Just go all in with ddos and inside job and lose the matches that can deal with that.
Disregard that, stupid idea, too much inf
I’m not sure I understand your thinking.
Caring about tags isn’t any help, caring about being tagged will (since the Runner is tagged but has no tags with Paparazzi). Closed Accounts and Bad Times they won’t care about if they’re bleeding you out. Meat damage can’t happen.
So “caring about tagging” is reduced to “include Freelancer to save a click and some credits”. Of course there is proactive tagging in the form of SEA Source and Cerebral Cast, but they require runs. So you only have the option, really, to punish the Runner for not running. Which means scoring agendas. If you brazenly install agendas, daring them to run and face all that proactive tagging you’ve put in your deck, what do they lose? Two Fall Guys, which you have to pay shed loads to trash due to the increased resource trash cost? Then they clear the tag and have an agenda.
You need a nuclear option really for it to be worth giving up agendas, which really only means the Wayland meat death decks. Which they have the perfect foil to in Paparazzi! Alright it means they play it earlier than they’d like, but it’s hard to see it as an outright strategic win if you’re leaking agendas to do that.
It seems to me it would decrease Corp diversity: you must be able to consistently win in ten turns or probably lose to this deck.
Nbn decks should play all seeing I if they worry about resources at all, it’s great with breaking news.
Other decks can just figure out how to score quickly, stop the dlr, and defend all the centrals. I haven’t won with this dlr deck, but it’s always been close, and I play it as a sadistic challenge to the Corp. These decks suck, but no more than other denial in my opinion. The decks most all in on the dlr route have shitty breakers, and the ones that aren’t a focused, aren’t as destructive. Maybe it’s just me, but these decks are still filthy. But there’s more ways to challenge it. I’ve always been a fan of project ares
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Mulligan for agendas and rush? Already works vs most Kate / Anarch decks.
Interesting, I feel that rushing agendas is a losing proposition in the current metagame. Kate has SMC, Noise has Faust, and both can lock down your R&D after you score 4-5 points. I’m wondering why we ended up with different views on the state of the game. Anyhow, that’s off-topic.
4 Likes
I’ve been using a version of this with Noise, Faust as my breaker and a few virus w/ asops for money, and hades shard, good times. Beach party pancakes fuled by inject gets Faust up and running quick
Honestly I think the most recent version in Val posted here is the best build for this deck. She dodges All Seeing I and the Blackmail + Faust threat is just insane when you are drawing 2-3 cards per turn with Drug Dealer. Also, even if they get through your Paparazzi, it’s not uncommon for me to sit on 8 cards during the Corp’s turn.
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i’ve tried a no-siphon/vamp list and an appartment / drug dealer / siphgon list and I think a clever FA player would be able to easily beat you just by being faster than your setup.
fixed for accuracy
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yeah, I think this is where it’s at. HB and NEH are such terrible matchups for this deck that the rest of us should be able to get by on “herd immunity.” That said, the real trick to beating this deck is to know that it’s coming. If you’re familiar even passingly with the archetype, there will be a ton of giveaways that it’s “one of those” decks - time to start scoring shit.
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I blatantly forget what threads are about all the time.
I will readily admit that Bristol has a slightly unique meta. With Kate I still contend it’s a good idea, but it does depend on her draw quite a lot. The reason I’m asking is because I haven’t played against faust noise yet and am wondering whether it’s still a viable approach. (Also I play a lot of Weyland and Atlas cares little for late game RnD lock)
Slightly off topic, but why not 2x GFI 1x NAPD? Seems like you could find use for the spare influence pip.
Was the Val DLR that won SMC posted anywhere?
I think it won MAC, SMC was won by PPVP Kate
Not yet, may do a write-up on it in a day or two when I’m not working / completely exhausted.
Also, I have you to thank personally for the turntable include. You kicking my butt with it in Philly led me to include it, and it was amazing all day. It sniped an astro token, an atlas token, and an efficiency committee even!
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I’m 100% convinced Turntable sealed the deal in our game. Without it, I probably would’ve won within 2 turns (unless you sniped the Astro/BN from hand or milled 5 more points), but had zero outs once I lost the token.
Here’s the decklist, with a bit of inspiration:
MegaMaid Val (50 cards)
Valencia Estevez: The Angel of Cayambe
Event (10)
2 Account Siphon ••••• •••
3 Blackmail
3 Inject
2 Queen’s Gambit
Hardware (1)
1 Turntable
Resource (35)
3 Daily Casts
3 Data Leak Reversal
3 Drug Dealer •••
3 Fall Guy •••
1 Hades Shard •
1 Human First
1 John Masanori
3 Joshua B.
3 Off-Campus Apartment
2 Paparazzi
3 Same Old Thing
3 Scrubber
3 Street Peddler
3 Wireless Net Pavilion
Icebreaker (3)
3 Faust
Program (1)
1 Medium
The deck performed admirably well, going 5-0 in Swiss and 2-0 in elims. Edit: It was only 1-0 in elims, I played NEH twice and this once. The matchups are a complete blur to me now, but I believe they were against 3 NEH, 2 HBFA, a very tricky Titan, and CI Scorch. Apologies for not giving shoutouts / forgetting most matches, as I was running on coffee fumes most of the day.
