Haarpsichord also has some interesting plays available to it. One can install advance breaking news and install another agenda, and it creates a real lose-lose. If they go for the BN that is a potentially scored astro, beale, or Exploda. Alternatively if they choose to take the non-advanced agenda it can yield 5 creds or give a tag with tgbgt, and open some kill plays with the advanced BN.
One nice property of Film Critic is that decks that run Film Critic (Kate) are usually the decks that don’t run IHW (Anarch), so SEA Source becomes a lot better.
5 Likes
Great, it seems that some hope remains!
Looking at the situation, if the runner has Film Critic but no Plascrete (and 5 cards in hand and no tags) then we have:
SEA Source -> Scorched Earth -> Scorched Earth (8 damage)
Breaking News 1x Advance -> Traffic Accident -> Scorched Earth (or similar; maximum 8 damage)
Breaking News Score -> Traffic Accident -> Scorched Earth -> Scorched Earth (or similar; maximum 12 damage)
If the runner has both Film Critic and Plascrete (and 5 cards in hand) then it becomes much more difficult- only the third combination above would result in the kill. In this case we have to advance Breaking News twice and make full use of the identity. However, advancing it twice would consume the entire turn, meaning that the other agenda would already need to be in play- or that an Astro counter would be required, I think?
So far it seems to me that runners are not respecting the SEA source which tends to get kills in the game. I am running SSCG so the BN + astro token + SSCG leaves two clicks to kill. This will normally happen mid to late. I’ve converted to the 12 agenda suite slotting a TGBGT and 3 breaking news. I may swap TGBGT to the new 2/1 with D&D.
I think people should and are expecting sea source now. I was at the Australian nationals (rocking butchershop, which went undefeated on day 1 for me) on the weekend, and saw a fair few sea sources in other people’s butchershop decks. And Old Hollywood wasn’t legal yet. So yeah, people are definitely on top of it already
2 Likes
So what’s the right package for sea/mid seasons right now? 2 and 2? 1 and 3? 3 and 0?
Once all seeing I is legal it might help out a bit too. Being able to do a full resource wipe seems a little scarier to me than merely closing the runners accounts or purging all virus counters.
I was also wondering about this. It seems worthwhile to retain Midseasons since Film Critic will not always be in the opponent’s deck, and even if it is, it may not come out early. Maybe 2 and 2? Are there any corp cards that allow operations to be tutored?
Aggressive Negotiations is splashable, but difficult to trigger.
Could always put in corporate shuffle if you wanna play the NBN moneyballkilllottery.
A 2/2 split is what I saw at nats. Also 3 midseason 1 sea source in one deck. But I liked the 2/2 split, and if I continued to play the deck now that’s what I’d go for
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2 and 2 seems the way to go for now.
I tried butchershop out of Haarp today and really missed the draw I got out of NEH. I probably will have to try to find room for either daily business or some other form of draw.
Also are people still running PAD out of a Haarp build? Almost seems better to go back to Melange, especially if you are using SEA Source.
Hello everyone! How are your testings against Film Critic going? Right now I’m trying list with 2 SEA Sources and 2 Midseasons.
Near-Earth Hub: Broadcast Center
Agenda (11)
3 AstroScript Pilot Program
2 Breaking News
3 Explode-a-palooza
3 Project Beale
Asset (6)
3 Jackson Howard
3 Marked Accounts
Upgrade (3)
3 SanSan City Grid
Operation (16)
3 Hedge Fund
2 Midseason Replacements
2 Restructure
3 Scorched Earth
2 SEA Source
3 Sweeps Week
1 Traffic Accident
Barrier (2)
2 Wraparound
Code Gate (5)
2 Enigma
3 Pop-up Window
Sentry (6)
2 Cortex Lock
3 Data Raven
1 Gutenberg
I’ve decided to go with only one Traffic Accident, cause now we are not always relying on Midseason. Last 4 influence I’ve spent on 2 Cortex Lock, but maybe Snares are better, also Psychic Field is interesting.
I’ve played only against Kate so far, and if she runs only critics, then it’s not a big problem, but if she runs plascrete as well, then it becomes almost impossible to burn her. And our anarchs matchup becomes more difficult with only 1 TA…
Do you have any ideas, guys? I don’t want to give up on butchershop, cause I’ve won both SC and Regionals with this deck, and want to bring it to Nationals.
Personally I would go to one midseason and add a cvs. Snares are certainly a good include here.
I just think that slows the deck’s kill potential down way too much. They still have to draw Film Critic, and Midseasons is still a great draw before the game gets to that point.
I’d definitely stick to two traffic accidents…but in large part due to the fact that breaking news kills are also still a thing, and it’s just such a good kill condition. But I’ll likely just follow the success of butchershop decks for now and will go back to nearpad for some gnks and stuff, for fun!
Is anyone now considering Reclamation Order to recycle Scorched Earth back? It seems that with SEA Source and 2x Scorched a single Plascrete will ruin the plan…unless you can get the used kill cards back to hand. However, this uses up some influence and so NEH would be needed as opposed to HS (or drop TA to 1x).
Considering the original has Reclamation Order, I’d suspect adding it in is just fine.
Good one pal! The original deck did not itself have SEA Source- but as per the thread, things have been happening since then with certain key card releases 
SEA source always had problems, and midseason replacements more or less fixed them, but now SEA source is required to fix the problem with midseasons, so now we have come to a nice middle ground. So many times I’ve wanted SEA source in my decks cause runners act like they ain’t scuured
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I played two Midseason and two SEA Source with great success at the Polish Nationals, only dropped one game with the Corp. SEA Source for the Film Critic defense and Midseason for Plascrete defense works perfectly well. Most of the time you can score out anyway because everyone chickens out. 
3 Likes
Care to share your list?