The average value of Daily casts is five credits, so if we’re saying PPVP averages out to 5-6, in a deck full of cards that benefit from PPVP, it would seem like it’s a better choice than Daily Casts for the reasons we’ve been talking about in the past few posts.
1 Like
Except that the benefit is different. For all that I’m going with a different plan because PPVP let me down, it does make econ events more easily utilized. Additionally, it costs 1, with Kate, to play. Daily Casts costs 3, you’re not making your money back for two turns, instead of one – and LARLA can help recoup some of the money in a longer game.
Definitely seems like it merits some more testing, but acknowledging that it’s a recurring credit (which is different, inherently, than a gained credit) seems worthwhile.
2 Likes
One of the more useful anti-Shutdown cards there is. Protects everything in the deck but Inti (who cares) and Suckers, and is highly useful. However, backed against the wall, you’d toss it away. If anything, the opponent prob. wouldn’t even bother to PS with them out.
I think it’s worthy to discuss the merits of not running PPVP, but, as I noted, I believe you’re running a different deck and econ build then. Just swapping it for Casts doesn’t seem like a great trade. It’s a trade, but, if you LARLA at all, PPVP is the way to go.
3 Likes
bro do you even LARLA?
Joking aside, I played a game with my J:RP against a CT PPVP LARLA deck. To say it was a long game is an understatement. He didn’t LARLA until completely out of cards, and I saw him play two of the MF’in things ;). I got all three Jacksons off for max corp recursion and ended up losing 8-5 with ten of my cards left, 50c, while he had 15ish cards left after two LARLAs. I’d forced 5 clone chips to recur dead breakers and was taxing him 10c per run.
It was goddamn exhausting. I think I scored an agenda in every MF’in window he gave me, but all for naught.
4 Likes
[quote=“GreedyGuts, post:349, topic:938, full:true”]
Except that the benefit is different. For all that I’m going with a different plan because PPVP let me down, it does make econ events more easily utilized. Additionally, it costs 1, with Kate, to play. Daily Casts costs 3, you’re not making your money back for two turns, instead of one – and LARLA can help recoup some of the money in a longer game.[/quote]
Yes and no, you can play cards on less money with prepaid, but with daily casts you just have the extra money, so it’s a bit of a moot point past the first turn
would you rather have the +5 4 turns from now, or the +6 7 turns from now? prepaid obviously has benefits (very long games, protects against large power shutdowns, less vulnerable to tags), but daily casts is stronger in quicker games, which is how a lot of the stronger corps are playing. Glacier being the obvious exception.
I think a swap of kati for larla and casts for ppvp would probably work well
Except in, say, the case of Closed Accounts, or dealing with tags in general. PPVP is effectively tagme, or can be, whereas Resource econ… isn’t. PPVP helps pick a demolished econ back up in ways Kati doesn’t/can’t usually because trashing.
would you rather have the +5 4 turns from now, or the +6 7 turns from now? prepaid obviously has benefits (very long games, protects against large power shutdowns, less vulnerable to tags), but daily casts is stronger in quicker games, which is how a lot of the stronger corps are playing. Glacier being the obvious exception.
I’d rather have +1 one turn from now rather than having -1 one turn from now. I’d rather have +2 two turns from now, rather than +1 two turns from now.
PPVP is actually faster if you’re using it, and you want faster, since that’s, y’know, how a lot of the stronger corps are playing. I want to be able to afford to get into that server now, not have a potential slight advantage 4 turns from now.
[maybe I won’t use PPVP every turn, so in the short run (3-4 turns) Daily Casts may sometimes be noticeably ahead…but I found it really surprising that your argument was essentially “Daily Casts is better than PPVP for keeping tempo” when the reality is literally the exact opposite. PPVP certainly has drawbacks, and I’ll be reexamining PPVP and reconsidering other economy options like Daily Casts - but you’re kind of making the wrong argument. The whole “it’s real money not conditional recurring credits” thing from earlier in your post is a better one.]
Don’t forget to account for all that card draw you’ll need to have a play-worthy Event with cost > 0 each turn. If you actually need all your clicks for plays, Daily Casts does indeed seem better.
sidenote: personally, I don’t like Daily Casts outside of an Aesop’s situation (the two reasons being “completely dead if hit by Midseasons” and “doesn’t actually make you money until the 4th turn”), but I found the need to be drawing a negative effect of Pad.
