Face-Up Cards Only: The Mumbad Const. Co. Story

New Cards and Spoilers
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Since the Mumbad Cycle thread is frankly gigantic and overwhelming, and I think this card has some potential and is worthy of further examination, I wanted to break this out into its own thread.

The potential of Mumbad Construction Corp. is readily apparent, even when you set aside pie-in-the-sky Casting Call-Government Takeover schemes. Finally, Weyland has a fast-advance tool all its own, and one limited only by how long your opponent is willing to let you build up advantage. Coupled with Dedication Ceremony, a well-equipped Weyland deck could theoretically pump out agendas as quickly as it can play them.

Advantages of MCC

  1. If you consider 2 credits to be close to the equivalent of a credit plus a click for advancing, using MCC itself is essentially free. The only real costs you face (besides the ones listed below) lie in the rez cost and the cost in time spent accruing advancement counters.

  2. Weyland is already well-equipped with incredibly punishing ice, and as Public Support in Bootcamp Glacier has demonstrated, running through all its ice just to trash an asset just so that asset doesn’t cost you the game can be incredibly demoralizing for the runner. And unlike Ash, you don’t even have to put your agendas on the board for them to pose a thread with MCC.

  3. Being able to theoretically win out of nowhere aids with some of Weyland (especially Bootcamp Glacier)'s historic weaknesses, in that it lacks cards like Nisei Mk II and Caprice Nisei to grant it some late-game staying power. And winning out of nowhere makes Hive, already one of the better anti-Faust ice in the game, even more potent.

Disadvantages of MCC

  1. The big one: it’s not SanSan City Grid, and Weyland doesn’t have AstroScript Pilot Program. This probably will not be as good as NEH FA. But that’s what we’re here to figure out. Still with me? Good.

  2. Public agendas only (if we exclude the aforementioned pie-in-the-sky) means we have to accept the added cost of most of our fast-advanceable agendas being 4/2s. And while when you’re fast advancing, it’s not like you necessarily also need to get the payoff from an Oaktown or Hollywood Renovation, losing that payoff is a drag. On top of that, while the upside of Hollywood Renovation (one more advancement counter for one more point, vs. an Oaktown/New Construction) is great, it also means we can’t as easily avail ourselves of the joy of Global Food Initiative.

  3. The sheer cost of the combo (Install Advance Advance score out an Oaktown is fairly cheap, at a net of 2 credits and 2 MCC counters, but New Construction is 6 and Hollywood is 8, and that’s not counting the cost of the MCC itself) over the long haul, and the added burden to protect the MCC, means it may be too impractical to just throw some MCCs into Gagarin Deep Space and call it a day. Not to mention

  4. Unless you have Dedication Ceremony, comboing off requires telegraphing you have MCC and protecting it for at least one turn face-up. Which, again, your opponent may be leery of spending a substantial amount of time and money just to trash it, but you can’t rely on your opponents being coy. In my mind, this is another point against Gagarin.

  5. Splash damage from fast advance hate. It is a bit easier to play around Clot, if you can get enough advancement counters on the MCC to foreclose any Clotting window. But that puts your MCC in even greater danger. So the deck will need at least one Cyberdex and likely more just to cope with Clot on top of the typical Noise problem.

Here’s my current working list.

Public Enemies (Blue Sun)

Blue Sun: Powering the Future

Agenda (10)
2x Hollywood Renovation
2x Hostile Takeover
1x New Construction
3x Oaktown Renovation
2x Project Atlas

Asset (7)
1x Adonis Campaign ••
1x Executive Boot Camp
3x Jackson Howard •••
2x Mumbad Construction Co.

Upgrade (3)
2x Crisium Grid
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite

Operation (13)
3x Dedication Ceremony
3x Hedge Fund
1x Interns
3x Oversight AI
3x Restructure

Barrier (5)
1x Curtain Wall
2x Hive
2x Ice Wall

Code Gate (4)
2x Enigma
2x Turing ••••• •

Sentry (5)
1x Archer
2x Caduceus
2x Ichi 1.0 ••••

Multi (2)
2x Orion

15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Business First

I like that the deck can play at several different speeds - rushing out an agenda turn 1, playing Blue Sun ice shell games with the advantage of your extra free influence, sitting back on MCC, or pushing for a Hollywood - Dedication Ceremony 5-point burst if your opponent lets their guard down for a moment to rebuild.

I’m not entirely happy with Hostile Takeover, but the cash infusion plus the ability to play Archer (even if only as an additional OAI target) is probably worth it even if the point usually doesn’t matter. It’d be nice to fit in a second Cyberdex, and maybe 3 Restructures are too many.

