I’m sitting on 10 ICE, but I’ve been really loving Lockdown! It’s so strong on centrals when the runner hits a Snare and can’t draw up afterwards, leaving them vulnerable to a agenada score/neural EMP flatline.
I’ve also been leaning on Cerbral Overwriter as my main advanceable trap since 2-3 Brain Damage can set up the kill very nicely.
I agree on clickless net from agendas, i believe it is what gives PE an ultimate argument over any other Jinteki faction for pure kill-decks. The bleed-net from just stealing agendas does very little for the overall gameplan, but the clickless net is essential.
I would like to know how this is compensated by running kill in other identities like Spags suggested (Biotech), i suppose through other options (easier to win by scoring).
As for ice i think it is dangerous to go below 10-11, the reason is that you want an ice in the opening hand, or being able to mulligan for one. Some matchups, especially versus siphon, you NEED 2-3 extra turns to set up to prevent being siphoned to the ground.
With Faust currently being so popular, I’m feeling Lotus Field can be exceptionally good in PE. Forcing them to discard cards before access makes accessing all the more dangerous. There’s still Spooned and NRE+Yog of course, so it’s mostly a meta-call of what you think you’re facing in your meta.
I think you are right. In my meta, Yog has all but disappeared, so codegates are particularly effective. Lotus Field being immune to parasite is a further leg up. Finally, many anarch decks seem to paradoxically shun both yog and spooned, with many running only a single copy. Codegates tech well against anarchs with so little preparation for them.
Forcing the runner to essentially do two damage to themselves is a pretty good trade in the 1000 cuts game. Also, when the runner has made runs several turns in a row and ends their turn without a full hand, even 1 or 2 net damage is likely to hit something important to them.
Here’s a question, for all of you who play by 1000 cuts (Cambridge) how can you win games against any deck with Levy?
Seeing as it is prominent in the meta and has been for a while, i would think that that playstyle is competitively unfeasible, but do you run Chronos to counter it? Could potentially work quite well.
I run Chronos if I’m expecting to see lots of Levy. Probably just 1, 2 might be too much, not sure.
But in general, bluff out agendas, bluff them to run Cerebral Overwriter, etc. Levy doesn’t give them more hand size afterall.
Given how much MaxX I’ve been seeing, I slotted in Chronos for most of my decks. Against MaxX it can very easily be devastating. Against Shaper it can be pretty good too, since many of them run 1x Levy as a ‘just in case’ card and get a little careless about what goes into the heap.
But the brain damage from a Cerebral Overwriter is much more important. 2-3 brain is a great starting point for a flatline. Lots of anarchs only run 1x Levy and 1x SoT (MaxX will have more). If brain damage was applied early, there is a very good chance to hit one or both cards on 1-2 net damage when their stack is low. It’s hard to pull off, but can close out a game.
Right, but if you are going for the kill you might as well not play 1000 cuts, but instead soemthing more suited to a kill, like my deck above. In addition it makes R&D stronger (Punitive and less 1-pointers) which is a major weakness of the 1000-cuts archetype.
Thus there has to be a valid reason (IMHO) to run 1000-cuts/Cambridge, i guess that could be to use Chronos to a greater extent, but i don’t play that style so i’m just speculating.
Lotus Field has a very bad break-cost-to-rez-ratio for Faust though: 2 cards to 5 credits. Wall of Static costs two cards as well but is two fewer credits to rez, while a lot of the Faust decks (Whizzard’s ICE Feast, Noise) often don’t run Corroder. Or better yet, Yagura often costs two cards for a mere credit.
I’m still clinging to Lotus Field in my lists, though it’s not as great as it used to be. The main advantage is it’s a constant tax for Noise decks, which don’t pack Spooned and have no way of removing it.
This deck can’t do ANYTHING to hurt tag me runners, so I took out a snare and a cerebral overwriter and added 2 closed accounts. It makes the matchup against everything else very slightly weaker, but I think I like the added protection. If someone can think of a better card to remove than cerebral, I might swap that back in.