The Very Basics
Start by dropping down a combination of Wireless Net Pavilions and Fall Guys to protect your house of cards. Lay down a Data Leak Reversal, get tagged, and start going to town.
The Draw Engine
Inject is ridiculously powerful in this deck, almost always drawing 4 cards for a credit. Off-Campus Apartment is also amazing, especially if you can get it early, drawing 5 to 10 cards over the course of the game. Drug Dealer is great, although not as amazing as the other two. The drawback isn’t very significant – the deck is either swimming in money, or flat broke (not as bad as it sounds). Other draw options cost too much influence (I still want to make Fisk Seminar work) or don’t do as much (IHW sees one card less, and Paparazzi/Drug Dealer is all the damage prevention you need.)
The Economy
Daily Casts needs little explanation, it’s a solid economy piece – just remember to pretend you’re broke to your dealer before you collect. Queens Gambit has been very strong, and I’d recommend everyone try to shove at least one into Anarch decks, if only to practice reading your opponent. Account Siphon is economy and denial rolled up into one very influential package. Sure Gamble is too expensive, Dirty Laundry doesn’t do a whole lot and sometimes lacks uniced remotes, Kati is too click intensive and better when you want lots of money later.
The Denial
Account Siphon was great all day. It was unexpected so it often hit like a ton of bricks, and the meta around here doesn’t have many blue runners, so there weren’t too many Siphon-stopping upgrades around. Also incredibly helpful was 3x Scrubber. I would recommend at least 2 in every deck, and 3 if you’re facing lots of NEH / HB. Turning into Whizzard in matchups where you want that for only 2 credits (and often getting the card back) is ridiculous. These two also synergize well with each other, as you can trash remotes to prevent them from denying you siphon credits. Crescentus might be worth a try, perhaps?
Getting In
You’ve got two and a half ways to break into servers. Faust, Blackmail, and making the corp too poor to risk rezzing ICE. You can’t use Faust too much, and generally want to load up with Inject before running. You also want to save most Faust runs for HQ so that you can land a Siphon, make the corp poor, and then run elsewhere. Blackmail is for remotes and Archives. Generally the threat of Blackmail is enough to keep a corp from scoring without an upgrade. Knight and David might be decent includes for secondary icebreakers if you’re into that – both deal with Wraparound a bit better.
The Glue
Some of the cards just make the deck run much smoother. Joshua B is great late-game power, allowing you to use Same Old Thing events, check remotes, and just mill more cards in a single turn. Just make sure that when you turn him on, he’s on for good. Turntable is the sleeper of the deck, and I might go up to two copies. Denying an Astro token is one of the most powerful things you can do versus NEH FA. Especially now that NEH FA often runs 3 Breaking News, it can also deny the corp a point, which furthers your late-game inevitability. Hades Shard encourages people to use Jackson before they’re comfortable, and can create some insane combos when you’re able to Turntable at instant speed. Street Peddler is also amazing, as it fits into pretty much every category above. It’ll draw you one or two cards on the apartment, it’ll discount an extra buck occasionally when you’re running, it’ll hide your secret tech (and instill The Fear into your opponents). Paparazzi is way better than Plascrete, because it requires the corp to pay money, which they never want to do – they’d much rather burn a Scorched and hope to draw into more. Also, it’s frakking free, how great is that? John Masanori is a decent card-drawer that can feed Faust over time and dig you to your power cards. One card that might be helpful is DDoS – serving as both a pseudo-breaker to guarantee a siphon, and pseudo-blackmail. Also, Deja Vu is always a good card, but I felt like I didn’t need run event recursion 4-6. It is slightly weaker than SoT because it can’t be hit from Peddler and you can pay the extra click instead of the two credits easier.
The Rejects
Medium and Human First. At least you can discard them to Faust?
I Hate This Deck!
Fair enough. Slot lots of cards that will make it disappear. Freelancer is great for trashing a Fall Guy and their second best resource. Corporate Town is good because the trashing can’t be prevented, so the first rez can take out the huge apartment stack if the runner is unaware. (So when you’re playing against Weyland, be extra vigilant about checking for Corporate Towns, and don’t stack the apartment as high.) Crisium Grid / Caprice are great as always versus Siphon. It’s been said many times before, but The All-Seeing I doesn’t work against Val unless you can use it twice, which is unlikely. Blue Sun definitely does well against this deck, as it can easily out-money and defend against siphons. Wraparound is definitely annoying if you can’t find the slots for David. Psychographics seems like it would be good.
16 Likes
How heavy do you rely on Siphon? I thought BlueSun is too slow for this deck, and you have blackmail to punish early rush as well .
When I played a eater/faust vamp build, Blue Sun was clearly one of the easiest matchup I got. It surprise me a bit that it’s a hard one for you 