Anyone tried out MCC yet? Any thoughts on what it could do?

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My immediate thought on it was to stuff it into Gagarin behind a scoring server and tax the runner as hard as possible between that, Public Support, and other must trash assets. If they go broke you put the agenda in the server and score it the normal way. Once it gets even one counter on it you can score Atlas from hand, albeit at the same cost of a Sansan score and without a token. A Titan deck may do it better.

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Remember - MCC only works on Face up cards.

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Yeah, as first I felt this was a pretty underwhelming card, but I think even a simple one-of in bootcamp glacier might be pretty strong. having a way to either a) force extra runs through your scoring server from runners who are content to just “camp” and wait for agendas, or b) if they refuse to or can’t run it, you get a great closeout tool (especially useful in those games when you get to 5 but all the atlases are gone and scoring an oaktown the hard way is out of the question).

Also, ofc, gonna be trying this in titan, though the necessity of casting call there makes me extremely dubious…

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Better put that in the topic, will save lots of time. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Forgot to mention Casting Call, but that’s almost a given at this point. My mistake.

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Shipment from Mirrormorph is probably too janky for this deck, but would allow you to score a 4/2 with nothing on the table

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I’m going full jank.

IT Department, Mumbad Construction Corp, and miscellaneous 3rd asset on Worlds Plaza.

It’s like the IT Department decks of yore, but you only need one remote for scoring, econ, and ITD.

We’re_All_In,_Peeps.dec

Barely workable for 1 month(-ish) before Political Operative gets printed!

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Maybe THIS card is the reason why World’s Plaza was printed? It is sure as hell easier to defend one server foodcoats style than it is to defend open assets.

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i see this argument brought up a lot, but if i’ve learned anything in netrunner, it’s that you can never rely on keeping the runner out forever

also, Worlds Plaza makes killing itself and all hosted assets a lot easier in that the runner just needs to run one server and pay to kill Worlds Plaza

i think it works for things like Capital Investors, Melange Mining Corp, etc. along with a Snare!, Junebug, or Edge of World or something, forcing the runner to pay to kill Worlds Plaza just to take out your low-trash econ assets or face the traps if they don’t want to pay that much. it’s still probably not the best idea, but so far, it’s the best use of Worlds imo

but that’s probably detracting from the thread.

back to Mumbad Construction Co., i like this card a lot.
i like the play of install, advance, advance Oaktown Renovation and using the 2 credits you gained (and another 2c) to finish scoring it. that’s 5c and 4 influence cheaper than Biotic Labor, 1c cheaper if you count the rez cost of MCC (granted, requires at least 2 advancements on MCC)

i also like the install Hollywood Renovation, advance, Dedication Ceremony on Mumbad Construction Co. for a total of 4 advancements (plus the one it got at the beginning of the turn)

it’s a little combo-y and requires a lot of credits, but that’s 3 points FA out of hand, (plus another advancement on your Ice Wall). i like @voltorocks’ use of it as a way to close out the game. once you’ve scored 4 points, which you can just rush out as normal for Weyland, and then all you need is a Hollywood Renovation and Dedication Ceremony in hand and a Mumbad Construction Co. on the board (and Cyberdex if Clot), and you can close it out. tokens on Atlas can help you find the pieces, and Weyland has never had a problem scoring the first 4-5 points. it’s always those last two, so i don’t see that MCC needs to be your ultimate win condition for scoring agendas, just your way of closing out the game

i’m liking that Trick of Light would only really save you 3c, so it’s essentially the economy of a Beanstalk Royalties, so MCC practically pulls double-duty and removs any inkling of considering ToL (even though, yes you can move from your Ice Walls and whatever; it’s a lot of influence)

also, i’m really not liking Casting Call for this. it costs influence, makes scoring even more combo-y, and literally does nothing but allow MCC to work for your installed agenda, and its primary use of protecting your agenda but forcing tags is completely wasted. and if trying to score out an Atlas, you’d probably want the extra advancement for the agenda token anyway, so it’s not like it will save you on money or require less advancements (unless with Titan, of course)

anyway, just go with Public agendas imo and again save on influence and have a more reliable chance to score. sure, you also lose out on some of the public agenda abilities as well by moving advancement tokens onto them, but i think you’re still advancing them at least once normally when you FA them out, so you still get some benefit.

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I agree that Casting Call is too combo-y. The public agendas are good as they are, aside from the obvious being face-up. Save the influence for something like Ash in the server?

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I think a big advantage of this card that people are missing is that you can now play traps NA style, and shift counters to them before the runner accesses.

