New Angeles Sol

Decklists
221

I have 3 Wrap, 3 Archangel and a Little Engine. I’m not sure how much more you can tax D4v1d and still have a sensible ice suite! Particularly with Swordsman acting as another ‘non-Faust’ gear check.

The hardest question! Basically: the critical pieces, given the gamestate and that you’re a rush deck (or it’s a bit later and you’re a FA deck, or it’s a bit later and you’re now glacier…).

Actually, I think it’s critical to name Faust first. Force them to install it by rushing out. It’s quite possible to have someone not play Wyldside and still Faust and D4v1d their way to enough points to win. It’s much harder to win without Faust. I might name Wyldside next, but D4v1d is usually the next target. Medium is also not a bad call if you have a FA threat (Astro tokens, SanSan safe) but a weak R&D.

Noise is similarly tricky, but naming Parasite can often be more important than Aesop or Wyldside.

Against Shaper, you can get a long way naming SMC and trying to start scoring. Personal Workshop becomes a gold mine for you, as do Stealth rigs as you know exactly their breakers and they have limited alternatives.

Against Criminal you can name Account Siphon and guard HQ with a PopUp, but at some point they will go tag-me and everyone gets rich. This is probably bad for you. You can usually name their whole rig, or name Special Order, too.

Things I have named and regretted are cards they don’t have to play. Sure Gamble, Daily Casts, Liberated, Personal Workshop, Aesop, Wyldside, Desperado - these are all fine choices that ultimately the runner might just avoid playing.

I prefer not to give the runner the choice - name Faust, SMC, Corroder, D4v1d, Medium, Parasite, R&D Interface. These cards are absolutely critical for their specific decks (i.e. they can’t win without them, bar one-off tricks or pinging R&D for single accesses). Figuring out the specific card given the board state and your opponent’s deck is the hardest part of playing out the current.

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222

interesting, thankyou for your take on this

what is your ideal first turn? sweeps, ETR ice, astro? or do you prefer to ice up centrals e.g. with popups and play the current and go for the first score in turns 2-3

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Assuming no crippling HQ threat? News Hound, 0-cost current, push the Astroscript out. Against many decks this is a lock, and if you’re playing against Faust there’s no point waiting any longer than necessary for e.g. a Wraparound and more money. Wraparound + News Hound is still ‘only’ 7 cards.

I wouldn’t try this against Criminal due to Faerie/Inside Job (naming Targeted Marketing on Siphon and leaving HQ open feels like you’re mocking blue decks!), but Crim has no sensible way of dealing with Archangel or Fast Advance, so you can often just turtle up and score out with a SanSan.

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This is pretty much my deck, except I have +1 Tollbooth, +1 Little Engine, +1 Fast Track, +1 Predictive Algorithm, -1 Wall of Static, -1 Archangel, -1 Cyberdex, -1 Targeted Marketing. My deck name is even similar… I call mine Solfood.

It probably plays nearly the same, but I like the extra big ICE and additional option for the Current, though dropping the Algorithm for an extra Targeted Marketing is probably the right call (you want it ASAP vs Criminal to call Siphon). I would say that Wall of Static just isn’t worth it in my testing. For the Barrier plan, I’d just stick with 3x Wraparound and call it good. The third Archangel is good, but I’d rather have the third Tollbooth because the Angel doesn’t do much vs D4v1D. Fast Track is my favorite agenda, so I have to have the full set. I can see having 1x Cyberdex, but I’m not facing a lot of Clot Shaper right now.

I will say @Dragar is right, that going fast is the most important thing about Sol. You just have to make ballsy moves, like rushing behind a News Hound on Turn 1, or feeding them an agenda in a remote you know they can get into once at huge cost and then just install another next turn.

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225

From how you’re describing it it sounds like we play in a similar way. I know it’s sacrilege, but I’m not enjoying tollbooth at the moment. It’s expensive, the anarch decks don’t need too much money but have access to loads, it only takes one D4V1D counter to break… That’s why I prefer archangel - it’s half the cost, so hurts less if it gets spooned, and I even prefer assassin at the moment. But everyone keeps saying tollbooth is the best…

I agree on wall of static, just never know what to play instead. Maybe I’ll just swap that out for a fast track

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226

I’m telling you, a Little Engine is where it is at. Swap that Wall of Static for Engine. Faust just cries when it is rezzed, and it offers another Spooned target to keep them away from your Booths. It also rocks when you can lock out Bank Job/Desperado/Dirty Laundry econ vs Crim and they’re rocking something like Zu.13.

