[Competitive Podcast] The Winning Agenda - Episode 34 (SPECIAL featuring Dan D'Argenio!)

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21

I’m surprised Jesse seems to see Gorman Drip as an auto 3-of in the Noise deck. Sure, it’s a 1-cost virus with a decent effect, but how often do Corp players actually click for credits or cards against a Noise deck that isn’t hammering their economy with Lamprey/Siphon or their hand with Hemorrhage/Wanton?

I get not wanting to be reliant on Aesop’s Pawnshop, but Pawnshop is just so good with Noise that you need to be importing some pretty powerful stuff to justify spending that 6 inf on something else.

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22

The corp is always going to have to click to draw or click for credits at some point. They will never have enough cards to use all their clicks installing. Installing, rezzing or playing non-economy ops is intrinsically a drain on the corps wallet anyway, even without lamprey or other drain effects. Gorman’s efficiency also goes up when you have multiple installed.

It is a good economy card plus the fact it is cheap, plus the fact it is a virus, plus the fact it might confuse the corp into taking a suboptimal turn just to deny you a few credits.

23

I can understand it in Noise without Pawnshop, but I think Pawnshop is way more powerful than this suggested build. You can slot traditional breakers in Noise Shop and be aggressive, it was the first Runner deck I put in serious games with, and it tended to work well for me. This was early Lunar, but still.

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24

Well this is the noise decklist (roughly in order of the cards mentioned):

3 Datasucker
3 Goreman Drip v1 * * *
3 Cache * * *
3 Gravedigger
3 Imp
3 Parasite

3 Grimoire

3 Clone Chip ** ** **

1 Medium
1 Nerve Agent

3 Inject
2 I’ve Had Worse
3 Sure Gamble
3 Daily Casts

1 Hades Shard *

2 Corroder
2 Yog
1 Mimic
1 Zu.13 Key Master **
1 Knight

Edit: Jesse’s actual list has -1 Imp and +1 Mimic

25

Thanks for putting that together @Ef_! The only difference in my build is -1 Imp and +1 Mimic.

@moistloaf - Pawnshop can certainly feel powerful, and it is in a lot of situations, but there are a number of things to consider. One is that drawing and playing a Pawnshop, and then having access to cards to fuel it, is somewhat clunky and requires some degree of sequenced plays. That is not all that easy to achieve consistently given Anarch’s problem with card draw. This makes Pawnshop a reasonably high variance play.

The other is that it is 6 influence to play the full suite. That’s a sizeable opportunity cost, and there are other similarly powerful options. Efficient recursion of programs that can be used mid-run in the form of Clone Chip opens up a lot of new strategies and plays for the deck.

That being said, there may be a middle ground there - maybe 2 Clone Chip and the miser’s 1 Pawnshop. I’m not 100% sold on the idea - and it certainly doesn’t solve the issue with variance - but maybe the upside of the 1 Pawnshop is higher than the third Chip, particularly with the addition of another virus in Gravedigger that sometimes wants to be trashed.

There’s a lot of tuning to be done on the deck to make it really competitive, and Clot will certainly find its way into the deck once The Valley is released. Clone Chip is even more important then I think.

26

Do you still find Cache worth it without Pawnshop? It’s Easy Mark (and a mill, obviously) with Grimoire. But that requires a sequenced play, which you already voiced your dislike for. Grimoire is actually worse than Pawnshop for those purposes, as you really do need it first. Aesop can go down after installing the viruses to clean up, costs less, and is turns Cache into an all-star, makes Imp (another all-star) have barely any opportunity cost for playing, and adds to Daily Casts.

D4v1d starts to make a lot more sense than Corrodor at that point. And so on - there’s so many synergies in a deck that is constantly installing programs, particularly programs that have some limited function and then go away, that it’s hard to see how something like Gorman Drip can ever compete.

27

I think it’s a critical mass issue. If you aren’t triggering Noise’s ability often enough, you need to play more viruses. If you don’t have good enough economy, you need to play more economy cards. Cache does both. Seems like it works to me.

