Going Against the Grain: Reg-Ass Maxx

StimHack.com
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In Re: Architect:

From Article:
Near Earth Hub AstroBiotics is a tricky matchup…
Install your Mimic if possible before facechecking, especially R&D, as you don’t want to let them fire off Architect, (though you can sometimes run through it later if you’re gaining Medium counters).

I agree with spags on this one: I think it’s the correct play to facecheck Architect (even on R&D) in the early game (turn 1/2). I don’t think it’s the correct play if they already have SanSan that you trashed in Archive.

Sure, they’ll gain some tempo if they can install two things and draw a card, but that’s not necessarily a given if you facecheck turn 1: they won’t have anything in Archives, but 99% that they can install from R&D and HQ may or may not have something that they can install (asset/upgrade or ice). It’s not likely that they will install an agenda (unless they you’re running on click 4; DON’T RUN ON LAST CLICK AGAINST A POSSIBLE ARCHITECT :cry: ), but check anyway. A great turn 1 could be - click 1 - run R&D (corp rezzes Architect, see nothing of consequence on top of R&D), click 2 - check remote (if there’s only 1), click 3&4 - Queen’s Gambit that SanSan/DBS/Pad/Jackson (go up to 11 and ready to trash it next turn).

But, they’ll also lose some tempo rezzing a 4 cost ice. In the most likely best case they’ll have 9 credits after turn 1, rezzing the Architect drops them to 5 credits, which delays the Biotic Astro play the following turn (but not the Biotic SfSS Astro play :fearful: ).

There is also an opportunity loss by not checking R&D ice. If it’s not Architect, you can Parasite a Quandary/Pop-up, drop Corroder for a Wraparound, or Knifed an Eli (given you have access to the right card for the situation), but just the knowledge is valueable. Just make sure to check what they install in any of the remotes after they rez Architect.

Against non-NEH corps, facechecking Architect is an easy decision. If the top card is an agenda, you’re going to get it either on top of R&D or in the remote (unless they install the agenda, then trash it by installing a Jackson from HQ and then shuffle with said Jackson, when you check the remote).

Those are my thoughts, but I would welcome further discussion on the topic. In general, there seems to be a shift away from facechecking in the early game, which I don’t think is always correct.

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In addition to Architect, Grail ICE has made the early facecheck somewhat more dangerous. Not saying it’s not still +EV, but the Corp definitely has more tools to punish early aggression.

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Mostly agreed, I’d like to contest this point though:

This smells of really n00bish play on the corp’s part.

Don’t know about you, but I often keep a hard ETR in hand when I have an Architect in place. That way, if an agenda is on top of RnD, I’ll install that with the first sub and the ICE from HQ with the second sub - voila, instant scoring mini-server! Usually something like a Quandary handles this very well, later on a Parasited piece of ICE can serve the same function if they’re stupid enough to let Architect trigger.

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Nice! That’s a much better play than using Jackson to get rid of an agenda. But, it’s not likely a play you can pull off if the runner runs first turn. Assuming a pretty high ice count (in current meta) of 17, most likely you’ve played the first two available ice in R&D (likely the Architect that the runner hit) and HQ (likely an cheap ETR or a tracer for Siphons), then to have a 3rd piece of ice to save for the instant server in the first 6 cards is only 34%. Less likely for it to be cheap ETR (depending on your deck composition). Obviously, playstyle and deck composition vary, so you may like to leave a central open or have a high ice count, where this play can be more reliable.

All that to say if you’re going to facecheck Architect (and I recommend that you do), do it very early; first turn if possible.

No doubt that the Corps have so many more playable ice that punishes early facechecking. I would also recommend to facecheck Grail on the first few turns. The only one you don’t want to see is Merlin (with multiple copies), but to get hit by 6 net damage against non-Foundry decks is 1:1000. To get hit by 4 net damage is less than 3% (about the same as 6 net damage in Foundry). And, against non-BS corps, knowing where they played which Grail is great information, it goes from having a solution to any of the 3 to having one breaker to handle the Grail they rezzed.

