Cybernetics Division, Brain Damage/Hand Limitation?

Decklists
21

Any Mushin deck without at least one Junebug feels like it’s making a mistake. It’s an easy kill when they have to go up from 4 cards in hand at probable most, seeing one may make them more likely to just overdraw to 7 and hit an Overwriter, and so on. You’ll pick up enough games off of that for one or two influence to seem worth it, to me. It also fires from less than Overwriter, so it’s harder for them to get you to spend under the effective range – if they think all you have is Overwriter, they’ll be more willing to run to trash it when you have 2 credits, at which point you can kill them dead.

Similarly, if you’re using Mushins and not running three copies of Vitruvius, shame on you. Pop it out, advance it once. They risk hitting an Overwriter for their whole hand, dying on a Junebug (or follow-up Neural), and if you get the score you’ll have 2-4 counters to play with which can be used to recur Mushins and traps both as well as cover for ABT attempts or bring econ back or whatever else you might need.

[quote=“linuxmaier, post:19, topic:3895”]
Importing Ronin could change that, though.
[/quote]Might be too much influence at 4, but could be useful with Mushin and such.

[quote=“Saan, post:18, topic:3895, full:true”]
There’s no real guess there. The correct decision becomes to only run on R&D and HQ. Sure, Snare! might make things annoying, but there’s little chance of a flatline if you run with 3-4 cards in hand.
[/quote]Valley Grid on R&D, maybe? Other than that, yeah, the runner is probably safe enough if you aren’t running Ronin, but it’s not like they want to let you score out either, especially with overadvanced Vitruvii.

But yeah, Ice-less seems waaay too risky when Ice is one of the things HB does well. Could see an Ice-light deck maybe, but not Ice-free if you wanted to actually survive. Medium, R&D dig, death.

Mushin/asset spam/never advance stuff does seem like it’d make Self-Destruct Chips work. Not ideal, but if you can average one of them and a Brain Damage each game then Snare kills if they don’t immediately draw up before running, and they stop being able to safely check Mushin’d anything for fear of the flatline unless they can expose it first.

Pinging the runner seems like the wrong move. For reduction and punishment, I’d look at Mushin, Overwriter, SDC, Junebug, Valley Grid, Snare, Ichi, Viktor, maaaybe Heimdall if you’re running mostly Bioroids, and NEXT Gold. Maybe Neural EMP and/or Ronin, I guess.

Ryon seems awkward and unreliable, though maybe Brain-Taping with Bioroids will prove me wrong there.

But if you can hit them with an Overwriter and score an SDC, the game is probably yours. Even beyond the increased flatline threat, it’s rough for a runner to not be able to hold very many cards in hand. Doable, sure, but not terribly pleasant.

1 Like
22

Cerebral Overwriter has to be in the deck. It’s the most “reliable” means of applying additional brain damage. Obviously Mushin No Shin makes sense to load the overwriter or bluff an agenda which leads me to two lines of thought.

  1. Mushin is greatest in PE because it could be trap/agenda/ronin. Ronin is the card that forces the run even when the runner doesn’t want to. Otherwise, you’re forced to wait for match point to mushin to have the runner actually run it. Ronin, at 4 influence, may not be able to fit in with mushin. It could be a good add in a low-ICE asset deck with encrypted protocols or something. This small deck makes me want to think more aggressively so never/slow advance may be too slow to take advantage of the ID ability.

  2. If you’re going to do 1-3 damage with an overwriter the best way to finish is punitive or some other bulk damage (see ronin above). Sea/Scorch is basically out of the question. Midseasons/Traffic Accident? I don’t have a better answer than punitive here and neural emp seems like it doesn’t do enough damage.

As hand sizes go down, Snare! seems like a must. They help protect your hand when it’s at 4 cards and your deck since your at 40. Should slow the runner down enough to create scoring windows or allow you to add economic pressure.

I don’t think I could justify playing with Gyri even in this deck. It’s almost never going to fire and the times you’ll be able to capitalize on it when it does fire will be minimal. I would play with Zedd before Gyri… which now that I’m saying it doesn’t sound terrible :stuck_out_tongue:

Ryon seems like too many hoops. I’ll report back on all this once I get a couple games in.

3 Likes
23

I think the goal is to just get 1 point of brain damage on the opponent. At that point punative+neural is enough to win most games.

Multi-tag has no business in the deck, so scorch is out, though closed accounts might not be if they’re trying to recover from snare!

Cerebral+Snare!+False Lead+Neural EMP wasn’t consistent enough when your opponent had a 5 card hand, but it probably is when they have a 4 card hand and there’s all these other modes for causing damage.

