You could definitely switch the NAPDs for Atlas if you are more aggressive but having to get through an Ash trace or running twice to then pay 5 credits to steal an agenda helps on the economic front. With this in mind, I haven’t found it very hard to make heaps of cash while most runners struggle. I’m not sure what I would cut for the 3rd Jackson but I haven’t been missing him while playing. EBT is pretty much to find the the Root or Corporate Town depending on the matchup.
Patch has been a very clutch card. Patchitect is absolutely awful to deal with and a spiderpatch (need to get a better name) or datapatch also form a pretty effective tax depending on what the runner brought to the table for a decoder.
It’s interesting, but I can’t really think of a good reason not to cut Chronos and a Food and something for at least 2x Atlas and a 3rd Jackson, which will help you find the Food when you have a chance to score it.
why do people keep playing paywall implementation in gagarin? it seem counterintuitive, as u really want to ice up centrals in gagarin and u discourage run on remotes anyway due to id ability. am i missing something?
I think the idea is that you do as much as possible to get the most value out of people running your remotes as possible. However, I actually took Paywall out of my Gagarin because I found it did too much to disincentivize people from running my remotes. There’s a point in the game where I really want people checking my shit, and Paywall gives them another reason not to.
I played this last night against jinteki meta (so take that as you wish) and it felt quite solid. Don’t cut the Atlas. Weyland is all about scoring windows so if you open one, you want to Fast Track I/A that Atlas like there’s no tomorrow! BBG Root is quite nice and BBG Ash is always amazing. If I have to use it on a PAD Campain, that still saves me 2 credits. I could try out Expo Grid, but BBG Ash is far too good.
I’m really curious about these decks. Some questions (while probably mixing the two decks up, but still…)
1 ) How’s the Noise matchup? Neither have CVS, but a lot of Parasite-fodder ICE. Certainly for the deck with only two Jacksons, how do you fend off the Noise – he’s not rich but Parasite makes for easy trashing.
2 ) Val DLR type match ups? Minh MaxX, Apocalypse or anything with heavy central pressure, Account Siphon or Apocalypse. Certainly the deck with no Crisium seems weak here, but in general the ICE mix doesn’t present as strong a early challenge to successful runs as I’d maybe hope for (Wormhole requires set up, Architect can be run through if you don’t care about access but want effects, Archer needs food, Assassin can come down to traces and is expensive to rez).
3 ) Why no Meru Mati? Seems a decent barrier to swap for one of the Ice Walls at least?
Well, in my case: I first want to get a feel about which cards feel essential in the deck and which I can do without. I’ll make the relevant switches when I get more games in. You can play around Siphon without Crisium (The Root gives you a nice way to duck under), just have to be more careful about your credit totals at all times. Architect is great tech against Apocalypse. Noise matchup is baaad without CVS, I’ll definitely give you that.
As for Meru Mati: Ice Wall has the same general utility at 1 credit cheaper and Spiderweb is all-around more useful than these two. I’ve been really underwhelmed by Meru Mati everytime I put it in a deck…
I agree with this, I’ve tried to slot it lots of times but it always ends up getting cut, it’s just not good enough on HQ (the server you care about the least in the majority of games) to justify the extra cost over Ice Wall anywhere else. The difference in quality to the other factions server-specific ice is really embarrassing.
Just want to pick up on this. How so? You get to keep it, but your Root, assets and all the other stuff disappears. Doesn’t feel like much of an answer in a deck that wants to build board state?
Well, they lost all their stuff as well at that point and also quite a lot of money if you built your board right. Architect lets you recover faster than they can usually because they can’t really run it until they find another answer for it. This of course depends on where you put it down, but chances are you put an Architect on either RnD or HQ.
I really don’t know how any of these lists survive the Crim matchup either. I experimented extensively with Gagarin, and while I got it to the point of having a good Kate and a reasonable Noise matchup, Crim was a real struggle.
I can’t speak to the lists others are running, but I’ve always had good luck against criminals - gagarin has a pretty strong anti-siphon game with plenty of early etr, crisiums, and assets to dump credits into. If you can block the runaway siphon train, then the game usually boils down to “can you stop me from scoring a single point and corp towning your econ into the stone age.” Generally, the answer is no.