#FunWithHyperGeometricCalculator

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Clearly, the Foundry is the Foundry, caution recommended. But it’s not just the corner case Merlin kill that I was referencing. The overall EV calculation is skewed by the possibility of providing the Corp more ROI on their Grail than they would otherwise receive. Losing a Faerie to a Galahad, for example, makes the rest of RP’s ICE that much better. Facechecking a Galahad is a lot different from facechecking a Bako, Eli, Pup, whatever. Generally, Grail rez has its highest ROI early in the game. It stops, damages, and destroys, and then keeps on taxing. There’s a reason it costs influence. The question is not whether you will survive facechecking Grail. Most of the time you will. The question is: are you doing more harm to the Corp or yourself?

Furthermore, the Corp’s vastly improved economy compared to the first year of the game means rezzing ice is not such a big deal for the Corp anymore. The classic example was facechecking a Katana, which was generally considered a no-brainer as it was, in the initial history of this game, a reasonable bargain to trade the Corp three cards for four credits, especially if they had no first turn Hedge. Now I would be much less happy about giving the Corp three cards and taking that tempo hit just to make them spend four creds. (neural katana is still not good ice, not saying that it is; although it’s not the worst target for Wormhole)

Again, not saying facecheck isn’t still +EV, just that it’s not self-evidently the strictly best line of play as it once was.

(EDIT: Just realized this is the Mandromeda thread, not the Estimating Facecheck EV thread. Sry for tangent.)

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I agree with your analysis: runner’s are getting less in the exchange when facechecking than they used to get. When I say facecheck, I don’t normally expect you to install any programs. Faerie out of criminal would be the exception (on topic: MaxX isn’t running Faerie :slight_smile: ), but you’d expect to lose it to a destroyer anyway (now the corp is just getting a much better exchange of 2 credit vs. 4 from Roto and instead of the access you’re seeing the Lancelot in HQ). I’m not sure if MaxX is installing any programs before facechecking, maybe a Mimic expecting an Architect or a Datasucker (if she has either). It sucks to lose your Mimic, but you have recursion. Grail against criminal is where to get your real value out of your ice.

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I played this version in an 18 man Store Championship today, went 5-1, second seed after swiss. I think MaxX works better if you burn the edges of the ID and put your own flavor text and decor on the actual card. I didn’t miss the third clone chip, but I wouldn’t run more than one Scavenge. Grimoire+Leg v. Dopple+Wanton just depends on your scene. I think an NEH heavy meta wants the Legworks, whereas I’ve liked Wanton more in most other matches. No matter which was you swing it, this deck is the tits.

ni dios ni amo

MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock (Order and Chaos)

Event (15)
2x Déjà Vu (Core Set)
3x I’ve Had Worse (Order and Chaos)
2x Knifed (Order and Chaos)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) [color=#4169E1]••••[/color]
1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]•••[/color]
1x Queen’s Gambit (Double Time)
1x Scavenge (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]••[/color]
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (4)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]••••[/color]
2x Grimoire (Core Set)

Resource (10)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
2x Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow)
3x Liberated Account (Trace Amount)
2x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

Icebreaker (6)
2x Corroder (Core Set)
2x Mimic (Core Set)
1x Yog.0 (Core Set)
1x ZU.13 Key Master (What Lies Ahead) [color=#32CD32]••[/color]

Program (10)
1x D4v1d (The Spaces Between)
2x Datasucker (Core Set)
3x Imp (What Lies Ahead)
1x Medium (Core Set)
3x Parasite (Core Set)
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Order and Chaos

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Finally got my boxes and literally spent the entire weekend running with this fine piece of artwork.

I’m finding Eater, Femme, Medium and the utensils to be a significant improvement over Keyhole jank. Cutlery runs still get a virus counter and you only have to focus on 1 server for destruction tools rather than two.

Also, as a big bonus, you can include 2 showing off, and on turns where you can amped up on an open r&d you pretty much win that turn with one of them in hand, you can access like 14 unique cards in a single turn like this, not withstanding that agenda’s get scored and new cards become available for searching.

I understand keyhole also trashes other stuff. But it’s a bigger memory hog, forces you to make extra runs on different servers to score, and requires much ‘more’ accesses to get the agenda’s out in the first place. Keyhole runs don’t access Crisium Grid, which medium runs still do, and the femme not only bypasses into R&D if you need it, you can still run without any fear of that 2 strength AI trasher.

I’m really curious why people have gone for Keyhole rather than Medium. It seems much worse to me and testing this weekend showed it to be. It was faster and more direct. At least in my playgroup. Am I missing something big? Help me understand the keyhole love please??

