While I agree that you want tools to dig your deck quickly to get Wyldside set up, Street Peddler isn’t always the best option, particularly when you run events important to your game plan. Street Peddler kills events, including any Cutlery, IHW, Blackmail, or even the Rebirth you are trying to build this deck around.
Personally, I think Rebirth is a bit of a trap. I think it could work well in Andy, since her ability gives her a decent chance to see it in her opening hand, and her opening hand is all she gets from her ID. It’s never going to be a guarantee to get it in any game for any runner.
In Valencia, I certainly understand the temptation, but it’s going to be difficult to find your 1x Rebirth in a 50 card stack, and then you can finally start playing with your ‘real’ ID in the mid-late game. What ID do you want to swap into? Whizzard: You’ve already fallen behind the asset spam (and won’t catch up). Quetzal: Ignoring an early Wraparound or Ice Wall is her main benefit, or any one barrier if you packed e3 as well, but by mid-game this is less helpful. Reina: boosting the cost of early ICE rez is the best time to punish the corp, by mid game the econ denial has fallen behind. Ed Kim: get his jollies from trashing that first Hedge Fund, or the SEA/Scorch combo. Noise/MaxX: take a different deck than the other ID’s.
In short: I don’t think Val is a good fit for Rebirth. You can make a good Val deck and toss in a Rebirth as an afterthought to see if it helps you out, but I would focus on a good Val deck first. If you are making a good Val deck, you need good events, like Blackmail, and Street Peddler is anti-synergistic with all events.
One excellent observation that I’m surprised I haven’t seen more discussion around before is: the Dumblefork deck does not interact with the Whizzard ID in any significant fashion. You can play this deck out of any anarch with similar success (probably less good in MaxX and Noise). Of course, in this current age of Museum asset spam, Whizzard does seem like the best ID to work with…
I’d make a slight disagreement here. One of the powerful aspects of the Faust/Wyldside engine is that you don’t need money - those card slots can be dedicated to other powerful effects (ice destruction is the big one). We’ve seen other attempts at decks like this before - stealth decks are a good example, which can run cheaply but lack actual credit engines. They fall down badly when it comes to trashing SanSan or even Jackson. I think Whizzard’s ID is deeply relevant to providing an influx of credits into an engine that is otherwise credit starved.
It may feel like I’m splitting a hair here, but I believe you are thinking of how the ID interacts with the meta more than how the ID interacts with the deck. The deck can break and trash ICE without Whizzard’s ID ability, and I believe it was originally designed for Edward Kim (as a 1-armed ICE feast perhaps). But at any rate, I respectfully disagree with your implication that the deck does not run much economy.
The Dumblefork core always includes Liberated Accounts, and usually Career Fair to go along with it. That’s a pretty serious credit engine. Look at current Faust Noise decks, which run on basically just enough credits to keep installing viruses.
If the most trashing you need to do is the occasional SSCG, then the econ in the Dumble decks is plenty, as non-asset spam NEH usually has limited ICE. If you have to trash assets every turn (e.g. IG, Gagarin), then the Whizzard ID is very relevant. At any rate the deck itself can run out of any ID, Whizzard is only relevant because there are a plethora of assets in the meta that need to be trashed. If corps were running mostly operations economy (e.g. many current Palana builds) then the Whizzard ID would be much less relevant.
Finally, if you were going to a tournament where you knew every corp was going to be Operations-econ Weyland and/or Jinteki, would you need to change your Dumblefork deck significantly to address the meta shift? or would you just sleeve a more relevant Anarch ID (Ed Kim, Reina, Quetzal) to better manage the non-asset corp archetypes?
The issue is that you need to trash much more than just a SSCG. Asset spam decks are everywhere, be it IG, Gagarin, or NEH, and the Whizzard credits go a long way. When the meta changes, Whizzard will see less play, but for now I think starting as the Whizz has real value over hoping to Rebirth into him, beyond the added benefit of the extra deck slot and influence not spent on Rebirth.
I think that’s a fair response - but I do think that there’s a weakness in the deck that the ID covers. Non-ice tax is predominantly trash costs, and even in non-asset spam decks that’s very relevant.
