Patchwork in Shaper - As Close to PPVP as You Can Get

Deck Archetypes
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I know I’m not alone here in testing this, and hopefully I’m not spoiling anyone’s “secret Worlds tech,” but I’ve found Patchwork in Shaper to be right around fucking amazing. As soon as you get it out, you’ll almost always be making 2 credits a turn; thus my mention of PPVP in the title. Another card that gave out a free 2c a turn was Bloo Moose, and let’s all remember the money-drenched 30 seconds while that card was unbanned.

Patchy is a little worse, in that you have to also discard a card from your hand in order to get that 2c discount, but this gives a great incentive to run 3-ofs of cards that would later normally be considered dead draws. I know I saw someone on Slack talking about running ProCon with it, which I tested and found to be pretty good. It gives a bonus to drawing cards, which is something you need to do, since you’ll ideally be installing at least one card a turn, as well as discarding a card a turn. Eventually, I decided that if I was going to be drawing cards as a Shaper, I should just buckle down and draw some damned cards, so I swapped over to Laguna Velasco District and that was a great change.

Something else that’s good about Patchwork is that it takes cards that might normally be a larger tempo hit than you’d want and make it a much more manageable experience. I decided to run the Laamb/Engolo suite, with a safety Na’Not’K that I usually don’t have to install. Since I like DDM as a Shaper wincon these days, I also included a couple Dhegdheer. I chose DDM over Indexing because it can also get reduced by Patchwork when played, and that you really don’t want to be doing multiple runs with Laamb/Engolo, since those runs are usually fairly expensive (and Sentries can give issues if there’s enough of them and you don’t have Na’No up). This also makes a good play space for Data Folding, since it both requires free memory, and usually feels awful to install if it costs 3 (but great at 1).

Finally, the deck needs an ID, and I think any Shaper deck that leans so hard on one card really just needs Ayla at the helm. With 3 Patchwork in the deck (and I wouldn’t recommend any less than 3), you find it with decent reliability. 3 Diesel and 3 Laguna makes sure that you find it swiftly if Ayla misses.

So here’s the most recent version of this deck I’ve been messing with. So far it feels very powerful.

Patchwerk?

Ayla “Bios” Rahim: Simulant Specialist (Terminal Directive)

Event (16)

Hardware (6)

  • 3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
  • 3x Patchwork (Reign and Reverie) ●●●●● ●●●●

Resource (12)

Icebreaker (5)

Program (6)

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Reign and Reverie

Right now I’m on a Levy as my restricted card, although I could easily be convinced to move some influence around and use Employee Strike instead. Most games I don’t really need the Levy, but it has been very useful in a few. In at least a couple of those games, Emp Strike might have made it so the game didn’t go on long enough for Levy to be needed.

I’m sure anyone looking at this deck list is going “Wait, Modded? 3 of them?!” Yeah, 3 fucking Modded. Come at me. I’m almost always able to install the first Patchwork I find with a Modded because Ayla is amazing, and that allows me a lot more freedom with using Patchwork the first turn of the game. Installing Patchy for 1 and then using it to Sure Gamble for a net 6 leaves you at a cool 10 credits. Installing Engolo on Dhegdheer with a Modded costs 1 credit rather than 5 (or Clone Chip Engolo onto that same Dhegdheer after discarding it for savings on a different card, and use Modded to discard to Patchwork for an install cost of 2). That’s the glory or Patchwork - cards you no longer need you just pitch for 2 credits.

I also like the ability to use Patchwork on my opponent’s turn using Clone Chips and SMC. I liked it so much I made a version with Artist Colonies and Fan Sites, but I found that I then had less cards that I wanted to pitch to Patchwork, since I always wanted to install the Fan Sites, which made for awkward turns. It turns out, you actually want some chaff in the deck for it to work out.

Anyhow, I’m still working on the optimal list, but right now this feels really good. I’d love to hear folk’s opinions.

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Patchwork is amazing. I was thinking the same thing, it’s like two PPVP stapled together, but better. I’m glad someone else made the same connection.

I’ve been playing it with Gnat since I’ve gotten R&R and it’s amazing. At first thought it was mostly because I was running Zer0+CV, but once I took that out when the new MWL was spoiled and tweaked it a bit, it’s still pretty great.

It really does feel like the ole’ Prepaid decks at their height. I think Patchwork might be better in Anarch than Shaper because they have the best draw and access to more burst econ. I’ve built Gnat to not rely on resource econ, so Scarcity is not a weakness. Plus, Patchworks makes the Gnat ability trivial, and I get it in 75+% of turns. Patchwork MaxX may be better than Gnat, but there’s enough people that were testing that already, that I’ll stick to Gnat to see how good he can get.

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This is almost certainly true, and actually my first version (the version with ProCons) was using 2x I’ve Had Worse as additional draw, since the deck needed so much. Obviously the switch to Leguna solved the draw problem entirely. I remember when Shaper was draw king and Anarch had almost none. Times have changed!

Anyhow, I’ve seen how killer it is in Anarch, especially since you want to pitch your breakers anyhow. It’s what made me want to try it out in Shaper, especially since CC came of the MWL.

What I really wish, though, is if there were some way to make Aesop’s work with it. Install something using Patchwork, get value off it, and then sell it for more value to Aesop’s. Unfortunately, other than Daily Casts (which would give a total of 8 credits value with Patch and Aesop’s!) there’s nothing you really want to install with Patchwork, since Cache and Harbinger cost less than 2. There’s really not much out there =( Flameout is kinda a thing, but that overtaxes the CCs.