Personally I think it depends a lot on the list. As Saan mentioned, there are some lists that want you to waste time and credits checking remotes - maybe they have traps, or maybe they’re counting on you wasting time and credits trashing things. Personally, the list I run loves to have remotes go unchecked and unchallenged at any phase of the game. Even a PWI that only triggers once often does work for me- if it contributes to pushing through a NA atlas or TWIY, or allowing my asset econ to reach that critical mass of “oh god I’m never gonna pay to trash all that,” or even just keeping my sportsteams a secret until they fire, I’m almost always glad to see this card. That said, It seems like I almost always end up making a lot of credits off the card. Last but not least, it’s great to see when employee strike is around.
It might not be worth 3, I had recently been testing with this change. It is good enough I think you want 2 at least. You have plenty of very good targets (Spiderweb, Datapike, Archer, Architect) to spend it on. Which ice you choose is dependent upon draw and runner decoder. Architects are your number one choice. I’ve locked out alot of runners from R&D this way because they had no way to repeatedly deal with patchitect or long enough that it didn’t matter. If they are running Yog, a patch on Datapike does good work obviously. Corroder becomes somewhat of a liability if they have to pay 5 credits each time to see a server. Since I don’t actually have any ice that naturally sits at 4, often times I will get atman at 6. Patch on Archer can help deal with this problem.
The way I see it is that patch is a very effective in game counter if your ice suite is weak in a certain matchup (which it will be). I was happy enough with 3 last game, but if I find with future testing that its not pulling its weight I will probably go back to slotting a CVS instead.
Paywall really helps with the Crim matchup while I’m getting Corporate Town online. Since alot of crims just want to run a remote server without actually accessing, my tax does nothing. This helps me still recoup costs and gain money. I’ve also found (and this may just be the jinteki.net meta) that runners really find it offensive that a corp should have any assets what so ever. Despite having Paywall and being Gagarin, people will still run so why not have paywall up?
I didn’t get to play against @linuxmaier Geist last night, but I did destroy a very resource heavy Ian deck.
I’ve found corporate town at the right time to be pretty devastating. Losing Aesosps or Wyldside can be a killer until they’re able to get another online. My meta doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of noise right now, so I’ve not needed to pack CVS. A possible change is to -1 Restructure and +1 CVS to help with this. I usually put ice walls on remotes so i’m not too worried about them getting parasited. Getting a patch on any of the other ice can bring it out of instant parasite range (if it wasn’t dead already).
I’ve lost to this before which is why I now have two Crisiums . You have to move pretty quick to get centrals ice’d and Crisium on there to prevent eater hell. This is definitely a notable weak point which I’m still not sure how to quite deal with. Account siphon isn’t too terrible since I can normally either rez an asset and be okay (the root definitely helps with this) or I am rich enough that it doesn’t matter anyway.
To echo the above comments, I tried with Meru Mati for a long time but it really doesn’t pull its weight. Its okay on HQ, but why not just put spiderweb instead? It really falls short in comparison to the rest of important people ice.
I find the opposite - all those lovely open remotes for Security Testing and Bank Job, all those sentries that Faerie and Shutdown love to deal with, and nothing more taxing than a Spiderweb which doesn’t punish an early face check.
All I can think is that people aren’t playing Security Testing/Bank Job Crims against you, or Patch does way more against them than I thought (possible - the Crim rigs are pretty brittle right now).
This is fair. I believe any non-BS Weyland is pretty rubbish against Criminal. But Criminal is not being played all that much either (except by a few die-hards).
Anyways, whatever you want to do in Weyland, you’ll have to accept that you won’t get it up to HB/NBN levels of efficiency or strength. It’s established that Weyland’s cardpool is insufficient and certainly my list doesn’t change that. I said it feels pretty solid, but it definitely won’t swing the meta or anything. No Weyland deck can at the moment imo. You have too many glaring weaknesses to really patch (heh) them all.
Just from a first glance, you only have 4 assets that stay and work well with expo grid. 1 is conditional, and three run away. Might be hard to set expo up.
. You have to move pretty quick to get centrals ice’d and Crisium on there to prevent eater hell. This is definitely a notable weak point which I’m still not sure how to quite deal with. Account siphon isn’t too terrible since I can normally either rez an asset and be okay (the root definitely helps with this) or I am rich enough that it doesn’t matter anyway.