My buddy and I have been extensively testing PPVP CT (quite a different list from Nord’s but with the same underlying principle of an entirely event-based economy; my amigo’s has much more draw, which i think makes it even stronger) this week and it is a beast. Lately, he has been piloting the deck and I have been doing my darnedest to find any kind of vulnerabilities. There aren’t many. It stays rich almost all the time. It is very difficult to find a scoring window as the Corp. I have had a little bit of success against it with my BABW dedicated kill deck, but honestly that deck has been doing very well against everything, and CTPPVP has done better against it than anything else has. CI combo could be a tough matchup, we haven’t tried that yet, but with aggressive early play I suspect it would be possible to keep CI on the back foot. If you anticipate heavy CI at your tourney, HQ multi-access is a must. Of course, it is quasi-suicidal against Jinteki, so your Nerve Agent/Legwork could be dead cards, especially now. On the other hand, this deck is plenty rich enough to run Feedback Filter, plus the draw/recursion is an innate defense against the zappers. I would feel perfectly comfortable taking CTPPVP to a tourney. It’s a top tier deck for sure, comparable to Katman and Andi Sucks. We keep meaning to try a Kate version of PPVP deck but the CT is just so fast and mean, it’s hard to put down.
I think H&P brought a lot more to the corp side of things, and this is where it gets tricky. Do you try to out-meta the meta and play an archetype that makes your opponents’ protection dead cards, or do you just hop on the Teki train. It’s a matter of personal preference and how much time you have to test. I have no doubt Tier 1 Teki deck(s) will emerge, but it’s early times yet. You can’t go wrong with NBNFA, and it gains value in elimination rounds if you are skilled and lucky enough to get that far.
@Lysander: For that NBN deck, what would be your reaction to swapping one of the Caduceuses for a Guard, in order to free up influence for Ash (in place of one of the Bernice Mais)?
I just feel like criminal bypass will be prevalent, and I like the fact that Ash can protect SanSan or a central under different circumstances.
Is Psychic field intended to be protection for SanSan (or Jackson) while you wait for the next agenda to show up? I can see how it works if the Psychic Field goes in first (or as a bluff), but once the SanSan is live, how often is the runner going to run into it do you think?
@TandooriChicken, do you have a list of your buddy’s deck? I’m looking at Nord’s at the moment. I was playing a Siphon version with loads of draw pre-Double Time.
Resource (23)
2x Crash Space (Core Set)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Data Dealer (Core Set)
3x Data Leak Reversal (Future Proof) •••
1x Donut Taganes (Honor and Profit) ••
3x Fall Guy (Double Time)
2x John Masanori (Opening Moves)
1x Joshua B. (Cyber Exodus) •••
3x Mr. Li (Future Proof)
3x New Angeles City Hall (Future Proof)
1x The Source (Creation and Control) ••
It’s not the most interesting deck to play against but it got his share of results against a lot of strong archetypes. The one I really don’t want to play against is the RP deck with Caprice since I can’t snipe a remote without crashing myself on a central. Except that, i’ve got pretty good results against a lot of strong archetype. The lock is usually put on the board around turn 5-6 and after that, i’m just gonna mill the shit out of the corp.
On another note, it’s also probably the best kind of deck to beat CI =). You really don’t want to play against that if you’re playing Cerebral Imaging.
I passed on the request, I can’t really share his list for him (or won’t, anyway). Truth be told, if you start with the idea of PPVP + draw + events + Siphon it falls together in a pretty straightforward way.
The thing is, if you spend all your influence on Siphons then there’s not much left for the other cool criminal events, which makes playing PPVP questionable. You’d also have a pretty below-par breaker suite if you’re not stepping out of faction.
I played Siphon CT at Store Champs with reasonable success, but it bombed for Chronos.
I suspect there are different ways to approach the archetype, and even the individual sub-archetypes. PPVP I think may be at it’s best by negating or at least ameliorating the econ hit of power draw. (Obviously, discounted Gambles/Laundries/Finds are huge too, but that’s the “smack me in the face obvious” interaction.) Lawyer Up, Quality Time, and LARLA ordinarily cost credits… not with PPVP’s out. Thus, there is no choice between finding your stuff and playing your stuff, as there would be without PPVP. Admittedly, we are hardly done testing, but I feel like it’s a moral victory for the Corp if I can drag the game out long enough to make him use his second LARLA…
@Arkhon: when it bombed, what killed it? (I really want to beat this deck)
EDIT: Maybe we should move this to the other thread discussing PPVP Millionaire… And just link it back to this one by saying that PPVP is a contender…
Siphon CT usually has trouble with HB Glacier builds, as well as more defensively-minded NBN variants. HB because you can’t really keep their econ down (and all the ICE has many subs, so getting through will always be sorta expensive), NBN because they can make you hate life for floating tags, and also have decent econ (and can FA like nobody’s business).
In both my store champ semi-finals my CT lost to really fast NBN decks.
In Chronos I didn’t win a single game as runner - losing to a couple of Super Modernism (Weyland) and three various flavours of HB. This wasn’t PPVP though, it was 2x Siphon with a fairly toolboxy programme loadout. Not as quick as the builds we’re discussing in the other thread.