Most people see an unadvanced card, and think “the worse this could be is a snare, or a psychic field”. So they’ll run it with a few clicks left or whatnot. But now with a charged MCC, it could be a junebug that you pump to the required amount to get a kill, a ghost branch that tags a ton, etc. You just rez and transfer the counters at 4.3.

I think this has could have some potential in IG. The ID “protects” the MCC, and the MCC reduces your dependency on Mushin. Any NA’d card could be an overwriter, so that’s awkward. But what’s more awkward is any card could also be a Ronin that can be pumped to 4 at paid speed. In fact, you could probably do some weird stuff if you had a ton of counters, such as:

  • Have single ronin and single allele installed.
  • Click 1, Rez Ronin, Transfer counters, Fire (4 counters total)
  • Paid ability window, Rez allele, transfer counter, put the ronin back into hand. (5 counters total)
  • Click 2, Install Ronin,
  • Click 3, Rez Ronin, Transfer counters, Fire (9 counters total)

I’m not saying it’s good / great, I’m saying it’s probably cheeky enough to look into. The counter is clearly to just run the MCC and trash it, but I think IG could make that enough of a struggle to pull out a win here and there.

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yeah, Ash could be a good one to help protect it, but i think you only need it to last one turn. i would also hope that my scoring remote is taxing enough that, even if the runner runs in and nabs the MCC from under you, it’ll give you a chance to score Hollywood Reno (or whatever) normally

also on the topic of Worlds Plaza and spending influence on yellow cards, i might be tempted to spring for Full Immersion RecStudio to put them all into the same scoring remote and keep my agendas safe if the runner brings out something that sabotages my FA plans (but it is a lot of influence)

overall, again i have to stress that i think MCC is merely a safety net for helping Weyland get to 7 points but isn’t (and probably shouldn’t) be the only method of getting there. it’s really expensive, bypasses some of the bonuses of advancing public agendas, and can never really be guaranteed to stay on the board for very long given its 3 trash cost and need to be rezzed to build counters, telegraphing its location to the runner

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Is anyone considering using this to advance ICE or is that just a total write off? Really all it achieves is trading 1 credit for 1 click per turn, but then isn’t trading 1 click for 1 credit not that bad actually? I suppose it’s only good if you’ve something important to do with that click, which generally advancing ICE is not. :frowning:

More interesting though is that this a paid ability, which means you can screw with your ICE mid-run, reducing the rez cost (space ICE), buffing up the strength (Ice/Fire Wall), changing the type (Morph ICE) or … ADDING SUBROUTINES WHEN FIRST REZZED!!! …is any of that worthwhile? I have no idea myself.

(Obviously this card will not make advanceable ICE legit on its own, but one day…one day… :smile: )

This makes me think about the initial comments in the OP on the cost of advancing, say, Hollywood at 8 credits. I think it’s important to note that it costs you 5 credits and 6 clicks (including install) in the first place. Comparing that to 8 credits and 3 clicks makes the cost proposition seem more favourable: 3 clicks or 3 credits basically (however the rez cost is not insignificant at 4), and clicks are way harder to come by (then again, so are safe servers).

Bonus:

You can move advancement tokens onto a spent Haas arcology for extra clicks and achieve…basically nothing!! (Is there some edge case where you’d want an extra click for something other than money or advancing?)

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just theorycrafting, but while i think it’s a cool idea for advanceable ICE, i think PAD Factory is probably better overall, even if using it telegraphs that it’s probably advanceable

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Probably the best way to think of MCC is as an Advancement counter breeding ground whilst DC becomes the corp equivalent of Surge.

As for the space ice - MCC needs to be used on faceup cards so you cannot reduce their rez cost (also at 2 credits per advancement you wouldn’t exactly be saving much!); whilst PAD factory doesn’t solve the tempo problem that BWBI/space ice has in that you still need to invest an entire turn into it and it can easily be parasited/d4vided etc.

I like the idea with traps and agree its biggest downsides (rez+trash costs) would be most easily mitigated in a horizontal IG build with mumba temples.

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So does MCC (such a flavourless name) alleviate the risk in Mushin plays out of Weyland?

Now if they run the Mushin’d card and it’s not a trap you’re only out an asset rather than an agenda, and you’re ready to FA that Hollywood Renovation out on your next turn if they don’t run (can even fast track it out of your deck).

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For the influence saved using dedication ceremony seems good enough, and you don’t invest the operation until it’s actually paying off, and you get to keep it more subtle never advance style.

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MCC Flavorless?

How about Mumbstruction? Mumcon? Mumcor?

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Mumshop.

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