Well, to be fair you would need to count the click to install the SoT in the first place, so it’s significantly worse. 
The “installing SoT” click is somewhat less important, because it can be done in one of the previous turns. Also, this can be done from 2 credits at most (unless we’re talking Toolbox, Femme or Morning Star), so overall I’d say those things, coupled with the general flexibility of the SoTs, tend to even things out.
Anyway, I plan to test and see how I like it. My luck tends to make me rarely actually draw Sure Gambles in starting hands anyway, so maybe I won’t even miss them that much 
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I don’t think I used the Escher at all. I wish there was room for a copy of Copycat! That always makes Escher more valuable to me unless my opponent has, I don’t know, revealed a bunch of ice at or near Atman strength.
The Blade’s coming back out of my deck for that Atman again. Maybe Escher becomes Cyber-Cypher? Thought about Torch as well, but sheesh, yet another card with a 9 install cost.
Can we talk for a moment and try to figure out a way to make enough money? That’s always been my problem with the guy. I always feel like I have to run or fall behind, and if I run and make a play I then run out of money. The way I currently see things is pretty grim:
- Voicepads? Sorry - you can’t run Lucky Find.
- ProCon? Sorry - you can’t run Hostage.
- Opus? Sorry - you’re basically out of MU.
The best hope I can see is resource economy like Armitage and Daily Casts plus Aesop’s and maybe Workshops. But that’s a lot of card slots - how can you get enough useful influence? Aesop’s takes economic pressure off Scavenge, at least, letting you use it for recursion instead of discounts.
Well, most ProCo shaper decks do it without hostage–generally considered clunky and a waste of 2-6 influence. Mostly you just take 3 and mulligan for it–and maybe still run diesels to help you dig.
Similarly, other Shapers besides CT play Magnum Opus, all the best memory pieces are shaper, so play some akamatsus or a cybersolutions in you’re worried about it.
Kati Jones, modded, daily casts and Proco is already a pretty tried a true economy suite, which Professor can run. Generally that’s out of Kate so I might take one more piece to offset the difference in her ID ability.
I think when the cerberus breakers come out, Professor will be up for a major re-evaluation–but whereever that concensus lies, I don’t think the true issue is his ability to make money–you can always take 8 in shaper, if nothing else.
I’ve found lately in my shaper games that the time Opus sucks up clicking for 2 credits at a time, usually leaves you with not enough time or money to run the servers that matter, and for that reason, I’ve been trying to avoid opus-only economies. Has it just not been a problem for you? Or are you more of the sit back till you hit a threshold of credits kind of person?
Morningstar/yog may be the missing key, that’d save a lot of credits that I’m often not saving.
I tend to agree with you on Opus, but it is a very efficient economy from a deckslots perspective, and my point was generally shaper has the search and MU in house to make it work, so there is no reason for Prof to be poor if money is what you think is holding himb ack–he can make money just like the other shapers.
Totally off-topic, but why no 100 cards? It’s the magic prof number. 45 card prof just seems soo… legit
I run Aesops Pawnshop, Armitage codebusting and daily casts in my Exile deck. It has rarely run out of money.
I played professor a couple months until this whole worlds ramp-up and plan on getting back to it afterwards. I have some thoughts so far:
first is I’m beginning to feel that most people fail at making the professor work because they fall into the “professor trap”. Just because you can take one of everything that’s good doesn’t mean it makes a good deck. I was in the process of attempting to adjust my thinking so can’t give a solid alternative approach at this time.
I think one of my best lessons from practicing professor (as described in the above) is developing from medium/keyhole. Yeah I can port in this really strong RnD threat but there is rarely a good situation for it. You almost always have to tutor it and those really need to be saved for main breakers or important “disposable” programs that save your ass. I believe I need to (when I get back to it) work on the process of having less programs and having more events to speed the professor up.
Magnum opus is not going to work as the primary source of economy. I had moved to including sure gambles and daily casts. I think just about every professor deck should include modded but the amount to be dependent on the number of applicable programs in the deck. I was on one copy of eureka as a way to exploit test run if I don’t have a scavenge in hand but that again depends on what programs you’re using. SoT works in this fashion as well and may end up being the better way of having a virtual 4 scavenges (or test run if its the scavenge in your hand) to work with. My last iteration had Morningstar, femme, and garotte so there was ample opportunity to use it. Someone else may just be on recurring faeries and femme and that might be the way to go, I’m still at the point where I want to see how stressful working garotte onto the table is.
