I’ve been playing this quite a bit since it was posted on the winning deck list page. My only switch was changing Lucky Find to Femme and Utopia Shard. I like 47 cards so I added another Datasucker and David. But yeah, I didn’t like Lucky Find.
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Inject’ll get you deja & same old too though, which is something I rely on in other builds where oracle may might through out hardware/resources. And if you pick up a deja, it may suck to retrieve a program with it, but it may be better than losing the chip if you really do care about that. (Or deja the chip?).
Worst case scenarios and all though.
I’ll come out and say this looks like a shaper/criminal player came over to anarch and didn’t quite get the scene. I don’t doubt that it works. I’m sure it does, but I don’t think its peak; and I don’t think you avoid eater just because someone might play crisium. I’ll tweak this a bit and throw up a list later that I think is better. I grant you spaces are tight, but I think 2x Kati is a place to start. I think once you have inject, the need for 3x is way lower than you’d think it’d be.
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There’s a reason why Shaper and Crim performed better than anarch for the last two years. People who keep trying to play with the “right anarch spirit” never goes really far when it comes to result, or at least rarely.
My 2 cents.
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Flipping over the table may not win, but it’s always in the anarch spirit.
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I actually started with 3 Inject and 2 Kati and moved to this because I was overtaxing my recursion. Sorry but not sorry about not “getting the scene”. I’ve played those decks, and they don’t hold water against the best players.
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Spitting in the Champ’s face is pretty MaxXimum Punk Rawk.
I would say that Dan has been hanging out in the scene a bit before O&C, though.
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Sweet!
But yeah. Building anarch decks, and suddenly realizing it’s even better when all those amazing 1 and 2 influence cards you were splashing are now free. Oh look, Medium, I’ll take 2 please! Goodbye RnD interface, maybe learn to dig deep enough to beat NEH next time we meet !
Awkward draw/economy package makes them feel clunky to play, but the sheer power of some of anarch cards might be worth it, and this deck makes a good case of showing it.
That’s kind of a fair analysis, since Dan is more familiar with winning, but this reg-ass build shouldn’t be surprising considering the author. If you think back to H&P when everyone was getting into the spirit with crazy Jinteki builds, Dan ignored the trend and posted a reg-ass RP build with Ash/Tollbooth/Eli that just focused on winning. It certainly evolved over time but it started from a comfortable place that had some proven strengths.
When you get a flood of new cards there’s always going to be questions on what works and what doesn’t and sometimes the obvious answer is a good place to start 
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What’s comfortable is going to work, and clearly it’s a good deck. I just don’t buy that it’s optimal or the only way worth playing anarch. All in siphon is clearly not the best idea either, but there’s enough material in red now that this doesn’t have to be the only build. Spags is right that there is more than one way to play max because she’s that powerful.
Not trying to shit on Dan here
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Having a lot of materials doesn’t means all of them are playable with every ID.
For instance, I really love Demolition Run or Morningstar but there’s not a lot of deck those cards are playable and more often than not, it just plainly worse than the other solution available for the same problems it seeks to solve (Imp and Corroder here).
Also, it’s not because the card exist that it should be played. Some cards are just plainly bad and fill a niche so small that it’s not worth consideration most of the time.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that you don’t play Eater just because someone might play Crisium Grid.
There are more reasons than just that.
Eater is “merely” an efficient breaker. It isn’t so efficient as to be mind blowing in the late game. Datasucker + “Standard” Rig + Parasite is much, much more efficient. Eater lets you apply combo pressure early but if you don’t hit your combo pieces you’re in real trouble in the late game.
When we look at games where MaxX/Eater misses with Siphon, it isn’t just about Crisium Grid or the Corp playing around your strategy. Sometimes the corp will stifle you but sometimes you simply won’t see your combo pieces early due to variance. Then what? At that point you’re entering the mid and late game with inferior efficiency and the inability to easily play for accesses.
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Competitive decks in games with RNG factor are all about consistency. I think that’s an accepted fact. The raw power of the Eater + Keyhole (or potential power if you will) route might be higher, but it’s more prone to variance, both on Runner and Corp side. for this reason, a build that simply plays good cards and sees more of them might have lower potential power, but is going to have a better baseline power. for competitive decks, you want this consistency. even the best players can’t do much RNG steps in and their deck feeds them garbage, which is why the most competitive decks in the long run will eschew the tricks and play strong utilitarian cards. Criminal is so strong because many of their good cards are also trick cards: Siphon, Inside Job, Shutdown, for example. Shaper does one trick and does it so well that it basically dictactes how the faction is played: tutoring. With MaxX, Anarch now has a way to play more of their good cards than ever before, and the faction has a fair number of good cards. That is why this MaxX build is more stable and likely ‘better’ given a large enough sample size, moving forward.
