I read that Dumblefork is this super strong deck, and I believe it. I am just living proof that a weak pilot undermines a strong deck.
When I play the deck, I often lose. Faust is strong but tricky vs multi-sub ice. It can be tough to get into servers when it costs 4-6 cards to do so.
What are the tricks of the trade for running this deck, especially for newer players.
Itās been a while since I dumbled, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt. But my hunch is that you are playing too aggro. Faust threatens the remote early to prevent a rush, but the deck actually prefers to durdle a bit too setup an explosive midgame with deep medium runs. Thatās why the early versions were comfortable running liberated - theyād big up a big stack of credits and get the pancakes running before they whipped into an ice melting frenzy.
If youāre paying 4-6 cards to get into the same server more than once, you might try slowing down a bit, building your board state, and letting a few things go through the remote. Remember, you donāt have to stop the corp from scoring; you just have to stop them from scoring 7. Itās not worth breaking your back to stop them from scoring a 3/2 or an Adonis from ticking down.
Thatās without actually watching you play, of course - just a general sense of common misplays with dumble. The alternative explanations might be that the deck is about a year old now - during that time it has been partially neutered with MWL changes, and the player base has learned to play better against it.
The important thing to realise is that you shouldnāt be paying 4-6 cards. The ice should be dead. Itās an ice destruction deck facilitated by Faust.
Iām also a terrible Dumbles player, but THIS ONE SIMPLE TRICK got me on the road to improving:
Donāt break ice to get accesses. Break it if you have to when itās first rezzed, but otherwise only use Faust to trash ice with cutlery events, and have Parasite do the rest.
There will be exceptions, but thatās a principle to always keep in mind.
That matches my experience. Spending more than 2 cards on a run feels horrible. Almost every time I discard cutlery or Parasites, I end up regretting it.
The best strategy Iāve heard for the deck is that the first priority is destroying the remote. If they donāt have a place to put agendas then they pile up in hq. Destroy it even if itās empty so that they have to build a new one everytime they want to score. The next priority is destroying ice on hq. Single accesses are fine when they get flooded. The last option is r&d with medium. You donāt want to switch to this strategy too early. If you leave them a remote and a secure hq then they might have enough points to score out before you dig deep enough. I recently got second at a sc with dumble and I only installed medium in one game. Above all else, if you are breaking a piece of ice more than once then youāre losing.
Donāt break for access. Just put everything in the trash.
Agree with Forsythe, medium is there to close out, often not needed if you keep killing the remote ice
This. Kill the ICE.
So when piloted wrong, the deck becomesā¦ Fumbledork?
ā¦ sorry. itās Sunday and Iām tired.
Thereās good reason Corp players want to be able to prevent ice trashes
Echoing what many have said: Trash the ICE, donāt break it. Generally you should break ICE two times at most: Once when first encountering, and then again to Cutlery it. The pre-Faust version of the deck ran Eater, so if you pretend Faust has Eaterās drawback, youāre halfway to playing the deck.
Way back when, I used the same strategy with Kit+Parasite+Clone Chip+Wyrm. If I ever actually used the ābreakā ability on Wyrm, Iāve lost the game. (This was before MWL. Iād played the deck out of Kate and it was wonderful but Corps wouldnāt rez ICE unless they knew it would keep me outā¦ So I played Kit instead, so that theyād have to Double-ICE to keep me out, and I could still kill one of them and keep going. It was very fun, and completely wrecked by MWL.)
There is lots of good advice here, especially @TheBigBoyās laconic input. So you want all of the ICE and assets in the trash.
In general, when you play any ID that gives credits per turn, you should use those credits every turn, so trash any unguarded assets.
As everyone here has said, you want to trash all of the corpās ICE, paying as few times as possible to do so. The first step to this is getting all of that ICE face-up. This is a hugely important skill as credits the corp spends rezzing ICE cannot be spent on advancing their game (with the narrow exception of Blue Sun). You want to run a lot early to force ICE rezzes, probably before you find/install Faust.
These early runs may net an agenda, but what is more important is learning what ICE the corp is playing to evaluate how dangerous face-checks may be, how important credit levels are, and how the corp may be trying to win (e.g. Biotic to close the game on a Fast Advance play). You need this information to guide the rest of your game. Gathering and using this information is the biggest difference I see between intermediate level players and elite players.
I can repeat to you what a really good player in our meta told me regarding the Two-Armed Ice Feast ā the creator of the deck told me once that he hates the name āDumbleforkā. This player told me that he does the same thing in almost every matchup: locks down the remote so they canāt score, after that hammer HQ, and after that pound R&D.
I got confused when he mentioned HQ and he said that if they canāt score then agendas will usually pile up in HQ. That made a lot of sense to me.
In older version of the deck there were at least 2 copies of Knifed and spooned and 1x forked, while newer versions are running just 1x knifed & spooned and maybe a forked. With decks migrating away from datasucker to Sifr a lot of the early game tempo gets hammered when you switch to parasite destruction. How do you effectively transition into that stage especially against decks like EtF or Palana where theyāre geared to a more rush, multiple ice build and you can only kill 1 ice per turn reliably?
Took SifrFork to local game night. I tried to focus on advice here. I worked to money up then focus on destroying ice on remotes before turning to central servers. It was pretty effective. ParaSifr is ridiculous.