guaranteed asset econ threat from turn 1.
Cardslots ( No need to add cards to save money from removing upgrades and assets.)
I think that the Whizz shell is fine. Adding the directive doesn’t help. Why not just add in HQI or Legwork with no drawback?
I personally find the install of HQI unpalatable, even in a deck with as much money as me. perhaps my aversion to the card is too harsh and unjustified. I did play a single Legwork in my SMC Whizz and never regretted seeing it. The idea behind NAT would be pressuring the Corp to commit more ICE to HQ, which Legwork doesn’t really do.
You’re right, though; the shell isn’t broken and why try to change it? If NAT were only 2 influence I think I’d slot it immediately as an experiment, but Clone Chips are so good here and I rarely hesitate to install and use NRE to great effect when it turns up.
@edmund_blake_nelson I played a fair share of SMC Whizzard, probably around 50 games. Granted that isn’t many, but I was always and still am a huge fan of the deck. I consider it a better deck versus traditional NBN FA strategies than L4J, but strictly worse in every other match-up.
I think your opinion that Val is strictly better than Whizzard is the mainstream one. I haven’t ever played Val, and Whizzard has been my Runner for 1,5 years now, so my opinion is biased. I think Whizzard’s main advantage is his ability to build board early while still forcing Corp to either lose assets or ICE them. Valencia is still paying a lot of money to trash assets, 2 for Jacksons/Adonis, 3 for PAD/Sponsorship, 4 for SanSan etc. That’s still a lot of money. Moreover, even with IHW it can still take awhile to find cards fast enough in a 45 card deck. I don’t think the L4J shell gains enough from Blackmail to make up for that disadvantage. Lastly, NRE+Yog is the best Lotus fix in the game. TBH I don’t see Lotus Field very often right now. Not many are splashing for it out of faction like they were months ago, and even Jinteki lists are cutting down to 1 or none pretty frequently. Also, Atman 4 solves it
Plus, people flat underestimate Whizzard, for numerous reasons. Always helps.
HQI provides a quiet threat of pressure. I think it may be nicer than Legwork, currently.
With 0 SMC, how are we… finding our icebreakers. are we Jamming 9+ draw cards in our deck? if so why aren’t we MaXx? Are we running 3 of the 3 main ones and just hoping to get lucky? if so what are we doing with extra’s in the NEH matchup?
I will try 2 SMC in whizz though, with 2/2/2/1 yog/mimic/corroder/faust 1 clot and 1 medium, combined with 2 NAT and 3 career fair.
Career fair is broken, but it only barely makes you a much worse Kate. Playing earthrise hotel and using career fair twice to install 2 Daily casts, and playing 1 Sure gamble is a net of 0 cards and 4 clicks for 10 credits. Barely above opus efficiency. Kate get’s to play super cards like Double prepaid into quality time into 1 lucky finds into laundry and 1 gambles. For a net expense of 6 clicks (not counting laundry) and 0 cards for 18 credits. or a ratio of 3:1! Also Prepaid kate got setup so now she can throw the deck at the corp with super efficient lucky finds sure gambles and dirty laundry.
How does L4J whizzard fight that level of effiicency? Stimhacking into R&D to find Medium to get a free R&D+a free medium?
Is Street Peddler good in L4J? I saw a version on nrdb that dumped Career Fair entirely (can it even be called L4J!) and added Peddler and SMC. Is this more of an SMC Whizzard? (link)
you realize that L4J plays all those cards and Career Fair right? I’m not sure I’m understanding your argument. you also love to throw numbers around but they’re not the be-all-end-all in ANR.
By mid game In L4J I frequently find myself with 2 out of 3 breakers and a perpetual 15+ credits. You continue to dig through your deck and pressure all servers while never really losing any steam.
I’ve played Anatoliy’s whizzard deck for the last two weeks in october, It’s tremendously good. I’ve only made slight tweaks from his list here:
http://www.acoo.net/deck/14331/russian-nationals-2015-1st-mukhin-anatoliy-trash-this-thrash-that/
1 Like
no HQI in whizzard please.
Also I am the Whizzard super-fan, sorry Moist 
Sorry, is your whole post “Kate is better than Whizzard?”
Very original, no one else has realized how good Kate is at all. I guess we should just change the names of all threads to “kate thread” or “nbn thread”
1 Like
I ain’t buying it 
I think you should go to Kate thread?
yeah, this is my feeling as well (and it applies double for neutralize all threats, which is way too influence heavy to be a real option).
