yog, and the Knight seems to be working best, mostly because of the fact that Knight can randomly turn on blowout Account Siphons or be used to break otherwise unknown ICE without having to use Femme. You can play Gordian, and it’s ok, but there was just so much of the time I was burning Parasites on Quandaries or Pop-Up windows because it was better than getting Gordian Blade. There is some concern about getting Knight trashed and running into Lotus Field later, but it hasn’t come up yet, and you still have femme as an out if the game is going long. Essentially, Knight is better because it gives you another angle of attack, whereas other code gate breakers sort of just clash with Yog or are a lot worse than Yog in every case except for against Lotus Field. Passport and Peacock save influence, but are just plain meh in any event.

(2) Clone Chip is fine. I don’t hate it. However, I noticed that when I was playing Clone Chip, the first Parasite was always significantly better than a Clone Chip if you didn’t have a Parasite binned already. Clone Chip is better than Parasite after, of course, but not enough better to counterbalance the early Clone Chips that sit in play while there is ICE to be killing. It might save you a click or something. I thought that 2 Parasite 1 Clone Chip was alright for a while, but I can’t get behind 2 and 2, especially if I’m spending influence to break Lotus. If you want to go hard on Parasites, I wouldn’t add the Chip until I maxed out on 3 Parasites. In about 30 games, I only used Clone Chip to recur a breaker once, and it was more of a convenience thing, (I let a breaker get discarded to net damage so that I could save a click and actually use the Chip). Not once in those games did I get a breaker trashed, (it very rarely happens if you’re careful), and then later used clone chip to get it back. When you have Parasite, Inside Job, and Femme, getting a breaker trashed isn’t really game over anyway. Bottom Line: 3 Parsites and 1 Clone Chip is good but influence heavy, 2 and 1 is fine but is sometimes clunky, and more Parasites are never a disappointment.

(3) Quality Time vs Mr Li: I used to hate on Mr. Li a lot because of how badly I have seen him played on the other side of tables, (Hostage for Mr. Li on turn 6!). The trouble with Li is threefold: First, he is slower than QT. If you need an answer quickly, you’re going to spend more time using Li than playing QT. This isn’t a huge problem usually, but it’s often good when playing Andy to never let up pressure so that you can maintain your headstart lead for the whole game. Second, you can’t float tags and expect to keep him. This isn’t a gigantic issue right now, because floating tags is becoming less and less useful now that corps play longer games where you want Kati to stay in play for the whole game. Plus, if you get good value out of him, you can still float for a turn after Siphon and let him get removed or just bust tags on the next turn, (you can do this with Kati too if you take the money off her and don’t fear a Closed Accounts). Third, and most importantly, Mr Li becomes terrible to play sometime before halfway through the game. If you don’t get him online early enough, you might as well just draw cards and save your $3 and a click. Quality Time never runs into this issue. If you’re digging for something in the midgame and find QT, it will almost certainly find economy to pay for itself along with whatever you needed, and probably some other shit. It’s just generally a good deal better, mainly because of this. However, I think that getting to fit 2 Parasite alongside either an RDI, a Clone Chip, a Maker’s Eye, or the 3rd Parasite into your deck makes playing Li over QT worthwhile. I am actually going to start testing 3 Mr Li, because of how absurdly better he gets the earlier you play him, and because you’re unlikely to have to draw another one ever against once you stick the first. Just don’t play Hostage. That card is a true piece of shit.

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so its 1 corroder/1 mimic/1 yog/ 2 parasites/1 clone chip/3 datasuckers/1 knight ? what are you cutting for your RnD tech ?

I am playing an RDI over clone chip.

Excellent post and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never run Clone Chips. I think the best current setup is as indicated above, with Yog/Knight or Zu, and 1 RDI. You can get away with the 2x CCs now when there’s no Lotus Field, but I’d prefer to test as if Lotus was already out, as it will be splashed in many decks due to its low influence and being a hard counter to Parasite and Datasucker/Yog.

Not sure I agree on fitting in a 3rd Mr. Li. I’m currently running 2x of Li, Kati, SOT and Security Testing, and don’t know what to cut. I already added in a 2nd Plascrete, as I don’t think the risk of running with 1 or 0 is worth an extra card slot tbh.

I can’t agree with this statement. It costs 1 cred to draw and play any connection in your deck. It’s totally appropriate for any connection that costs influence. If you aren’t running any connections that cost influence, then you’re right. It’s not as good as more copies of your connections.

From reading this thread I think Atman is better than gordian blade, which is probably better than my original touched up Yog suggestion. I don’t trust myself with knight. I will get it killed and then I will be sad when Lotus Field inevitably shows up to ruin my day.

Is one crypsis a plausible solution?

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If Gordian is too expensive for this crowd, I doubt Crypsis will be well received! :wink:

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Crypsis + Lotus Field = 5cred install + 1 click to ‘charge’ + 5 creds to break once

Yuck

I think you’re better just keeping a Knight in hand if you’re worried about getting it trashed by installing.

From reading this thread I think Atman is better than gordian blade, which is probably better than my original touched up Yog suggestion. I don’t trust myself with knight. I will get it killed and then I will be sad when Lotus Field inevitably shows up to ruin my day.

Is one crypsis a plausible solution?

If you’re afraid Knight isn’t going to work, I would probably just play Gordian Blade. Atman isn’t even better than Femme, really, for 3 influence. Crypsis is unreasonably expensive. When you could keep the corp poor he wasn’t COMPLETELY unplayably terrible, but those days are over. You could also get tricky and just play a passport and hope they don’t Lotus a remote, I guess, or play 1 passport 1 knight and you’ll probably have all your bases covered.

My issue with hostage is that its always is tutoring for an econ card, but playing it is uneconomical. I don’t think I’d play Pro Contacts in Andy if it were in criminal, and I certainly wouldn’t ever play hostage for it. And you’re right, if you’re not tutoring for Pro Contacts, playing more copies of Li/Masanori/Kati is just better.

If you’ve never played with the Clone Chips how can you know what the best setup is?

I’m partly being facetious, but on the other hand Clone Chip does a metric ton of work in this deck against a wide variety of decks. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it.