10 in archives, 3 ice on table, 12 in hand. 49 - 10 - 3 - 12 = 24 cards in R&D. R&D plus Hand = 36 cards. No agendas scored means they must all either be in Hand or R&D. 9/36 = 25%. Given a normal distribution (and all the caveats that go with it), 1/4 cards in hand are agendas, and 1/4 cards in R&D are agendas. 12/4 = 3. 24/4 = 6.
9 Agendas in the deck. 3 in hand, 6 in R&D.
How did you draw half your deck without also drawing half your agendas in a ânormalâ distribution?
So you pull out the big tricks and score from hand, using 4-5 cards, leaving you with 3-4 agendas amongst 7-8 cards and no further ICE to deter runs. You get legworked for 1.5-2.5 agendas, then R&D locked because you have no real defenses there, then legworked again. Or siphon/vamped, then locked. Runners have lots of tricks beyond single-accessing :).
Nobody is saying CI is DOOOOOOOOOMED, just that unless your opponents are goofy about HQ pressure Legwork has been the biggest reason CI isnât a trolololo win machine anymore :).
If you want to go that way, you still only end up with 4 in hand, way below a 1:1 ratio.
OK, thatâs fine. I personally havenât had that experience, I guess. If anything, CI is one of the few decks that has done well for me, but my local meta is full of hardcore tournament guys.
I personally still think it is a lot of fun and a pretty great archetype too!
How do you usually score? A Double-Bioticed EffCom costs 12 creds (the very least it can possibly cost is 8, but that means youâre delaying your whole game plan by another turn and a Reclamation Order). Since you donât want to ditch any cards, that means you canât really initiate the scoring until youâre at 12 + {hand size} + {cost of âemergency gtfo ICEâ}⌠which usually comes down to about 30-35 credits.
How long does it take you to make 35 credits plus the cost of all the ICE youâve had to rez to survive early game multiaccess pressure, early game economic pressure, or both? My estimate would be about 50. Youâre starting with 5 credits. Taking a highly idealized model (where all your stars aligned, we donât bother with silly things like pre-conditions etc etc etc), the most efficient way to make money with the deck is probably â3x Restructure, reclaim Restructures, archive Reclamationâ. Thatâs 6 clicks and 1 credit to make 15 credits, so an exchange rate of 2.33 credits per click. Thatâs 20 clicks of just that to hit the afforementioned 50 credits. So yeah, five straight turns.
tl;dr: I really donât see how you can score before turn 7 or 8 without compromising your position to the point where you risk just flat out losing as a result.
In all honesty, what Iâm reading from your description of your usual scoring pattern is that youâre going up against runners who donât know how to handle CI properly (the best indication of this is that you consider â1 ICE on HQ, 2 ICE on RnDâ to be a good idea :D), and thus youâre pressured way less than you should be.
p.s. oh yeah, another card that bugs CI greatly is Lamprey. That mother****er just straight up forces an HQ rez, whether you want to or not.
edit: aaand once again, âwhat Hypo saidâ. 
Thatâs the difference. I donât save any for emergency ICE rez. Start scoring around 20-25 creds, which doesnât take that long to accumulate. I also donât often click to draw, but instead will click to get creds when I donât have an operation to play.
Account siphons are more an annoyance, since its really just a single restructure to get back, and they have to clear two tags. Vamp is so rare itâs a non-issue. Lamprey through an Eli I might lose a cred. Maybe 2, if they really wanted to pay for it, I guess. Theyâre definitely losing more than I am.
As for âyouâre going up against runners who donât know how to handle CI properlyââŚthatâs pretty insulting to my opponents, and I would hope is incorrect given that two of them are nationals finalists and kick my ass on a regular basis. Iâm going to assume they know what theyâre doing.
20-25 credits is just cash. What about the money used to rez ICE? Or are you saying you donât have to rez ICE before youâre ready to score?
