I am curious how an anarch deck with no more than 3 breakers OR an exile deck (lots of prgs) would do with inject.
Theory crafting for a moment:
a). Presume a deck with <=3 (4?) programs.
b). This presumes therefor an AI approach, or the ability to pull a precise breaker suite quickly.
c). We presume a resource / event heavy deck.
d). The desire to use inject presumes minimum other draw. In other words, it doesn’t seem to fit in a deck making use of diesel/qt.
e). It implies the ability to cycle cards through the grip rapidly.
This implies either run or econ events.
As a first pass, this seems to be a useful card for Tenma, coupled with express delivery and/or special orders and/or e3.
If it weren’t for the fact that the deck uses diesel/qt, and the fact the deck’s influence is hella tight already, I’d say this sounds like you’re describing the Chaos Theory/Oracle May deck over in this other thread.
I usually run whenever I see a weak spot, especially in the early game to keep some pressure and to have targets to my parasites.
I mulligan for PC and it doesn’t seem to me that PC delay me too much: I need a single turn to fill my hand and recover the credits.
Wildyside + Aesop is not a fast strategy either, but I feel more comfortable with PC if I need to recover from damages or if I don’t need to draw (a typical play is Deaj vu+install+install+run).
Here is my actual decklist:
Identity:
1x Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire (Core)
Event: (8)
3x Deja Vu (Core)
1x Hostage (Opening Moves) ■■
1x Stimhack (Core)
3x Sure Gamble (Core)
Resource: (7)
3x Professional Contacts (Creation and Control) ■■ ■■ ■■
1x Aesop’s Pawnshop (Core) ■■
1x Hades Shard (First Contact) ■
2x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
It works quite well for me!
Speaking about Inject, I will give it a try: playing with several 3x programs it shouldn’t be a great issues to trash a few… I think Inject is very well designed: it doesn’t work everywhere, but it’s very good in the right deck
So Inject, Lotus Field and Architect have all come out for Noise.
Noise made up almost a third of the field at Worlds.
There was only a single Noise in the top 16.
So what happened? I can see two explanations:
Inconsistency (no Wyldside/Aesops is a pain)
Lotus Field and Architect utterly wreck Anarch.
I’d also be curious about everyone’s play testing with Inject. So far I’ve preferred having Atman to the required Clone Chips if you run Inject (trashing all your stuff).
That is probably because my Anarch builds are event-heavy and cheat programs with Retrieval Run. Inject gives a lot of draw power for a minimal cost.
On the other hand, I try to install as many programs with Noise as possible. I don’t like them in my heap (usually don’t run 3x Clone Chips).
So I guess is a matter of personal style after all. In any case, I think Inject is a great card if you know what it can give you. I mainly use it for draw power, not for economy.
From my testing, Inject is great either when you have a lot of programs and redundancy in their use (Noise tends to fall into this category), or as few programs as possible and extra recurrence (think Anarchs with run/Resource based economies that use all their influence on Clone Chips and/or Tutors).
Inject is bad in Noise. You want real card draw, not a hybrid money/critical mass enabler.
As for what happened to Noise at Worlds, I don’t believe players truly understood how to play Noise against NEH or even HBFA.
During the top 16 stream, I watched players throw away the game by floundering early on trying to make runs and score out before the fast advance deck can win. It seemed they believed they were on a clock and that if they did not win quickly enough, they would lose.
Why?
I understand that is the case if you’re Shaper and Criminal, because you have no way to interact with Biotic Labor. Once the corp has 7 credits, they can score.
However Noise is different. It CAN interact with Biotic. All you need to do is set up properly and attack with Imp. Yet even during the top 16, good players who were competing at the highest level failed to understand this. They threw away Wyldside, and made bad inefficient runs.
The way to beat HBFA/NEH isn’t to shoot yourself in the foot going for single accesses on RnD/HQ. The way to win is to take what the corp gives you. Gnaw and pressure at whichever central is weakest, but make sure you have an Imp ready at all times. As far as I am concerned, every single time you see a Biotic/SanSan without the ability to trash it is a mistake. Between your ability and Imp, you are restricting the number of FA tools they have access to, all the while putting the corp on a clock. The key is to slow down, not to speed up and fizzle out.