The difference between Pawnshop and Grimoire is that Grimoire benefits 20 of the cards in the deck. How many will you be trashing with pawnshop? Just Cache, Imp and another credit on Daily Casts? Also, if you are playing Pawnshop in addition to Cache, how much influence to you have left? Is it work giving up Clone Chip? Without Clone Chip, inject is signifanctly less powerful. Without Inject, you need other ways to draw. It just seems like a can of worms that isn’t worth opening.

28

As far as Noise with Pawnshop goes, my default influence spend in Noise is 3x Pawnshop, 3x Clone Chip, 3x Cache. Inject hits both Pawnshop and Clone Chip, which gives you a leg up on the Pawnshop variance problem. You could also run -1 Clone Chip, +1 Hades Shard, +1 something else (Utopia Shard or a virus) – Noise can get away with 2x Clone Chip, although 3x feels pretty luxurious. Then you add some combination of IHW and Earthrise Hotel (which can also be pawned if you don’t need all the cards), and suddenly you’re probably seeing more than half your deck in a game.

Also, you don’t only pawn Cache, Imp, and Casts – you pawn whatever your least valuable card is at the start of your turn. I’ll happily pawn a Datasucker if I need the credits, or a Medium/Nerve Agent that has served its purpose and/or been purged. Lastly, I don’t run Sure Gamble in NoiseShop, since can’t be pawned. For a sudden infusion of credits, I run Stimhack.

In the Worlds meta, NoiseShop turned out to be too slow and too high variance. I only went 3-4 with my Noise list at Worlds, losing two NEH games 7 points to 5, getting Scorched by Blue Sun (I only had 1x D4v1d) and eating a Ronin like a noob (round 1 jitters). Obviously, I didn’t top 16 Worlds! But with the impending demise of NEH Astrobiotics, I think NoiseShop is actually well-positioned. It’s very strong against RP, which is the next best deck. However, in TWA lingo, I do think NoiseShop is more of a control deck than the midrange style @jesseo_o is going for here.

My current NoiseShop list looks like this:

Noise’s Haberdashery (v1.2)

Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire

Event (7)
3x Déjà Vu
3x Inject
1x Stimhack

Hardware (8)
3x Clone Chip ••••• •
3x Cyberfeeder
2x Grimoire

Resource (8)
3x Aesop’s Pawnshop ••••• •
3x Daily Casts
2x Earthrise Hotel

Icebreaker (6)
2x Corroder
1x Crypsis
1x Knight
1x Mimic

Program (16)
3x Cache •••
2x D4v1d
3x Datasucker
3x Imp
2x Medium
1x Nerve Agent
3x Parasite

However, I’m certainly open to the idea of Shopless Noise! I’ve played several different styles of Noise with and without Pawnshop, including Anatomy of Anarchy Account Siphon/Gorman Drip Noise, Hemorrhage Noise, and SMC/Clone Chip Noise.

It just seems to me that if you’re opening up 6 inf by skipping Shop, Gorman Drip in a list that isn’t actively forcing the Corp into clicking for cards and creds isn’t the best option. Drip wants to sit out there taking up MU, it’s somewhat antisynergistic with Imp/Medium/Nerve Agent… I dunno. If I had 6 more inf in Noise, I’d look to Scavenge first, I think. Scavenging Imp gets you a mill and 2-3 new trashes, Scavenging Cache gets you money for 0c, Scavenging D4v1d is clutch against Blue Sun, you can Scavenge Medium into Nerve Agent or the reverse depending on circumstances… It has the same capability to get you money as Gorman Drip, but with far more flexibility.

I could see 2/2 Scavenge / Clone Chip, which leaves more than enough for 3x Cache, Hades, and Zu.

2 Likes
29

This. The final turns of many a Noise game involves selling the Grimoire you installed at the start of the game.

30

Thanks for the well thought-out discussion!

I’ve been toying around in a headspace pretty similar to yours, with Earthrise, Scavenge, Pawnshop, Siphon etc all cards coming in and out of the deck at various times with no combination that I’ve been able to settle on.

Perhaps Gorman Drip without Siphon is too weak, and should come out for a Clot, a Pawnshop and something else.

Earthrise I’ve just found too hard to make feel profitable in Noise, because turning credits into cards isn’t as good when the credits are harder to come by in the first place!