Honestly, I think the nature of the rig means that even just datasucker/s present a significant threat on all 3 centrals.
w/r/t comments about the decks viability, I think it’s uniquely positioned right now; thanks to sponsorship, public support, and other new trashable toys, assets and high-trash upgrades have never (or hardly) been more popular. I’m putting in a lot of games with L4J where whizzard goes off every turn until the game is all but won.
the influence spend of the orginal deck feels solid - 3 clones is a must and the 2 career fairs is fine - the one change I’ve gone back and forth on is atman and something else for faust and SMC. Late game, faust is strictly worse than atman imo, but the single SMC does quite a bit of work in terms of smoothing out bad draws.
last off, val is good, no doubt about it. Whizzard always has been and always will be meta call - right now, imo, he’s looking very strong, but Val doesn’t tend to go up and down with the meta: sooner or later whizz will be a bad call again and val will still be there… I think I’ll wait till then to sleeve her up 
I think it’s going to be a long time until Whizzard isn’t a strong ID. Runner economy is already strong and until rotation it can only stay the same or get stronger. IMO Corp is at a point where you need must-trash cards to open scoring windows of any kind (saving all but the rushiest of builds). Mumbad already looks to be an asset and upgrade heavy cycle.
Regarding Atman, I personally have never found myself debating swapping it. I believe Steven Wooley’s build that influenced L4J played 2 Atman. it’s even stronger with NRE when you can cover 2 tiers of ICE. Last night I installed Atman 6 to cover both a Gutenberg on RND and a Little Engine on HQ, for example. Faust is a strong card but I don’t think it makes sense in this shell of heavy economy.
Numbers are an illustration of a point.
We NEED to be better than kate on some axis in order to be viable. Having a better NEH matchup is probably the way to go, from what I could tell PSI was literally NBN.format so beating NBN is the top priority.
Kate is better at breaking eli, but whizzard is better at breaking toolbooth, and with atman at 4 break’s eli better than kate. We are just as efficient on the architect front.
Whizzard is WAY better at the trashing of PAD and Sansan city grid, and has better sustained R&D pressure, however has weak HQ pressure compared to Kate.
My point is we need to be only slightly behind kate in eco, and if you can manage that then the Whizzard deck is better than the kate deck at beating the most important matchup.
The other front to fight is the Haarp and RP matchup. We have in faction I’ve had worse for scorch protection but that’s really about it. Just I’ve had worse is only ok and whizzard doesn’t like Imp very much, so imping away the kill is probably non viable. IHW+dodging is reasonable though.
RP is a matchup where stimhack and parasite shine. Whizzard can also fight the asset econ better than anyone so Whizzard could be as good as kate here.
My point is that whizzard does have a CHANCE to be great, my questions aren’t “do this or you suck” it’s “try to manage to not fall behind kate and then whizzard has a place as a top runner with kate”
1 Like
I understand. Whizzard SMC definitely does have a great NBN Fastro match-up. That said, I don’t think you can get much better in that match-up than PPVP Kate. Medium may be the only reason, but CVS are slotted pretty aggressively. 2 seems to be the Fastro standard, and some lists in PSI played 3.
I agree that SMC Whizzard has a strong FA and RP mu. Personally I think RP is on the decline thanks to all the Anarch being played. I would actually consider the SMC mu versus butcher shop to be significantly worse than Kate. Lastly, the biggest gulf between SMC and L4J is against ETF. The SMC build relies heavily on stealing early agendas in that mu. When that fails you, it isn’t uncommon to be taxed out by ETF.
I suppose if you expect a field of Fastro, which I imagine those at the highest level should, SMC may be the better choice. I do think you lose a lot against HB though
Should you play Film Critic in L4J? What do you cut? Do you go down to one copy of NRE?
Is one of your tweaks accounting for the presence of lotus field? I guess you just Atman.
I didn’t enounter any NBN in both polish nationals and PSI, save for first PSI game with Matuszczak. The meta is not so tight, not only NBN and Kate are worth playing at the highest competitive tier.
So one thing I considered was slotting Data Dealer to deal with News Team. It felt great doing that once but obviously that influence and slot can work to just grab more agendas. But watching all the Jinteki games against SYNC hurts to take the tags and just slows an already short NBN matchup.