That is true, and a completely legit change if your meta is full of them. From my side it is a concession to not make the deck too matchup-dependent.
Personally i would experiment with going to Scorched before playing CA. It is more potent in a kill-deck, however i would not play tag punishment since it sometimes does very little. The runner having lots of cash is not a major problem i think, Punitive is a mid-game plan, and them having a bunch of cash is essentially the same as them installing a Plascrete: At that point your kill-plan should be set up, and you should not be relying on Punitive anymore.
Scorch is a ton of influence, you’d have to make significant changes to the deck to include 2. Closed Accounts is just 1!
Indeed, you’d probably need to remove the punitives, and include a singleton. Or switch out the Eli’s to include 2. However, CA does next to nothing for the gameplan imo.
Feel free to try it out and report back with observations however, my stance right now is that tag punishment is not worth it, but of course that is meta dependent and it is interesting to see what others experience. Stuff like this should not be set in stone.
I don’t see how CA advances the game plan either. It’s not like you have to punish tags. The best I’d ever want to use a tag is to trash resources that hurt your matchup, like SoT, Film Critic, Wyldside.
Played in a store championship on Saturday and three players in a row floated tags against me: 2 siphon Maxx decks and Timmy Wong playing Sunny and running into a kitsune where I showed snare, then taking a 2nd tag from John Masanori for jacking out. I closed accounts all 3 of them for 10-20 credits. But… to be honest, I lost all 3 games. I still feel like I would’ve lost a lot worse without closed accounts, as I would’ve been hopelessly behind in the econ game. I was really close to winning all 3, whereas before I would be absolutely destroyed by siphon decks.
Another advantage of closed accounts - it almost always got keyholed by the Maxx players when it was in the top 3 cards, allowing 2 other good cards to survive!
…but maybe I should try to make room for a scorch, because it would’ve won a couple of those games for me.
i run Scorched x2 and it feels great everytime
Issues with the deck are resources like The source,the new one forfeit an agenda install anything and friends
the new psi operation will help a lot
I played PE in a store champ tournament this weekend, it was a lot of fun, and really watched Dumblefork squirm and agonize over when to run, when to use Faust, and on many runs even break all of my ICE, only to choose not to access because of the net-damage taken during the run.
I really like Yagura, it worked like a dream. It drew out several Parasites, moving some pressure off of Komainu, which was great. Yagura is also 2 cards for Faust to break, which is a wonderful trade for 1c.
One of the best runs of the day was Dumblefork running R&D, breaking ICE with 6 cards in hand, but 3 max hand size. HoK pinged him for 2 net damage, taking out both I’ve Had Worse. He ended the turn having to discard most of his hand.
Both of these observations have me interested in using Harvester, especially if any brain damage can be landed. Many Faust runners will run against PE above their maximum hand size, so they will be forced to discard several (~5) cards if they do not break Harvester, or discard 3 cards to break with Faust. Brain Damage makes the sub much more dangerous, as they may be forced to discard down to few enough cards that accessing a Snare or Fetal AI could be deadly.
Has anyone given much thought to using Harvester in PE when it releases later this week?
I don’t think it’s quite Yagura good, but I like the thing. A lot of Faust/Wyldcakes decks start almost every turn over hand size. Worst case in that matchup they drop a Yog, which answers Yagura just as cleanly so whatever. It’s awkward that you could run it empty handed and come out ahead.
I don’t think it really matters much in other matchups. Yagura is basically always relevant.
I tried Heritage Committee in a cambridge type PE last weekend in a serious tournament (nordic ANRPC). Basically guaranteed no one ran R&D next turn. While I kinda won one game thanks to it, in the end I don’t think it was worth the deck slots.
I almost won a game because of Heritage Committee this weekend, but may have blown it by confirming that the runner was committing to accessing. Once I explained that there is a window after he commits to accessing cards when I can use HoK to deal net damage, he realized that 4 cards would not be enough to see his next click, and refused to access 
I like the card draw, since it is easy to get R&D locked playing PE. It is a good way to break through while also discouraging a run on R&D next turn. It’s value is very questionable against Noise, obviously.