Was lucky/desperate enough to install Sus/Cortex early on R&D and Archives. Gained a bunch of creds, and forced them to faceplant doom, crushing breakers in their hand.
I’m a big fan of the singleton Fetal. No one expects RP Glacier to actually have any teeth, so you can get some surprise kills with that Fetal. Lord knows I did at Nationals last year. (sorry @DJhedgehog)
I think it’s probably a mistake not to have 3 Enigma in a meta with so much Zu (and at worst it’s 1-2c from a CyCy). Are you sure the Yagura’s better than a third Enigma? If so, I’d be interested to hear your reasoning. It could well be that I’m overrating Enigma but there aren’t many Corp decks I wouldn’t put 3 in at the moment.
I feel like with 2 TFP you’re going to get stuck scoring 4 agendas to win some of the time. Maybe that’s ok since the Runner has to also? Or do you stick your DBS enough to dig to it reliably? I would want the 2nd DBS, or to play 3 TFP.
I think you’ll learn to love Crick if you haven’t yet accepted him into your life. You don’t have to put in on Archives, anywhere else it’s still $2 for Gordian to break and $3 for Zu to break, for the same cost as a Pup and more Parasite resilient.
On facecheck you probably get a random asset economy back or an ICE that died to Parasite. Best case you recur a game-winning Caprice or Ash or Crisium. What more do you want a $1 ICE to do, make you a sandwich?
I would love to fit 3rd Enigma actually. I would rather cut Crick for it than Yagura, though. I found Crick in the early game to go on archives and threaten to recur exactly nothing and in the mid to late game it’s a 2nd piece of Archives ICE that you didn’t need.
It’s one of the closer matchups but you can certainly still win. You have to play a lot rushier, because it’s hard to beat them late, especially if they can get into archives and repeatedly pound a TFP. Lotus Field is quite good at keeping Noise out for quite a while on the cheap.
I love the Fetal. I was actually convinced it was the best choice for a long time and then switched over as a concession to time concerns. I don’t honestly even care that it is dealing damage and I expect to kill approximately no one using my build, but it’s taxing to hit, and it can’t give the runner 3 points.
21 Points was justifiable because you could expect to always fight on the TFP psi. There’s too much Reina denial, unlucky Siphon starts against Leela, and people throwing agendas into Archives via Noise or Keyhole or Wanton right now to expect TFP to be worth 1 point on average. Most of the games you lose with the 21 point list, or even the 20 point list with a one pointer, will be games lost where the runner scores 3 agendas. 1/3 of those times, if you play the Fetal over the 4rd TFP, the game would go on.
I can’t really justify it with any good math, it just feels right to me right now.
Anyone else been trying out Valley Grid in RP? I think taxing maximum handsize is a really good play in the current environment, as I have yet to see any runners running plus handsize cards. 3 ETR ICE and any one of RPs numerous methods of forcing the runner to run again, and your scoring remote is safe pretty much forever regardless of what the runner has/does. It can be a bit durdly getting up and going, but once you have it, the runner has very limited options for the rest of the game.
Besides your one given example, are you really sold on Cortex Lock? I think it’s the definition of a suboptimal piece of ICE. Most people don’t rush versus RP AFAIK. I suppose you can get lucky and trash some useful things from their hand but I’m not sure I’m sold on the Lock, especially in a deck where they can’t run into a Snare! afterwards or get EMP’d. Then again, I don’t play much RP, so what do I know.
I tried Lock for a little bit. It’s can be great but it’s super high variance and always shit late. I’d rather just cough up the 5 for Komainu and force a Parasite.
Crick is way better than pup. At worst it makes the runner pay 2 and another click to kill a sundew that it brings back. At best it brings back caprice.
6-1 with the following ice suite in SHL4 so far: 3 eli, 1 ashigaru, 1 bako; 2 crick, 2 lotus, 1 enigma, 2 booth; 2 pup, 1 tsurugi, 1 cortex; 1 excalibur.
Rest of inf on 3 DBS, 3 jackson, 1 ash. Probably gonna try -1 DBS +1 crisium soon.
Yeah I’m not sure about Lock yet myself. My justification for it at the moment is that I’m running a Susan, which is good against Shaper and that’s the MU where Lock is (very) bad. I’m not sure whether that reasoning is particularly sound, but the card seems to work. I like it more in lists with 2 DBS because you’ll see it less in games it’s bad.
I’m yet to try Crick, but I’ve slotted one with the intention of trying it tomorrow.
What’s everyone doing (if anything) as tech vs Vamp? That card is very, very popular now because RP is very, very good. The obvious options are stuff like Crisium Grid, but maybe there’s something else that I’m missing that makes the matchup better, but maybe people aren’t planning anything and hoping they dodge it or sacrificing the MU. The matchup vs Vamp is probably the worst that RP has at the minute if you ask me, but a bit of the winrate can be reclaimed just like how it was against Stealth Andy.
I like DBS but having 2 in play doesn’t really do much for you, so I wouldn’t want to play more than 2. (wouldn’t mind a PAD campaign though). I feel like less than 3 Pup is insane.
Haven’t played it in RP yet, but I played it in Tennin NA and it was solidly taxing, so I can imagine it would work great as remote ice in RP. Paying 9 for it was hard in Tennin, but RP isn’t usually hurting for money, so I would think it’s even a little better.
Susanoo is a great 1-of because it can win games. It’s a huge tax as mentioned (4 datasucker tokens and 1 credit, 6 for garrote, 11 for femme), and you can almost surely rush out an agenda behind it. Plus, it existing means the atman play at 4 is less likely to screw your tax on those ICE. For 1 ICE slot I think the value is there.
Tollbooth remains the single best ICE against the entire field of breakers, so 2 is probably appropriate. Crick to taste: 1-2. I like to mention that it’s still a 3 strength code gate that costs 1 to rez off archives.
I tried Grail for a long time. It’s fun to play cards out of your hand and sometimes flatline or clear someone’s rig. Other than that I don’t think it’s the best build to run the grail suite. Excalibur makes that scoring remote a much bigger problem. Probably more personal preference here.
Hacktivist meeting is something to consider too, in my mind. Cerebral static is a great choice for a current to kill hacktivist. As @eric_c loves to preach Cerebral can cause many runners to grind to a halt. With Andy taking a back-seat in the meta now it only gets more volatile. If you think it’s not hard on Kate you’re mistaken.