Big Girls Play with Mass Install

Decklists
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I’ve been inspired by that old classic list of @PeekaySK’s, Big Girls Play with Monoliths, but I’ve given up on the idea of getting out the 18-credit bomb fast enough to not lose. PeekaySK’s list is very tight, and all the parts interlock very well. I’m trying to rejig it to use Mass Install instead of the big M, and here’s where I’m at so far:

Chaos Theory: Wünderkind (Cyber Exodus)

Event (19)

Hardware (3)

Icebreaker (6)

Program (12)

15 influence spent (max 15)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Upstalk

Peekay’s list is from C&C, so what’s changed? Monolith gives you MU, install spam and economy (in the form of its 12-credit discount). Leprechaun and Sahasrara are program sources of “memory” and discounted installation. Overmind makes landing the first siphons much more of a sure thing. Spamming Mass Install also enables some scary-fast rig building, particularly with Sahasrara (Mass Installing Sahasrara + X doesn’t cost you any extra than installing X normally).

How does my list go? Honestly, it feels like there’s promise but it’s not doing that well:

  • Mass install is great. It turns siphon credits into board state quite well, and gives you an out if you have a little money and you’re trying to big-draw into Freelance and it fails.
  • If it sticks a siphon early, it can apply pretty good early pressure but then has a really rough time rig-building and going late (and your subsequent Overminds start sucking).
  • If the first couple of turns misfire (3 draw events into nothing, for example), things get pretty tough.

So where to take the deck in order to make it really sing? I see two main options:

  1. If using Siphon as a source of funds, the third siphon is looking increasingly necessary to slow the corp down early. The Source just landed where I am, so Shoot the Moon is something else I have to worry about (and there was Information Overload before that).
  2. Abandon the Siphon/Overmind plan, and use all that influence to bring in some good cheap stuff. Lamprey now exists as an interesting source of HQ pressure and yet another cheap program.

I’m leaning more towards #2, because it seems like the Golden Age of Siphon Spam is behind us.

The deck also needs more card draw, because of all those times where you’ve spent two clicks drawing, have a zillion programs in hand and need to decide whether or not to go for the FCC/Mass Install. Options worth considering:

  1. Inject. The influence cost sucks, but paradoxically it’s not as bad as it looks. If you save it for the awkward situations where you want to see events and not programs, it has potential. Consider replacing with Steelskin post-O&C.
  2. Earthrise Hotel. Giving up on siphon means that resources are an option again, and this is another 2 cards on those big Diesel-QT-Diesel-FCC turns.

A note on Ekomind: The brain looks potentially interesting because you can have a humongous hand mid-turn, install the Overmind and then drop everything afterwards. But since levy is going to leave you with a 0-card grip during its resolution, you’ll only be able to keep one program across resets. What’s the point of all those other programs if you’re forced to trash them when you push the big green reset button?

Alternative engines: FCC is only 1 influnce, so Duggar’s/Joshua B/Inject/NACH could make a decent engine. Harder to start, though, because of that delay on Duggar’s. It gets better when Amped Up comes. Another Anarch engine for this sort of thing is Inject/QT/Steelskin. Anarch also have their own daemon, so you don’t have to import Leprechaun. Importing Levy really stinks though.

Alternative IDs: Particularly if going the “cheap program” route, Hayley Kaplan looks really interesting. Has the same Sahasrara synergy as Mass Install but she allows hardware stacking as well as program spam.

After all that ramble, I’m looking for ways to improve the deck or do something similar with the burst card draw + FCC/Mass Install engine in a different ID. Any ideas?

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On my phone right now, so telegraph version:

  • love the Mass Install angle, think it will work well
  • moving off the siphon spam angle is a route I’m pursuing as well, and think it’s the right move
  • missing a console here, too many good ones not to run at least a 1-of
  • best way to leverage MI seems to go the full stealth route, to me (don’t have the inf worked out yet though)
  • Overmind seems actively bad to me, Sahasrara makes me wary without more support (probably Aesop, possibly Scavenge)
  • the breaker part of your particular list seems wrong to me (mostly gut feeling and some specific things), I’ll tinker around a bit and see what I can come up with
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Ekomind is jank and absolutely not worth it for Overmind alone, because you either have to build around removing Eko after the install, or deal with Komainu, Sweeps Week and Psychic Field.

Maybe you could build an Eko-Sage deck; Komainus can be built around, but I see no way to disable Psychic Field short of Vamping the corp to 0, and good luck with that if it’s the Worlds PE deck with Sweeps Week.

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I like the idea! PeekaySK’s original list is the first deck I ever felt the need to netdeck it and try it out. I’ve been playing permutations of it off an on since, and this is one I haven’t tried yet!

#1) drop siphon like a bad habit. corps are wise to that game and have been for a long time, and shaper just doesn’t have the speed to make it stick. More importantly, it is a monstrous influence sink that this deck needs for other things.

#2)I agree with Peekay, Overmind is a bad card here. better to include extra copies of breakers or SMCs. Speaking of which, you have no tutors and only one copy of each breaker. No me gusta, even with all the card draw.

Overall, I love the concept. I agree with @PeekaySK’s suggestions , though I actually think Sahasrara could have play here. That said, free up some influence and re-balance your card counts. Include more one-off tools like deus, sharpshooter, imp, mimic, etc or go with a more cohesive suite, possibly stealth or fixed breakers or something. Oh, and throw in a one-of astrolabe. any deck without a console needs a one-of astrolabe.

