Since my regional is right around the corner, (probably yours too!) I was having a hard time waiting for PeeKaySK to make the official topic hopefully he will post his work soon.
This feels like the deck to beat right now, here are several versions for anyone unfamiliar:
1 turn kill:
Uses Power Shutdown, Jackson Howard, Accelerated Diagnostics to score 7 in one turn.
These decks are really strong right now, so far there is no way for them to beat a shaper with magnum opus and vamp; however this weakness, I think can be overcome by the inclusion of a single beanstalk royalties.
Again, not trying to start a big thing, just want to discuss how I think this will be a big thing at regionals.
I agree with the sentiment that it’s not that these decks are powerful, but rather that their counters are rather unique and not largely beneficial against other archetypes you’ll see in a tournament.
That being said, I’m not a huge fan of CI combo decks or ones that score 7 points in one turn, but that’s probably more personal preference than anything.
To answer the thread title though, I’d probably rank CI third after Making News and ETF, simply because the other two are extremely versatile and difficult to play against until you’ve identified the opponent’s archetype, and even then you’re prone to surprises.
That’s a good point, getting crushed out of R&D is of course, a great way to kill any corp.
these decks have a ton of turns where they make more than 8 credits, out-moneying them to vamp if they are playing taxing ice will be extremely difficult late game without magnum opus, and relatively easy to recover from early game before the hand gets too stacked.
Donuts for sure.
@Lysander
I would debate the tier of this deck, but like you said it’s counters are so specific is what makes it worse than ETF and MN. Do we pack counters in our decks for CI like we do plascretes? We will probably be dealing with this bullshit deck until lunar cycle starts.
Actually, no need for Beanstalk Royalties. The deck that plays 3-pointers scores a 3/2 with biotic first, then an efficiency committee with double biotic. After that you can Vamp all you want, it’ll just go like this:
Subliminal Messaging (thoughtfully saved in hand if Vamp is suspected), install 5/3, advance, remove three counters from the Committee, double Shipment from SanSan for the win. 5/3, out of hand, from zero credits. next turn after spending half your money for two biotics.
If you had something else in mind for that Beanstalk, please tell.
That’s true, your cost to win is frontloaded on the first double biotic, the time to vamp would be before it hits, since you and corp are both racing each other in money a good player will see your window coming and try to close it.
Certainly easier to deal with in the more resilient slow-roll variations.
I was thinking Legwork would be a fantastic one-of in just about every Shaper and Criminal deck anyways (aside from Gabe since he hits HQ so much regardless). Typically agendas tend to accumulate in HQ unless the corp is using Jackson excessively (in which case Indexing/RDI would be more fruitful). Same Old Thing and Planned Attack will help your timing windows and recursion.
Dunno, I’m not too terribly concerned due to that and Atman/Parasite/Datasucker has served me fairly well at keeping CI’s central servers somewhat reasonable. I haven’t had any more trouble against CI than against a well-designed ETF glacier deck.
Well in all fairness, I can’t really claim any bit of it was my idea aside from assembling the pieces. @spags was the one that originally clued me into LuckyPAD.
These decks are really strong now. I don’t know how popular they are because I’ve been a bit out of the loop since SC season ended, but I’ve yet to see or experience any strong moves to counter the “slow-roll” CI builds (small sample size). I’d probably say that MN/TWIY/CI/ETF are in a top group with BABW & RP trailing but still a bit ahead of the rest of the pack.
The nice thing about CI is that it has a very straightforward plan and a small surface area: both strong benefits in tournament play. (cf. how nice and comforting Andromeda’s opening 9 card hand is in tournament play.)
I loathe single-turn combo wins, but I should probably build and test the Jackson7 concept.
Legwork is probably going into a ton of my decks, since it is good against all of the strong archetypes, and it’s a decent enough counter.
Time for a little trolling again: The Professor can easily play Nerve Agent, Sneakdoor and Imp because these are good vs a wide array of corps. But they tend to really hurt CI decks. We have one “slow-roll” CI player in Germany who has a couple Top8 finishes at recent tournaments and he said the Professor might be one of his worst matchups.
That’s all true, but the thing is that you need Nerve Agent AND Sneakdoor AND Magnum Opus to really have enough econ to make the threat credible (especially against CI decks that aren’t stupidly light on ICE). This in turn leads to some nasty memory issues.
Not saying it can’t be done, just that it’s a long way from an auto-win
(and the worst matchup for slow-roll CI is Siphon Noise, in my experience)
When people talk about EC and 3pters like in Peekay’s version or does that encompass everything that doesn’t win in one turn?
Have people tried just standard FA where you replace EC with NAPD and just Biotic 4 times? I like this version better since there are some games where the 2nd Biotic is at the bottom of your deck and you take forever to find it - thus halting the Shipment plan. Also, after the big EC turn, the last thing you want to do is wait for 2 shipments and a 3pter. I like being able to Biotic out agendas at will instead of waiting for pieces to assemble because it gives you an opportunity to play around sneakdoor/nerve. With the free influence I include a singleton Scorch to kill tag-me players in combination with Archived Memories. I also run Ichi 2.0 and have won on several occasions from Ichi tag plus Scorch.
This version can not run Hive since you’re not sitting around all game till you win, so it is weaker against Atman.
2x Archived Memories
3x Biotic Labor
3x Blue Level Clearance
3x Hedge Fund
2x Reclamation Order
3x Restructure
2x Scorched Earth ••••• •••
2x SEA Source ••••
3x Shipment from SanSan •••
2x Subliminal Messaging
Barrier (5)
3x Eli 1.0
2x Wall of Static
Code Gate (5)
3x Viktor 2.0
2x Viper
Sentry (4)
2x Ichi 1.0
2x Rototurret
Principal differences: my ice is cheaper, i’ve got some hard ETR to defend me against first-turn Siphon; the runner needs to steal four agendas, and I score Committee first with double Biotic, then use Shipment to score three 3/2 agendas. Actually, I’ll probably swap two 3/2s for 2x PAND and try to bait the runner and outseasource him.
Rather like your version (I especially love how we have the same Influence ), some comments:
I’d definitely up the Ichi 1 to Ichi 2. The 3 credits might seems like a huge deal until you realize that you’re getting 2 of them back on the first trace that actually fires - then you’re just paying 1 credit for +1 STR and actually making the trace fire. This is invaluable in scenarios where you care about the tag more than you care about the trashing (like, in this deck)
Do you find Viper to be worth it? My problem with it is twofold: it’s an Enigma that needs tracing to work, and it’s STR 4, which clashes with Eli and Ichi 1 re: Atman. For these reasons, I’d run one at most
How do you fare economically with the reduced amount of recursion? How often do you use it for economic purposes?
(oh, and - I didn’t rez him that often, but when I did, Heimy 2.0 was totally kick-ass. It caught several people off-guard, as they didn’t expect such a huge piece of ICE, and got brained as a result. The rez cost wasn’t so much of a problem in these situations - if you’re going to kill the runner next turn, it doesn’t matter that you’d be discarding some cards, obviously)