Re: the whole opponents thing. My current assumption is that youâre not really having a clear picture of how long it takes you to score (this is super easy to have happening, btw) and that if you check out an OCTGN log or a video of yourself playing CI, youâll be surprised. It might feel like youâre fast to start scoring, but more often than not thatâs a matter of how short your CI turns really are, rather than the objective number of turns that have passed since the game began.
âŚif youâre left with 10 credits at the beginning of your turn, sure.
Peekay, would you mind letting us know what decks you use these days? Iâm a BIG fan of your decks and would love to know how the new cards have changed your builds.
I would just like to add that I used to play a Cerebral Imaging Combo deck ala Jackson 7, except my deck was built to be able to score through The Source or Chakana (but not through both together, though itâs rare enough to not be a concern) at the cost of requiring more cards in hand. It also survives against Noise clone chip by scoring through the EffComm route. The scenario of 24 cards left in deck is about the time I trigger my combo. The game typically ends in 8 to 11 turns, any later and I likely lose the game.
I found scoring EffComm through double Biotics a massive blow to the Corp momentum, so much that I would almost always just continue drawing through my deck to get my combo in place. I would say scoring it at 20-24 credits puts you in the hands of the runner. Youâre down to possibly 8-12 credits, one siphon at that point will halt your plans. They will have breakers up by then so 1-3 siphons (AS or SOT) in the 3 turns after you score your EffComm is not too out of the blue over here.
I do think the situation being discussed for a non-combo CI deck would be considered early-mid game rather than the point you can score the first EffComm.
Yes, Legworkâs usefulness goes up over time, but The Makerâs Eyeâs usefulness doesnât go down. Cards accessed from R+D that you havenât seen before will always have the same likelyhood of giving points, minus shenanigans.
Always glad to meet a fan (theyâre useful when itâs hot outside!)
Iâm currently enjoying the âoff-seasonâ of competitiveness - too poor to go to Worlds, so now Iâm getting all that jankiness out of my system 
Hopefully Iâll be back to an actually useful skill level (both player- and deckbuilder-wise) by the time the SC season starts up again.
On the runner side, Iâm back to almost exclusively Anarch (DoppelTester Whiz, Duggar Whiz and Denial Reina), with the odd sprinkling of The Professor (who I think got a major boost in the form of D4V1D, btw).
For corps, playing almost exclusively Jinteki, with the occasional Stronger Together thrown in. As far as Jinteki builds are concerned, the two that I use the most are a Will-o-the-Wisp centric build with 15 sentries (with an influence spend of Archer, Lancelot and Gallahad) that actually seems to work reasonably well, and then a Mushin-type thing with GRNDL refineries.
As far as new cards changing my builds go - the last pack I feel like I fully explored was Upstalk. After that, the combination of them coming in a bit faster than usual, and my professional life exploding caused the rest of the new cards to sit in a pile (where only a couple cards got pulled out and slapped into existing decks).
If youâre interested in any of the decklists, just drop me a PM - ever since NRDB got (temporarily) shut down, my decks de-synced between net and meatspace, so if youâre interested in something I have to punch it in.
Would love to see your decklists⌠not sure how to send a PM thoughâŚ
Just click on his name goddamnit 
Anyone had any luck with Crisium Grid? I have been playing it out of Blue Sun and I think it might combat the problems of the archetypeâŚ
But what to cut from Scorched Imaging?
I love CI. Iâve had a lot of success with Scorched Imaging and PsychoAres, but Iâve never actually tried the 7-Points in one turn combo decks. I recently heard someone has been using the new Bifrost Array to help it go off with Efficiency Committee, and I wonder if that adds another level of resilience to the build. I need to do some research to see how the old decks work and what kind of new options the Array open up.
Has anyone here tested Bifrost Array and know how it effects the current sequence? Is it worth the slot?
Nice! Iâve seen the Panic Button/ Reuse shenanigans, but never to score out. This is definitely something I want to try out.
