I’m not the creator of the deck, but I think the breaker suite is set up to get through AI-hate for as low cost as possible. In that respect, Gordian probably should be Zu. Inti is there to reduce Wraparound to 0 str, and Chameleon can deal with Swordsman or other Mimic range sentries.
Clot is useful just by virtue of discarding it and having a clone chip in play, even if it might bugger my combo, it is also another known (or suspected I suppose) agenda that I can nab. I do need to score 4 points from the corp, so any points you can guarantee before you do Makers+Legwork+Archives+3-Notoriety turn are really good to have, even if it slows down how soon you pull off that turn. There’s always Levy to reset your deck and try for the dream turn again.
Using Vamp with Bagbiter out would be tough unless I had an enormous economic lead on the corp… which I didn’t for the most part. While I’m working my magic my opponent is firing off Bioroid Campaigns, or holding a Sweeps Week or two when they see my Bagbiter. That being said, I think I would try Vamp out as an alternative. Not every deck will Sweeps for 26 credits… twice. In one turn
I’ll rather pay 1 cred instead of discarding 3 cards if I encounter an Eli, and i’ve heard that Eli is still widely played ;).
And you usually have an enormous economic lead on corp : you click on opus for like 3-4 turns (+ kati )
On a 10 click turns, you can surely vamp your opponent at some point, don’t you ?
On a ten-click turn I can click through Eli if I don’t have enough cards to break him… but I never had to. I never had any problems breaking into all 3 centrals with 20 cards in hand. Even if I did, I ended the glory turn with 2 clicks, 15 credits, and a Levy in hand to start it over (I think this is why the Quality Time’s are in the deck? I only used one of them once, and I never Levy’d)
I saw another build that replaced the NACH with The Helpful AI for your glory run. Faust at 4 strength sounds way easier to recover from the Notoriety turn so I might try that out this week. NACH wasn’t relevant in any of my games so far.
Inti makes complete sense; I’d run it over lady in this deck every day of the week. And @PaxCecilia is right on the money that you’d only install it in the case of small barriers and wraparound. For that same reason, I don’t understand gordian. I guess it’s targeting turing and you don’t have to pump it as much, or maybe the creater of the deck was dealing with stacked code gates to hate on faust.
On Vamp; I think clot has more value. You probably don’t want to be spending down credits when that would eat hand size. It’s counter synergy. After your “big turn” you still may need to play a bit and Vamp won’t be useful until then. Clot may help prolong the game to get you there.
Run into any Komainus? That’s obviously why the deus x is there, but just curious if you ever used it.
No, there was like 1 Jinteki at the event and I didn’t play him. edit for the first time in ever, my local meta actually brought out tournament winning decks. It was like 50% NEH, 2-3 Noise and a bunch of Whizzard… we’re still behind a little
I was expecting to use it against a Janus from an Eliza Foundry deck, but she scored a Chronos Project on turn 3 or 4 and removed it from the game. Had to use Faust.
I’ve been playing a version for a while now. It’s a lot of fun. Mine is different from yours by
+3 Sure Gamble
+1 SOT
+1 Bookmark
+1 Mimic
-1 Mass install
-1 Fall Guy
-1 Kati
-1 New Angeles
-1 Chameleon
-1 Hyperdriver
My version is more tuned against damage decks. It can be quite maddening to go for the final combo turn and get a Notoriety sniped out of your hand by a Snare! or Shock! SOT protects you from losing against PE by getting your last Levy sniped. Bookmark also can protect against key cards being sniped as well as carrying a Game Day through the Levy.
Yours is better tuned versus tag decks which probably makes a lot a sense now. Getting Bagbiter killed is pretty bad. Getting accounts Closed with Bagbiter online is even worse.
I tried Chameleon/Fall Guy for a while but I like Mimic better. Architects are just everywhere. Versus fast decks you usually need to hamper quite a bit and many times just never get the Bagbiter thing going at all. Mimic is good in that case. For a while I had one more Diesel in there and that was nice, but I am trying Bookmark in it’s place.
I like the Sure Gambles for those early turns so installing Magnum doesn’t set you back so far (or keeping enough credits to get Magnum installed). Haven’t tried Kati, but maybe that’s
I dunno about Pax but Rob was using mass install in order to combo off a turn faster against rusher decks (also helped get round Hyperdrivers MU hogging). I.e. Turn A: game day for deck, drop hyperdriver. Turn B: mass install the rig, run the three centrals, play 3x notoriety. Lets you give more clicks to magnum opus/kati before the Game Day by saving clicks afterward.
