Let's talk Whizzard

PeekaySK · January 19, 2015, 10:56am

Depends on your opponent - if they double-ice, just money up and don’t run first turn. If they don’t, take the random access they gave you and see what happens after that. Maybe a reasonable line of play opens up and LA becomes dead for a while - whatever. Or maybe you’ll just see a piece of ice, and can then still go credit, install LA, LA.

kenobob · January 19, 2015, 8:02pm

I often have trouble floating 6 credits to play Liberated. I was referring to games where it all comes together (early Sure Gambles and Daily Casts and the like). Those games LA is great, but that’s probably true for any game where econ falls together.

When I get some playing time in tomorrow I’m gonna test a deck with all economy that leads to LA. 3 Gambles, 2-3 Queen’s, 3 Dirty Laundry, 3 LA.

I also want to test my current Cyberfeeder package with Kati instead of LA, but I have to do other stuff besides play netrunner. Someone theorycraft Kati vs LA for me.

moistloaf · January 19, 2015, 8:05pm

I’ve been running Spinal Modem in my Whizzard for awhile, I am generally very happy to install it. It’s 2 Cyberfeeders in 1, with the upside of 1 MU and a downside that is rarely relevant. Although funny enough I did lose a game to @Scorcho because I totally forgot about that rarely relevant downside. Pretty sure I got brained by Manhunt and died lol.

moistloaf · February 23, 2015, 6:19pm

continuing discussion re: Whizzard from the Influence Inflation thread.

Where are these claims that Whizzard wasn’t strong pre ONC? He had the highest win rate amongst anarchs in SHL2, and second highest Runner winrate amongst players ending above 1500. Granted, he had the smallest Anarch sample size, but I don’t think you can write him off because of that. IMO Whizzard is underplayed because he isn’t flashy. I believe that Whizzard is a very strong ID, and players that know how to leverage his 3c a turn are going to see lots of success. I’d rather play a boring game of Netrunner with Whizzard than a game with Noise any day. I’d argue you also have a better chance of winning, too, if you know what you’re doing. I almost returned to my Whizzard build for SHL3, but decided to play some Leela. I balk at the claims that trashing assets is bad Netrunner. Corps don’t pay credits to rez irrelevant cards. Denying corp economy and tricks is not durdling. Being able to trash Jacksons from centrals and not lose any resources is huge. Sure, they will probably Jackson that one back in later, but they won’t have access to it for longer and that’s one more economy/agenda they can’t shuffle back in. Without Imp, Anarchs can lose a lot of steam trashing things like SanSan, DBS, and especially Eve. These are all cards that give the Corp a huge advantage. Some Runners might be content to wait for an Imp, or eat a Sure Gamble just to trash a DBS, but not me - I’ll take my 3 Whizzard credits and keep the aggression up. Whizzard is obviously weak versus remoteless and Operation based economy, but so are many Criminal builds. Blue Sun can be tough, but around the time of SHL2 I was playing a lot of Whizzard and rarely had trouble versus Blue Sun. NEH was my tough match-up, until I switched to an SMC build. MaxX is Whizzard’s biggest competition, since both can play Junk builds. In a vacuum, MaxX is stronger, but don’t discount Whizzard’s efficacy. Sorry for the rant, just had to defend my homie =)

fluffdasheep · February 23, 2015, 7:22pm

If it’s Whizzard you want, I just won an SC with him. See here.

voltorocks · February 23, 2015, 8:01pm

very first line of that post

Mostly from me, though that’s not really what I was driving at - my comments were in response to “why weren’t people playing whizz last cycle” (paraphrasing) and I just meant to say that non-noise anarchs in general were hurting a bit at the time.

I actually really agree with you, the Whizz hate over there got out of control (sorry!). I consider him my “home” ID - once you play enough games with him, playing other decks just tends to make you yearn for your days of carefree trashing!

I think this is really true. Yeah, there are games where i barely use whizzard (contrary to popular belief, he is never truly blank b/c no one play w/o jackson) but there are other games when I net 30+ credits from this ID without a single card slot (nearpad, let’s be friends!)

fluffdasheep · February 23, 2015, 8:07pm

I would say that IHW, Inject, and to a lesser extent Knifed and Wanton Destruction finally made Whizzard good, that is, fast enough to keep up with NEH somewhat. D4v1d is a huge deal against Blue Sun, where your ID ability is much less powerful, and since you now have all your draw influence-free, you can splurge for Test Run, which is basically 2 D4v1ds in one card (or another parasite, or whatever else you need).

Punching Jackson in the face is always a joy, always has been, and always will be.

PeekaySK · February 23, 2015, 8:21pm

…or you could use all that free influence to get strong economy, play an Atman at 10 and trolololo through Curtain Walls all day long!

(just sayin’)

fluffdasheep · February 23, 2015, 8:29pm

Then they’ll put an ICE in front of it and your Atman will feel very silly.

