Cerebral Imaging: The Evolution of an Identity

Just finished the Illinois, USA regional a half hour ago. I finished in second playing Peekay’s CI deck and Kate. Lost in the finals to silhouette(sp). The ID card is a masterpiece :smiley:

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Which version? Any notable nuggets you’d like to share?

I’m also curious about which version you played, and I’m very curious about how unique your opponent’s decks look compared to what I’ve gotten used to seeing (Silhouette coupled with Tennin Institute).

And congrats on getting all the way to the finals!

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Good to see you back! Congrats on the result. Second of 81 is impressive

In the jinteki shutdown thread :

Ohhhh, I see a real life jinteki mindgame here :slight_smile:

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Yes, was making an inside joke there. I’d been playing CI since peekay leaked his doubletime list from chronos, and it was too late to change corps.

@PeekaySK I was playing scorched imaging with walls of static. I also changed the 3rd priority into a project vitruvius while testing and found it better - however, after getting to event and entering my deck list, I realized that I still had 3 prioity requisitions, one of which got stolen basically every game (usually out of hand) so I was pretty salty about that, especially when I needed 1 priority req to win with my corp game against Kranse’s silhouette deck and it never showed up on time.

But yes, the walls of static were always amazing and I did not miss heimdall 2.0 all day, I think I only rezzed heimdall 2.0 twice and never stuck brain damage with him, money was always an issue for rezzing heimdall before - while I used walls of static to ruin an atman deck in the finals, and tax silhouttes breach - I just never had a spare 11 credits to throw away on an opponents clone chip.

I had more than half of the corp games I won end with me at 0 credits, including playing a biotic labor then restructure to have the exact number of credits to sea source scorch a stirling deck through 2 plascretes.

I saw a lot of CI at the event, my round 1, and round 4 opponents both played Cerebral Hive of Giraffes, and it seemed like there were always people adjacent to me playing hive+celebrity gifts or scorched earth; unfortunately, I think I was the only one in the finals playing a CI deck - I don’t have the numbers but it seemed like it was mostly HB Red Coat’s decks and NBN decks in the finals, with an array of other factions sprinkled in.

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Thanks for the (mini)report!

About the PriReqs: I pretty much always get one stolen, whether I’m running two or three (Murphy’s Law and so on). Having one and not having one is a huge difference re: winning the old-fasioned way, so I’m way more comfortable running three. That way, I don’t have to dig for the second one in a race against the runner whenever one gets stolen.

Not sure how I feel about (directly or indirectly) causing that, actually - HB has never been my favorite corporation. On the plus side, I now have enough rep on NRDB for a lifetime’s supply of deck slots :stuck_out_tongue:

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I played in two more tournaments with my list from Helsinki (scorched imaging, no 5/3s).

In the first I lost 2 games out of five: one was going pretty good, then he plays Legwork and hits 3 agendas at once. Oh well. In the second game, he breaks into R&D though four ice, loses all breakers to Ichi in the process, goes down to two credits and two cards while I have SEA Source + 2x Scorch, but hits the 4th agenda. Hail mary run, oh well. Overall 1st place anyway :wink:

In the second tournament I lost one game out of four, started with 3x Hedge Fund and a Blue Level, but didn’t get any ice, and he picked two agendas from my bare hand and two more from my bare deck, no multi-accesses. Oh well.

Stories, stories. Anyway, the deck is STRONG.

(on a side note, my gamble-less Kate deck keeps working wonders. Out of these two tournaments, 9 games as runner, I only lost once, to Astrotrain.)

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You forgot to say, “oh well.”

:stuck_out_tongue:

Darn man, you read my patterns so well, you a shrink? :wink:

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Is CI still competitive?

I’m looking for a corp ID that plays a little differently but can still win tournaments. Are CI’s glory days behind it in a meta with Clot, or is there some life in the old girl yet?

It’s not top tier but I took a Mandatory Upgrade/Media Blitz CI to a GNK on Saturday and went 3-1 and had a blast.

Amazingly there was another CI Mandatory Upgrade/Media Blitz player there who came in 2nd with a 4-0 record for the deck. Both of our wins probably came from people having no idea what to do against the deck though.

Not every deck plays clots, and CI is an identity who can reliably replay a CVS more times than the runner has clone chips.

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Very interesting. Do you have a decklist you would reccomend as a starting point?

If you’re looking for a list closer to the ones from the original article, I was playing this in the Stimhack Jinteki league for a while.