I can see why you’d be down on Tollbooth. Spooned is most certainly a worry. However, I find myself so flush with cash late game that I really love the extra tax. More Archangel lets you rush a little more, though, and that’s perfectly valid. The core strategy of the deck most definitely can be seasoned to taste.

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227

I don’t add more “big” Ice to Sol when I want to tax someone out when I am flush with cash… my solution is to put a singleton Lag Time in addition to the 5-6 regular currents I am playing. Vs. Faust + D4v1d this will force them to burn cards (all your even Str Ice now require an extra card) or tokens fast (Sure, use D4v1d to break News Hound). Added bonus for messing with Atman (which was a popular splash in decks in my local meta).

Orbital Tangent’s inclusion of Will-o’-Wisp is also a painful check to everyone but Shapers.

My two credits…

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228

Those are good points in Lag Time’s favor. I hadn’t considered that it would fuck with Atman, and burning through even more D4v1D seems really good in some situations. I supposed the best to be said in its favor is that you can easily turn it back off once you don’t want D4v1D to run through News Hound. Huh. I might be sold on trying it.

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229

Yeah, it is easy to turn off when you don’t need it anymore. The power turn is having it in your HQ and plop down an “agenda” into your server without advancing and then playing Lag. If you are match point they must either plow through your now more taxing scoring server or pay more to attack a central. Either way it will open a scoring window. I drove people nuts by installing some random Upgrade and they would go broke for nothing.

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Yeah. I get what you’re saying there. I also play the Never Advance game with upgrades too and force awful “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” runs. Seems solid to add Lag to that.

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My deck is named Better Call Sol.

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Some fun ideas coming out here. I’ll give little engine a try - I think my hangup with it is that, pre-MWL I was playing 3 ash and a caprice, and just never advancing stuff in a server from hell. Little engine didn’t play nice with the ash trace if they had D4V1D.

But with the new style of the deck I’ll give it a shot

233

Do you not like predictive in general? I think it works great early and helps keep the pace of the game in your favor, especially when combined with tollbooth, turnpike, and datapike. As a one of, it’s not worthwhile, but I posted a deck that is centered around it that works pretty well, it’s hard to trash all the ice when you’re being taxed money and clicks to run again because of a surprise price increase

234

If you play Food it should be Food for the Sol.

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235

Ok maybe if you build a deck around it, run ash and ice that taxes credits then it could work. Maybe. But my main issue is that it’s not a surprise. As soon as you play it the runner knows he/she has to end the run with a couple of credits spare

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I’ve been playing a single lag time in my sol deck recently and have not found much use for it, normally ends up getting discarded. My current set is 3x targeted marketing, 2x paywall and 1x predictive algorithm. Haveing the 7th current did not help out as much and the lilly its been replaced with has done loads more work.

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I’ve made a deck like that, might put in red herrings and some on access agendas. It’s crucial to tax the runner every turn by threatening astro, forcing them to either run your servers, which leads to them taking tags and losing money to turnpike, or hitting tollbooth, further seeing them back. Keeping the runner low enough that they end up making fruitless runs is priority, but opening up scoring windows because of the 2 credits is easy once you realize how often the runner steals agendas against nbn at low credit totals. Even if it just stops a last click makers eye, or makes legwork useless is nice. The key is Mumba Temple and upgrades all day, threaten astro with every face down install, and you could put in SanSan to give you an extra out if you need it, but i feel that makes the runner focus intently on gathering money, which doesn’t work. So i use midway station grid, cause its great against Faust. Interrupt 0 is a good taxer, rsvp works, but isn’t phenomenal. I don’t think most currents are meant to be general use honestly. I see where you might think that the 2 credit open information is detrimental, but the game is designed to make that matter more often than you think, it just depends on your play. And reversed accounts.

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I like the concept of a deck that is flexible in strategy choice. I’d like to explore that further.

Against anarchs a rush opening is good, News Hound or Wraparound on the remote, play Targeted Marketing on the breaker they need (faust or corroder, possibly mimic or d4v1d). Can play an agenda as well, but then you risk up to 7 free medium runs if you want to score next turn. As they get breakers online you can transition to pure FA, especially if you rushed an Astro. If FA shuts down, you start building a remote, hopefully leveraging TM cash with Ash.

Against crim you can go straight for FA - protect centrals, use Interns to spam SanSan.

Shaper shits all over both rush and FA, so it’s glacier all the way.