@cspieker Honestly I brought the deck to a GNK having not played it before (very satisfied with 3-1) so Mass Install was extremely useful to make sure I didn’t fuck up the glory turn. Once you become more comfortable with how it all works out, you definitely do not need it, however it gives you a few free clicks to do runs on remotes if necessary. Also can be used similar to what @Dis said, but it gives you the flexibility to do it in a different order if necessary. So I could Game Day for 1 and 2, mass install to play Leprechaun + Hyperdriver + Hyperdriver for 3, and play Faust for 4. Next turn you can do the glory run with 10 clicks instead of 7), which is great vs bioroids.
Like you said, it’s tuned to anti-tagging instead of anti-damage (which proved better in my area). New Angeles. Kati, Mass Install seem like the most flexible slots. Not 100% sure on removing Fall Guy + Chameleon just for Mimic, but in my case I wasn’t using it for early pressure, just back up for my 7-10 click turn at the end. That’s what surprised me the most about the deck; even against a tuned-to-hell Butchershop I was able to draw my whole deck and get the 3 notoriety scored.
IMO a single Kati is good as a fourth Opus if you cannot find one. She’s really good at the stage where you click for a dump load of credits after Theophilius hits play because you can pre-load her with a ton of money. You need to dig through your deck a lot if you do that and play clone chips, because it can slow down how quickly you go for gold
Good point about Kati Jones. In games where you can’t find the Bagbiter/Hostage it doesn’t make sense to get a bunch of money via Opus because it’ll all just get lost when you finally install Baggy. With Kati to click and build eventual money you can be working toward the eventual draw-your-whole-deck turn before dropping the Bagbiter.
Moving to the anti tag plan seems like very good sense with D&D looming (or for playing on OCTGN where it’s already there)
I used to play CT a lot, and I was thinking about digging her back up for Worlds, but I don’t think my old deck really has teeth anymore:
I used this in the ANRPC tourney in Michigan earlier this year and it performed pretty well. Basic Big Rig, get the big shit out, run forever. If I were to bring it back, I’d probably slot some Employee Strikes, Clot and a Film Critic. Not sure what I’d remove exactly to DO that, but whatever.
As for Kati vs. MO, I used to run both in mine, but I found that by the time I found Kati, I already had the tools available to pull MO out, so she went away in favor of Visage. But in a Bagbiter deck, I would find it hard to justify MO. At the same time, I started to see a lot of Snatch and Grabs recently, so that could be risky too.
Just a thought if you’re looking for feedback: you could save an influence and memory by slotting GS Shrike M2 · NetrunnerDB Sunny’s Killer over Garotte. Without Datasuckers I’m not sure if it’s strictly an upgrade… but with Battering Ram + Torch + MOpus + Shrike you wouldn’t need the Akamatsu Mem Chips for a full rig, so that’s a few more cards free.
I hadn’t really thought of changing the breakers, but Shrike’s not a bad idea. Sneakdoor Zeta doesn’t have the numbers but at a glance, most Sentries will be a little more expensive to break, but it might be worth it for deck space/influence.
Fundamentally, Chaos Theory is design to make Combination/Synergy focused decks more reliable. This is why almost every successful Chaos Theory deck is trying to make some setup usually categorized as Magical Christmasland work. Stimshop, Au Revoir, some insanity involving Hyperdriver - you have to do something.
Which brings me to Opus, interestingly enough. Opus has a simple upside: reliability. If Opus is out, you can always trade time for money at a reasonable rate. Unlike the mostly disposable econ options of other decks, an online opus is never, ever going to screw you with draw variance. Stimhack is still common for the surprise factor, of course.
Opus makes your econ more stable, and CT’s deck size and mem bonus make you shenanigans more stable. And you have to be on some shenanigans plan, because any non-shenanigans plan is better out of Kate.
Finding 1 personal workshop and 1 stimhack is magical christmas land? I see your point about CT’s best deck uses but stimshop never seemed that combo-y.
Point taken but it’s not as if personal workshop doesn’t do anything by itself. Cheapest (or one of) persistent drip econ in the game by itself after all.
Sure, both cards are independently useful - but that’s true in many cases for these decks. However, Workshop isn’t good enough to play just for its drip. Contrast with PPVP Kate, where besides the Voice-Pads themselves and the Levy, everything else is a generic value generator/generally good card.
I actually think Workshop is good enough to play just for the drip, just not in Kate (where it denies you the ID drip if you use it), and probably not in triplicate.
