I understand that of the influence available, Reclamation Order is probably the first card to go. It is also commonly accepted that 2 Traffic Accident is sufficient for most games.
However, I have to say that recently the abundance of Noise, Ed Kim, and Imp in just about every half decent Anarch deck has made me wonder if Reclamation Order is really the place to cut. I had at least one game at the Cambridge Regionals where Reclamation Order to put Scorches back in my hand won me the game.
I understand, it is also an operation, it suffers from the same vulnerability. Is the answer just pray for Jacksons to put kill cards back in the deck? Because if that is the case that could be a losing bet more often than not.
I am a big believer in SanSans. The card draw and threat of scoring is invaluable. I scored out at least two of my wins at regionals, and maybe I didn’t ever rez one, but I certainly had them trashed plenty, which only furthers your “credit differential” cause.
Maybe I’m just living in a very Anarch heavy meta, but I’m curious about answers to Imp/operation trashing in this environment.
Also, has Enigma been worthwhile? Especially with resurgence of Yog.0?
First of all, due to heavy drawing (because you want to assemble those combo pieces), you are susceptible to milling yourself out.
Second of all, the main key pieces of the deck take up too much space and if you want to cut something, you end up affecting the deck dramatically.
The key pieces of the deck are (well, minus one or 2 agendas, if you’re aiming at the 44 cards) 11 agendas + 9 (or 8) kill cards + (at least) 6 money operations + 3 Jacksons (obviously, but also need him to draw those combo pieces and get the agendas into the bin) + at least 10 ICE (3 Data ravens + 3 wraparounds + 3 cheap code gates (I like Pop-Ups, however I see the point being made about Quandary) + another tagging sentry, such as Gutenberg, best as a 2-of. We have ourselves 11 ICE in this case) = 40 cards. Yes, you can live with this composition, but you also need money to feed the Midseasons trace. I might’ve sounded wrong - I didn’t mean that it’s something noone should do and that it’s absolutely stupid. What I meant was (and this might sound as misunderstandable as the statement before, I’m sorry, English is my 2nd language) that you NEED deck space to put your cards in, you have so many combo pieces that your deck relies on. Furthermore, you need cards that dilute the agenda density, making it less vulnerable to R&D digs.
With a 44 card deck we can probably afford to cut down on a little of everything, in order to maximise our chances of drawing the best type of each card. I’ll look over the numbers properly here when not on my phone.
Yes, you want to draw your combo pieces but you also need to draw your support cards. And R&D lock is what destroys this deck and with smaller deck size you die to it more quickly and more times than with a bigger deck size. Would love to see those stats though!
I haven’t given much thought to TGTBT in any other deck besides NEH, but I absolutely love it. My agenda spread is currently 1x Restructured Datapool, 3x Astro, 3x NAPD, 2x BN, 3x TGTBT. The vulnerability of Datapool is offset by the fact that you can surprise them with tags from TGTBT that they weren’t expecting while simultaneously turning on Midseasons if they are able to clear them.
Dumping 2x TGTBT in Archives and intentionally overdrawing with Jackson to bait an Archives run is one of my favourite things to do (even if it only works once on each person, lol). Best case scenario, you land two tags and can kill them on your turn. Worst case, they clear the tags but now your Midseasons is turned on and they have that many less credits to fight the trace.
Its nice for a close tempo swing, but after a long year of running it, I’m considering taking it out, just for slots. I love the ability to IAA it behind 2 Dravens and make the runner eat tags for days though.
Sentry (6)
3 Data Raven
1 Information Overload
2 Pup
Never missed Gutenberg, I believe now that it is more useful in fastrobiotic, because in butchershop you should defend your RND after midseason, and this card is obviously a bad choise for that. Pup, otherwise, is amazing and have done some good job.
I’ve faced 3 Whizzards and beat them all. One game by scoring (good old astrotrain, always good against anarchs), two by flatline. Also flatlined Kate, Restructures were good there to keep up with her burst ecenomy (I’ve played Midseason for 30 against 25 creds to give 4 tags). Lost one game to Hayley: wasted BN+astro token to burn the Utopia Shard, probably should’ve try some luck and kill (had 1 traffic and 1 scorch in hand). Then she had found clot and two plascretes quite fast, while I even couldn’t draw enough eco to threaten with midseason.
