I’ve been thinking about this. How often when you are running Plascretes do you die anyway because you don’t see it or only draw one when you needed two? Genuine question, I’m trying to get a feel for percentages here.
If, for argument’s sake, you still lose to Weyland maybe 50% of the time anyway, even when you do have Plascretes, then it’s not so crazy to drop them in favour of something that’s more universally useful. Every deck has bad matchups, but if your meta is light on Weyland then why not take a calculated risk? Experience shows that Weyland doesn’t do so well in the KO stages of tournies against experienced opponents, so you can hope to use that to your advantage and rely on the fact that many of them will lose.
To win a tournament you need to have good matchups, some favourable draws and the occasional lucky access. That’s part of what Netrunner is. Why not just embrace the variance and accept you might lose a bit more to one card, but be reassured that you’re now stronger against all the other decks.
I have a few thoughts on some of the ideas so far:
In games I don’t win or lose very quickly, I go through most of the deck because of how aggressively I draw. I’ll spend 3c on a QT with no VPs on the board and four cards in hand if I don’t have what I want. I haven’t played much Weyland or NBN Scorch, but I’ve almost always had a Plascrete on the board when I wanted one, and drawn or both one many, many times when I didn’t want it in other matches. I’ve won all but one of my Weyland games, but that isn’t saying too much.
I’ll use the Test Run to grab a DX if I can’t find one, but in general, Test Run / Scavenge is one element of the deck I’m not completely happy with. However, I think it comes with the Femme / Dino package, and Scavenge is needed for Cyber-Cypher. I’m looking forward to testing a revised suite when the stealth decoder comes out in Lunar – I’m thinking Cloak + Dagger + Refractor in place of Femme, Cyber-Cypher, Dino, Test Run, and Scavenge.
I don’t like Kati in this list, because Lucky Find and Same Old Thing are both click-intensive. I don’t think I can afford another click tax.
I think I’d only want Planned Assault if I could have more than one, which I don’t see a good way to achieve. I may still add an Indexing, though.
There’s a strong argument to be made for just putting in the third SOT. @Lysander even runs the third SOT over the third Clone Chip.
I could go down to one DX and add the second Test Run, which IIRC @Lysander added over his Sharpshooter. I see enough Grims that I like having Sharpshooter around to grab with SMC when I can’t afford to Femme it.
I also use Test Run to kill zero-str ice with parasite. I also find that the “surprise I just femmed your remote for almost nothing to get in this turn and steal that agenda” play to be very, very effective in my experience, especially in the early turns. People will often try to score behind a single piece of ice early when they see I’m not criminal, and with your other tools and the fact that femme breaks sentries, there’s a good chance you can [surprise!] get through a two-ice server with that move, too.
This weekend I’ll try dropping the plascretes for the third SOT and an indexing (with 2 maker’s eye) and see how it goes. Hopefully I’ll run into some scorch or punitive users to test against.
My only losses were to a Weyland: BaBW in Swiss (I had a slow start, and he pushed through a Cleaners and a 1-counter Atlas, and from there it was pretty much game), and two back-to-back Jinteki: RP in double elim. Which, by the way, was one of the most frustrating hours of my life, but that’s besides the point.
Some things to take note of:
Up till recently I’ve been a diehard Santiago player; it was only 3 days before the tournament when I decided that Gabe Knight just wasn’t working. So that was pretty much the timeframe I had to practice with the deck, which speaks volumes as to its effectiveness.
My original version played 2 Legworks, I swapped out one for the Crescentus and Datasucker on the morning itself. While I’m still agonizing to this day which card to cut to make it 45 cards, both the replacements performed admirably on the day itself. I Crescentus-ed a Tollbooth and Wall of Thorns with a SMC’ed Cyber-Cypher and SMC’ed Corrodersaurus respectively, which I would imagine was a massive morale hit across the table. Also, I find that people are much less likely to purge counters if you don’t have Atman on the field. Speaking of which…
While I get that 4tman and Femmasaurus are our best answers to high-strength Sentries, I still find that I’m very unwilling to commit either to the board. Having to spend a minimum of 7(6) credits on a single program really turns me off, not when the rig is as mutable as it is. As a result, I was struggling with Ichi 1.0s all day (and once, a Susanoo that lost me the game).