Again, thanks for chiming in, you’ve given me lots of food for thought :slight_smile:

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31

Mmm it’s interesting that with pawnshop, you could make Earthrise a 1 credit draw 4… given of course that you would have to pay the 4 credits upfront and get 3 later. Still interesting to think about

32

@Dragar is the best Noise player I know. His list is fast enough to scare NEH and is Noise, so anyone who wants to go late better find their agendas and/or their Jackson Howards quickly.

There’s a reason why Aesop and Noise are pals.

Don’t sell the last 2 cards of Earthrise to Aesop unless you really have nothing better to sell and you’re poor. 2 cards are often worth a lot more than 3 credits. Consider Inject instead of Earthrise too.

Utopia Shard has got to be worth more than Gorman Drip v1

Anarch don’t have a problem with card draw. They might be the best faction at drawing cards now!

2 Likes
33

Hey guys,

I’ve done a bit more testing and thinking, and after trying out a few things and incorporating some of the good suggestions made in the discussion above, I’ve arrived at the following list:

3 Datasucker
3 Cache * * *
3 Gravedigger
3 Imp
3 Parasite
1 Medium

3 Grimoire
2 Clone Chip ** **
1 Deja Vu

3 Inject
3 I’ve Had Worse
3 Sure Gamble
3 Daily Casts
3 Aesop’s Pawnshop ** ** **

1 Hades Shard *
1 Utopia Shard *

2 Corroder
1 Mimic
2 Crypsis
1 D4vid

Clot will almost certainly come in, and the following cards are liable to be rotated in at any moment:

2x Deja Vu (see below)
3x Earthrise Hotel (unsure if I prefer this or Inject yet - Inject is more explosive but I’d probably want to play the other Deja Vu if I keep playing it)

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34

I find it hard to believe that Gravedigger is actually any good.

35

I thought it would feel clunky Dan, but it has been better than I expected. I’m still playing around with this, but Imp + 2 Gravedigger in play is a lot of pressure, and you can host that with a Crypsis and Parasites/Datasuckers. It gets out of hand pretty quickly. As long as you can hit Grimoire+Aesops early you can snowball into some hefty milling.

36

It was really good for me when I used it as a proxy for clot playtesting, since the inf and cost are the same. :stuck_out_tongue:

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37

Greetings all!

Episode 24 of The Winning Agenda is now live!

‘The Valley’ Card Highlight

It’s that time of year again, and we’re leading up to the beginning of a brand new cycle. The
Panelists are frothing at their jowls for the impending road trip across SanSan, and so we’re spending the episode this week discussing some our favourite, -or at least, the most interesting-, cards from ‘The Valley.’ This includes an extensive conversation about ‘Clot’, and what it could mean for the state of Fast Advance Aggro decks, as well as ‘Jinteki Biotech’ and some of the interesting directions such a unique ID could be taken in.

As always, we love to hear your feedback, and look forward to jamming some games (or traffic) with you all in the near future!

Website: http://thewinningagenda.com

RSS: The Winning Agenda

iTunes: ‎The Winning Agenda on Apple Podcasts

Email: thewinningagenda@gmail.com

Facebook: Redirecting...

Twitter: @WinningAgenda

38

liked the episode, but you incorrectly referred to Clot as 1/1, where as it is in actuality 2/2. doesn’t change any speculation on the usefulness or effect of the card, though. so far testing has demonstrated that there really is no counterplay to clot, wonder if any of the TWE guys read here with any frequency ;d

39

Hey mate,

Yeah we recorded the episode before the revised spoiler came out with the change to Clot’s cost and influence. We felt that what we said about it stood regardless, as you pointed out!

I’m not sure what you mean when you ask whether we read here frequently? We always love hearing your feedback and endeavour to reply as soon as we can! (Is that what you meant?)

Jesse

40

I think he meant the Stimhack forum in general, there’s been a pretty long discussion about Clot here with test reports, but it sounds like the episode was recorded before that stuff was posted.

Enjoyed the podcast as usual, although I was surprised that the sentiment on Clot seemed generally positive – even at 1c / 1 inf! You’re much more optimistic about the future of scoring agendas from hand than I am.