Maybe Reclamation Order has its place in the deck. Today I played against Maxx and she kept using Wanton Destruction to empty my hand. And naturally, each time my hand was full of kill cards that I had been accumulating for later use! In this case Reclamation Order (which I didn’t have) would have been a great way to get the kills cards back into HQ (noting that this card may also have ended up being trashed). Other than that, Jackson Howard can be used, but he only puts the cards back into R&D.
Was it Eater MaxX? Eater MaxX has a really good matchup against Butchershop because of Keyhole, Wanton, and Singularity. Also she often runs Siphon and almost always Vamp, so staying richer than her isn’t easy.
If you’re going to splash something for MaxX hate, Crisium Grid is the obvious choice and Cerebral Static is the hilarious troll choice.
My friend has been playing this deck and I’m really not sure what to do against it. I’ve sometimes been able to rush out 5 points under the threat of midseasons but then you get into a lock once they get set up. They make 5-6 money before each turn with Kati going, so you can’t keep up once they trash your economy, and they have clot to prevent you fast advancing the win.
Does anyone have any advice for playing against this? Here’s the list I’ve been using (deckbuilding advice is also welcome):
My advice would be to play 3 Breaking News and go BN behind Data Ravens. That should hopefully open up a midseasons window for the kill. I don’t think you’ll win the money war in a long game. Also, play 3 Data Ravens.
I am running 3 bn and a tgtbt now, and it just does so much for you. Also a closed accounts can be good. But most importantly against decks like the one above, put pressure on them early. Don’t give them time to set up. Threaten the score, or definitely the kill. Scoring an early astro makes both the kill by Breaking News and just winning by score out much more viable. Restructure instead of DBS sounds dece.
But yeah the congress deck looks fairly slow. I’d be much more worried about playing v traditional prepaid kate with burst econ and the ability to multi access your hand and R&D for no money
Thanks for the help! I’m going to try
-2 DBS
-1 Quandary
-1 Beale (Assuming this is the cut above NAPD?)
-1 PAD
+2 Restructure
+1 Data Raven
+1 Breaking News
+1 TGTBT
and see how that does.
I played one game with a few of these changes, and the Restructures definitely seemed to help.
I’d cut a pop up window over a quandary. And maybe make room for another quandary or enigma.
The thing is that pop ups, whilst mildly helpful early in creating economic disparity between you and the corp, is 100% dead after midseasons, and also pretty dead if the runner actually manages to have comfortably higher money than you. This means that you’ll sometimes just finish the game, losing to a medium or maker’s eye, because you only had a data raven and pop up in front of R&D after midseasoning and not finishing the job.
More cheap etr means gear checks, but also means you can go for remote breaking news plays that don’t involve data raven more often.
Also yes, beale is the cut above napd. You want them to steal napd, or you want them to know where it is but not steal it because they are too scared (though keep in mind if you leave it somewhere easy to get to, they’ll remember to go for it on game point). With the higher density of 1 pointers they’ll also often have to steal 5 agendas to win rather than 4, which makes you a happy chap, with more chances to not only kill, but also midseasons etc.
Anyway tl/dr: don’t cut quandary, find more etr ice like another quandary or enigma and cut questionable pop ups, and see how you go
She was using Chrome City cards to boost her maximum hand size and generate extra clicks for Wanton. The main breaker was Faust. I just managed a scoring win, primarily because she didn’t have Clot. Wraparound was the MVP!
Faust in MaxX seems like a madman’s dream to me. I already pitch like half my deck to the ID ability as it is, so I have no idea where she’s getting all the Faust ammo from. Sounds neato!
Crisium Grid will shut Wanton down pretty quick, though, and it’s really good against a bunch of other stuff, too.
The deck was very good, applying a ton of pressure throughout. I only won because my agendas were down towards the bottom of the deck. Of the mountain of cards shoved into archives, only a few agendas could be found.
