I too wanted 3 Archangel at some point, then I either didn’t want to/couldn’t afford to spend 3 every time the ambush triggered, or I ran into Gordian Blade which makes stacking Code Gates miserable.
The 15 Minutes is good at closing out if you get to 6 points, but Turntable is close to its peak and playing a 2/1 in a deck like this, even for as good Breaking News is, becomes a risk. I’m not saying they’re going to hit the one-of every time, but turning a GFI and 15 into 2 NAPD, or NAPD and 3rd Beale keeps you at 9 Agendas, saves you an influence point, and screws you only slightly less on Turntable. It’ll be much more common for Food or active Astro to get swapped, but you at least you don’t get blown out too hard with the 1 pointer.
The Launch Campaigns were okay when I switched to them, but 5 credits over 3 turns was actually pretty underwhelming for this deck. I played 3 games with Private Contracts and felt more comfortable economically, at the cost of a little speed. The problem with that lies in the value of the speed you lost; it might be too much. You’re also playing Restructure, which Launch is friendlier towards.
Turnpike doesn’t really do anything in this deck; you’re not leveraging the tag and if they go tag-me I’d rather have a Pop-Up Window instead. 2nd Resistor is probably better served as Wraparound, which annoys the Faust decks and could potentially eat a D4 counter.
Glad you got to squeeze Caprice in here; I really wanted to see if you could get away with not playing it but the remote camp is too real.
I played against a val recently with an napd build and turntable. It was impossible to win bc of napd being a 5/2, blackmail, and then I finally scored one and it was turntable for the 15 minute. idk what is the correct agenda composition. Caprice is needed unfortunately. Really need 2 as 1 doesn’t show up often enough. Launch feels fine with restructure to me. Good call on 2nd wrap.
I haven’t faced any of the issues in my own build, thanks to SSCG. Even if your scored 15 Minutes gets DJ’d, it’s still much better than playing a third NAPD and 21 points. I think 3 GFI 3 Astro 2 NAPD 1 Minutes is the optimal spread for any Algorithm list. 15 Minutes is ultimately not very common.
well of course. But taxing out a clone chip + SMC just to bring a program back is much worse than just the chip and costs more in credits and board setup. Also the strategy holds up against chip-less decks that rely on Special Order or Scavenge to get their Lady/Corroder going. In practice that was the only part of the deck that I really liked actually - Will O’. Other than that I didn’t feel like Sol could hack it against the aggressive central attacks while maintaining any semblance of a good remote. I’ll revisit later, but for now it seems meh…
Yeah, this is my general feeling on the id as well. I think surveillance sweep is the main way right now for this deck to be “worth it” over the other great nbn IDs, but there need to be one or two more nasty mid run traces that aren’t subroutines (a la troll) to really make the deck sing.
Here is my Housekeeping NAS that I’ve been trying out. Housekeeping is by far the most oppresive of the currents and staying in play for most of the game compounds the runners hate for it. Add in IOP and Snoop and Snare! For extra card sniping. The deck is trying to gain card advantage over the runner. Score agendas with never advance tactics. With one astro I can never advance out a 4/2. With two astros every facedown card in a remote can be a 5/3 and the runner must check or lose. Against Val I go horizontal with one ice remotes to tax her blackmails. She is probably my hardest match up.
I played it. What trace would you ideally use it on? Ash seems the best, but frankly nbn has a hard time making a remote taxing enough that they don’t just trash ash and come back in.
Problem is that when they need to, they can just break the subs. If surveillance sweep cost 0 it’d be amazing for amping up already good cards like resistor and archangel and ash, but costing 2 makes it a significant opportunity cost that the runner can just play around. I ran a build with SS and Targeted Marketing and find myself preferring TM to SS because TM was no burden on me.
this is exactly on point w/r/t surveillance sweep. right now there are very few “must beat” traces going around; ash is probably the only one close but the ability to simply trash ash and run again means he falls short. Also the 2 cost is really high, especially in a deck that wants to keep their cash up to threaten very taxing traces - SS doesn’t help much if you’re at or near zero credits, and needing to re-pay for it over and over tends to keep you that way.
Assassin seems like it would be quite a good card in a Surveillance Sweep focused deck. A bit expensive, but runners really don’t want either trace to go off. Shinobi the same, though the bad pub is annoying (stupid 3-card jank combo - Surveillance Sweep + Shinobi + Broadcast Square!) . Same with Muckraker. Even Self-Destruct!
I’ve been playing variations on Marimbist’s Targetzan list quite successfully, getting a lot of mileage out of just 3x TM and 1x Cerebral Static. I mean, the strength of the list is in the fast advance shell, but I’m not seeing a need for more complex exploitation of the ID.
I might not be playing much against turntable? But could someone talk more about their sense of the overall weaknesses of this ID?
the thing is, as powerful as SS could potentially be, the list of conditions a card must meet for it to be worth building an entire deck around is pretty long:
trace must run during the run (already we’ve lost the most powerful traces)
trace must not be easily avoided, bypasssed or broken (here we lose the vast majority of all subroutine traces, except those on the very toughest to break tracers like gutenberg)
trace must have a significant, win-condition-promoting impact on the runner if it lands (here we lose most of the rest of the tracing ICE, as well as trace-on-encounter ICE like troll and TMI, and bernice. Basically only ash is left.)
trace must happen frequently enough to incur a serious tax on the runner, greater at least than the credits spent repeatedly keeping this 2 cost current alive (here at last we lose ash, who will likely fire only once or twice a game, and whom will be the absolute highest trash priority against an opponent running this current.
So, a card like assassin that seems like one of the best options, only firmly passes the first condition, weakly stumbles through the second and third (as it can be broken, and its effects are by no means guaranteed to secure a score) and fails hard on the last thanks to its 7 rez cost. My feeling is that we’ll need to see at least one card that hits every point to really see this version of Sol come alive. meantime, targeted marketing is hilarious and way better than it has any right to be ;D
I’m playing an heavy tax glacier in a D&D ID only competition.
So far, it can compete with a +6c clickless economy, with 0c currents aka Paywalls and Targetted Marketting (but it’s very easy to make TM triggering in this environnement).
Thinking about it, Surveillance Sweep + Broadcast Square + illicit ice might not be such a bad combo. Illicit ice is usually pretty good, and forcing the runner to decide just how much the bad pub is worth to them could make for interesting decisions. Checkpoint, Shinobi, Grim are all really good ice if the runner doesn’t get the bad pub. Not sure if this is best in Sol or MN though. But would also be an excuse to run Improved Tracers!