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like Peekay, I was thinking stealth might be a good route with the Mass Install angle.

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It’s hard to know what to put in instead. One of the things that made the original list work is that it’s ripping through the deck and hitting this powerful event that slows the corp down while helping you set up. The crazy draw needs to capitalise on something, but I’m not sure what. Indexing maybe, or some other nasty program (Keyhole?)

True. Obvious candidates:

  • Desperado
  • Box-E (less so if we’re kicking Overmind)
  • Astrolabe

Given the influence cost I think Astrolabe.

Stealth does look really promising, and because of your ability to cycle through everything you can use 2x Ghost Runner to supplement 3x Cloak for special occasions. Switchblade (+Datasucker support) is really nice against Komainu and Tsurugi as well.

My list only includes Overmind to enable Siphon, so if Siphon’s going it should go too. Sahasrara is actually surprisingly good, even without support, because you can drop it as part of a Mass Install. I played a game last night were a turn 1 Sahasrara was the only redeeming feature of a disastrous start. Particularly when you don’t have Siphon to get you stacks-o’-cash, it makes future Mass Installs much cheaper. It’s also Power Shutdown protection for Leprechaun and if you do end up trashing it you get FCC fodder in later Levy rounds.

Yes, absolutely. I don’t think the Atman rig is a good idea here because you’re not installing on the fly. I’m thinking of something like 2x Lady 2x Switchblade 2x Refractor 1x Mimic for breakers plus Opus, Cloaks, Datasuckers and odd tools like Nerve Agent and Net Shield as they come.

Tutors are weird in this list. SMC is a program but you’re going to have very little in your stack very quickly. Clone Chip works well with a big heap, but it isn’t a program, and for FCC/Mass Install to work you have to be vary careful with the program% of your deck.

I think Imp is going to be required because if we give up Fat Siphon Cash™, assets and SanSans are going to be a struggle. I think a one-of Test Run could go well here, actually.

Here’s a sketch. WDYT? It’s gone down to two Levys because we don’t need to recur Siphon as aggressively. I also dropped a Freelance because unlike the Monolith version we can play our program spam on the first pass. Sahasrara becomes important to enable spam even when low and we have Astrolabe for MU now, so 3/2 Sahasrara/Leprechaun.

Big Girls Play with Mass Install

Chaos Theory: Wünderkind (Cyber Exodus)

Event (17)

Hardware (1)

Resource (1)

Icebreaker (7)

Program (14)

15 influence spent (max 15)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to All That Remains

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

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When I look at monolith I see a prepaid Kate or power napdeck with eureka

Eureka monolith or workshop stimhack it, install 4 programs for a profit of 5 then trade in for a poftt of 9 more toward a toolbox or other hardware.

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SMC is a hero in my list - easy to toss for FCC if you don’t need it, click efficient like clone chip and almost as cheap. I tend to keep one on the board before each Levy; while this deck puts cards in the trash fast, it also resets the deck, often multiple times a game. Very few decks out there can draw SMC in the bottom 6 cards and actually have something to do with it (ie; it’s rarely a truly dead draw) Just my 2c; I don’t think they’re auto-include by any means.

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Eureka monolith is so hard to engineer. You have no way of putting the monolith on top of your stack. I agree that trading in monolith seems like a really good idea. I couldn’t make it happen when I tried it just after trade in came out. I’m pretty sure Toolbox is 2-3 creds too pricey to be viable. It takes so long to pay you back. Maybe if the link has value that isn’t the case, but I’ve not often been that grateful for +2 link. Typically I find I’d much rather have Daily Casts.

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Agreed. I don’t think it actually works… but thats always what I t hink about when I see monolith in a deck. That or a placeholder in pw.
I suppose monolith off a pw is possible if you can get bp up to 3 or so.

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If you want to know about real monolith use, read up on @PeekaySK’s original decklist. The list is definitely aging, but the concepts, as well as how to play monolith in a way that makes sense, hold true today.

Imho, this is the definitive monolith deck archetype, and pretty much any other way of using this card is almost certainly a waste of a decklsot. Eureka’ing it out is impractical to the point of ridiculousness, and it is a very weak PW placeholder, as it either never comes out, or comes out far too late to be of value.

That said, this thread isn’t about monolith; it’s about making the deck playable without the centerpiece.

1 Like
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I really want to put Aesop’s in here. Imp, Lady, tossing programs before you need the mem, or before you LALA…

Sometimes it might even be worth adding another program to your mass install simply to Aesop it the next turn if you can afford the memory. More creds than FCC’ing it.

Also, I think the counts in the list are wrong. I only see 17 events, not 18. But the total is still fine.

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I’ve edited the event count. Good catch.

I’m tinkering with the idea of an even more crazy list that drops the FCCs entirely in favour of 3x Mass Install and uses Cache + Sahasrara to rig up cheaply. I’ll probably refine the more conservative list above first, though.

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I put together a version I’m going to test out. I love the Monolith deck, so this looks fun too.

I took out the Inject, added a Pawnshop, swapped out a Dagger for one of the Switchblades. Without Inject, I added another Imp, but I can’t decide what to remove. I’m considering staying at 41 for now.