(As an interesting exercise if you’ve time, go back and read the Whizzard threads from early last year and before Inject/Street Peddler/Faust. People were already remarking that Whizzard’s ID was bonkers good even if it’s just Jackson - it just didn’t cover the problem at the time, which was setting up a functional rig fast enough to get any accesses to make it worthwhile. Example.)
I think it’s unfair to compare to Noise decks - they get 3 credits a turn from Aesop, 3 Cache, and still can’t afford to interact with most corp assets except via Imp.
The only one I’d consider would be Ed Kim in a very Weyland/Scorch heavy meta, where Plascrete and I’ve Had Worse just wasn’t enough. Whizzard’s ID is a perfect hedge against decks that try to tax you in non-ICE ways (upgrades and assets), even if you’re not expecting running into many of them. The ID patches over one of the very few holes in the deck. That’s hugely important.
I remember the old threads and discussions about Whiz being good, even if he’s ‘only trashing Jackson’, but there are some assumptions going into that statement that are probably more telling:
Whiz has a complete R&D lock independent of his ability
Nothing can pass through HQ without Whiz getting it
Jackson is a pretty important and useful corp card, corps don’t just leave him to get trashed on the board. With complete access to R&D and HQ, the runner will likely win before they trash the 3rd Jackson.
Whiz has been good because HB (and to a lesser extent RP) with it’s asset-based economy have never been absent from the meta, and trashing Adonis, Eve, and Jackson are all very important, and likely to come up enough times to make the ID ability very profitable.
The ID is obviously good, but bonkers good even if it’s just Jackson is hyperbole.
I don’t think Dumblefork beats NEH if it can’t interact with SanSan in the very early turns of the game, or find Turntable in a timely fashion, or trash Jackson on Medium digs.
I also don’t think Dumblefork beats IG if it can’t interact with City Hall / Temple / Museum / Turtlebacks in the very early turns of the game.
Kind of a show-stopper for Val-u-spork, even if she slots a Rebirth and a couple Scrubber.
So basically play Whiz until he rotates or until asset spam gets pushed out of the meta (won’t happen anytime soon).
On the plus side, the rebirth Val deck was fun to play, but yeah its not probably the best home for Dumbleforks. Although it would probably be pretty wicked in a regass build that could shapeshift into Null.
I think Dumbleforks with Blackmail is pretty nasty. Makes rushing harder and makes it even harder to get scores out of remotes.
But I agree, the influence pip hurts and I am not sure you really gain enough from it yet.
I think it’s important to reopen this thread every so often and just state how much I, and everyone that’s ever played against this deck, hates this deck.
I admit it’s not that bad, but I still hate HAVING to play against it, since it’s basically flipping a coin that has Bowser on one weighted side with most decks.
Nightclub breakfast decks have that unfunness factor from the RNG where if nightclub breakfast is on the bottom of their deck it’s actually really easy to win, and if nightclub breakfast is in their opening hand, it’s extremely difficult to win. I’m in the josh camp of thinking it’s kind of a crappy game mechanic to have to involve yourself with as corp, to some extent it’s kind of borrowing MtG’s weakness in that it must introduce variance by making decks include a mixture of cards that are good no matter when you draw them with cards that provide a recurring benefit every turn and are inherently best if you draw them early (in MtG that’s lands).
I don’t think ICE destruction is an inherently bad mechanic and I don’t think it’s unfun to play against, I think it’s interesting to decide how to ice your servers with the knowledge that your opponent might pay some credits and a card to remove one of the ICE on that server. To what extent that’s ok, which server you would allow that to be a possibility, it changes and it’s an interesting choice.
The third hallmark of dumblefork, the dumble, I think it’s kind of a problem if you design an ID with the ability that says “Does 3 times the effect of the current Gold Standard of IDs if a certain condition is met” and then design an entire cycle based around enabling deck archetypes that meet that condition in a game without sideboarding. When you’re feeling particularly frustrated by that, you have the option of playing decks that don’t emphasize that cycle. The main really unfortunate thing about attempting to secure a fun play experience that way is that Item Number one of this post is unavoidable unless you spam e. mills to an extent that is pretty unrealistic. Like, really unrealistic since Weyland’s not a faction and De Ja Vu is a card.
EDIT: Oh hey this post might not be current with Voter Intimidation. 67% of the time may or may not work every time, not sure what overall impact that has on the Palana op econ option.