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If you are playing the same breaker suite keyhole is almost certainly better than medium. Medium is a great card but eater+cutlery+medium is way too reliant on drawing the right cards to be fast enough compared to eater+keyhole. That’s before we even talk about purges, architect, the fact that keyhole lets you trash ice, jacksons, agendas, operations whatever all for free.

I also find it amusing that you dismiss an incredibly strong archetype as “jank” when you started playing it this weekend.

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It’s not janky, it was just a tease. :smile:

Trashing stuff is cool, I get that. Agenda’s win you the game however. Purges give you a free turn of no new ice. Architect can be broken by both? Eater+Medium will be installed almost exactly at the same speed as Eater+Keyhole. I have included 3 parasites in my build.

I’m not dismissing it, but after 10 games or so I think medium is better. I posted here to find out why it isn’t…

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But eater+medium gives you nothing until you can access. If you pay for medium counters with no access you’re asking for a purge. If you wait until you have an open R&D before running you may never get one. Are you saving up and blowing all your biscuits on one turn of aggression?

Edit: As an aside, I’m not trying to be awkward for the sake of it. I’d be very happy to play some back to back games on OCTGN later to try out your archetype compared to the keyhole one if you want. I am constantly trying out new MaxX stuff because I absolutely love the ID.

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I’ve been able to clear a path to RnD reliably in every game, and when you can’t kill a piece of ice you just femme it. Between same-old-things, dejavu’s and eater, and when you can, an amped up turn, you can clear the path and access a whole bunch of cards pretty reliably, especially in the early game. MaxX is the only ID that can pull it off imo cos you have the draw and discard tutoring you need to do it. Also in the early game, it’s hard for the corps to say, ok, i’m JUST going to ice RnD. There’s usually only so much ice to go around.

Totally understand you’re not trolling. I’m as interested in this as anybody. Sorry if I came across as a bit harsh initially.

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I have actually had a brief attempt at getting an ice destruction MaxX working with medium as the main pressure. Do you have a build you’re willing to share? I think MaxX has such a powerful ability that as long as your deck contains solid win conditions you’re going to do well.

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Yeah happily. I’ll pm you!

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156

Hi,

I have take the Reg-ass MaxX deck to my local store championship. I have replace Queen Gambit and Stimhack by 2 Dirty Laundry and 1 Knifed by 1 Spooned . I have won 3/4 game with the deck. My only loss came from trashing all my economies and recursion from MaxX hability.

What I didn’t like is the Knifed and Spooned. In my meta, there a lot of Sentry and both card where dead in my hand.

I will continue to experiment with the deck.

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I think the deck should be called RelaxX.

I playtested it at my LGS recently. I exactly copied Dan’s deck for testing, and have since made changes I’ll discuss at the end. It was a small sample size but I wanted to share it because I hit all three nightmare scenarios for this deck in one night.

  1. High strength code gates

I played against a Blue Sun that was teching against this type of deck with 3x Wormhole 3x Lotus Field. It was very difficult to get or keep Datasucker tokens, so Parasite was mostly turned off (used 2 with a Grimoire to kill 2 Ice Walls). Definitely felt some desire for a 2nd D4vid for that one against full constellation ice suite. Still won thanks to D4vid and Knifed getting me the last few accesses I needed, but very easily could have gone the other way.

  1. Chronos Project

Got hit with one of these with 3 cards left in deck and Levy in the bin (was going to SOT it next turn). It was against what otherwise seemed to be a standard Dan-style RP build, so I didn’t expect it amongst the drip econ that had been installed facedown in the other remotes. I still won this game - had Kati, all 3 breakers, and a datasucker in play already and was able to pull off some tricks with the few cards still available in my hand and the heap. This deck felt very good against RP, with the only real downside being that I couldn’t tutor directly for breakers super early to get at a sundew quite as soon as I wanted to.

  1. Get Levy and all my recursion milled

Against a different RP (an even more standard Dan-style deck with the ELP’s dropped for Crisium Grids and Wraparounds to tech against Eater), I managed to just get unlucky and have Levy, both Deja Vu, and both SOTs milled by my ability. I narrowly won this one, but only because the other guy forgot to use a Nisei token to stop me running on his hand last click when we both knew he had another Nisei agenda and only one other card in his hand, giving me a 50/50 chance to win on that run. All 3 Katis had also been milled, so I had no econ and certainly would have lost if he had used the token (we played it out as though he had used it once I pointed it out, and he eventually managed to win with 4 cards left in his deck.)