I’ve been doing a LOT of testing for regionals, which is what turned me off ppvp, but in general I didn’t always have a turn where I only installed it, (thereby making it cost 1) and immediately had an event to play. More often it got installed during a quality time turn where I was installing several things/constrained on clicks. Kate discount speeds it up a lot, but if you have to wait a turn to use it, it functionally cost you a credit when evaluating efficiency.
Isn’t Aesop’s also dead if hit by Midseasons?
Aesop doesn’t fix the first problem, but it addresses the second one while also increasing the profit margin somewhat.
Most of these analyses are still using best cast scenario for PPVP. You actually need to draw more than two cards per turn to use it consistently. Anyone got numbers to report yet?
@Ajar nailed the other factor, the mulligan decision is tricky. I’ve seen several PPVP decks absolutely crawl at the start, playing their PPvPs but then too busy running in phase 1 to draw the 2 cards a turn needed to use them. It might sometimes be the right move to hold back your PPVP and play just one economy event to fuel your early cheap runs.
PPVP may be improved upon, or ‘subpar’, in most of your eyes.
Yet, it was used to finish 2nd and 1st in two 70+ person tourneys in the past two months.
Just sayin’.
3 Likes
I also finished second in the toulouse regional with a Voicepad Katman, fourth in the Antwerpen Regional (The third placer also played PPvP) and second in the Liege CP.
2 Likes
If only they made cards that let you draw more cards… Then this deck might be good.
1 Like
I agree with @spags here. I think the issue arises wherein people expect to have a magical opening draw with PPVP, SMC, and econ/draw. Fact is, your game is far from ruined if you draw PPVP late unless you’re facing an extremely taxing deck; which is generally slow to play so you have more time to set up anyways (so to be more direct, mulligan for PPVP against HB). And in that case I’m more than happy SOTing LFs if I’m short on money.
1 Like
It seems weird to me to complain that PPVP are only good for long games, and propose Daily Casts as an alternative. I might agree that there are games where you don’t want to waste time on PPVP, but in those games Daily Casts would be even worse. Instead, use your econ events for instant burst, without worrying too much about long-term econ, and just win quickly.
2 Likes
One can argue about having any card buried. Crim having their 3 Siphons (less of a problem post-H&P) in the bottom 10 cards? Suckage.
I’ve had games with all PPVPs buried in the bottom 10 cards. Not the end of the world. Surprisingly, events are still playable/good without PPVP. They become that much greater when discounted.
I’m done arguing for PPVP, because it really doesn’t need to be done. If you think it’s bad, and want to try alternatives, godspeed. However, if you think of the design goal of creating an alternative econ build, especially for Shaper, I believe the results are in:
4 Likes
Too bad poor Prof can’t play Lucky Finds 
3 Likes
Agreed, I played PPVP at two regionals and came in the bottom 4 in one, and top 8 the next day (same decks, ~ 40 players both days). I found it to be wildly inconsistent, often hinging on which way up the deck decided to come out. I also agree that it leaves you some tricky mulligan decisions.
Yeah but a lot of tournaments have been won by sub-par decks - Jinteki won Worlds back when they were terrible. I grant you PPVP econ is a little more reliable than Jinteki were back then, but nevertheless I find this point to be a bit of a non-sequitur.
I think the Kate argument is slightly falacious. Obviously your credit position, in real terms, is better with Kate but it’s Kate generating that saving, not PPVP. The fact that you paid $1 less for it was because you chose to play Kate rather than any other identity. Obviously your actual economic position is what’s important so the point has some validity, but you could also argue that PPVP shows up sooner, on average, for Chaos Theory and so you get comparatively more value out of it from her. Those two effects probably cancel one another out.
I’m not sure if this anecdote is in support of PPVP economy or not? It seems to me like a Magnum Opus economy would have been just as effective for the runner, if not more so? It would take 5 clicks to recover the funds to make another run, but that window isn’t enough for Jinteki to score most of their agendas.
The economy basis for a deck depends a lot on metagame decisions. In event based decks, where every card has a high individual value, cards in hand become a very important commodity. Drawing cards becomes more valuable and taking damage becomes more costly. As Jinteki become more popular in the environment, event-based economy will become weaker because losing cards to net damage hurts a lot more.
Moreover, it looks like Taurus might push runners away from over-reliance on hardware - for a little while at least. I’d say PPVP’s days are numbered.
1 Like