Bios: The combo runner?

So terminal directive will be here soon, and while there has been some discussion of Bios as a generic efficiency ID for shaper, akin to Andy, to me her ability screams combo. You don’t care so much that you need to spend a click to draw, you just need access to your key cards quickly.

So what kind of combo deck do we build out of bios? My first idea is to exploit the power of Savant and deep data mining. So how do we get all that mem? How about we go partying? Beach party, game day, ekomind, profit! So here’s my first stab at it.

Ayla “Bios” Rahim: Simulant Specialist

Event (17)
2x "Freedom Through Equality"
3x Deep Data Mining
3x Diesel
3x Game Day
3x Sure Gamble
3x Trade-In

Hardware (5)
3x Akamatsu Mem Chip
1x e3 Feedback Implants ●●
1x Ekomind ●●●

Resource (14)
1x Aaron Marrón ●●
2x Adjusted Chronotype ●●●●
3x Beach Party
2x Beth Kilrain-Chang
2x Film Critic
1x Political Operative ●
2x Public Sympathy
1x Same Old Thing

Icebreaker (3)
1x Paperclip ●●●
2x Savant

Program (6)
3x Magnum Opus
3x Self-modifying Code

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)

I also love the flavour of this deck. “How does one achieve enlightenment, oh wise Savant?” “BEEEEAAACH PAAAARTY!” I call this deck “sophomore”. I haven’t been able to test it yet, because Bios isn’t implemented on Jnet yet, so it probably needs tons of tuning. (And even then, is probably bad–but fun!)

Any thoughts on this deck? Any other fun Bios combos? Love to hear it. Oh, and @CodeMarvelous, this brew seems like it might be up your alley–I’d love ant advice from the Jank brewing master!

3 Likes

Why Savant + Paperclip over Adept + Gordian?

1 Like

I had two main reasons. Number one, it seems relevant that Savant can break 2 subroutines for the 2 credits–so you can function without e3 for longer. Number two, people play a lot more high strength codegates than high strength barriers, so the built in high strength seems more relevant on Savant.

Yeah. The only advantage to adept is the base 2 strength.

I think Savant has potential in a faux ai slot if you are going for the mem build… Which is still probably missing a card from being competitive.

Just took a look at the core + TD cards to see what kind of fun Ayla builds can be made for the TD campaign and launch event, and there really aren’t any. All you can really do is find MOpus quickly and click it a bunch - how boring! Steve looks way more fun for the campaign.

Decks like this are fun though!

It definitely seems like the Shaper build wants you to go for those big cards that focus on MU so that you can capitalize on cards like deep dive.

The Shaper resources are also kind of… meh. If there are some spiffy campaign only programs, the Levy resource might be worthwhile, but that 5 install cost is very expensive.

And while you could go for a more traditional rig of Yog/Gordian, Mimic, Corroder + Datasucker and play Egret… that might not be the best option.

I don’t know. I was going to go Shaper for TD just so I would be forced to dive into the side of the box I probably won’t use as much, but now I am a little less sure.

I’m a Shaper fan, and I couldn’t put together a single core plus TD Bios deck that didn’t look absolutely terrible.

Agreed. The corp decks have access to a mixture of strong asset and operation economy, have reasonable agendas, good ice, and access to Biotic Labor, tag and kill, other core set tricks like Snare! etc. To be honest, they look like regular meta decks without Jackson Howard. In fact this is probably what core HB and Weyland should have looked more like… (obvious issues with Skorpios aside).

I’m mainly a shaper player and I wanted to give Ayla a try for the campaign, but the more I tried to build for her the more I started to wonder if the “suggested decks” were really a typo or whether FFG simply forgot the core set doesn’t have 3 Modded and 3 Magnum Opus. Both would likely help immensely. The kicker, though, was realizing that Hunter Seeker would give the corp the ability to smash one of my Deghdeers, effectively cancelling either one of two Mopuses or an Adept/Savant and making the game a progressively uphill battle as my MU collapses. Rewarding the runner for scoring by progressively reducing the strength of fixed breakers is hilarious, it really is.

So I went with Steve. Via a mixture of Easy Mark and Armitage Codebusting etc. (bleurgh) I was able to hang in games long enough to get some accesses. Of course a variety of internalized best practices (“don’t run last click, keep enough cards in hand to respect snare, don’t end your turn tagged, don’t get SEA sourced, only facecheck before you put out your rig”) meant that these games were nervewracking and a terrible grind for credits. I was able to recur one or two Easy Marks the corp didn’t RFG. Ho hum.