Anyhow, if you can get them down to a 3 card hand, maybe tagging is the way to go. Biotic+Security force for the win?

24

No mention of valley grid? That +2 ice makes for lethal punitives, with a back up plan in case of plascrete. Works well with eli/Viktor1/heimdall as well. Limited combo pieces helps with the handsize drawback too.

25

Valley grid is def solid. Influence and deck space are both concerns. Maybe a 1 of? Viktor 1.0 seems like he would be a bad choice since we’re getting Net Ready Eyes and will probably see a huge push for Yog.0 after NRE release. Yog.0 is still big in my meta anyways, so Viktor 1.0 while amazing on paper just eats it hard around here. Small bioroids seems like a good plan with valley grid though.

EDIT: Yog.0 breaks the subs, so it still works. But the card is much more likely to be trashed on first access.

26

I worry about how easy it is to land a punitive without EtF money, but ill give that build a go:

Valley Cybernetics (44 cards)

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

Agenda (7)
1 Domestic Sleepers
1 Hades Fragment
3 Priority Requisition
1 Project Wotan
1 Utopia Fragment

Asset (6)
3 Adonis Campaign
3 Jackson Howard

Upgrade (2)
2 Valley Grid

Operation (15)
2 Archived Memories
3 Green Level Clearance
3 Hedge Fund
2 Neural EMP
2 Punitive Counterstrike
1 Subliminal Messaging
2 Successful Demonstration

Barrier (6)
3 Eli 1.0
3 NEXT Silver

Code Gate (3)
3 NEXT Bronze

Sentry (5)
3 Architect
2 Ichi 1.0

1 Like
27

One of the problems with Mushin (cerebral/upgrades) from a game theory perspective is your win rate is semi-independent of player skill. You’re basically trying to reduce the game to 2-3 coin flip decisions where if you win any you win (either brain damage or being able to fast advance for the win). This is obviously reductive, but I think it basically holds.

So lets suppose you get 2 Mushin’s off in every game. Then you’re at a 75% win rate! Which seems pretty good. There’s actually a pretty large problem with your win rate, in that’s it’s pretty independent of your opponent’s skill. Or, I’m extremely happy winning 75% against Medio, but I’m extremely unhappy about winning 75% against a bottom half swiss player.

So a tournament worthy Mushin (Upgrades/Overwriter) deck will probably need to be able to win against a bad/mediocre opponent without scoring an upgrades or hitting an overwriter.

This is very different from SHL, where you can simply play it only against top tier players.

I’m definitively going to mess around with it some (Mushin is one of my favorite cards), but its just something to keep in mind.

4 Likes
28

And this is why I played 1 infiltration in Andy last year.

2 Likes
29

PE doesn’t have any agendas (other than Braintrust, which is marginal for Cambridge style stuff) that give benefit for being overadvanced, though.

Mushinning a Vitruvius, again, is astoundingly strong. You get that Mushin back, and maybe a Snare! the runner killed earlier, and then also that face-down card you had to discard that the runner’s about to flip and see. It’s also a reason to Mushin>Advance, which allows for bigger hits from Overwriter and/or Junebug.

You can go crazy with it and also Mushin an Efficiency Committee, Sentinel Defence Force, or (if you’re really wild) a Mandatory Upgrades. With Mandatory Upgrades and two counters on Vitruvius left you could pull the Mushin out of Archives, use it, and then do that again to bait flatline or just win on the next turn.

That said, I think MU is the wrong way to go. Scoring it without a Mushin is just rough, and building up to FA-dom is a weak-ish strategy because it also increases the likelihood of you saving Mushins for that agenda rather than just using them whenever on whatever. 3 Vitruvius/3 ABT/2 SDF/2 SDC seems better than anything involving MU, to me.

HB totally lacks assets that make Mushin powerful if not run on, but their agendas get a lot more benefit out of it, I think, than most Jinteki ones do. I’ve made sure that people locally know that when I Mushin as HB it might be a flatline concern but it also might just be massive control and dominance from a ridiculous agenda score.

I agree that bulk damage is useful at that point to finish the runner off. But there are a variety of ways to increase the damage some or otherwise make things awkward for the runner, and you can land 4 with an Overwriter, at which point the current in underway or just one neural would be enough to make the kill.

Hell, get them down to one hand size and either Snare! or double Neural EMP does them in, or a Valley Grid protected by two or three pieces of ICE.

I think y’all are focusing a bit too hard on how to flatline the runner entirely, when that’s rarely the main/only goal in good flatline decks. Flatlines are a way to pressure the runner’s choices and pick up wins when they make mistakes. You want to use the handsize restrictions to limit runner play (one reason I think Junebug is so good here, because from Mushin it takes 2-4 extra cards to be safe without any extra hand reduction (or increasing) which is a looot of resources to risk on a remote-check, similarly Snare! because a Legwork is more likely to hit one or two than with a full five-card grip, and actually guaranteed if you get three in hand).