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I had been exploring an Exile deck that used the Conspiracy breakers with Sahashrara to get them installed for free, and then used Aesop’s to eat them. Find a benign ETR ice on outermost, then go to town getting at least a card and three credits for free every turn.

But Hard-Hitting News is still a card, so…

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9 influence is pretty insane! :o I would try to tutor it out with Fan Sites/Artist Colony instead of going for hte full 3 copies. Not sure what I’d use the other 6 influence on.

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Played around 10 games with your version in Jinteki. Net in the competitive lounge. Had 7w/3l, toughest mu probably a ctm that finds the agendas or any rushy corp. Still, a good showing. Seems to be light on econ though. Changed velasco to pro co and seems to be going better and a little bit faster imho. Needs tuning for sure though. Trying now one Rebirth and one fenris just for testing. Rebirth into jasminder and fenris into liza is free draw.

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I was thinking about Rebirth and Fenris as well. I’m also kinda close to dropping Clot and Levy and going to 2 Emp Strike. If I do that, I might have to go back to ProCo as well, since no Levy means I can’t burn hard to get Patchwork online if I can’t find it soon enough.

It gets a little slow waiting for Artist and Fan Site to find you your Patchwork is the only problem I’ve had with that so far. Without Patchy up, the econ is a little light, as ZiNOS mentions. Maybe the solution is, in fact, to go back to ProCo after all. I’m not sure what I’d spend the Inf on either, other than Emp Strikes (AgInf is a hard mup).

I think this weekend I might also experiment with changing to a more standard breaker suite rather than the heavy Dhegdheer-fueled Laamb/Engolo combo, and swapping DDMs for Indexings. That’d also let me use some inf for Paperclip if I went the Colony route. There’s a lot of ways to go with this deck.

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DDM is a god sent though against decks like CTM and asset spam in general where the ice count is really low. Can give you many accesses, and usually they only use one ICE on Rnd (early on) so you can get in only with a Dhegdheer and one of the breaker. The breakers are really expensive but are a really great tool against rush advances against titan and stuff.

Dunno, a lot of ways to build the deck, all of them, meta dependant.

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So I took a version of this deck to Worlds without much testing (bad idea? Bad idea.) and it won 4 out of the 7 games I played with it. I swapped some more stuff around, brought it to a GNK (which is basically the same thing as Worlds), and went undefeated. There’s still some edits I’d make, but it performs pretty darn well, imo.

As I mention in the writeup, the Hopper should be either a Film Critic (if I drop the Levy, which would probably be a second FC) or a third Data Folding. I don’t think all 3 Clone Chips are required, so one could also be dropped, maybe for a second SoT for more DDMs and Legworks.

The version I had at Worlds was an Artist Colony variant with Fan sites and only 2 Patchworks in order to have Clot and a Hunting Grounds, but it’s just not god damned worth it. 3 Patchwork is much, much better. I also dropped the Modded, and god damn if I didn’t miss that card. I also had a more PPVP-esque breaker suite with 2 CyCys and an Inti alongside the Na’Not’K and Laamb, with Indexing instead of DDM. This was also a horrible idea. I thought it would be more lightweight and flexible, but that much MU just ends up turning off Data Folding half the game, and Indexing means you get stomped by stupid things like Exec Boot Camp (thanks, Spags). Plus, you have to run two or three times, which is for chumps. Dhegdheer and the Laamb/Engolo combo is expensive, but you strait up access 5 cards (plus Patchy and Modded help with those install costs in a pretty huge way).

Anyhow, I dig the hell out of the deck now. It’s a pretty fun time.

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Just curious if you think all those copies of Modded are good? I have really enjoyed Ayla but maximizing her ability for me has been about maximizing my ability to get my sick tech on NVRAM, for better or worse (e.g. I get the tech I need for the matchups I need, or park the tech I don’t want to draw into in an irrelevant matchup).

Modded is kind of neither… I think I’d probably rather have some other money card to not get it stuck on NVRAM.

I’d experiment a bit more with this but Jnet casual is pretty brutal right now. More on this later.

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So far I’ve tried the deck with and without it, and being able to use it to cancel the tempo loss of installing Engolo or Laamb while also using Patchwerk to install something else the same turn, or just using it to install that first Patchwork without going broke is pretty huge. Plus, I don’t even know what money card could go here. The deck is already a little on the slow side, so Armitage is out. Shaper doesn’t really have money cards, and MO is bad here.

I guess there’s Dirty Laundry, which is effectively the same card so long as I’m planning on running in the same turn I’d use Modded in. This deck really doesn’t run that much, though, outside of remote camping and the big run events. It seems like kind of a waste to DL archives or something when I could be setting up. After Patchy is installed, though, DL does become better, since it can turn itself into a net 5 rather than 3. I might try some games with Laundry and see how it feels.

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I see. This is a good point. I have been finding Dirty Laundry really underwhelming lately. It seems like the corp power level is so exaggerated right now that Stimhack fills the role that Dirty Laundry once did, and people are sacking two-pointers to Shadow Net just to get more Stimhacks and 9-credit Sure Gambles.

I wish we lived in a world with Rashida or NGO but not both, and not at the expense of your restricted slot.

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