A copy of eater could easily mean no need for zu. Spooned for lotus instead. That could mean a second legwork or lucky find. In fact, clone chips and parasites for silverware are probably a viable option, which gets you another six influence. Internally, retrieval run could protect your rig. And rather than Kati, voice pad and day job could full the economy gap. All of these changes play into making inject stronger and make the mu less stressed. I’m a firm believer in testing so I’ll try and put numbers and a list up, but I’m not sold that parasite spam is the best way to play this deck.
Things I see as hard to overcome is that parasite-deja is very efficient, but I’d expect blue sun to be an easier match up when I don’t have to worry about maintaining data sucker tokens to execute a melt.
I’ll also have to watch econ. There’s something to be said for a single piece like kati that you can easily lean on, but she also weaker since snatch and grab and more of a liability for it. Retrieval run opus on the other hand seems like something worth checking out and would be far less vulnerable. Though memory in that case and competition with day job and voice pad imply it’s probably for a different deck, maybe something closer to what Dan took.
Then there are the shards which I think any deja vu deck wants. And also Escher, which I think plays well with silverware and the anarch suite in general.
Like I said I want to actually get some reps, but I think merely repeating what we’ve seen is the easy thing to do. This might be a starting point, but it shouldn’t be considered the final stop.
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As a man of letters, I do sort of agree that “Reg-Ass MaxX” is a little stilted and could be better. Can you sponsor a contest where we name the deck? Top prize is 36 hours of OCTGN coaching.
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My NRDB versions of these builds are called ‘Giving Zero Fucks’ and ‘Giving a Few Fucks’.
You can guess which is which.
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Ok, but then you’re pushed to play Knight and Femme as supports to get spot accesses … so …
In the article we’re looking at Reg-Ass actually spending fewer card slots [8 vs. 6] and less inf [2 vs. 1] on the breaker suite compared to Keyhole/Eater.
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Apologies, I see what you’re getting at now.
The corp can recur or replay ice better than the runner can recur Spooneds. You can play Zu against Lotus which will handle all subsequent Lotuses or Spooned, which is one shot and requires being drawn or recurred in combination with Eater.
This is even more so throwing yourself to the fates of variance. You need to hit Lotus+Spooned instead of just Zu, use extra clicks to force the rez, and you’d better hope that on top of that the corp doesn’t have/find their second Lotus and play it or use something like interns to recur it.
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I agree re: Eater. The two-card combo just isn’t reliable. The best option might actually prove to be Zu + Spooned, because Lotus can suck to break for 4 repeatedly. Works on Tollbooth too. Deckslots are the eternal problem.
As far as names go, I’ve been using “Same Old MaxX.”
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Plus you could actually access stuff on the turn you do it.
A contributing factor to my theory behind competitive Running is that most of the good Corp cards are good in-and-of themselves. (Most) Corps cannot spare the time trying to assemble multiple cards**; they need to defend their servers and then they need to score their agendas before the Runner has all the answers. This leads to nearly every Corp deck being a “Junk” deck, the variety lying in IDs and their faction’s card pool. Running with cards that aren’t independently strong is risky; you may not be able to match the Corp’s power fast enough, whether that be economically or ICE vs. breakers/tricks. It is an unfortunate symptom of the game, and competitive ANR will always be a field of Junk versus Junk when it boils down to it. You have your outliers like CI and PE, but I would argue that Runners will never have comparable outliers that can reliably perform. Maybe I’m wrong and this MaxX Keyhole is one. This outlook may seem reductive (RP is nothing like BS Glacier!), but there are already a large number of cards that Runners can’t really afford not to play. Anarchs, Criminals, and Shapers are all splashing for Lucky Find right now, just to be able to compete with Corp economy. Nearly everyone splashes for Legwork because you have to. IMO a large reason for Corp/Runner disparity in win percentage is that I believe Corp cards are influenced lightly compared to Runner, generally. This leads to Corps being able to play better cards than Runner. Obviously this doesn’t hold true for everything. I think Runner cards have been influenced relatively well for awhile, but Corps are still being influenced a bit too low. Maybe this is all in my head, but I suppose my point is:
tl;dr Competitive Runners have to play good stand-alone cards because competitive Corps are and always will, because they have to.
** An obvious exception being SEA + Scorch, but even this combo IMO is becoming sub-optimal, largely due to IHW, a good stand-alone card that can single-handedly stymie a 2 or 3 card combo.
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