Now, I have no doubts that Lotus Field and Architect are big enough problems that Noise isn’t top tier even assuming perfect play. However, it was sad to see players getting it so wrong
I think that is true, but recognising that a good corp player will be looking to threaten Wraparound/Astroscript (for example) or shell game into SanSan or Agenda. Preventing that sort of play that takes up a lot of set up time for early game Noise.
On Inject, I think the thing Inject does which is very helpful is dig for Aesops/Wyldside. Once you have them, it’s usefulness declines. Personally I think it is worth it for the extra consistency, but my version uses Clone Chips which mean it adds extra value by enabling instant-parasite/D4V1D.
Does it add extra value though? Most Noise lists are already running Clone Chips, so instant speed Parasites/D4VID isn’t something exclusive to Inject.
Inject in Noise is always going to give you more creds than cards simply because most of your deck is programs. So dedicating card slots to it to get you to Wyldside faster is going to continually disappoint you by giving you credits more often than it actually digs you deeper.
Except that it always digs you deeper. Every time you play it you get four cards closer to the Aesops/Wyldside. Whereas if you clicked for cards you’d be spending your whole turn doing that.
The thing with inject is that in anarch decks you often do not find the program you need just because it is in bottom of your deck. Most noise decks i saw do not use any tutor. So trashing some random programs is not bad bad for this decks, of course in case if you do not always draw through whole deck. Additionally you get money for this trashing and thin your deck that leads to faster aesop, wyldside, clone chip, cyberfeeder, deja vue etc.
More then that if we continue compare programs being at bottom of deck and trashing them by inject, second variant is better even besides extramoney because you actually get access to programs through clone chip(instant parasies!) and deja vue. If you just draw a parasite you need to use it on some ice, and vs jinteki it is very helpful to have an opportunity to break down komainu/neural katana before they shoot first time.
I still think you’re giving up resources by not being able to play your programs for value and then recurring them. If all you care about is getting Aesop/Wyldside NOW, then sure, it’s okay.
I wouldn’t say it’s the only thing I care about (I also like being able to dig for carapce for example and Gozik is entirelly right that having a parasite in the heap and a Clone Chip in my hand is a great outcome against Jinteki), but I think inconsistency in drawing the moving parts is one of the big issues with Noise. I’d rather have an influence-free Diesel or the early game economy to play Quality Time, but we work with what we have .
I didn’t watch the streams but I played noise vs 2 neh in the top 20ish tables during swiss and beat both NEH I faced, as well as both blue suns. I abused nerve agent, imp, parasite and scavenge to slow neh down. Pressure on HQ and rnd is cruicial, hitting the opening when they go to score rather than trying to stop it at all costs.
The biggest slowdown for me in attacking was when I took a turn to install imp, trash marked, and scavenge it and trash a sansan…and that got me a mill and a freshly charged imp.
I agree entirely, yes if they double astro you can be in pain, but what deck wouldn’t be?You have to play to your outs, and that means wyldside and Aesop’s and in my case, even djinn. Nbn has terrible ice generally (if they’re going to be fast anyway). The best counter is to bring the heavy hitters in multiaccess and card destruction.
I faced two Noise with my NEH and won both. I expected a heavy Noise presence in the tournament and ran 3 Lotus Field an 3 Architect. If you get a Lotus Field in front of HQ and a Architect on R&D Noise gets stuck watching you score unless you get really stalled on agendas.
I think Inject is sort of necessary in Noise just because of how awful your deck is when you don’t have Aesop’s Pawnshop. Anything that helps you find one is a welcome addition in my book. I took 4th in the winter FFG tournament the day before worlds going undefeated with Noise. It was similar to what most other people were playing but had no Wyldside and used 2 Quality Time 2 Inject to draw. I am by no means an Anarch authority like Gozik but it worked out pretty well for me and was palpably better than any Pawnshopless Noise or Wyldside + Pawnshop Noise I tested pre worlds .
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