At the same influence, I think Atman at 4 might be more expensive but is far more flexible. I’ve switched it in and out of my decks depending on how much I think I’ll see Lotus Field. It completely ends some games all by itself. All the common ICE that gives you trouble are hit by Atman at 4: Lotus Feild, Ichi 1.0, Eli 1.0, Tollbooth with the aid of Data Sucker. It’s also just a really nice card to have when things start going poorly or in a weird direction: During the SSCI (which I didn’t do so well in, but it was my first time playing Maxx in a major tournament) I thought it was superb. There was a funny moment when my opponent had IQ and I had to get out Yog, Atman, and D4v1d to make sure I could get by since he got all my Data suckers with a Chronos Project. But it got me in and I won.
The question is whether it is worth the influence. It means you lose Legwork most likely, and that means SoT becomes a lot worse (which is why I haven’t yet committed to playing it over Zu), but if you’re already using CyCy, I think it’s an easy switch.
With -1 Lucky -1 Legwork for influence cuts to fit CyCy or Atman, what do you do with the last one? Shards seem like a standard go-to but I doubt their effectiveness in Maxx. I guess being able to randomly see a Utopia is better than everything else right? Even if you’re going to mill it and not use it most of those times, (unlike Legwork)?
I am pretty happy with the Zu. I think I would rather play Femme+Ret Run than any 3 influence breakers, and if Lotus is everywhere, Spooned works pretty good.
We used Utopia Shard. Mostly just as a goofy Legwork. It was fine, but yeah, you definitely lose something when you drop the Legwork. But Atman was so good I feel like it could be worth it in some tournaments.
Edit: Also, one of the cards you cut for influence is Zu. So you could keep one of the LF or LW potentially.
If you’re adding a 3-inf breaker, you’re kinda force to cut a LF/legwork also though. Unless you’re willing to reduce the amount of Clone Chips in the deck, which is crazy if you ask me.
Edit: nvm, this is what you’re saying. Stupid me… >_<
Yeah, I’m not saying you can keep both, I’m saying that you can cut Zu and one of those 2 cards, which is painful for sure but potentially worth it if Atman can win you games that would otherwise be beyond you. I too am against cutting Clone Chips.
For about a week until they play against a deck where it doesn’t do anything a few times in a row. NBD either way, worst case scenario it’s just a Mental Health Clinic.
So after the SSCI, I decided to try out the gordian blade because Ahmed basically thrashed me with all his lotus fields, tollbooth, and enigmas. The gordian is nice to use, but losing lucky find or legwork for it just didn’t feel right… I put the zu back in again in a local tourney, and went to 46 cards with an additional spooned (I know, blasphemy). Thought since its 46, might as well add in one inject too to at least speed it up a tad.
The deck was pretty good in the tourney, but I did end up losing to the boot camp blue sun glacier, which just stacked all code gates. Some how I might really end up swapping the zu and lucky find for the gordian again…
On a side note, human first is actually pretty amazing, ended up not losing tempo when scoring NAPDs or after delving a deep server.
MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock
Event (16)
2x Déjà Vu
3x I’ve Had Worse
1x Inject
1x Knifed
1x Legwork ••
1x Levy AR Lab Access •••
1x Lucky Find ••
1x Queen’s Gambit
1x Spooned
1x Stimhack
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (5)
3x Clone Chip ••••• •
2x Grimoire
Resource (11)
3x Daily Casts
2x Human First
2x Kati Jones
2x Liberated Account
2x Same Old Thing
Interesting point, because I actually switched from Atman to CyCy. Atman is very expensive upfront but decent for all the reasons you give here, but having experimented with CyCy I think I prefer it slightly.
I’ve come into this thread with a slightly different angle though because I’m talking about Valencia, not Maxx. Valencia has blackmail as an additional tool for controlling remotes,and I don’t think I’ve ever found myself inconvenienced by CyCys restriction. I still have a Knight if I absolutely must breaking into a Lotus remote, and Yog/spooned/parasites for other codegates on a remote. If desperate you can even clone chip CyCy back in onto the remote - obviously this should be avoided, but it did win me my runner game against Noah in the SHL3 playoffs, and its a threat the runner must bear in mind. Perhaps for Maxx, CyCy is just worse.
Yeah, I think when I shift to RegAss for Regionals season, this is probably what I’m going to port over from my Maxx deck. 2nd D4Vid does work against Blue Sun, as finding it goes so far. Othercard is spooned, as it just does so much work keeping your from running LotusField for 4 or tollbooth repeatably, some of the big Anarch problem ice.
I have replace Grimoire for MemStrips because of memory issue. I know that my virus lose 1 counter when I install them, but with only 2 Mu left my choice are limited. Now with 4 Mu, 3 for virus), I can install Dav1d, Datasucker, Medium and Parasite.
I do really like x2 datasucker in my rig, which a single memstrips can support for the same price as a grimoire. Also the second copy of Memstrips isn’t a dead card… although you typically will not have the extra clicks to be installing a ton of extra viruses because so much of your economy is tied into clicks (Everything except for Daily Casts), which you make up for somewhat as MaxX.
Memstrips seems like an okay enough swap over from Grimoire, although you lose the extra imp tokens and extra parasite tokens, which can be clinch.
1 and 1 in MaxX might not be atrocious. Although you will probably almost always look at that copy of Memstrips and wish it was that copy of Grimoire in your Heap.
I don’t know. If you really wanted to get into Dan hate territory run x2 Memstrips, Career Fair and Data Folding, replacing Daily Casts.
I know we joke about the 'Strips but I can say that I’ve tested it (at least like 10 games) and it’s frequently been very good. This was in the DoppelRAM build. I would only play it with the Doppelganger setup, I think. Ice just melts.