How feasible is this? What cards do you need for each strat, and what cards are flexible enough to be used in more than one strat? Interns help both FA and glacier (recur SanSan or Ash). Targeted Marketing smooths the transition between strats - if you know what card disrupts your current strat, it will give you a bunch of credits to kickstart the next one.

Tangentially, I’ve been playing 3x Tollbooth, but struggle to rez even one. Is switching one for a third Pop-Up a good move?

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Here’s a deck that’s been doing well for me and even helped me win a 26 person store championship (buoyed by a Whizzard Faust runner)

S.O.L.

New Angeles Sol: Your News

Agenda (9)
1x AstroScript Pilot Program ☆
3x Explode-a-palooza
2x Global Food Initiative ••
3x Project Beale

Asset (8)
3x Jackson Howard
2x Lily Lockwell
3x Melange Mining Corp.

Upgrade (2)
2x Cyberdex Virus Suite

Operation (18)
1x Closed Accounts
3x Hedge Fund
2x Midseason Replacements
2x Paywall Implementation ••••
2x Psychographics
2x Scorched Earth ••••• •••
3x Sweeps Week
3x Targeted Marketing

Barrier (5)
2x Resistor
3x Wraparound

Code Gate (2)
2x Pop-up Window

Sentry (5)
2x Information Overload
3x News Hound

I’m planning on getting a couple sansans and putting in more astros once I find the influence, but so far the deck is doing well. While currently a bit too reliant on tagstorming to win (hence why I need to add sansans), it’s a nightmare for people to deal with once those tags land.

The standard play is to protect centrals and money up as hard as you can as quickly as you can so you can hit them with a big midseason (13 tags to the psycho beale). Once the runner is tagged, they’re almost always going to run R&D and that’s where you put information overload. With so few people playing criminals and, by extension Faire or Shrike, information overload becomes a full rig trasher, giving you plenty of time to find either scorch to kill to Psychographics to Psychobeale. Lily Lockwell does great work for pulling up operations you want when they’re most effective.

The deck falls flat against any runner that sits back and moneys up rather than trying to steal, so I want to get some fast advance in the deck to force the runner to run while I’m ahead on credits. My current plan is -1 Scorch -1 Psychographics, + 2 SanSan City Grids, and then with the extra influence, +2 Astros -1 Exploda, -1 Beale.

I’d appreciate thoughts on this.

EDIT:So I’ve gone and made the changes and it seems to make things a bit better:

Agenda (9)
3x AstroScript Pilot Program ☆☆☆
2x Explode-a-palooza
2x Global Food Initiative ••
2x Project Beale

Asset (8)
3x Jackson Howard
2x Lily Lockwell
3x Melange Mining Corp.

Upgrade (4)
2x Cyberdex Virus Suite
2x SanSan City Grid ☆☆

Operation (16)
1x Closed Accounts
3x Hedge Fund
2x Midseason Replacements
2x Paywall Implementation ••••
1x Psychographics
1x Scorched Earth ••••
3x Sweeps Week
3x Targeted Marketing

Barrier (5)
2x Resistor
3x Wraparound

Code Gate (2)
2x Pop-up Window

Sentry (5)
2x Information Overload
3x News Hound

10 influence spent (max 15-5☆=10)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

The loss of the scorch hasn’t come up yet as the kill hasn’t been the typical win condition for this it; Psycho-Beale is a much more reliable win condition. The SanSans are a much better way to force the runner to steal an agenda before they’re ready if they’re trying to money up; I’ll leave an agenda on the SanSan so if they access to trash the SanSan they also have to steal. Information overload on R&D is a great way to slow down ( or just outright cripple) the runner once they’re tagged to high heaven from midseason and gets them to just take more and more tags if thy run through it more than once.

The rest of the ice is cheap because the deck is most likely to lose in the early game; melange is needed ASAP to start making a pile for credits for both a big midseason into psychobeale. Targeted marketing is good for that though make the top priority having it out to turn on New hounds, next be siphon defense, and last make them hesitant to play their power cards if they don’t run siphon (i.e., calling Wyldside against any deck I think runs faust).

Film critic and imping agendas seriously hurt this deck, so I think I may try to get a snatch and grab into the deck for film critic (and particularly well loaded kati’s) and CVS can be used to clear imp counters. Otherwise this deck seems very strong in a meta dominated by resource dependent anarchs who don’t often keep lots of cash around.

Thoughts would be appricated

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240

I’ve had fun with this, thought I’d share if others are interested