Scorched Imaging, Enhanced

Cerebral Imaging: Infinite Frontiers (Creation and Control)

Agenda (9)
3x Efficiency Committee (Creation and Control)
3x NAPD Contract (Double Time)
2x Priority Requisition (Core Set)
1x Project Vitruvius (Cyber Exodus)

Upgrade (2)
2x Cyberdex Virus Suite (Order and Chaos)

Operation (28)
3x Archived Memories (Core Set)
3x Biotic Labor (Core Set)
3x Blue Level Clearance (Fear and Loathing)
1x Enhanced Login Protocol (The Spaces Between)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
3x Reclamation Order (Double Time)
3x Restructure (Second Thoughts)
2x Scorched Earth (Core Set) ••••• •••
2x SEA Source (Core Set) ••••
3x Shipment from SanSan (Second Thoughts) •••
2x Subliminal Messaging (Fear and Loathing)

Barrier (3)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof)

Code Gate (4)
1x Enigma (Core Set)
1x Turing (Breaker Bay)
2x Viper (Cyber Exodus)

Sentry (3)
1x Assassin (Data and Destiny)
2x Ichi 1.0 (Core Set)
15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

It did fairly well for me. I did retire it for the time being as it has an unfavorable matchup to Noise and especially DLR decks. Still, it’s a ton of fun to play, and has a better matchup to decks packing clot than you would think.

With the coming of Hasty Relocation, a new CI player is in town: GOTTA GO FAST (2016 Store Championship, 1st Place) · NetrunnerDB

Is it better than 7pt? Maybe, who knows. But it’s a lot of fun. My recommendation:

![check it out] (http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5169/59/16x9/960.jpg)

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Time to elicit some groans.

Behold my necropotence.

Genuine question: If your goal is exclusively to win, even if you have no fun and lose all your friends, is there a situation where you shouldn’t play CI at any given tournament?

There have been some changes to the meta from all sorts of factors, but I have been playing against CI more than any other deck in the hands of my partner, and whilst we’re both relatively new to NR, we’re both pretty convinced it’s unbeatable in a normal game. All (and I’m pretty sure that’s not hyperbole) our losses have come from the Runner going to 5 points in the early game and then getting a lucky access later on, or one of us (usually me) forgetting how MCA Austerity works and putting out a 5/3 Agenda with only 4 Advancement counters on it or something.

We cannot figure out a proper strategy to beat it that doesn’t involve a lot of random access. Why isn’t everyone playing CI? What am I missing?

Some general CI vulnerabilities:

  • Deny their econ. Make them rez ICE. Fairchild 3.0 is almost always the worst scenario (unless it’s Moons, then its Architect). Remember that FC3 is 6 credits and consider how that will effect the corp’s hand size.

  • Try to exploit their weakest central. They usually can’t find and rez all the FC3’s, so poke around and figure out what’s poorly guarded. CI is typically going to have about 1 in every 5 cards be an agenda, so a random access is actually going to give you decent odds. You only need to score 3 times if you hit a 5/3, so get all the random accesses you can.

  • Stimhack is always handy for cracking the remote, and barring Punitive variants, CI will rarely be able to punish you for taking brain damage.

  • Rumor Mill and E. Strike should both be useful in curbing CI’s effectiveness, particularly if they’re using Stinson/MCA Austerity.

  • Besides Fairchild 3.0, most of CI’s ICE is pretty lackluster, so if you can answer it with something efficient like Cyber Cypher, Atman (5), D4v1d you’ll be in good shape. If you’re on Black Orchestra, consider supplementing it with ICE Carver or Datasucker to save 3 bucks. It’s usually worth it in the long run.

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Me: “Hey, a new Stimhack article on CI”
“Wow, this is real in-depth evolution here, starting with ancient history.”
“Are we seriously going to look at every card from every cycle that fit in CI? How long is this thing?”
“Wait, looking forward to Honor and Profit? Holy necromancy, how old is this article?!”

That’s what I get for finding new articles primarily through their discussion threads and not paying any attention to post dates. SMH

Fun “blast from the past” meta read, though. :smile:

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Perhaps I just need to bite the bullet and actually play some more Employee Strikes. My experiences just haven’t been good with it. If it’s not in your opening couple of turns, they will be able to answer it on their following turn. They have half their deck, there’s going to be a Scarcity of Resources in there somewhere, or just Biotic + 3/2 or something like that.

We did find that the most effective game plan was to run early, run often, and force them to Rez, but stuff like NEXT Silver on R&D is so good at nerfing an early assault, so then you have to find Clippy to carry on with that, or run HQ and hope they’re a bit flooded. For real, you can run my HQ all day. Your odds are so low on that access that I don’t care enough, and depending on my build six of my seven Agendas have game text on them on your access, so I’m actively hoping you start giving me SSL credits early, or maybe pinching yourself with an Ikawa.

God I love/hate this deck.

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