How is Sec Testing no longer an issue with Cerebral Static? I’d say ELP solves the Sec Testing issue. Also, with fewer agendas, ELP becomes much, much better.
It’s not an issue because Criminals are dead where I live hahaha. Otherwise I would run ELP, no question about it.
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I think learning how to spite criminal tactics makes you better at the game, and the game better
So I took a revised, yet experimental list to today’s tournament and I’m extremely pleased. The Vanity Project agenda suite is a huge improvement over the previous one, enough that I don’t see myself going back. I remember being forced to use my Jacksons to avoid agenda flood very often with the previous build, to the point that keeping Archives full with three of them with a Jackson on the table was a common play. Now I don’t need to so I can use them to bring back all the nasty stuff. And it’s far, far easier to score two agendas than three, I would have lost at least one game if I hadn’t been able to score 4 points in three turns.
I also regretted not running Cerebral Static quite a bit. Had I played it instead of ELP I wouldn’t have suffered as much against Noise (Only won because of OHG) and right now Noise and Anarchs in general are the deck to beat. Sure, you make your Kate matchup worse, but your Kate matchup is already great so it’s not like you need it.
My next step should be to find a way of stopping glory R&D runs and replacing Cortex Lock and, perhaps, Tsurugi. I have 4-6 spare influence so at least I’m confident I can try anything.
Apologies, they did seem to me (at the time, thank you painkillers) to lend themselves more to mid-late agenda scoring rather than attrition. Batty, removing TollBooth’s and having Rec Orders, it seemed at the time like those decisions aided mid-late game scoring rather than decking the runner. But having re-read your post I think you’re right, it doesn’t effect your win condition much.
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Care to share the list? I have been trying to work OHG into a genomics deck and had really poor luck so far. How does IG deal with the runner constantly running archvies early?
A shock or two, Hokusai grid and a 1 cost ShiKyu is my plan. Paying through some big ice to be faced with that every other turn is a bit of a turn-off.
Between Shock! and Crick, plus any other nastiness you might have, you should have something to make archives taxing for a tiny credit cost within your opening hand/first few draws.
Then you just drop a few cards in archives at a time rather than going crazy - just 2 or 3 added to trash costs can be enough to let you build your assets.
Early on the goal is to get a Melange or a PAD Campaign online, I don’t fill up archives until I have some sort of defense on my central servers.
Here’s a slighty modified list of what I run on the tournament:
Bloodlock: v2.00
Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions (The Source)
Agenda (7)
1x Chronos Project (First Contact)
1x Hades Fragment (Up and Over)
2x The Future Perfect (Honor and Profit)
3x Vanity Project (Old Hollywood) [color=#708090]•••[/color]
Asset (19)
3x Hostile Infrastructure (All That Remains)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) [color=#FF8C00]•••[/color]
3x Melange Mining Corp. (Core Set)
3x PAD Campaign (Core Set)
3x Shock! (True Colors)
2x Snare! (Core Set)
2x Sundew (Mala Tempora)
Upgrade (7)
2x Caprice Nisei (Double Time)
2x Hokusai Grid (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Marcus Batty (The Underway)
1x Old Hollywood Grid (Old Hollywood) [color=#FF8C00]••[/color]
Operation (8)
2x Cerebral Static (The Spaces Between)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
2x Interns (Mala Tempora)
1x Reclamation Order (Double Time) [color=#8A2BE2]••[/color]
Barrier (5)
2x Ashigaru (Up and Over)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof) [color=#8A2BE2]•••[/color]
Code Gate (2)
2x Crick (Breaker Bay)
Sentry (5)
2x Cortex Lock (The Valley)
1x Susanoo-No-Mikoto (Honor and Profit)
2x Tsurugi (True Colors)
Other (1)
1x Excalibur (The Source)
13 influence spent (max 15)
22 agenda points (between 22 and 23)
54 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Old Hollywood
OHG is amazing against Noise and I bet it’s a reasonable one-card solution to glory runs agaisnt most Runners but it does nothing against Film Critic. So while it did fine, I think I would rather replace it with Ash and just pay for the trace.
Hades Fragment is a bit of a luxury, now that you can score faster I’m not sure it’s worth playing over the third FP.
Reclamation Order, the OHG/Ash/Second Batty slot and perhaps one of the Hedge Funds are also luxuries, I think you can change them without much of an issue. In practice that gives you 2/3 slots and 6 influence to play with which is a lot. Sadly, I can’t think of a lot of improvements other than running RSVP or Architect over Cortex Lock.
EDIT: Interesingly, having so much influences enables us to run Global Food Initiative over The Future Perfect. It means that the Runner will have to steal three agendas unless they steal two Vanitys. That requires testing.
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With your left over influence, I would much rather run a Tollbooth than swap the TFPs into GFIs. I also feel like the Reclamation Order and one of the Cerebral Statics might could be better as Daily Business Shows but that might just be personal preference.
Daily Bussiness Show is one of my favourite cards, but I didn’t like it when I tried it in Genomics. The deck simply gains too little from being able to filter cards to be worth the slot, specially if you run less agendas.
Still, there’s a lot of stuff that could go on that slot so it’s a matter of trying.
I find it really necessary, though I run really Ice light so agendas flooding HQ is a real problem. Not that it happens often, but it happens enough that it’s problematic. It’s also close to a must trash asset, so it helps with the money tax as well.
I’ve got a question for you guys. What do you all mulligan for? I understand it’s a given if you get flooded or maybe zero ICE, but what else are you looking for? Do you always try to get a Shock/Shikyu? Or an economic asset /operation?
In my deck, (not running shock or shi kyu, just x3 crick) I mulligan for Turtlebacks and Tech Startup (for more Turtlebacks). The higher trash cost prevents runners from trashing it before any cards are in archives lest they sacrifice their early game setup.
Personally (hopefully the good IG players can also chime in) since the IG plan involves a lot of drawing/discard I don’t really mulligan for things - they’ll come eventually, and bad card in the opener can go into archives.
Mulliganing away from bad hands (too many agendas or ice) is obviously important, and there is matchup specific mulls (try for archives protection vs noise, and assets to dump money in vs siphon).
IG definitely seems to be the most resistant corp to “bad hands”.
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I have a very general question for IG players: are you playing decks over 49 cards? Do you feel like it’s working? A few players locally were running 54 card decks and I don’t know what the consensus is on that.
If so, would you consider going to 59/64/etc if there were strong enough agendas to fill out the slots? Does IG get more and more powerful as more Jinteki cards are released (in terms of built in redundancy with cards)?
I think it’s pretty wise to run 54 cards in a deck that is planning on discarding a substantial number of cards during a game.
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There’s a point at which using too many cards does put agendas at risk and dilution can hurt the deck. 54 isn’t that number, but i’d hesitate to go any higher.
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I won a local GNK with a 54-card IG deck focused on Old Hollywood Grid. It works well, but search effects are more important (eg, Tech Startup). I’m testing a 49-card version with Ash instead of OHG now.
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