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Fifty-four?

#1

Is it time for the fifty-four card corp deck?

With Noise on a serious tear threatening many games to mill out the corp (and also minor threat from DLR mill decks) does it make sense to be thinking of bumping up the deck size a little?

I guess the question is have we hit a point where there are enough good cards (within faction/neutral) to fill those slots and be something more than hitpoints?

Are there two points of good agenda that are currently not played within each faction?

Seems like the rush decks are fine where they are, but this could be a consideration for the grinder Glacier decks.

Thoughts?

#2

If you play 1 or 2 copies of interns or archived memories, so you can make sure you get all 3 jackson activations, I don’t think mill is a serious concern. I’ve definitely had games as glacier end with 0-10 cards left but I would rather rely on tight play (this includes knowing not to draw too much early game!) than metagame against noise with 54.

That said… in ETF and RP glacier, there are enough good cards that you can definitely add 5 more, and only hurt the deck by introducing higher draw variance, rather than by adding bad cards. HB can play an extra project V or ABT, and jinteki can play an extra Fetal or the 3rd NAPD (my preferred build is 3 TFP, 3 nisei, 2 NAPD, 1 gila). Then 2 more ice, 1 restructure or PAD, and an interns or archived mem.

I definitely think archived mem is underplayed right now. I always find room for 1 in my HB decks.

#3

I’m seriously thinking 54 in RP.

#4

I haven’t tested Inject Noise against RP yet. But if it becomes necessary, there are definitely some goodies I’d love to add to my current RP list.

#5

I’ll be honest and say I was thinking of a 59 card HB deck with 8 3-pointers and some Sleeper action. Sounds like a total bitch to play against, but that’s just in my head (where lots of scary things go on!).

Not too sure how consistent it would be, either. But it’s the easiest way to play only 3 pointers and not go over the absolute minimum agenda count.

#6

I think if noise mill becomes more of a thing then slower Corp decks might want to look at going over 49, but that’s more a hypothetical than anything else right now.

#7

We can see Noise becoming more popular overall I guess, but he is just one of many Runners. Taking into account that he is a top tier Runner and that you may just see him in roughly 20-30% of the matches you play, I just added three Shock! into my RP Deck and that’s enough to help with this matchup so far. It’s not an actual Anti-Mill card, but I’m not willing to do more. And after all it’s not that bad versus all other factions as well. It helps with your Net Damage ICE and adds a surprising kill potential (also with the often being played Fetal AI). Oh and it’s quite taxing on top of R&D and HQ so it may stay in HQ a while helping out here if you prefer that.

#8

Out of 20-odd games I’ve played recently with Noise, I’ve won only 1 or 2 by decking. And that was because Corp was indecisive and was too afraid to score. In competitive games, decking is never happening.

#9

For what it’s worth a lot of really good french players are using 54 cards deck when they play HB glacier, usually with a 10 agendas structure (3 napd, 3 ab, 2 prioreq, 2 vitrivius) and it worked really well for them. I played myself against one of those during the elim-phase of the France national and it was a pain in the ass. Saw half of the deck through multiple indexing / good timed legwork and didn’t see a single agenda while the Corp played 6 power shutdown against me and destroying my rig. It wasn’t really fun :frowning:

#10

I thought about going up to 54 cards in RP, too. Adding some ICE and a 2nd Fast Track so I can fetch the Nisei MK2 when I have a scoring window.

#11

I say sure, it can make your agenda density marginally lower, but not really an amount you care about. If you’re not relying on combos as much as just drawing chunky ice and money ops and agendas in a timely manner, it makes almost no difference, just keep your ratios up. 54, 59, who cares?

#12

Well, my prof. deck runs 100 cards and he begs to differ

On-topic:
6 3 pointer in Medtech is the lowest density you can get, or is my math terribly off? 54 is ok, if you don’t count on drawing combo pieces and are really scared of noise. So it’s a decent choice for glacier HB/RP. However, imo you just have to score early vs noise and you are fine, it’s pretty easy creating scoring windows vs a mill-heavy deck

#13

It is :wink:.
8x3pt in 59 cards is 13.56%. 6x3pt in 44 cards is 13.64%.

#14

#15

The absolute lowest density you can get is by putting the largest even number of three-pointers in your deck. At the moment, that’s a Weyland deck with 12 three-pointers, with a total of 89 cards and an agenda density of 13.48%.

#16

Dam you all with your fancy calculators!

#17

Also, Foundry could easily go over 49 I think, as I’ve found you’re less likely to need to see any given card, and the ID will pull usually 5-10 ICE from RnD over the course of the game.

#18

I have been running a 54 strong stronger together deck, which has worked pretty well recently. It is only 54 to pull the econ up to strength as it is a horribly expensive deck to run. Sometimes feels a bit stretched out and like it isnt drawing well, especially compared to my etf deck, but it is a pretty slow deck so feels alright in the end.

#19

(hope you guys don’t mind I ask a newbie question)

The main argument against higher number of card decks is that they lose predictability, right? If so, does that argument lose power when the game starts to have a really good amount of good cards that fit the strategy of the archtype? Or is it always better to keep the decks lean and as predictable as possible?

#20

I think that’s exactly the issue this thread is debating :smile:.

Personally I think that since influence limits, it will almost always be better to run 49 cards and (in some cases) even 45 cards to maximise the chances of seeting the out-of-faction cards that you presumably included because they were better than the in-faction alternatives.