MVPs of the deck were definitely Cyber-Cypher and Parasite. Cards that underperformed for me were the miser’s Scavenge (didn’t use it the whole day, surprisingly), and to a lesser extent Test Run. LARLA pulled its weight more than once, allowing me to stay in the game against the more grindy matchups: EtF and RP spring to mind.
Going forward, I’m looking into the Indexing/TME split. I still favor Indexing, but TME synergises very well with the other card I’m dying to include: Imp, Which, coincidentally, makes my Legwork and Scavenge better as well, I have no idea what to cut for it, though, seeing that I’m already struggling to cut to 45 cards…
I should’ve cut one Maker’s Eye for LARLA. Went 1-5 with PPVP (one of the tournament winning lists, though I forget which one off the top of my head). Four games against Jinteki, three of those against Replicating Perfection, and I just didn’t have the econ to sustain the kind of necessary pressure.
Also, Maker’s Eye is a traitorous jerk. (Used it 10 or so times last night. Saw a grand total of two Agendas with it, despite timing each to avoid overlap.)
Definitely some play mistakes, too, but I think that swap would’ve made a few more games winnable that weren’t. I lost those games before LARLA was required, but certainly not before it might’ve done me a lot of good.
Anyone had any experience trying the deck without plascretes? I didn’t run into a single deck using meat damage at my weekly tourney or on OCTGN past few days, so I haven’t gotten to really test it yet. I replaced them with Indexing and the 3rd Clone Chip, but I wish I could put another econ card in there. Thoughts?
Yesterday, at the Liege Regional, I got flatlined with double scorched by a Jinteki Replicating Perfection deck after hitting a snare and not clearing the tag because I was at low credits at time (1 cred if I Remember correctly) and didn’t really fear a closed account.
It was unexpected and it gave me an humility lesson I wouldn’t forget.
The winner of the 41 player regional last weekend was running a prepaid voicepad deck with no plascrete. There were very few weyland decks present, but there were several NBN decks running mid-season/scorched, at least two in the top 8.
I’ve tried it on OCTGN a few times. Beat CI Scorch once in 3 tries, because he was bad at math. Other time, was on game point and couldn’t get that final point.
It really depends on how completely confident you are that your meta doesn’t scorch people at all. In my regular playgroup, one guy runs a mean CI Scorch deck, another used to play TWIY* TurboScorch before I convinced him to change to Astrobiotics (yeah, I know right, what was I thinking), and another PE player with a singleton Scorch.
On the other hand, at my Regionals there were only 4 Weyland players, one of them being myself. Two made top 8, one top 16, and the last was 17th. Also, our winner was a Midseason/Psycho/Scorch NBN: MN. It’s entirely possible that people are just becoming complacent against the threat of Scorched Earth, but make of the data what you will.
I, for one, will not be taking out my Plascretes anytime soon…
I’ve been running 1x Magnum Opus instead of Plascrete in Kate because against a Weyland or NBN matchup you can just tutor it out and outpace them economically. Seems ok, but I rarely see SE decks.
Didn’t mean to be repetitive, was following up on the earlier discussion on the topic to see if anyone had been testing it after we talked about it - I have been testing it but just haven’t run into anyone using scorch yet.
So this is what I’m running at the moment - any suggestions? I’ve run it in a couple of tournaments and not gone lower than 3rd, but it does feel like it’s missing something.
I’m thinking of dropping a Sharpshooter for an Atman. Dino is mostly there for strong sentries but I actually haven’t managed to drop it yet. I do really love Indexing here - you really want it early and can put on some serious pressure.
@shmyberfeeder how are you finding the deck without Diesel and Parasite? I find that it’s pretty hard to kick the habit once you start pulling off end-of-turn shenanigans with SMC to kill annoying Komainus.
Speaking of which, I get a very strong feeling that RP is a pretty bad matchup for this deck. A burst econ deck like this really has issues with multiple asset econ, well, assets. And it’s not like HBFA when you can just snipe the campaigns and the SanSans and Indexing for points every other turn, not when half their agendas protect themselves (TFP, NAPD) and the other half protects the first half as well (Nisei, False Lead). More so than EtF, RP feels like it has the ability to grind you out over 20 turns, then Niseitrain their way to victory.