It’s a different sort of shell game and opponent reading required than for PE, but it just pushes the Runner’s abilioty. Sure, they can let you score this agenda. And maybe the next. But they have to run sooner or later, but they’ll never have the assurance that something is safe until it blows up in their face (or not).

You also need a way to deal with things like Infiltration, so relying on Mushin just for flatline is kinda risky. One of the nice things about NEXT Ice is how you can pop one in front and be vaguely safe, though parasite and inside job make it still something of a big risk all the same.

But this looks to me like a rush ID with backup flatline support built in rather than a primarily flatline ID or non-rush thing. You want to go as quickly as possible, throw out stuff the runner has to check or risk getting behind quickly but also make them hesitant to run lest they end up dead in short order.

3 Likes
30

I’m thinking something like this:

Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded (Chrome City)

Agenda (6)
3x Priority Requisition (Core Set)
1x Project Wotan (Creation and Control)
1x Eden Fragment (The Spaces Between)
1x Hades Fragment (Up and Over)

Asset (10)
3x Adonis Campaign (Core Set)
3x Eve Campaign (Humanity’s Shadow)
1x Cerebral Overwriter (Creation and Control)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) •••

Upgrade (3)
3x Valley Grid (The Valley) ••••• •

Operation (10)
2x Archived Memories (Core Set)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
1x Restructure (Second Thoughts)
3x Punitive Counterstrike (True Colors) ••••• •
1x Blue Level Clearance (Fear and Loathing)

Barrier (7)
1x Heimdall 1.0 (Core Set)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof)
3x NEXT Silver (Upstalk)

Code Gate (6)
3x Viktor 1.0 (Core Set)
3x NEXT Bronze (Opening Moves)

Sentry (2)
2x NEXT Gold (The Valley)

15 influence spent (maximum 15)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Chrome City

with maybe a trouble shooter worked in somewhere to hit with next gold.

1 Like
31

You gotta get some Turing in here right? Ryon Nights and Turing are #remoteserverboys

4 Likes
32

This deck has all the best B+ cards in it. Looks awesome.

2 Likes
33

Finally an ID where Zed can shine! :wink:

Midseasons/traffic accident might be a solid combo here or punitive, but meat damage is probably expected in this deck. 5/3s with punitive, and the runner needs to be very careful, even with one plascrete out.

How about a never-advance scoring remote? Add some non-advanceable traps like snare and edge of the world? Snare also gives you some centrals protection. As a runner I would probably ignore remotes as far as possible, and having some traps in centrals would certainly help.

Self-destruct chip can be cheated out with biotic or fake them as jacksons.

I would probably try and include one Ryon or so, and even if bioroids are porous, they also have a nice tax/rez ratio.

2 Likes
34

I’ve been thinking of Tori Hanzo for this ID, but then I noticed she says the FIRST time the runner takes net damage, which is really disappointing. I thought I was onto something with my Sentinel Defense Program/Tori Hanzo infinite brain damage deck…

2 Likes
35

Mushin Overwriter is good and ‘easy’. But its hardly great. Why would I run anything you Mushin? The agendas don’t lead to more danger, only SelfDestruct chips, which are memstrips to you.

Mushin is only truly threatening with Ronin, and without it, its just not very good with this purely rushy ice.

1 Like
36

You run on a mushin card because of Mandatory Upgrades. If the corp scores one you lose. I’ve never lost nor seen a Corp lose after a scored MU.

37

Funny, I’ve both lost after scoring an MU and beaten plenty opponents who scored one. Now that Clot turns off the best feature of MU (namely 2-point turns without extra cards and costs), I’d even argue having one scored is somewhat less relevant.

3 Likes
38

I would only even consider it in conjunction with Corporate Troubleshooter to make it stick. If people are going to fall back to Yog and use Net Ready Eyes then you only need the Labyrinth at Str 5, which is a total cost of $5

39

Agreed. The extra input required to score a 6/2 over a 4/2 (the only realistic alternative) is $2 and 2 clicks, which probably has a value of around 3 clicks, with the added risk of having the agenda sat in the server for an extra turn. I’m not convinced that Man Up adds that much value any more if you can’t FA a 3/2 (or 4/2 with Biotic) in.a naked server. I’d rather just play a utility 4/2.

2 Likes
40

Never advance + edge of world with neurals for the kill. Beta tests resing next ice is enough reason to run remotes and you only need to land 2 brains to set up a potential kill.