I love what the TD cards bring to the wider card pool, but I think this was a missed opportunity to give the runner some strong economy and tools that would make campaign play effectively an amazing balanced update to core, but when mixed back into the wider card pool would not be unbalanced. Corp got IPO and Marilyn Campaign, right?

Instead we got another thematic triptych of criminal breakers that don’t massively improve the core + TD experience, another Inside Job (!?) as well as these frankly awful shaper breakers (as well as a Maker’s Eye of limited utility). Poor Ayla, she deserves better!

These moments of overlap, redundancy, and similarities make me wonder if TD started out as Core 2.0, the project was shitcanned, and they scooped the half-desgned new core cards into a new “concept” expansion. :thinking:

1 Like

After US Nationals there is very little talk about Ayla and she seems absent from subsequent Regionals. Even though I see little sign that people are teching to beat the NorCal Ayla, she has vanished

Does that deck or any other Ayla have a place alongside Haley and Dyper?

That deck was kinda a 1-shot deck that was great for the specific meta of US Nats, but gets shut down hard by a lot of cards. In the deck’s description, John even says that he wouldn’t recommend playing it, as it becomes hard to win vs good players once the cat is out of the bag. There’s definately some bad matchups as well, but fortunately John was able to dodge them. His team mates from SF were also (mostly) on the same decks, and those that were got 11th, 13th, and 37th.

I think my favorite way that I saw that deck lose was when Noah (nobo) was playing Angelo from Portland. Noah goes off, but Door To Door is in play, and Noah has a tag. Noah sets up the combo pieces and plays all the Encores, then goes in and Appocs everything with Faust. He drops the last card in his hand (Equivocation) and starts hammering R&D for the win. His turn ends, and Encore gives him another one… and Door To Door goes off, since it’s a new turn. Noah has a tag, which means that he takes a meat damage from D2D… and dies.

Not that this particular story means much; I think that if Noah had been paying attention he could have easily not died and perhaps won that game. I just like the story.

=D

3 Likes

At the DC regionals, I ran Desperado Smoke with a couple of deuces wild. At the end of the day, a friend pointed out to me that we had recently all shit-talked Build Script, but the “net 1, draw 2” combination on Deuces is one of the most popular choices. So, I thought I would see what a deck that runs all of the deuces/build script/process automation looked like.

After trying a couple of variations with Smoke and finding it playable but not amazing, I tried switching to Bios and have been having a lot of fun with it. Deep data mining is great, and NVRAM helps to guarantee an early Comet and makes it easier to string together Comet triggers.

I’m not sure about E3, I haven’t hit enough multi-sub sentries/barriers to pull its weight yet, but it probably makes sense to have in case of Komainu. Otherwise I would drop it for a Legwork.

Comet Bios

Ayla “Bios” Rahim: Simulant Specialist (Terminal Directive)

Event (25)

Hardware (6)

Resource (5)

Icebreaker (4)

Program (5)

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Terminal Directive

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

4 Likes

I’ve been tweaking a version of Joseki’s deck that uses DLR instead of Equivocation. You don’t need the Apoc or Exploit, which gets you influence for Josh B (meaning 6 click Encores with Akshara installed as well) a DLR and a Hades Shard. It also means you can’t really die to Snare in R&D which actually killed me when I was testing the Equivocation version. At the end of the combo you should expect 18-20 mills, which is usually enough to close the game on Hades Shard access with the extra point you get from Notoriety. I don’t have a list handy at the moment, but I’m sure someone could reverse engineer it pretty easily.

1 Like

Incidentally, this is my updated comet ayla list based on @yojimbosteel’s chaos theory build. It’s way less janky than it appears at first glance! I’ve played it with 3x day job, 1x legwork, and the 3rd process automation (instead of 6x exclusive party) and that also works pretty well. Money is generally not a huge issue, so I think that having more draw is helpful-- particularly if you are using Brahman to somewhat-regularly bounce stuff to your stack. Also you haven’t truly lived until you’ve used Same Old Thing to replay exclusive party #6.

cantrip bios

Ayla “Bios” Rahim: Simulant Specialist (Terminal Directive)

Event (33)

Hardware (4)

Resource (3)

Icebreaker (5)

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Revised Core Set

1 Like