I’m not done with experimenting with it but I feel sahasrara is a viable econ option with professor. Where I’m at now with it is getting over the possible mental block of thinking it has to stay on the board forever. If we’re grading cards against cards then sahasrara only needs to save me 6 credits for it’s time to have passed. this makes it as useful as sure gamble. downside is that the card can chew up a memory slot early if I don’t get an akamatsu or one of the 2 credit memory programs to extend my MU, also it doesn’t put credits into my hand now. Upside is that it can save me more money than sure gamble gains and only has the 2 credit entry-fee vs. SG’s 5. I would not look at sahasrara as an individual card that I feel I have to have so I include three. I would look at it from the viewpoint of “I want X number of econ cards” and it takes up one or more of those slots.
I think many of the cheap, cute effect cards that you think would be fun to include in your professor deck probably have to go. parasite may even end up on that list before it’s over. Most of these cards are annoying to the corp but don’t really save your ass or get you in when you need to. Just because you have test run and clone chip doesn’t mean you have true consistency, that only works when one card (ex: parasite) is your ONLY play. If you have some of those cards try taking them out and putting something like tinkering in their place. See what happens ( I haven’t been able to yet).
I can speak more on it later after worlds and I’m back to trying to decipher him. Good luck everyone.
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Believe it or not, I’ve seen Freelance Coding Contract played to good effect in The Professor.
That was how I played him (FCC). I felt that the deck was very good at responding to threats, but when I was winning I had a hard time keeping the lead gap open, as nothing in my arsenal was particularly punishing or snowballing.
I also agree with this, but found that generally when you really paired down your idea to its most basic building blocks, I was able to get it down to 15 influence, at which point you’re better off playing that deck in Kate (or in my case, a stimshop).
I think with shaper recursion, a cerberus rig will get a lot of mileage and you could either build into a big rig or just have them in there as strong on-demand breakers. I could see that rig not being worth 6 influence in a lot of decks, and he could still play a traditional rig or big rig as well.
Actually, whenever I used it twice and then turned it into a Parasite via Scavenge, I was a happy camper 
If used most every turn Sahasrara is the most efficient economy card in the game. Don’t know if the Professor is going to install enough to deal with the MU issues, but I 
that card
Dusted off Vivat Academia today with a few changes (D4v1D and a few small other program tweaks) but I had pretty limited success.
Wonder when and if the professor will be playable.
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@false_idol Cerberus the 1.5 headed dog? Lady is really good, play it. Don’t play Cuj.0 faerie + mimic + deus x isuch better. Probably don’t play Rex. Cyber Cipher -> Torch is probably better (+/- yog.0).
Folk get greedy with prof. There are lots of really good green cards. You’re allowed to play them.
Dave, imp, faerie, medium/keyhole, sneakdoor. I like morning star. That’s already too much influence for 15 inf runners. The big problem is lack of access to hq pressure. I wonder if lamprey/imp is worth a go. Nerve agent is typically too slow.
It’s a deck for a different age, don’t expect it to work today.
I’m in the process of writing that Professor article, if it’s good enough when it’s done, I’ll publish it. If not, I’ll salvage any usable parts and put them up here.
Seconded on the list, except for Morning Star - 2 MU is too much and Lady is enough.
Imp is a must-include, and is usually spent on HQ. Lamprey isn’t worth it, especially if you’re using your 1 inf on the second Sucker like I usually do. Nerve Agent is fine, but needs a degree of self-control - it’s not your “start panicking on HQ now” play, instead it’s your follow-up to Sneakdoor if they didn’t panic then.
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I wonder if Code Siphon is good for the Prof.
I have been messing around with my one influence as Rachel, as the extra click can be amazing, however it sucks when you hit a snare 
datasucker is the only other card ive considered as my one influence.
There’s a bunch of other options worth exploring. There’s Stimhack, of course, but you could want two Caches, for instance… or two Sherries, if you’re the kind of deck that installs a lot. Hell, you could even want a Hades Shard, if you’re doing something suitably crazy like Keyhole/Eater Prof 
But, to be honest, my Prof builds always end up with two Suckers somehow.