Atman’s a pretty good Lotus Field solution though, it’s worth considering for that alone. With Datasucker support, it also tears through space ICE if you run out of D4v1ds.

PeekaySK · February 23, 2015, 9:52pm

Sheesh, fine… I’ll type out the version I actually am using:

“Get two Suckers and an Atman at 6. Proceed to trololo through Archers, Curtain Walls, Hadrians and Wormholes. Save D4v1d for Nebulas and getting more counters immediately after a purge”.

AkAnderson · February 23, 2015, 10:01pm

Whizzard also just won a 35 player store championship in Salt Lake City. I’ll see if I can get the decklist.

Mjlaufgr · February 27, 2015, 4:01am

I’m an unrepentant Whizz fan. I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched players packing flavor of the month anarch decks run into trashable asset after asset, upgrade after upgrade. They end up bleeding themselves dry to kill sansans, ash, econ, whatever, when Whizzard would crumple all that shit up and throw it away…if not for free, than at least at very favorable exchange rates.

moistloaf · February 27, 2015, 4:07am

awaiting that list. a 35 player tournament is no joke!

edmund_blake_nelson · February 27, 2015, 4:07am

Basically Take your old SMC whizzard deck and make the following changes

-Whizzard + valencia

+3 I’ve had Worse

+1 John Masanori
+1 Queen’s Gambit

and you have a better deck. Valencia ability is super good with SMC and it hits centrals harder.

moistloaf · February 27, 2015, 4:09am

ill have to test it out. you don’t think that extra 5 cards matter? I was going to start testing this post ONC version of Whizz Junk:

###[Whizzard SMC][1] (45 cards)

[Whizzard: Master Gamer][2]

Event (16)

3 [Dirty Laundry][3]
3 [I’ve Had Worse][4]
2 [Legwork][5] ••••
2 [Queen’s Gambit][6]
3 [Stimhack][7]
3 [Sure Gamble][8]

Hardware (3)

3 [Grimoire][9]

Resource (7)

3 [Daily Casts][10]
2 [John Masanori][11]
2 [Liberated Account][12]

Icebreaker (6)

2 [Corroder][13]
2 [Mimic][14]
1 [Yog.0][15]
1 [ZU.13 Key Master][16] ••

Program (13)

2 [D4v1d][17]
3 [Datasucker][18]
2 [Medium][19]
3 [Parasite][20]
3 [Self-modifying Code][21] ••••• ••••

AkAnderson · February 27, 2015, 4:27am

I’ll keep bugging him for it

crossbrainedfool · February 27, 2015, 7:09am

Brewed up a deck with BenConn a few days ago.

Reassembled from memory:
N3cr0manc3r

Whizzard: Master Gamer

Event (18)
2x Diesel ••••
2x Déjà Vu
3x I’ve Had Worse
2x Knifed
1x Quality Time •
3x Special Order ••••• •
2x Spooned
3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (4)
2x Grimoire
2x Clone Chip ••••

Resource (5)
3x Armitage Codebusting
2x Kati Jones

Icebreaker (7)
2x Corroder
1x Eater
2x Mimic
2x Yog.0

Program (11)
2x Datasucker
2x Gravedigger
2x Imp
2x Medium
3x Parasite

Gravedigger really helps Whizzard versus horizontal decks. It basically makes installing naked assets a really bad idea, and adds a Noise-esque pressure (although not as strong).

What makes it particularly powerful is that it takes a normally negating/controlling action that Whizzard is really good at - trashing assets and upgrades - and adds a form of positive/aggressive pressure to it. Now trashing a DBS/San San/ PAD is not just slowing down the corp, it helps accelerate your win. Of course, it also synergizes nicely with ice destruction, and triggers occasionally from the corps own actions.

moistloaf · February 27, 2015, 7:30am

My issue with Gravedigger is that it exacerbates an issue he already has, which are remoteless decks. I think to get value out of Gravedigger you have to dedicate deck space to ICE destruction beyond Parasite, which I think is ultimately a shakey build.

crossbrainedfool · February 27, 2015, 7:40am

To be sure, it’s not as good in glacier matchups, but still does a surprising amount of work. Most of these decks often run upgrades, or occasionally trash their own ice.

Mjlaufgr · February 27, 2015, 9:39am

Gravedigger is a classic win-more kind of card, yeah? Because if you’re trashing an asset with whizz, you’re already getting ahead, since trash costs are balanced around people who aren’t getting 3 trash creds a turn.

I personally tend to use less win-more cards than I use start-winning-in-the-first-place cards. Whizzard is naturally somewhat hostage to an opponent’s deck construction, though the intrinsic value of trashable cards mitigates that to a degree… It’s hard to get rid of your adonis, your sansans, etc, from your deck design, particularly in a whizzard light meta. Which is, as of press time, every meta. Regardless of the general applicability of Whizz’s ability, though, cards like this tend to put still more eggs in that basket, which makes me nervous.