Lessons learned:

A) I’m inexperienced at Anarch, and one tip I got from a more experience Anarch after that game was that I should have been drawing more to get the things I needed, and less precious about holding things in my hand. More experience play would have averted most of these bad scenarios (game 1 I should have dug harder for mimic earlier, game 3 I should have drawn for Levy or recursion once a few of them had been milled).

B) I dropped Queen’s Gambit and Stimhack (both of which had been very unimpressive in all 3 games) for another Deja Vu and a Spooned. I definitely wanted more recursion and a less-expensive answer to strong code gates. The new iteration of the deck did amazing the next session against 3 NEH and a HB: ETF, soundly winning 4 games, then losing a rematch to one of the NEH decks when I left a double-advanced Breaking News out and his Traffic Accident missed the single IHW in my hand, opening me up to a scorch kill (my own misplay).

C) Since then, I’ve dropped Spooned because it was an overreaction to that one code gate deck, and swapped the lucky find for Queen’s Gambit to get influence for a Scavenge. In all my games, I found I wanted either more Imps or more D4vids, and I figured more recursion couldn’t hurt. I was happy with the 3 deja vus, though maybe they are overkill with a Scavenge available. Scavenge is great utility as emergency recursion as well, and saves money over trashing and reinstalling things.

D) I generally found that I had enough money, so LF + QG both might be overkill when that card slot and influence could be used on utility. I’m very interested in other people’s experiences with 2x Kati 3x Liberated Accounts. I loved having Kati early but it was a bummer to draw dupes.

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I never played Anarch (really) until I tried this Reg-MaxX stuff. I run 3 Kati and I really don’t want to cut one, if I get Kati early, it is great, and if I don’t it feels so bad, until I get her, so I don’t hink I could cut 1 copy.

I also found, like @aerosaucer, that Code Gates are a major nuisance, tollbooth is kind of OK if I get D4v1d and I actually have not faced a Wormhole yet but figure it is actually less bad than Tollbooth, and I usually manage to kill those off after a while, so that is OK, Lotus Field otoh, blech! I palyed a Blue Sun and managed to trash most of their ICE but they used 2 Lotus Fields to good effect to severly hamper my game, moving them around. I still managed to win that game, since most ICE was trashed and they were low on econ and spent a lot of clicks moving those Lotuses around, but still, I think Spooned would have helped greatly, I would have Deja Vu:ed one in a heartbeat that game to kill those off.

Chronos I have not found to be som problematic, the times I’ve been hit (or hit the opponent playing MaxX) it has been a minor bump, it really requires to hit something very specific to have a major impact.

Recursion is the major hurdle, I run three clone, three Deja and two SOT, but if I could I would run more, thinking a bit about Retrieval, but think it is not worth it, and deckslots are tight as it is.

I also just dropped the LF for a Scavange and have yet to experience it.

All in all I really like playing this deck (type), it is fun in being highly interactive and actually (imo) very demanding of the pilot. I feel I already learned a lot from playing it but feel there are multiple levels for me to still grow here and become better at running it.

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I’d wager if you’re having trouble with recursion (or lack there of), you’re not spending enough clicks to draw. This isn’t a 47 card deck where you don’t expect to draw(I mean, that’s the only explanation right?)

For those having issues with code gates, a change that I like is -1 zu -1 legwork, +1 atman +1 utopia/hades. Yes you lose your shot at massive legwork when the agendas start to pile up in HQ, but you gain the ability to run more frequently on HQ (and everywhere else really) if you can afford an appropriately strengthed atman.

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I’ll rather remove the Scavenge and Zu for Atman + utopia before removing the Legwork. And I also think Zu is fine. You don’t need to run through a Lotus field that often anyway. If a server is locked out by a lotus run another server and pile money on your Kati for the deep medium dig you will do later.

Don’t tunnel vision too much on a single threat :wink:

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Yeah, I started drawing more, I never actually got into trouble from not drawing, but could feel more comfortable :smile:
I will try that suggestion, Utopia is a very favourite card for me as it is and will also help against the amount of BS-kill decks that are floating around in my meta currently…together with Imp.